Download or read book Welfare States under Pressure written by Peter Taylor-Gooby and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001-11-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exerpt from the Financial Times Comment & Analysis: Europe takes on reform of the welfare state: A new study indicates that while the UK has transformed its social policies, the rest of Europe has been far from idle - `[A] stimulating new book on European welfare states [Welfare States under Pressure] suggests that the view of Britain as the only great welfare state reformer is overstated. And it adds that the game across Europe is about to change.... This new study argues that, particularly in the late 1990s, there has been more reform in the rest of Europe than is appreciated in the UK. And that Europe as a whole is on the cusp of much greater changes.... Certainly in France and possibly in Germany, the study judges, the traditional power balance between government, employers, unions and welfare providers has shifted such that government may be able to impose much more drastic measures... In the UK, by contrast, the impact of EU institutions may in some areas mean a degree of levelling up - as in healthcare. The most intriguing question is how far reformed welfare states will retain the social cohesion they are designed to produce. So far, even in the UK, they have proved remarkably resilient - adapting to changing needs rather than being "rolled back". This study′s verdict on the issue is "don′t know". But so much change is on the way, it says, that "the past is unlikely to be a good guide to the future"′ - Nicholas Timmins, The Financial Times Welfare States under Pressure provides a timely and comprehensive review of welfare policy-making in Europe. The text compares the different ways in which welfare states have responded to similar pressures over recent years, and considers how welfare is likely to develop in the future. This work: · provides up to date accounts of welfare development in Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom. · explores how similar pressures can lead to different responses due to different policy-making mechanisms in each of the seven different countries · contains chapters written by leading national experts · written accessibly, and tightly edited, with each chapter following the same conceptual structure. This volume takes a fresh approach in its analysis of the future of the welfare state in Europe. It suggests that opportunities for radical change in welfare systems are now opening up, and that there will be little continuity between the future and the past/present of the welfare system in Europe. Welfare States under Pressure is invaluable to undergraduate students in social policy, European studies and politics, and will also be of great use to other social science students interested in Europe and its future development.

Download or read book Welfare States Under Pressure written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welfare States under Pressure provides a timely and comprehensive review of welfare policy-making in Europe. The text compares the different ways in which welfare states have responded to similar pressures over recent years, and considers how welfare is likely to develop in the future. This work: provides up to date accounts of welfare development in Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom; explores how similar pressures can lead to different responses due to different policy-making mechanisms in each of the seven different countries; contains chapters written by leading national experts.

Download or read book The New Politics of the Welfare State written by Paul Pierson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2001-04-05 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The welfare states of the affluent democracies now stand at the centre of political discussion and social conflict. In these path-breaking essays, an international team of leading analysts rejects simplistic claims about the impact of economic 'globalization'. Economic, demographic, and social pressures on the welfare state are very real, but many of the most fundamental challenges have little to do with globalization. Nor do the authors detect signs of a convergence of national social policies towards an American-style lowest common denominator. The contemporary politics of the welfare state takes shape against a backdrop of both intense pressures for austerity and enduring popularity. Thus in most of the affluent democracies, the politics of social policy centre on the renegotiation, restructuring, and modernization of the post-war social contract rather than its dismantling. The authors examine a wide range of countries and public policies arenas, including health care, pensions, and labour markets. They demonstrate how different national settings affect whether, and on what terms, centrist efforts to restructure the welfare state can succeed.

Download or read book Why Welfare States Persist written by Clem Brooks and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades. Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare state’s demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the world’s most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.

Download or read book Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change written by Staffan Kumlin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over three decades, mature European welfare states have been on their way into an austerity phase marked by greater needs and more insecure revenues. A number of reform pressures-including population ageing, unemployment, economic globalization, and increased migration-call into question the economic sustainability and normative underpinnings of transfer systems and public services. And while welfare states long seemed resilient to growing challenges, it now seems clear that they are changing. Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change examines how political leaders and the public respond to reform pressures at a pivotal moment in a mass democracy: the election campaign. Do campaigns facilitate debate and attention to welfare state challenges? Do political parties present citizens with distinct choices as to how challenges might be met? Do leaders prepare citizens for the idea that some solutions may be painful? Do their messages have adaptive consequences for how the public perceives the need for reform? Do citizens adjust their normative support for welfare policies in the process? The answers to these questions affect how we understand welfare state change and representative democracy in an era of mounting challenges.

