9. La soutenabilité politique des institutions : l’exemple de la protection sociale

Comparative political economy has shown that large Welfare States are funded through weakly progressive tax structures and deliver universal benefits. Such schemes relying on citizens? demand for insurance generate a broad and stable political support; they can thus raise important tax resources and redistribute at large scale. Institutional reforms designed to increase vertical redistribution by redeploying existing resources could destabilize this arrangement and restrain the capacity to adjust spending in response to growing social needs. We consider the possibility of political trade-offs between increasing the size of welfare systems and increasing the progressivity of its funding (or the targeting of its benefits).