scholarly journals Middle-class interests, redistribution and the postwar success and failure of the solidaristic welfare state

2021 ◽  
pp. 095892872110356
Author(s):  
Dennie Oude Nijhuis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Wage Earners ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Welfare State

According to the conventional view of over three decades of research on the welfare state, the postwar success of solidaristic welfare reform depended on the left’s ability to ‘tailor’ to middle-class interests or at least ‘synthesize’ working- and middle-class demands. This article offers a different perspective on the dynamics of postwar solidaristic welfare reform. It argues that key middle-class groups such as skilled wage earners often had a strong incentive to oppose such reform but were not always well-positioned to do so. The article distinguishes between two main avenues through which they could exert political influence and argues that their ability to mobilize against solidaristic welfare reform depended primarily on the structure of the labour union movement. The article illustrates its claims by contrasting the postwar success of solidaristic old-age pension reform in Belgium and the Netherlands with its failure in Britain and Germany.

The Consequences of Welfare Reform: How Conceptions of Social Rights are Changing

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT HENRY COX
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
Welfare Reforms ◽  
The Welfare State

The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights are discursive, the relative power of various clientele interests plays a greater role in the distribution of benefits than objective conditions of need. Also, such notions as universality and solidarity are giving way to selectivity and individual responsibility as the paramount principles of the welfare state.

Class in Thatcherite Ideology and Rhetoric

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Classless Society ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines Thatcherite rhetoric about class and individualism. Thatcher needed to distance herself from her own, narrow, upper-middle-class image; she also wanted to rid politics of class language, and thought that class was—or should be—irrelevant in 1980s Britain because of ‘embourgeoisement’. For Thatcher, ‘bourgeois’ was defined by particular values (thrift, hard work, self-reliance) and she wanted to use the free market to incentivize more of the population to display these values, which she thought would lead to a moral and also a prosperous society. Thatcherite individualism rested on the assumption that people were rational, self-interested, but also embedded in families and communities. The chapter reflects on what these conclusions tell us about ‘Thatcherism’ as a political ideology, and how these beliefs influenced Thatcherite policy on the welfare state, monetarism, and trade unionism. Finally, it examines Major’s rhetoric of the ‘classless society’ in the 1990s.

What's Globalization Got to Do with It? Economic Interdependence and the Future of European Welfare States

2006 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Hay
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Models ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Usa ◽  
State Regime ◽  
European Welfare States ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe appeal to globalization as a non-negotiable external economic constraint plays an increasingly significant role in the linked politics of expectation suppression and welfare reform in contemporary Europe. Yet, although it threatens to become something of a self- fulfilling prophecy, the thesis that globalization entails welfare retrenchment and convergence is empirically suspect. In this paper it is argued that there is little evidence of convergence amongst European social models and that, although common trajectories can be identified, these have tended to be implemented more or less enthusiastically and at different paces to produce, to date, divergent outcomes. Second, I suggest that it is difficult to see globalization as the principal agent determining the path on which European social models are embarked since the empirical evidence points if anything to de-globalization rather than globalization. The implications of this for the future of the welfare state in Europe and for the USA as a model welfare state regime are explored.

Reforming the Welfare State: German and European Experiences and Challenges

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-87
Author(s):  
Bernhard Seliger
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Reform Strategies ◽  
European Development ◽  
Western European ◽  
Special Respect ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

The rise of the welfare state has been a characteristic feature of Western European development after the second world war, despite quite different economic models in Western European countries. However, dynamic implications of the welfare state made a reform increasingly necessary. Therefore, since the 1980s the reform of the welfare state has been an important topic for Western European states. This paper describes the development of the welfare state and analyzes possible welfare reform strategies with special respect to the case of Germany. It focuses on the interdependence of political and economic aspects of welfare reform on the national as well as international level.

Responsibility and the Big Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Bednarek
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Good Society ◽  
Big Society ◽  
Class Distinction ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper focuses on the interplay between Conservative thought as evinced by the current Conservative Party leadership and the idea of responsibility, which is a central concern in the Big Society programme. I show that responsibility holds different meanings based on attitudes to work and the welfare state and that the differentiation in meaning map onto a working class/middle class distinction. I then argue that the ‘good society’ as it emerges from the Big Society idea would be a more stratified one that accepts large degrees of inequality. Leaving the conceptual plane, I then provide support for my argument with findings from qualitative research into the lifeworld of young Conservatives.

scholarly journals Hemmafru eller gymnastikdirektör eller både och? Kvinnliga gymnastikdirektörer, GCI och folkhemmet 1932–1952

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Leif Yttergren
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Physical Education Teachers ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Physical Education Teacher ◽  
Central Institute ◽  
Education Teacher ◽  
Occupational Career ◽  
The Welfare State

Housewife or Physical Education Teacher? Or Both? Female Physical Education Teachers and the Welfare State, 1932–1952The purpose of the article is to analyse the occupational careers and lifestyles of 32 female physical education teachers during the period 1932–1973. The results show that women could work both as physiotherapists and as physical education teachers. Many chose the former, which in Central Institute of Gymnastics’ (Gymnastiska centralinstitutet, GCI) own historical writing has been reduced in favor of the physical education teachers. The women came from the middle or upper middle class of society. They were around 20 years old when they started the two-year education at GCI, which attracted students from all over the country. They could combine marriage and children with work, even though it meant duplication and difficulty in bringing together the so-called “life puzzle.” Unlike many other women at this time, the physical education teachers chose the occupational career instead of becoming full time housewives. Their attitude can be explained by the occupational and caring character of the profession, but also with the strong loyalty that existed in the group and the GCI-spirit.

When Social Security Fails to Provide Emotional Security: Single Parent Households and the Contractual Welfare State

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelien Tonkens ◽  
Loes Verplanke
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Emotional Security ◽  
Front Door ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Welfare State

The provision of services in the contractual welfare state is conditional. If one wants to receive a service, one has to comply with the demands of the provider. If one fails to do so, the organisation threatens to terminate its services, and indeed often does so. There are, however, people who breach their contracts time after time, falling back into the same dire situation that prompted them to ask for help in the first place. Social workers must then visit these people to help them re-enter the contract. This article draws on an in-depth analysis of such ‘behind the front door’ policies, focussing on single mothers on welfare. It argues that for many single mothers on welfare, social security fails to provide emotional and relational security, which undermines their ability to fulfil the terms of the contract. So long as the welfare state is based on the idea of (material) social security, ‘behind the front door’ workers remain urgently needed.

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