How have differently institutionalized welfare regimes dealt with the Covid-19 crisis? In particular, how have they confronted the social and economic inequalities exposed by the virus? Taking three European countries—Germany, Sweden, and the UK, corresponding broadly to conservative-continental, social democratic, and liberal regime types—this paper tracks the virus response in the areas of income and employment protection and health and residential care. With attention paid to issues of “capacity” and the institutional arrangements in each case, we find that institutional histories in Germany and Sweden permitted a certain recidivistic reliance on established practices in the areas of employment and social protection. In sum, certain social and economic inequalities were mitigated as these countries set aside recent trends toward “liberalization” and mobilized longer-standing institutional capacities to protect some groups, although by no means all. Evidence of this trend is less clear in the health and residential care sectors, where Germany had existing capacity, allowing its older population to weather the crisis in better order than its counterparts in Sweden and the UK. In the UK, welfare liberalization has led to increased social and economic inequalities and funding reductions in health and residential care—all of which have reduced the country’s ability to deal with severe crisis. The Covid response in this case was agile, but also chaotic, with little being done to ameliorate the positions of the most vulnerable groups.

中文翻译：

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Covid（In）平等：德国、瑞典和英国的劳动力市场保护、健康和住宅护理

不同的制度化福利制度如何应对 Covid-19 危机？特别是，他们如何应对病毒暴露的社会和经济不平等？本文以三个欧洲国家——德国、瑞典和英国，大致对应于保守的大陆、社会民主和自由主义政权类型——追踪收入和就业保护以及健康和住宿护理领域的病毒反应。通过关注“能力”问题和每个案例中的制度安排，我们发现德国和瑞典的制度历史允许在一定程度上重复依赖就业和社会保护领域的既定做法。总共，随着这些国家搁置最近的“自由化”趋势并动员长期存在的机构能力来保护某些群体，尽管绝不是全部，某些社会和经济不平等现象得到了缓解。这种趋势的证据在卫生和住宅护理部门不太明显，德国拥有现有能力，使其老年人口能够比瑞典和英国的同行更好地度过危机。在英国，福利自由化导致社会和经济不平等加剧，医疗和住院护理资金减少——所有这些都降低了该国应对严重危机的能力。在这种情况下，Covid 的反应是敏捷的，但也很混乱，几乎没有采取任何措施来改善最弱势群体的处境。