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The complexity of family policy reform: The case of Norway

That ‘politics matters’ has become a central assumption in the booming welfare state literature in recent years. Sometimes policies do not matter much, however. A key argument in this paper is that family policies are becoming increasingly complex and diversified, and that the practical implications of policies have to be analysed in relation to the wider social, economic and political context. In the present case study of a cash-for-care reform introduced in Norway in 1998, the relationship between policy reform and mothers’ employment practices is explored. Against expectations, and after a heated and polarised public debate, the reform turns out to have very modest effects. The analysis aims at identifying the constellation of factors that can explain the unexpected outcome, locating them in the interplay of the reform’s intent and content, and divergences between policy assumptions and mothers’ actual context of social action.