scholarly journals Moral economies of the welfare state: A qualitative comparative study

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Taylor-Gooby ◽  
Bjørn Hvinden ◽  
Steffen Mau ◽  
Benjamin Leruth ◽  
Mi Ah Schoyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper uses innovative democratic forums carried out in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom to examine people’s ideas about welfare-state priorities and future prospects. We use a moral economy framework in the context of regime differences and the move towards neo-liberalism across Europe. Broadly speaking, attitudes reflect regime differences, with distinctive emphasis on reciprocity and the value of work in Germany, inclusion and equality in Norway, and individual responsibility and the work-ethic in the UK. Neo-liberal market-centred ideas appear to have made little headway in regard to popular attitudes, except in the already liberal-leaning UK. There is also a striking assumption by UK participants that welfare is threatened externally by immigrants who take jobs from established workers and internally by the work-shy who undermine the work-ethic. A key role of the welfare state is repressive rather than enabling: to protect against threats to well-being rather than provide benefits for citizens. UK participants also anticipate major decline in state provision. In all three countries there is strong support for continuing and expanding social investment policies, but for different reasons: to enable contribution in Germany, to promote equality and mobility in Norway, and to facilitate self-responsibility in the UK.

scholarly journals Welfare transformations and expectations of sameness. Living on the margins in Denmark.

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-84
Author(s):  
Camilla Merrild ◽  
Rikke Sand Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
Original Intention ◽  
The Welfare State

In Denmark, as in other welfare societies worldwide, the organisation and ideology of welfare are becoming increasingly influenced by neoliberal ideas. In practice, this means that the original intention behind the provision of social support, which was grounded in the notion of social responsibility, is gradually being pushed aside by notions of responsibilisation, with concepts such as deservingness and work ethic appearing to dominate the discourse. Based on long-term fieldwork and interviews conducted with socially disadvantaged Danes living on social security, this article engages with the current debates regarding responsibility and highlights some of the challenges arising from living a life that diverges from what has been termed Danish ‘in-between middle-classness’. We argue that the divergence between the promise of welfare, the current landscape of political regulation and expectations of individual responsibility leads to new forms of uncertainty, as experienced by those who depend on the services provided by the welfare state. One implication of this is that welfare seems to increasingly be tied to an agenda of sameness, whereby citizenship stems less from a imagination of sameness than from an expectation of sameness.

scholarly journals Neoliberalism and social work with children and families in the UK: On-going challenges and critical possibilities

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Rogowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Market Place ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractINTRODUCTION: Neoliberalism, the belief that free market economies are the best way to achieve human well-being, continues to dominate economic, political and social life in the UK, Europe and the globalised world. In the UK the welfare state has gradually been dismantled and become more punitive, the market place has been introduced, and social work has been de-professionalised and transformed into a narrower, more restricted, role. Instead of relationship-based work, practitioners are largely concerned with completing bureaucracy speedily to ration resources and assess/manage risk. Moreover, in relation to children and families, parents need to be self-responsible and, if they fail, a punitive response awaits: being told to change their behaviour/lifestyle or face losing their children to adoption.APPROACH AND CONCLUSIONS: Drawing and building upon my previous work (for example, Rogowski, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016), this article outlines the neoliberal changes and challenges to social work with children and families in the UK, arguing that critical practice is ever more necessary. Such practice entails working alongside children and families on the issues at the root of social injustice, notably growing inequality in the neoliberalised world. Importantly, examples of what such a practice might entail are highlighted.

scholarly journals Disability, Rights and Vulnerability in British Parliamentary Debate

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Odell
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Disability Movement ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper examines discussion of disability and disabled people by Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK House of Commons from 1979–2017. It examines general trends in the number of speeches mentioning disability, including the parties and MPs most likely to mention disability issues, and examines how disability is used in conjunction with two keywords: ‘rights’ and ‘vulnerable’. It uses these keywords to explore two conceptions of how the state should engage with disability and disabled people: a paternalistic conception (which post-2010 has become more common) and a rights-based conception (which has been in decline since the 1990s). I conclude with a discussion about how this reflects the disability movement in the UK, and what it means for the future of disability politics, the welfare state and how disabled people themselves might view paternalistic government policies.

Great Recession, great regression? The welfare state in the twenty-first century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky ◽  
Graciele Pereira Guedes
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Stable Performance ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Has the welfare state undergone significant retrenchment in the aftermath of the 2007–08 crackdown? In the literature, two contrasting views can be found. Some commentators argue that expansions that would otherwise be observed during crises have been suffocated due to the imperative of austerity. Other more optimistic assessments see social investment policies as having been experimented with in various places, alongside widespread retrenchment. In this paper, using an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database for 35 countries, we check these assessments by examining aggregate figures, such as the evolution—over the 2007–13 period—of social spending and its composition, the participation of social spending in public expenditure, the tax burden and tax composition and welfare state effectiveness. We document expansion in the OECD area alongside stable performance. However, important challenges persist.

DOES THE WELFARE STATE HELP THE POOR?

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Cowen
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Transfer Programs ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
The Welfare State

Does the welfare state help the poor? This surprisingly simple question often generates more heat than light. By the welfare state, I mean transfer programs aimed at helping the poor through the direct redistribution of income. (This excludes general economic policy, antitrust, the volunteer military, and many other policies that affect the well-being of the poor.) Defenders of the welfare state often assume that the poor benefit from it, while critics suggest that the losses outweigh the gains. The most notable of such criticisms is Charles Murray's Losing Ground, which suggests that the welfare state has failed to achieve its stated ends.

What Is the Affordable Care Act a Case of? Understanding the ACA through the Comparative Method

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-691
Author(s):  
Holly Jarman ◽  
Scott L. Greer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract International comparisons of US health care are common but mostly focus on comparing its performance to peers or asking why the United States remains so far from universal coverage. Here the authors ask how other comparative research could shed light on the unusual politics and structure of US health care and how the US experience could bring more to international conversations about health care and the welfare state. After introducing the concept of casing—asking what the Affordable Care Act (ACA) might be a case of—the authors discuss different “casings” of the ACA: complex legislation, path dependency, demos-constraining institutions, deep social cleavages, segmentalism, or the persistence of the welfare state. Each of these pictures of the ACA has strong support in the US-focused literature. Each also cases the ACA as part of a different experience shared with other countries, with different implications for how to analyze it and what we can learn from it. The final section discusses the implications for selecting cases that might shed light on the US experience and that make the United States look less exceptional and more tractable as an object of research.

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.

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