„Globalization of the Welfare State? World Society, Transnational Social Policy and ‘New Welfare States’ in Transitional Countries (with special reference to China)“ Internationale Konferenz des Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 6.–8. Februar 2004

2003 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 822-823
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
World Society ◽  
Transitional Countries ◽  
The Welfare State

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.

The Scandinavian Origins of the Social Interpretation of the Welfare State

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Welfare State

If a question can be mal posée, surely an interpretation can be mal étendue. This has been the fate of the social interpretation of the welfare state. The cousin of social theories of bourgeois revolution, the social interpretation of the welfare state is part of a broader conception of the course of modern European history that until recently has laid claim to the status of a standard. The social interpretation sees the welfare states of certain countries as a victory for the working class and confirmation of the ability of its political representatives on the Left to use universalist, egalitarian, solidaristic measures of social policy on behalf of the least advantaged. Because the poor and the working class were groups that overlapped during the initial development of the welfare state, social policy was linked with the worker's needs. Faced with the ever-present probability of immiseration, the proletariat championed the cause of all needy and developed more pronounced sentiments of solidarity than other classes. Where it achieved sufficient power, the privileged classes were forced to consent to measures that apportioned the cost of risks among all, helping those buffeted by fate and social injustice at the expense of those docked in safe berths.

7. Neoliberalism and WS 2.0

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Political Dominance ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare states that enjoyed three decades of expansion after 1945 endured a challenging period in the following decades. From the late 1970s, in one country after another, opposition groups mounted a sustained attack on welfare states in the name of free markets and conservative family values. ‘Neoliberalism and WS 2.0’ describes the 1970s economic crisis and the neoliberal assault it unleashed. Despite their political dominance in the 1980s and 1990s, neoliberal reformers did not abolish the welfare state, but succeeded in changing its character, creating a less expansive, more austere version—‘WS 2.0’—based on a neoliberal style of economic government and a market-oriented reworking of social policy.

France at a Crossroads

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Leruth
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Generous Welfare ◽  
The Welfare State

France has established itself as one of the most ‘generous’ welfare states in the world. The Great Recession of 2007–8 confronted French social policy with escalating unemployment and deepening inequalities. Combined with major pension reforms, these led to strong levels of dissatisfaction across the country, exacerbated by tensions over immigration, Euroscepticism, and internal security problems. This chapter examines how these issues developed in political context and uses material from attitude surveys to analyse existing and future challenges for the welfare state in France. It assesses recent reforms: governments of right and left offered contrasting programmes but failed to win public trust. France now stands at a cross-roads, facing a strong presidential challenge from the anti-immigrant, anti-EU right.

The Persistence of Poverty under Welfare States and the Prospects for its Abolition

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
New Right ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Main Factor ◽  
The Welfare State

This article examines the relationship between poverty and the welfare state and attempts to answer the question as to why poverty has persisted under all welfare states. Several major reasons for the persistence of poverty are advanced, and the author argues that the main factor underlying the failure to abolish poverty is the conflict between economic policy and social policy. The challenge to welfare states from the New Right is examined—particularly the contention that welfare states themselves create poverty and dependence—in the light of evidence of the impact of the Thatcher government's policies in Britain. Finally, the author proposes an alternative approach to the abolition of poverty, one that is based on the integration of economic and social policy.

Perspectives for Transnational Social Policy

1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abram de Swaan
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The West ◽  
National State ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Welfare State

WELFARE STATES ARE NATIONAL STATES, AND IN EVERY country welfare is a national concern, circumscribed by the nation's borders and reserved for its residents alone. In the course of centuries, these states have emerged from and against one another, in mutual competition, and in the past century this process of state formation in the West went in tandem with the collectivization of care. The welfare state is the national state in its latest phase. It may be succeeded by another stage which we may eventually see.

scholarly journals Borrowing for social security? Credit, asset-based welfare and the decline of the German savings regime

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 474-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Mertens
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Homeownership Rate ◽  
Rate Environment ◽  
The Welfare State

This article investigates the question to what extent Germany fits into the recent trend of credit-based social policy that has originated in Anglophone economies. In the course of the financial crisis and with its preceding increase in private indebtedness in mind, a growing number of scholars have argued that loans to households have become a central component of contemporary welfare states. Because of comprehensive savings-promotion schemes, high levels of public welfare provision and a low homeownership rate, the German welfare state conventionally figures as the paradigmatic counter case to this intensifying relation between welfare and finance. This article argues, to the contrary, that one can observe the rise of credit-based social policy in Germany due to the gradual erosion of savings promotion, the expansion of quasi-public loan schemes and the restructuring of the welfare state since the mid-1970s. Based on document and statistical analysis, the article evaluates reform trajectories in the field of pensions, education and healthcare to substantiate this claim. Within the current low-interest rate environment in the Eurozone, the developments combined might well challenge the traditional savings-oriented features of the German welfare state and its political economy.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. xxx-20
Author(s):  
Daniel Béland ◽  
Kimberly J. Morgan ◽  
Herbert Obinger ◽  
Christopher Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Welfare State Regimes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

This synoptic introduction guides the reader through the major themes in this comparative analysis of the developed welfare states. It first outlines the origins of the welfare state and its development down to 1940. It then considers the impact of the Second World War on social policy and traces the apparent successes of expanding welfare state regimes in the thirty years that followed the war. It then assesses the critique and challenges that arose for this welfare state settlement from the mid-1970s onwards and the idea of a ‘crisis of the welfare state’. These challenges were simultaneously ideological, political, economic, and demographic, and are sometimes seen to have created new circumstances of ‘permanent austerity’. The contemporary welfare state faces a set of challenges very different to those which arose after 1945 in which the near-future context is set by the continuing impact of the Great Recession after 2008 and the new world of social policy created by COVID-19.

Comparative Social Policy and Political Conflict in Advanced Welfare States: Denmark and Sweden

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gøsta Esping-Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet, the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

scholarly journals Dialectics and Modernity, Autonomy and Solidarity

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
J. M. Domingues
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
The West ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Dialectical Thought ◽  
The Welfare State

This article connects the contemporary crisis of modernity to the crisis of the Welfare State in the West and to its so far incomplete establishment in ‘Latin’-America, with special reference to Brazil. The reflexivisation of modernity is thus linked to a discussion of citizenship and social police which harks back to the definition of the principles of social policy, focusing on the possible alternative of ‘generative politics’ as a means of creating new forms of collective solidarity. The crisis of dialectical thought and the problem of social change are thereby tackled and a different way of understanding them is put forward, in accordance with new sorts of contemporary sociability.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document