Download or read book The Politics of Welfare State Transformation in Germany written by Christof Schiller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we best analyse contemporary welfare state change? And how can we explain and understand the politics of it? This book contributes to these questions both empirically and theoretically by concentrating on one of the least likely cases for welfare state transformation in Europe. It analyzes in detail how and why institutional change has taken Germany’s welfare state from a conservative towards a new work-first regime. Christof Schiller introduces a novel analytical framework to make sense of the politics of welfare state transformation by providing the missing link: the capacity of the core executive over time. Examining the policy making process in labour market policy in the period between 1980 and 2010, he identifies three different policy making episodes and analyses their interaction with developments and changes in such policy areas as pension policy, family policy, labour law, tax policy and social assistance. The book advances existing efforts aimed at conceptualizing and measuring welfare state change by proposing a clear-cut conceptualization of social policy regime change and introduces a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the welfare-work nexus between 1980 and 2010 in Germany. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social policy, comparative welfare state reform, welfare politics, government, governance, public policy, German politics, European politics, political economy, sociology and history.

Download or read book The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State written by P. Bleses and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-08-23 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book breaks new intellectual ground in the analysis of the German welfare state. Bleses and Seeleib-Kaiser argue that we are witnessing a dual transformation of the welfare state, which is caused by the emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Increasingly, the state reduces its social policy commitments towards securing the achieved living standard of former wage earners, which in the past had been the key normative principle of social policy in Germany, while at the same time public support and services for families are expanded.

Download or read book The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State written by Peter Bleses and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2004-11-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After discussing the traditional theories explaining welfare state change and continuity, it is argued that the dual transformation of the German welfare state is primarily caused by the emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Without an analysis of the political discourse, social policy change and continuity cannot be sufficiently explained."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Institutions Ideas and Learning in Welfare State Change written by T. Fleckenstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the transformation of German labour market policy, showing that Germany has departed from the conservative-corporatist path of welfare, especially with the Hartz Legislation of the Red-Green government.

Download or read book Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below written by Bernhard Ebbinghaus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-24 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying the political economy of welfare state reform, this edited collection focuses on the role of public opinion and organized interests in respect to policy change. It highlights that welfare states are hard pressed to reform in order to cope with ongoing socio-economic and demographic challenges. While public opinion is commonly seen to oppose welfare cuts and organized interests such as trade unions have tended to defend acquired social rights, this book shows that there have been emergent tendencies in favour of reform. Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below analyses a wide range of social policies affecting healthcare, pensions and the labour market to demonstrate how social groups and interest organizations differ and interact in their approaches to reform. Comparing Britain and Germany, with its two very different welfare states, it provides a European perspective on the changing approaches to welfare. This book will be of interest to those wanting to learn more about the politics of the welfare state and of relevance to students and academics in the fields of political economy and comparative social policy.

Download or read book The German Welfare State and Globalisation The Social Construction of Path Dependency written by Matthias Mayer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2006-08-13 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - Germany, grade: sehr gut, London School of Economics, language: English, abstract: Economic globalisation seems to have intensified the claims that an extensive national welfare state is no longer sustainable under high exposure to global competition. However, the evidence for significant welfare dismantlement in Germany is missing. In this dissertation, I endeavour to analyse, why globalisation does not seem to have had any significant impact on the German welfare state in terms of serious downwards reform. I contend that the actual impact of economic globalisation on the national welfare state depends a great deal, on how it is interpreted domestically. Hence, I would like to regard the impact of globalisation not only as an exogenous force, but also as a result of what national policy makers, media, electorate, etc. interpret it to entail. In other words, although globalisation really seems to strain existing welfare structures, policy makers still have a considerable scope how to react to these pressures. For my endeavour, I introduce a historical institutionalist framework of path-dependency, which I confront with a social constructivist framework. Prima facie, the path-dependency theorem seems to hold for the German welfare state. However, I claim that a social constructivist angle is able to illuminate how the institutional constraints propagated by the path-dependency thesis can be overcome. Institutional constraints continue to impede welfare reform in German only because the German political elite failed to socially construct the imperative of reform in public discourse, leaving the great majority of the German population unwilling to accept fundamental cutbacks in social benefits. I argue that the Schröder administration attempted to legitimise cutbacks in social services through referring to exogenous pressures of globalisation. In addition, the media discusses the increased need for welfare state reform in the context of globalisation. Although, there seems to be a trend of mounting acceptance of welfare reform among the German population, the general level for support of such measures remains low. I attempt to show that the notion of globalisation on its own appears unable socially construct the public acceptance of serious welfare state reform. Hence, the most likely scenario for the near future of the German welfare state seems the absence of reform until the prolonged economic crisis legitimises significant transformations of the current system.

