scholarly journals Campaigning on the welfare state: The impact of gender and gender diversity

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Social policy matters have long been considered women’s issues. Extant research has documented a strong link between gender and the policies of the welfare state in the legislative, executive and electoral arenas. Yet what determines the strength of this association has largely been left unexplored. Drawing on tokenism theory, this article proposes gender diversity at the group level as a key explanatory factor. It hypothesizes that the gender gap in social policy diminishes as the female representation in a political party increases. To test this argument, it examines almost 8000 press releases issued by over 600 politicians during four election campaigns in Austria between 2002 and 2013. The analysis demonstrates that women talk more about social policy issues during election campaigns than men, but that this emphasis gap disappears for parties with a more equal gender balance. These results have important implications for our understanding of the politics of gender and social policy.

Hidden Costs of the Welfare State: Employers' Compliance Costs and the Working Tax Credit

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Godwin ◽  
Colin Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Delivery System ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Compliance Costs ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper explores the impact of the decision to make the Working Tax Credit (WTC) payable via the employer, until March 2006. A unique survey shows the unequal distribution of compliance costs across firms and industries. It also suggests that the arrangement had some unanticipated results, and may have damaged the effectiveness of the WTC. Some employers' compliance costs may have been shifted to employees. So from a social policy perspective administration is policy – the delivery system affects outcomes. However the switch to payments through HMRC from April 2006 does not remove all compliance costs from employers.

The Persistence of Poverty under Welfare States and the Prospects for its Abolition

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
New Right ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Main Factor ◽  
The Welfare State

This article examines the relationship between poverty and the welfare state and attempts to answer the question as to why poverty has persisted under all welfare states. Several major reasons for the persistence of poverty are advanced, and the author argues that the main factor underlying the failure to abolish poverty is the conflict between economic policy and social policy. The challenge to welfare states from the New Right is examined—particularly the contention that welfare states themselves create poverty and dependence—in the light of evidence of the impact of the Thatcher government's policies in Britain. Finally, the author proposes an alternative approach to the abolition of poverty, one that is based on the integration of economic and social policy.

Retrenched, Reconfigured and Broken: The British Welfare State after a Decade of Austerity

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Kevin Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crisis Events ◽  
Financial Base ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This article is an attempt to take stock and critically reflect on the UK’s decade of austerity and social policy hostility over the past decade. It distinguishes between economic and political austerity and digs deeper into the data on expenditure in order to examine the impact of austerity on British public expenditure and politics. It argues that the decade of austerity was a hostile one for British social policy which not only undermined the financial base of key parts of the welfare state, it reshaped it and redefined its priorities, setting in train a series of subsequent events that would further change, not just British social policies, but British economics, polity and politics. And, as subsequent crises – notably Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic – testify, crisis events tend to be linked, and each one shapes and influences the ability of the state to respond to the next.

scholarly journals An Argument and an Outline for a New Employment Scheme

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Hansen ◽  
Jens Lind ◽  
Iver Hornemann Møller
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Wage Formation ◽  
Free Competition ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Liberalism is celebrating triumphs in these years. As faith in the welfare state and Keynesianism began to crack in the 1970s, capitalist principles were revitalised and the old virtues and dogmas were found and dusted. Now all that restrained the free competition in the market were considered a danger to the growth and the welfare. The impact of trade unions on wage formation should be limited, the welfare state should be reduced, and ‘modernised’ and the incentive structure strengthened by reducing social policy standards. Unemployment was again considered a natural part of the economy where individual choices were crucial to whether you were unemployed or not: lower your wage claims and you would probably get a job. (...)

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. xxx-20
Author(s):  
Daniel Béland ◽  
Kimberly J. Morgan ◽  
Herbert Obinger ◽  
Christopher Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Welfare State Regimes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

This synoptic introduction guides the reader through the major themes in this comparative analysis of the developed welfare states. It first outlines the origins of the welfare state and its development down to 1940. It then considers the impact of the Second World War on social policy and traces the apparent successes of expanding welfare state regimes in the thirty years that followed the war. It then assesses the critique and challenges that arose for this welfare state settlement from the mid-1970s onwards and the idea of a ‘crisis of the welfare state’. These challenges were simultaneously ideological, political, economic, and demographic, and are sometimes seen to have created new circumstances of ‘permanent austerity’. The contemporary welfare state faces a set of challenges very different to those which arose after 1945 in which the near-future context is set by the continuing impact of the Great Recession after 2008 and the new world of social policy created by COVID-19.

