International Class Conflict and Social Policy

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Social

The history of welfare states is marked by divisions between capital and labour and these divisions are replicated at the international level. At the heart of these divisions is enduring class interests which accord different priorities to social and economic factors. That these divisions exist is neither surprising, nor necessarily a problem; the problem, this paper argues, is the increasingly high priority given to business interests by ever more powerful international governmental organisations. This paper presents an analysis of power in the global economy before investigating the social policy preferences of key international capital and labour organisations. It argues that international class mobilisation has failed to produce very much of a compromise on the part of capital, and that, if anything, international social policy discourse is today even closer to business than it has ever been.

Social Policy Review 32

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
British Society ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
International Social ◽  
The Welfare State

This book presents an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year. The book considers current issues and critical debates in the UK and the international social policy field. It contains vital research on race in social policy higher education and analyses how welfare states and policies address the economic and social hardship of young people. The chapters consider the impacts of austerity on the welfare state, homelessness, libraries and other social policy areas. The book begins by asking what are the pressing racial inequalities in contemporary British society and to what extent is social policy as a discipline equipped to analyse and respond to them. It then discusses the key analysis and messages from the Social Policy Association (SPA) race audit, looking at the challenges facing the discipline, and moves on to examine the experience and views of young British Muslim women in Sunderland. Attention is given to the ‘othering’ of migrants, family welfare resources on young people's transition to economic independence, youths' labour market trajectories in Sweden, innaccessibility to community youth justice in England and Wales, benefits entitlement of different UK families, and the book concludes with the final chapters focussing on the impacts of austerity.

scholarly journals The social crisis of 'central'- eastern Europe since 1989

1997 ◽  
Vol 69 (9) ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Fatić
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
Central European ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Eastern

This paper deals with specific aspects of the crisis of social policy on the "central"-eastem European region, after the onset of political changes that commenced in 1989 with the so-called ..anti-communist revolutions", especially in "central" European countries. The period that began then has been characterised by fast political "transition" and restructuralisation of the economy and political institutions. It has brought with it the excitements of the "capitalisation" of the economy and society, greater individual liberties and rights. However, it has also inflicted on the region a social crisis of apocalyptic dimensions, which is truly unprecedent in this century's history of eastern Europe. The paper explores some particular elements of this social crisis, both statistically and qualitatively. These aspects of the crisis are interpreted, and in its concluding section the paper purports to suggest that any institutional and political change tends to have its more or less devastating social price, which in the case of most countries of "central"-eastern Europe could be have been lower if the reform had progressed at a more moderate and better planned pace.

FINANCIAL TSUNAMI, ECONOMIC INSECURITY AND SOCIAL PROTECTION: THE CASE OF HONG KONG

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (02) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIM MING LEE ◽  
CHING YIN CHENG
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protection System ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government

Rising economic inequality becomes an important concern for both advanced and developing countries. Nonetheless, political and business elites around the world never question the neoliberal agenda, despite economic crises happening every now and then. The year 2007 may mark the turning point of neoliberal globalisation. As the global financial tsunami kicked off from the burst of the subprime mortgage bubble in the United States in 2007, the global economy is facing an economic hardship never heard of since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Hong Kong as a highly open economy is also severely hurt by the financial tsunami. In every economic recession, all Hong Kong people suffer, but lower classes suffer most. This raises a serious question about whether the current social protection system adequately protects people against an increasingly risky global economic environment. By examining the social policy package adopted by the HK government in fighting against the financial tsunami, we show the lack of long-term strategies and commitments of the government in protecting HK people against globalisation risks and economic insecurity. By drawing experiences from other countries, we suggest that active labour market policies (ALMPs) may be the social policy tools the government can use to reform the social protection system.