Download or read book The Transformation of Welfare States written by Nick Ellison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Globalization', institutions and welfare regimes -- The challenge of globalization -- Globalization and welfare regime change -- Towards workfare? : changing labour market policies -- Labour market policies in social democratic and continental regimes -- Population ageing, GEPs and changing pensions systems -- Pensions policies in continental and social regimes -- Conclusion : welfare regimes in a liberalizing world.

Download or read book Restructuring the German Welfare State Health Care Policy and Reform in Germany written by Christiane Landsiedel and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2005-04-04 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Political Sociology, Majorities, Minorities, grade: A, University of Dalarna (Political Sociology), course: Restructuring the Welfare State, language: English, abstract: As health care is among the most personal issues, this is one reason why it is also among the most politically discussed as cost containment has become a priority of health care policy. Health care has consumed a large and growing portion of social spending in all advanced industrialised societies, particularly in the last decade. This cost explosion coincided with the global economic slowdown and worries about the fiscal viability of the welfare state. Reasons for escalating health care costs are, although to varying degrees, common to Western countries. The health care sector provides fertile ground for technological innovations that may prolong life but at considerable expense. Moreover, once these discoveries are made, it is extremely difficult for insurers or governments to limit their provision, as patients demand access to these treatments. Furthermore, the aging population of Western countries has direct consequences for health care because older persons are more likely to be in need of cost intensive treatment and/or care due to acute illness or chronic conditions. At the same time, birth rates are no longer balanced with increasing longevity, so that there will be fewer working age persons in the future to bear the financial requirements for elderly care. Governments and employers claimed that health care costs posed immediate and longterm problems and began to search for ways to address them. The ‘new politics of the welfare state’ – Pierson’s (1996) famous concept, which deals with welfare state reform in the face of changing demographic and tougher economic conditions – has also modified the position of diverse welfare state stakeholders. The actions and preferences of payers and the state are determined by the prevailing health care system as well as by the political system and whether it provides them an opportunity to influence health policies.

Download or read book Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform written by Sabina Stiller and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of this study argues that key politicians and their policy ideas, through "ideational leadership," have played an important role in the passing of structural reforms in the change-resistant German welfare state.

Download or read book The End of Welfare as We Know It written by Philipp Sandermann and published by Verlag Barbara Budrich. This book was released on 2014-01-22 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last 30 years, the governments of many Western countries have repeatedly called for an end to welfare. While the virtue of this goal and the means of achieving it continue to be debated in politics, much of contemporary social science research assumes that, in fact, the end of the welfare state has already occurred. The authors of this volume hope to contribute to a clearer understanding of how, where and to what extent welfare state settings really have changed since the 1980s. Their work examines questions of change and continuity while exploring various welfare practices in the Western world.

Download or read book Changes of the welfare state in the US and Germany The notion citizenship and the reactions in public written by Daniela Keller and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2005-04-16 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Social System, Social Structure, Class, Social Stratification, grade: A, San Diego State University (Sociology), language: English, abstract: In both Germany and the United States, Social Security matters declined in the last decade, be it the money for unemployed people, for pensioners or the tuition for students. In this paper, it should be investigated how the reforms changed the welfare state system, and how the discussions were led in the US and in Germany. By investigating surveys, newspapers and political party programs, I investigate which kind of notion of a citizen lies beyond the debates in these countries. In what kind of social state are people living, what image of a citizen do they have and how are debates about welfare state programs led? Which kind of words and which values are used in the current debates? For this investigation, it will firstly also be explained which theoretical notions of social citizenship and of the welfare state will be taken into consideration for the my investigation.