scholarly journals DIGITAL ECONOMY AS A FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL STATE

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 155-162
Author(s):  
Alla Silenko ◽  
Vira Bezrodna ◽  
Olga Nikogosyan
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Development Trend ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

The digital economy is becoming a development trend in most modern countries, the basis for sustainable economic growth and living standards of the population. In this regard, it seems relevant to consider the significance of the impact of the digital economy on the welfare state. The purpose of the article is to study the influence of the digital economy on the quality and living conditions of citizens in a welfare state. Methodology. The study is based on a systemic approach, within which the digital economy has been viewed as an external phenomenon (input) that has been able to affect the welfare state system (output). Results. The hypothesis of the study that the digital economy improves the quality and living conditions of citizens in a welfare state was partially confirmed. However, it became clear that in addition to positive, the digital economy has negative consequences for people. For example, the digital economy improves the ability to solve many social problems, but at the same time creates new problems. For example, it creates new jobs, new professions, as a result of which workers in traditional professions become unclaimed. The digital economy not only solves and creates problems, but also exposes them. So, it has clearly outlined the problem of social inequality in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, the digitalization of public social services makes life easier for people, but only if they are prepared for this process. Digital illiteracy of the population, characteristic of countries lagging behind in technological development, including Ukraine, is an obstacle to the introduction of digitalization into the social sphere. At the same time, the state is not ready for the active introduction of digital technologies into the system of social policy yet due to the lack of necessary resources. Digitalization will not improve people’s lives until the state has funds for social policy. And yet, some measures are being taken in this direction.

Egalitarians, Equalities and Welfare Evaluation

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael O'Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Welfare Evaluation ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTThe focus of this paper is on the nature of the egalitarian policy objectives of the welfare state, and on the evaluation and assessment of social policies in the light of those objectives. This focus reflects the pervasive but often ill-defined presence of equality as an objective for social policy, without asserting that it is either unique or uncontested as an objective. The paper does not offer an evaluation of the success or failure of the welfare state in relation to equality; rather it is concerned with exploring what might be and is meant by equality as a target for social policy, with presenting some contrasting conceptions of equality, and with discussing the implications of the multiple meanings of equality for the way in which we think about issues in social policy and, in particular, about the impact of social welfare programmes.

scholarly journals Dualized trust: risk, social trust and the welfare state

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 875-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kevins
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Generalized Trust ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract This article examines how labour market vulnerability and social policy interact to shape generalized trust. Drawing insights from the literature on dualization, I suggest that: (1) labour market outsiders will have lower levels of generalized trust due to their increased risk exposure; and (2) active labour market policies, by conditioning labour market vulnerability, can reduce the impact of outsiderness on trust. Leveraging within-country cleavages between insiders and outsiders therefore allows us to assess one possible mechanism behind the welfare state’s generation of trust, while at the same time holding cultural context and broader trust levels constant. Analysis of data from the 2008–2014 waves of the European Social Survey then provides evidence of the impact of outsiderness on trust and the ability of social policy to moderate that effect. The investigation thus sheds light on both an additional consequence of dualization and a mechanism linking the welfare state to generalized trust.

Introduction: Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Powell ◽  
Armando Barrientos
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Breaking Work ◽  
The Welfare State

Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). According to Headey et al. (1997: 332), it has become a canon in comparative social policy against which any subsequent work must situate itself. Abrahamson (1999) notes that, since the publication of the book, every welfare state scholar has referred to Esping-Andersen's tripolar scheme. Scruggs and Allen (2006: 55, 69) remark that it ‘is difficult to find an article comparing welfare states in advanced democratic countries (or a syllabus on social policy) that does not refer to this seminal work’, and ‘it is hard to overstate the significance of the impact of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC) on comparative studies of the welfare state’. Its seminal status is evidenced by the extent to which it continues to be cited in articles on comparative welfare states. It also remains required reading for most (graduate) students of comparative political economy and social policy (Scruggs and Allen, 2008). Kröger (2011) claims that, with few exceptions, comparative social policy research is shaped by welfare regime analysis. Arts and Gelissen conclude that TWWC is a defining influence upon the whole field of comparative welfare state research (2010: 569). Danforth (2014) writes that the ‘three worlds’ typology has become one of the principal heuristics for examining modern welfare states. In short, TWWC is a ‘modern classic’ (Arts and Gelissen, 2002).

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