Download or read book Development Democracy and Welfare States written by Stephan Haggard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-14 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing the welfare states of Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, the authors trace the origins of social policy in these regions to political changes in the mid-20th century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.

Download or read book Austerity Retrenchment and the Welfare State written by Bent Greve and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-31 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we living in an age of permanent austerity? In this insightful book, Bent Greve provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of welfare states since 2000, exploring the ways by which austerity can be measured and quantified. Through detailed comparative analysis between states, this book dissects the implementation of economic retrenchment, its extent and impact in Europe.

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 302 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 Comparative Welfare State Politics written by Kees van Kersbergen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis explain the political opportunities and constraints of welfare state reform in advanced democracies.

Download or read book The Welfare State East and West written by Richard Rose and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1986-12-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique, comparative examination of the different ways in which modern democratic societies provide welfare today, these essays focus on the welfare strategies and experiences of the U.S., Japan, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, and Israel. While the objectives of welfare are common to each society, each has its own ideas about the best way for the state, the market, and the household to contribute to the welfare mix. With the economies of many countries under pressure, the question of the proper balance between domestic welfare spending and defense spending is often at the center of the debate. The essays on Japan provide new and useful insights into how a state--not normally considered a "welfare state"--manages to provide a wide array of successful welfare services.

Download or read book Development of Welfare States in Europe and America written by Peter Flora and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to contribute to an interdisci-plinary, comparative, and historical study of Western welfare states. It attempts to link their historical dynamics and contemporary problems in an international perspective. Building on collaboration between European-and American-based research groups, the editors have coordinated contributions by economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians. The developments they analyze cover a time span from the initiation of modern national social policies at the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The experiences of all the presently existing Western European systems except Spain and Por-tugal are systematically encompassed, with com-parisons developed selectively with the experi-ences of the United States and Canada. The devel-opment of the social security systems, of public expenditures!and taxation, of public education and educational opportunities, and of income inequal-ity are described, compared, and analyzed for varying groupings of the Western European and North American nations. This volume addresses itself mainly to two audi-ences. The first includes all students of policy problems of the welfare states who seek to gain a comparative perspective and historical under-standing. A second group may be more interested in the theory and empirical analysis of long-term societal developments. In this context, the growth of the welfare states ranges as a major departure, along with the development of national states and capitalist economies. The welfare state is interpreted as a general phenomenon of modernization, as a product of the increasing differentiation and the growing size of societies on the one hand, and of processes of social and political mobilization on the other. It is an important element of the structural convergence of modern societies by its mere weight in all countries and at the same time a source of divergence by the variations within its institutional structure.

Download or read book Reinventing the Welfare State written by Ruud A. de Mooij and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dutch welfare state is under pressure. Future trends of ageing and globalisation render public finances unsustainable and worsen the position of low-skilled workers on the labour market. At the same time, welfare state institutions seem insufficiently adapted to changed socio-cultural circumstances. Moreover, they cause inactivity among elderly workers, women and social benefit recipients. To prepare for the future, the Dutch government aims to raise labour supply and improve human capital. This study explores how welfare state reform can contribute to these goals. Thereby, we take into account the key social and economic functions that the welfare state fulfils in our society. We analyse a number of reforms in Dutch institutions from a broad welfare perspective and quantify their effects on the labour market and the income distribution. The study also develops three comprehensive prototype welfare state reforms for the Netherlands in the future. We explore how robust these different prototypes are for immigration, economic integration and technological change.

