From Solution to Problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-193
Author(s):  
Peter C. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Western World ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

The 1970s and 1980s saw two important changes in the West German discussion of the welfare state. First, global trade put direct economic pressure on expensive welfare states in the western world. Second, the social science discussion of the welfare state shifted to a language of systems, which no longer viewed the welfare state as a tool of state or society, but asked about how systems of social policy could have unintended consequences—how social solutions could pose their own problems. Young Marxists, breaking with the SPD, questioned the possibility of a welfare state that could aid workers under capitalism; conservative state theorists questioned whether democracy, with its demands for state solutions, could paralyze the state. The result was a more complex reading of how the modern word created complex challenges for individuals and states alike, especially well articulated in the work of Kaufmann and Luhmann.

scholarly journals Welfare State Policy Model as A Poverty Reduction Strategy in the West Sumatra Districts and Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Azwar Azwar Azwar ◽  
Emeraldy Chatra ◽  
Zuldesni Zuldesni
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
State Model ◽  
The West ◽  
Policy Model ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
West Sumatra ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Welfare State

Poverty is one of the social problems that the government can never completely solve. As a result, other, more significant social issues arise and cause social vulnerability, such as conflict and crime. As a province that is experiencing rapid growth in the last ten years, the West Sumatra find difficulty to overcome the number of poor people in several districts and cities.  The research outcomes are the models and forms of social policy made by West Sumatra regencies and cities governments in improving the welfare of poor communities. It is also covering the constraints or obstacles to the implementation of social policy and the selection of welfare state models for the poor in some districts and municipalities of West Sumatra. This research is conducted qualitatively with a sociological approach that uses social perspective on searching and explaining social facts that happened to needy groups. Based on research conducted that the social policy model adopted by the government in responding to social problems in the districts and cities of West Sumatra reflects the welfare state model given to the poor. There is a strong relationship between the welfare state model and the form of social policy made by the government.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Western welfare states watched from the East during the Cold War: condemnation, competition, and creative learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Inglot
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The West ◽  
Creative Learning ◽  
The Cold War

This paper examines international influences of the Western welfare state on social policy ideas, institutions and reforms in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It identifies three types of Eastern reactions to or interactions with the West: “condemnation” of various “bourgeois” conceptions of social welfare; “competition” or increased attention to redistribution and social needs of the population stemming from the demonstrable successes of Western welfare states; and “creative learning” or implicit acknowledgment that every industrial society, including the Soviet style centrally planned economies, had to adopt at least some elements of modernized social welfare models or policy originally developed in the West. Paradoxically, first the explicit and later more implicit rejection of the Western welfare state, including the social-democratic and various “third way” models, eventually led to the rise of neoliberal and anti-welfare attitudes among many Eastern social policy reformers during the last decade of communist rule and beyond, after 1989.

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.

Models of the Welfare State

2021 ◽  
pp. 786-802
Author(s):  
Philip Manow
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
The West ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
European Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Research ◽  
The Welfare State

IN 1990, Gøsta Esping-Andersen published The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, a work which has turned out to be the single most important and decisive contribution to welfare state research in the past thirty to forty years. In essence, Esping-Andersen argued that we can observe systematic variation in the character of the developed welfare states of the West, which he grouped into three distinct welfare state models: a Scandinavian social democratic model, a conservative continental European model, and a liberal Anglo-Saxon model. This chapter provides a short description of Esping-Andersen’s three regimes; introduces a fourth, Southern European model, which will then be described in somewhat more detail; and outlines a historical and genealogical account of the development of all four models. Finally, the chapter briefly expands on the comparative perspective with a short discussion on whether the regime concept or the understanding of distinct welfare models can also be applied to other regions, such as Latin America and Asia.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document