From Welfare States to Planetary Well-Being

2021 ◽  
pp. 900-920
Author(s):  
Ian Gough
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Basic Services ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
The Welfare State

This final chapter concentrates on global environmental challenges to rich-country welfare states: climate breakdown and associated ecological disasters. These common threats add two new raison d’êtres for welfare states: first, that the security and equity they seek should be sustainable through time; second, that their scope is broadened to take account of global equity and well-being. With a few notable exceptions, these fundamental questions have been ignored in the social policy community. I argue here that we need to transform our understanding of social policy in four ways, each more difficult than the previous one. First, we need to develop novel eco-social programmes to tap synergies between well-being and sustainability via transformative investment programmes such as a Green New Deal. Second, we need to recompose consumption in rich countries in two ways: to realize the best principles of the welfare state by extending the range of universal basic services and to work towards a private ‘consumption corridor’ to end waste, meet basic needs, and reduce inequality. Third, we must develop strategies of ‘reduce and redistribute’ to adapt welfare systems for a future of slower, if not negative, economic growth. And finally, we need to develop a global equity framework to meet climatic and ecological threats in a globally just way that recognizes current international inequalities.

The evolution of social policy analysis in Ireland: from a theocentric to an econocentric paradigm?

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Fiona Dukelow
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter situates policy analysis within a social policy context and begins by stressing its early theocratic formation. It is an examination of the history of social policy analysis in Ireland since the 1950s, when the country began its journey towards modernity. The chapter reviews the actors and institutions involved and the knowledge deployed as the country moved towards a globalised society with its attendant social policy challenges. Dukelow charts the complexities of social policy analysis under what she characterises as the shift from the dominance of a theocentric paradigm to an econocentric paradigm. This saw the subordinating of the social to the economic valuation of social policy by the 1990s.

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.

Farewell flexicurity? Danish flexicurity and the crisis

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bredgaard ◽  
Per Kongshøj Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Unemployment Insurance System ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

Before the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, flexicurity topped the European labour market and social policy agenda. It was acclaimed for combining the flexibility of liberal labour markets with the security of social welfare states, thereby offering a viable formula for success in the new global economy. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in Denmark, with the Danish system repeatedly highlighted as a good example of flexicurity in action. In this article, we revisit the flexicurity concept, assessing how the Danish labour market came through the crisis. We argue that the economic crisis and especially political reforms of the unemployment insurance system have challenged the institutional complementarities of flexicurity, but that the Danish labour market is recovering and adapting to new challenges. The Danish case illustrates that institutional complementarities between flexibility and security are fragile and liable to disintegrate if the institutions providing flexicurity are not maintained and supported.

Eastern European welfare states: the impact of the politics of globalization

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Deacon
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Costs ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Maintenance Policy ◽  
Transition To Capitalism ◽  
The Impact

This article is divided into four parts. First there is a summary of the social policy of the old state-socialist regimes, some description of the legacy of social problems which they bequeathed to those making the transition to capitalism and a brief summary of the major social costs of the early years of the transition process. Second, the broad social-policy strategies of the new governments of Eastern Europe and the former USSR are reviewed as they have attempted to manage both the legacy of social problems from the past and the new social costs of transition. Third, in more detail developments in five specific fields are described: levels of public expenditure on social welfare; income maintenance policy; health and medical care; housing; and education. The article concludes by attempting to explain these changes, asking whether the policy changes have been motivated by a perceived need to reduce social provision, with a view to becoming more competitive within the global economy.

The History of Sociology in Britain

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Halsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
London School ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
London School Of Economics

This chapter discusses the battle between literature and science for domination of sociology, a topic that has rather been neglected as a theme in the history of sociology in Britain if also perhaps overheated nowadays in exchanges over relativism between the denizens of ‘cultural studies’ and the proponents of a ‘science of society’. The chapter argues that, traditionally, the social territory belonged to literature and philosophy. A challenge was then raised by science especially in the nineteenth century. Then, especially in the twentieth century, social science developed so as to turn a binary contrast into a triangular one. Sociology had three sources in Western thought: one literary (political philosophy), one quasi-scientific (the philosophy of history), and one scientific (biology). It is no accident that both sociology and social policy were placed first at the London School of Economics, the Fabian institution invented and fostered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in 1895.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document