Download or read book The Politics of the New Welfare State written by Giuliano Bonoli and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of the New Welfare State the main reforms in work and welfare are summarized and analyzed to provide up-dated evidence of policy change and its main determinants to policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders interested in the field.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State written by Manfred G. Schmidt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive analysis of social policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990), followed by an analysis of the “Social Union”, the transformation of social policy in the process of German unification in 1990. Schmidt’s analysis of the GDR also depicts commonalities and differences between the welfare state in East and West Germany as well as in other East European and Western countries. He concludes that the GDR was unable to cope with the trade-off between ambitious social policy goals and a deteriorating economic performance. Ritter embeds his analysis of the Social Union in a general study of German unification, its international circumstances and its domestic repercussions (1989-1994). He argues that social policy played a pivotal role in German unification, and that there was no alternative to extending the West German welfare state to the East. Ritter, a distinguished historian, bases his contribution on an award-winning study for which he drew on archival sources and interviews with key actors. Schmidt is a distinguished political scientist.

Download or read book Origins of the German Welfare State written by Michael Stolleis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the origins of the German welfare state. The author, formerly director at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, provides a perceptive overview of the history of social security and social welfare in Germany from early modern times to the end of World War II, including Bismarck’s pioneering introduction of social insurance in the 1880s. The author unravels “layers” of social security that have piled up in the course of history and, so he argues, still linger in the present-day welfare state. The account begins with the first efforts by public authorities to regulate poverty and then proceeds to the “social question” that arose during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. World War I had a major impact on the development of social security, both during the war and after, through the exigencies of the war economy, inflation and unemployment. The ruptures as well as the continuities of social policy under National Socialism and World War II are also investigated.

Download or read book After Austerity written by Peter Taylor-Gooby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines European welfare states, how and why they are changing, and how they are likely to develop.

Download or read book Welfare Modernity and the Weimar State 1919 1933 written by Young-Sun Hong and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study of the turbulent relationship among state, society, and church in the making of the modern German welfare system during the Weimar Republic. Young-Sun Hong examines the competing conceptions of poverty, citizenship, family, and authority held by the state bureaucracy, socialists, bourgeois feminists, and the major religious and humanitarian welfare organizations. She shows how these conceptions reflected and generated bitter conflict in German society. And she argues that this conflict undermined parliamentary government within the welfare sector in a way that paralleled the crisis of the entire Weimar political system and created a situation in which the Nazi critique of republican "welfare" could acquire broad political resonance. The book begins by tracing the transformation of Germany's traditional, disciplinary poor-relief programs into a modern, bureaucratized and professionalized social welfare system. It then shows how, in the second half of the republic, attempts by both public and voluntary welfare organizations to reduce social insecurity by rationalizing working-class family life and reproduction alienated welfare reformers and recipients alike from both the welfare system and the Republic itself. Hong concludes that, in the welfare sector, the most direct continuity between the republican welfare system and the social policies of Nazi Germany is to be found not in the pathologies of progressive social engineering, but rather in the rejection of the moral and political foundations of the republican welfare system by eugenic welfare reformers and their Nazi supporters. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book New Risks New Welfare written by Peter Taylor-Gooby and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the concept of new social risks in welfare state studies and explains their relevance to the comparative understanding of social policy in Europe. New social risks arise from shifts in the balance of work and family life as a direct result of the declining importance of the male breadwinner family, changes in the labour market, and the impact of globalization on national policy-making. They differ from the old social risks of the standard industrial life-course, which were concerned primarily with interruptions to income from sickness, unemployment, retirement, and similar issues. New social risks pose new challenges for the welfare policies of European countries, such as the care of children and the elderly, more equal opportunities, the activation of labour markets and the management of needs that arise from welfare state reform, and new opportunities for the coordination of policies at the EU level. The book includes detailed and up-to-date case studies of policy development across these areas in the major European countries. These studies, written by leading experts, are organized in a comparative framework which is followed throughout the book. They highlight the way in which national welfare state regimes and institutional arrangements shape policy-making to meet new social risks. A major feature of this volume is the analysis of developments at the EU level and their interaction with national policies. The EU has been largely unsuccessful in its interventions in old social risk policy, but appears to have more success in its attempts to coordinate policy for new social risks. Experience here may provide lessons for future developments in EU policy-making. The comparative framework of the book seeks to inform an understanding of the development of new social risks in Europe and of the particular political opportunities and challenges that result. It provides an original analysis of pressing issues at the forefront of European welfare policy debate and locates it at the heart of current theoretical debates.