Download or read book The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America written by Peter Flora and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to contribute to an interdisciplinary, comparative, and historical study of Western welfare states. It attempts to link their historical dynamics and contemporary problems in an international perspective. Building on collaboration between European-and American-based research groups, the editors have coordinated contributions by economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians. The developments they analyze cover a time span from the initiation of modern national social policies at the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The experiences of all the presently existing Western European systems except Spain and Portugal are systematically encompassed, with comparisons developed selectively with the experiences of the United States and Canada. The development of the social security systems, of public expenditures!and taxation, of public education and educational opportunities, and of income inequality are described, compared, and analyzed for varying groupings of the Western European and North American nations. This volume addresses itself mainly to two audiences. The first includes all students of policy problems of the welfare states who seek to gain a comparative perspective and historical understanding. A second group may be more interested in the theory and empirical analysis of long-term societal developments. In this context, the growth of the welfare states ranges as a major departure, along with the development of national states and capitalist economies. The welfare state is interpreted as a general phenomenon of modernization, as a product of the increasing differentiation and the growing size of societies on the one hand, and of processes of social and political mobilization on the other. It is an important element of the structural convergence of modern societies -- by its mere weight in all countries -- and at the same time a source of divergence by the variations within its institutional structure.

Download or read book The European Social Model under Pressure written by Romana Careja and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Social Model is at a crossroad. Although from the 1990s onwards, the threat of an imminent crisis shaped much of the rhetoric surrounding the future of the welfare state, disagreement within the academic community remains. What is however increasingly clear is that with the global financial crisis and the Euro crisis that followed it, the challenges the European Social Model faces have become more acute and demand action. This volume launches a multifaceted inquiry into these challenges. Each contribution, written by renowned scholars in their fields, represents an in-depth exploration of issues that cut to the core of current political, economic and social processes. They are an invitation to the seasoned scholars as well as to the beginning students of social sciences, public administration or journalism to engage with, by now, a large body of scholarship, to accompany the authors in their endeavours to seek an explanation to burning questions and start their own inquiries.

Download or read book The Political Sociology of the Welfare State written by Edited by Stefan Svallfors and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative analysis of the political attitudes, values, aspirations, and identities of citizens in advanced industrial societies, this book focusses on the different ways in which social policies and national politics affect personal opinions on justice, political responsibility, and the overall trustworthiness of politicians.

Download or read book The Future of the Welfare State written by Heikki Ervasti and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when welfare states in Europe are coming under increasing pressure from both growing demand and, in some countries, severe financial austerity measures, the attitudes of ordinary people and European social cohesion are much debated. Using data from the European Social Survey, these empirical analyses examine welfare state attitudes and draw conclusions for the future. Theoretically the book is linked to analyses of altering social risks, policy challenges, policy changes and policy performance of the European welfare states. The analyses in the book explore a variety of individual and macro-level determinants of welfare policy attitudes ranging from socio-economic factors to religiosity, but a special emphasis is laid on solidarity, social cohesion and social capital among European nations.

Download or read book The New Social Question written by Pierre Rosanvallon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How social and intellectual changes undermine our justifications for the welfare state The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector. According to the influential social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon, however, there is also a deeper and less familiar reason for the crisis of the welfare state. He shows here that a fundamental practical and philosophical justification for traditional welfare policies—that all citizens share equal risks—has been undermined by social and intellectual change. If we wish to achieve the goals of social solidarity and civic equality for which the welfare state was founded, Rosanvallon argues, we must radically rethink social programs. Rosanvallon begins by tracing the history of the welfare state and its founding premise that risks, especially the risks of illness and unemployment, are equally distributed and unpredictable. He shows that this idea has become untenable because of economic diversification and advances in statistical and risk analysis. It is truer than ever before—and far more susceptible to analysis—that some individuals will face much greater risks than others because of their jobs and lifestyle choices. Rosanvallon argues that social policies must be more narrowly targeted. And he draws on evidence from around the world, in particular France and the United States, to show that such programs as unemployment insurance and workfare could better reflect individual needs by, for example, making more explicit use of contracts between the providers and receivers of benefits. His arguments have broad implications for welfare programs everywhere and for our understanding of citizenship in modern democracies and economies.