Changing Paradigms of Wellbeing in the Welfare State

The future of the welfare state is increasingly being challenged on both economic and environmental grounds, bringing into question the welfare state’s promise of increased wellbeing, prosperity, and social inclusion. We examine the changing foundations of the Finnish welfare state from the perspective of paradigms of wellbeing. The pursuit of wellbeing is generally thought to guide the functioning of societies and accepted as a justification for various policies. Therefore, the prevailing understanding of wellbeing has a significant impact on societal targets. The paradigms of well-being, i.e. widely shared core beliefs about the nature of reality and desirable state of affairs, are often unspoken, even unconscious, appearing as common sense or ‘beyond politics’. Thus, the paradigms conceal their foundational premises, for example, about whose well-being claims are recognized, or the ontological, normative, and epistemological assumptions on which wellbeing ideals are based. We offer preliminary findings from qualitative analysis, in which we interpret and describe paradigmatic assumptions related to wellbeing conveyed in Finnish government programs in1983-2023. In this period, Finland has been led by relatively stable minimal-winning coalition governments. With increased pressure to cater to the needs of all governmental parties, such coalitions have lead to more strategic and binding nature of Finnish governmental programs. We develop a three-stage analytical framework for teasing out paradigms of wellbeing. First, building, we examine the programs’ legitimizing rationalities and (materially informed) policy paradigms (Hall, Carstensen) to understand the policy context of each governmental plan. This includes analyzing the issue frames, policy ideas, goals, instruments, institutions and resources related to policy planning. Second, we draw attention to the core beliefs and worldviews implicit in the governmental programs to understand which assumptions related to wellbeing transcend individual governments and reach a paradigmatic level in contemporary Finnish society. Here, we build on the concept of deep core beliefs developed in the advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier) and postcolonial theory and critique of modernity (Andreotti, Stein), in which the ontological, normative and epistemological elements of modern worldviews are empirically dissected and analyzed. We pay specific attention to changing notions of personhood and the generation of different subjectivities in relation to wellbeing. Finally, we reflect this analysis of policy paradigms and worldviews against the definitions of wellbeing in the governmental programs. We develop an integrative understanding of wellbeing, which draws on key philosophical and social scientific wellbeing theories especially in the context of social and public policy (building especially on needs-based theories, cf. Allardt, Max-Neef, Doyal and Gough, and Hirvilammi & Helne). We examine definitions of wellbeing across five dimensions: material needs, health, safety, autonomy, and belonging. In relation to social policy, we find that the general trend of welfare retrenchment within the neoliberal policy paradigm shifts paradigmatic assumptions related to wellbeing. Individualist ethos overtakes policy discourses and deservingness emerges as a key characteristic in relation to health and welfare services. Individualist ethos predominates also in left-wing policy paradigms (Sanna Marin’s government in 2019-2023), indicating that the paradigmatic understanding of wellbeing has shifted towards neoliberal ideals.