How Does Decentralisation Affect the Welfare State? Territorial Politics and the Welfare State in the UK and US

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT L. GREER
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Intergovernmental Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Central State ◽  
Veto Points ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe relationship between political decentralisation and the welfare state is much studied, and large-scale studies have repeatedly found that decentralised states have less generous welfare states. How do we fit that with other studies that emphasise the potential of decentralisation to raise welfare standards? This article argues that decentralisation, as a variable, is too broad and it is more efficient to focus on the structure of veto players in the central state, intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental finance. Those are the actual mechanisms that connect decentralisation to the welfare states, and they can all vary independently of decentralisation. It uses recent changes in the United States and United Kingdom as examples. The fragmentation and average weakness of the US welfare state is mostly due to a federal government riddled with internal veto points that permits considerable interstate variation and low overall average provision, while tight central control on finances in the UK means that most variation is in the organisation, rather than levels, of social services.

The Beginnings of the Nordic Welfare States: Similarities and Differences

1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stein Kuhnle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Compulsory Insurance ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Welfare State

The beginning of our present stage in the development of the welfare state can be traced to Bismarck's large-scale social insurance schemes of the 1880s. The article compares various political and economic macro-characteristics of the Nordic countries at that time, and proposes hypotheses about the timing of legislation in the Nordic nations, and about the likelihood for Nordic imitations of the principle of compulsory insurance. The article discusses why Denmark was expected to become, and in fact became, a forerunner in the Nordic context, and why the principle of compulsory insurance stood a better chance of gaining acceptance in Norway than in Denmark and Sweden.

The Politics of the Welfare State: Canada, Sweden, and the United States

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 748-750
Author(s):  
Linda A. White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Welfare State

The Politics of the Welfare State: Canada, Sweden, and the United States, Gregg M. Olsen, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. vi, 258This book presents a familiar puzzle in comparative politics: how are we to understand variation in the design and scope of social programs and substantive outcomes for citizens in the three welfare states under scrutiny. As Olsen argues, all three cases are “advanced, industrialized, and highly affluent capitalist nations…. and all three nations enjoy average per capita incomes and standards of living that are among the highest in the world” (10). Yet we find great variation on a number of social indicators such as poverty levels, and income and wealth disparities. All three have also “experienced marked increases in inequality and welfare state retrenchment in recent years” (11) but yet “they continue to differ along these dimensions, even in the face of similar domestic strains and other exogenous pressures related to global integration” (11). The question is how do we account for the variation in the use of social policy to assuage inequalities and respond to these exogenous pressures.

4. The welfare state 1.0

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Welfare State

The newly-emergent welfare states shared a distinctive set of features that set them apart both from the old poor laws and from state socialism. ‘The Welfare State 1.0’ identifies these defining features and describes how welfare states are structured. Welfare states generally have five institutional sectors: social insurance; social assistance; publicly funded social services; social work and personal social services; and economic governance. The WS 1.0 forms that predominated from the 1940s until the 1980s are described. Another feature of the welfare state landscape is sometimes called the ‘hidden welfare state’; it consists of welfare benefits that are channelled through the tax system or through private employment contracts.

Changing Expectations? The Change in the Role of the Welfare Ministry in the Regulation of Personal Social Services

2020 ◽  
Vol 691 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Lihi Lahat
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Regulatory Role ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
The Welfare State

Many welfare states have increased their regulatory role, but little attention has been given to historical changes in the regulatory role of government ministries. This study embraces a mezzo perspective and explores the regulatory role of the Welfare Ministry of Israel in the field of personal social services, asking the following questions: 1) What are the changes in regulatory expectations versus practices over the last five decades? and 2) How can we explain these changes and their outcomes? The study is based on the qualitative analysis of comptroller reports and other resources. It reveals a growing gap between society’s expectations of the Ministry as a regulator and the Ministry’s capacities over five decades. Notably, it points to the variety of regulatory spaces that have appeared in a regulatory welfare state. The Israeli case is relevant for other countries that have experienced processes of outsourcing and privatization in the welfare state and whose ministries had to change their role.

Fulfilling basic human needs: the welfare state after Beveridge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The Welfare State

Traditional welfare states with their origins in the Beveridge report of 1942 have struggled to respond adequately to new structural pressures and challenges that have arisen in the advanced economies over the last seventy years, especially in Britain. These include changes in demography and the structure of family life, alongside the emergence of a post-industrial economy marked by the loss of skilled manufacturing employment and regions of the UK adversely impacted by the process of deindustrialisation. As the pressures on the welfare state have increased, so existing social security systems have struggled to address a diversity of unmet human needs. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the implications of these changes for contemporary social policy in the developed capitalist countries, paying particular attention to the policy landscape in the UK in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and austerity. The chapter addresses why the crisis and great recession have not led to a more radical recalibration of policy, and examines the emerging models of ‘relational welfare’ that seek to respond to a series of criticisms of the role of states and markets in welfare provision.

scholarly journals The Illusion of Class in Welfare State Politics?

