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

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.

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT L. GREER

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.


Author(s):  
David Garland

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Raphael ◽  
Morris Komakech ◽  
Toba Bryant ◽  
Ryan Torrence

The welfare state literature on developing nations is concerned with how governmental illegitimacy and incompetency are the sources of inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination of significant proportions of their citizenry. These dimensions clearly contribute to the problematic health outcomes in these nations. In contrast, developed nations are assumed to grapple with less contentious issues of stratification, decommodification, and the relative role of the state, market, and family in providing economic and social security, also important pathways to health. There is an explicit assumption that governing authorities in developed nations are legitimate and competent such that their citizens are not systematically subjected to inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination by elites. In this article, we argue that these concepts should also be the focus of welfare state analysis in developed liberal welfare states such as Canada. Such an analysis would expose how public policy is increasingly being made in the service of powerful economic elites rather than the majority, thereby threatening health. It would also serve to identify means of responding to these developments.


2021 ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Ann Shola Orloff ◽  
Marie Laperrière

This chapter traces how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between gender and welfare states, examining significant differences among mainstream, gender-aware, and feminist perspectives. We discuss how feminist scholarship has broadened scholars’ understanding of social citizenship, how gender structures, and is structured by, the policies and institutions of the welfare state, and how women and men participate in social politics. We describe how insights from intersectionality theory and the adoption of more fluid conceptions of gender have shaped investigations of social policies and politics, bringing greater accuracy to analyses of the gendered effects of welfare states. Finally, we turn to analyses of how welfare states have reorganized in response to crises of care. We conclude by discussing normative debates over the role of welfare states in reducing gender inequalities and supporting people’s choices about care and employment.


Author(s):  
Roger E. Backhouse ◽  
Bradley W. Bateman ◽  
Tamotsu Nishizawa ◽  
Dieter Plehwe

This volume reveals the complexity of the positions towards the welfare state taken by economists, most of whom could be counted as liberal in one way or another. Liberal economists were both at the heart of the original development of the welfare state and at the center of the counter movement against the welfare state. The nature of the interaction between liberalism and the welfare state, and the role of economists, varied greatly between countries. Initially, the structure of the welfare states in different nations made it difficult for transnational neoliberal ideas to have much influence in minimizing the size and nature of the welfare state. Today, however, one brand of free-market, anti-state neoliberalism plays a particularly effective role in attacks on the welfare state across countries. History shows that is not the only form of liberalism or the only ways that liberals might see the welfare state.


Author(s):  
María José Lacalzada de Mateo

La Constitución de 1978 marca un antes y un después para las políticas Sociales. Así mismo el Trabajador Social como profesional experimentará a partir de ahora cambios fundamentales en su formación y en su capacidad de intervención. El Estado Social de Derecho dentro de un sistema de Bienestar mixto es nuestro marco de referencia.La asistencia social como un derivado de la estructura de la Beneficencia tuvo un sentido fijado al socorro en necesidad extrema con cierta indefinición sobre su alcance durante la España de Franco. El recorte de derechos y libertades políticas se hizo notar en este nivel, adquiriendo ciertas connotaciones peculiares.Así mismo y en consecuencia el papel del Asistente Social quedaba muy limitado en sus recursos y condicionado a ciertos valores dominantes.El concepto de Servicios Sociales como derecho de la ciudadanía, su extensión y garantía jurídica así como las políticas encaminadas a favorecer la inclusión y cohesión social, han nacido y se están desarrollando con un sentido integral muy diferente en los últimos veinte años, quedando abierta la consecución de su madurez hacia el futuro Es interesante ofrecer a los estudiantes una perspectiva de análisis y reflexión de esta trayectoria enfocando la visión no hacia los �antecedentes� �consecuentes� y �evoluciones� como se suele mirar hacia �la historia� sino constatando la �mutación de la especie�. Creo que puede ayudar a fijar y entender en su medida el carácter y posibilidades que tiene hoy trabajo social, evitando lastres no deseados.The 1978 Constitution marks a tipping point for social policies. Likewise, as a professional, the social worker will experience fundamental changes in their training and in their ability to intervene.We take our frame of reference to be the Welfare State within a mixed welfare system.Social assistance as a derivative of the charity structure had a meaning associated with providing aid in the case of extreme necessity, and was somewhat ill defined with regard to scope during the Franco years in Spain. The cutting of political rights and freedoms was noticeable at this level, with its own peculiar connotations being felt in some aspects. Likewise, the role of Social Worker was consequently limited with respect to resources and constrained by certain dominant values.The concept of the Social Services as a citizen�s right, along with their scope and legal guarantees, plus the policies designed to foster social inclusion and cohesion, have been put in place and are now being applied across the board in a very different way than in the previous twenty years. The way is now open for them to be fully developed in the coming years.It is interesting to offer students a perspective of analysis and reflection concerning such developments. However, rather than focusing on �precedents�, �results� and �developments�, which is the normal approach to history, instead we concentrate on the �mutation of the species�. In my opinion, this can help to fix and understand the nature and potential of social work today, avoiding any unwanted burdens.


Author(s):  
David Garland

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.


1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs

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.


2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brady ◽  
Jason Beckfield ◽  
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser

Previous scholarship is sharply divided over how or if globalization influences welfare states. The effects of globalization may be positive causing expansion, negative triggering crisis and reduction, curvilinear contributing to convergence, or insignificant. We bring new evidence to bear on this debate with an analysis of three welfare state measures and a comprehensive array of economic globalization indicators for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 2001. The analysis suggests several conclusions. First, state-of-the-art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era. Second, most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects, but a few affect the welfare state and improve models of welfare state variation. Third, the few significant globalization effects are in differing directions and often inconsistent with extant theories. Fourth, the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors. Fifth, the effects of globalization are not systematically different between European and non-European countries, or liberal and non-liberal welfare regimes. Increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred, but globalization does not clearly cause welfare state expansion, crisis, and reduction or convergence. Ultimately, this study suggests skepticism toward bold claims about globalization's effect on the welfare state.


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