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY KEVINS ◽  
ALEXANDER HORN ◽  
CARSTEN JENSEN ◽  
KEES VAN KERSBERGEN
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractSocial class, with its potentially pivotal influence on both policy-making and electoral outcomes tied to the welfare state, is a frequent fixture in academic and political discussions about social policy. Yet these discussions presuppose that class identity is in fact tied up with distinct attitudes toward the welfare state. Using original data from ten surveys fielded in the United States and Western Europe, we investigate the relationship between class and general stances toward the welfare state as a whole, with the goal of determining whether class affects how individuals understand and relate to the welfare state. Our findings suggest that, although class markers are tied to objective and subjective positional considerations about one's place in the society, they nevertheless do not seem to shape stances toward the welfare state. What is more, this is equally true across the various welfare state types, as we find no evidence that so-called ‘middle-class welfare states’ engender more positive middle-class attitudes than other regimes. Based on our analysis, we propose that researchers would do better to focus on household income rather than class; while income may not be a perfect predictor of attitudes toward the welfare state, it is a markedly better one than class.

scholarly journals Fostering the data welfare state: A Nordic perspective on datafication

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Rikke Andreassen ◽  
Anne Kaun ◽  
Kaarina Nikunen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Employment Services ◽  
State Employment ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
Automated Decision Making ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Digital tools facilitating everything from health to education have been introduced at a rapid pace to replace physical meetings and allow for social distancing measures as the Covid-19 pandemic has sped up the drive to large-scale digitalisation. This rapid digitalisation enhances the already ongoing process of datafication, namely turning ever-increasing aspects of our identities, practices, and societal structures into data. Through an analysis of empirical examples of datafication in three important areas of the welfare state – employment services, public service media, and the corrections sector – we draw attention to some of the inherent problems of datafication in the Nordic welfare states. The analysis throws critical light on automated decision-making processes and illustrates how the ideology of dataism has become increasingly entangled with welfare provision. We end the article with a call to develop specific measures and policies to enable the development of the data welfare state, with media and communication scholars playing a crucial role.

1. What is the welfare state?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Welfare State

There are three general conceptions used for the welfare state: the first characterizes the welfare state as welfare for the poor; the second focuses on social insurance, social rights, and social services; and the third highlights economic management and the role that the ‘government of the economy’ plays in every welfare state. ‘What is the welfare state?’ explains that welfare states are varied, complex, and difficult to define. There is no simple theory that clearly expresses what they do, no simple vision that neatly captures what they are for. The welfare state is a damage-limiting, problem-solving device rather than anyone’s ideal social relationship.

Bossing or Protecting? The Integration of Social Regulation into the Welfare State

2020 ◽  
Vol 691 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-120
Author(s):  
Philipp Trein
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Unemployment Policy ◽  
The Welfare State

This article is an empirical analysis of how social regulation is integrated into the welfare state. I compare health, migration, and unemployment policy reforms in Australia, Austria, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States from 1980 to 2014. Results show that the timing of reform events is similar among countries for health and unemployment policy but differs among countries for migration policy. For migration and unemployment policy, the integration of regulation and welfare is more likely to entail conditionality compared to health policy. In other words, in these two policy fields, it is more common that claimants receive financial support upon compliance with social regulations. Liberal or Continental European welfare regimes are especially inclined to integration. I conclude that integrating regulation and welfare entails a double goal: “bossing” citizens by making them take up available jobs while expelling migrants and refugees for minor offenses; and protecting citizens from risks, such as noncommunicable diseases.

Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACOB S. HACKER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
The Face ◽  
Risk Protection ◽  
The Welfare State

Over the last decade, students of the welfare state have produced an impressive body of research on retrenchment, the dominant thrust of which is that remarkably few welfare states have experienced fundamental shifts. This article questions this now-conventional wisdom by reconsidering the post-1970s trajectory of the American welfare state, long considered the quintessential case of social policy stability. I demonstrate that although most programs have indeed resisted retrenchment, U.S. social policy has also offered increasingly incomplete risk protection in an era of dramatic social change. Although some of this disjuncture is inadvertent—an unintended consequence of the very political stickiness that has stymied retrenchment—I argue that the declining scope of risk protection also reflects deliberate and theoretically explicable strategies of reform adopted by welfare state opponents in the face of popular and change-resistant policies, a finding that has significant implications for the study of institutional change more broadly.

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