scholarly journals THE WELFARE STATE: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS, OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES IN LATIN AMERICA.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 141-172
Author(s):  
Mauricio Godinho Delgado ◽  
◽  
Lorena Vasconcelos Porto
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second World ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper provides an analysis of the organizational model of the political and the civil societies which became prevalent in Western Europe after the Second World War: the Welfare State. It also provides a discussion on the reasons why this model of organization has never been effectively implemented in any Latin American country. To this end, firstly, the text highlights the many and most important characteristics of the Welfare State, with attention to the peculiarities it assumes in specific European countries. Secondly, based on these comparative elements, a typological synthesis of the Welfare States is drawn, considering the range from the most sophisticated examples to those which only meet the minimum relevant criteria of this model of State and social organization. Finally, the reality of Latin American countries is analyzed and it is indicated to what extent they have (or have not) structured something that could be effectively considered a Welfare State. In this framework, it is concluded that, although there are a few Latin American countries showing progress in terms of achieving these characteristics in comparison with the great majority of countries in the region, the obstacles and challenges for the full structuring of a real Welfare State in this region of the globe are still persistent.

scholarly journals THE DECLINE OF THE WELLFARE STATE IN MODERN SOCIETY

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-180
Author(s):  
Kire Sharlamanov
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state is a relatively new social phenomenon. Its rudimentary forms appear at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was especially developed immediately after the Second World War. It was created in order to reduce acute social conflicts in societies around the world and to give citizens the minimum conditions for subsistence. From its founding, to this day, the welfare state is at the center of the attention of the professional and general public. This article attempts to define and categorize a state of well-being, but also to consider modern trends that reflect it. Particular attention will be paid to reducing the welfare state and the reasons why it occurs. From the many factors that are often considered in the context of the decline of the welfare state, here we will primarily analyze the demographic, economic and political factors.

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.

The Changing Shapes of Latin American Welfare States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyne Huber ◽  
Zoila Ponce de León
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Cash Assistance ◽  
The Welfare State

Latin American welfare states have undergone major changes over the past half century. As of 1980, there were only a handful of countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay) with social policy regimes that covered more than half of their population with some kind of safety net to insure adequate care during their old age and that provided adequate healthcare services. With few exceptions, access to social protection and to healthcare in these countries and others was based on formal employment and contributions from employees and employers. There were very few programs, and those few were poorly funded, for those without formal sector jobs and their dependents. The debt crisis and the ensuing neoliberal reforms then damaged the welfare state in all countries, including these leading nations. Deindustrialization, shrinking of the public sector, and cuts in public expenditures reduced both coverage and quality of transfers and services. Poverty and inequality rose, and the welfare state did little to ameliorate these trends. With the turn of the century, the economic and political situation changed significantly. The commodity boom eased fiscal pressures and made resources available for an increase in public social expenditure. Democracy was more consolidated in the region and civil society had recovered from repression. Left-wing parties began to win elections and take advantage of the fiscal room which allowed for the building of redistributive social programs. The most significant innovation has been expansion of coverage to people in the informal sector and to people with insufficient histories of contributions to social insurance schemes. The overwhelming majority of Latin Americans now have the right to some kind of cash assistance at some point in their lives and to healthcare provided by their governments. In many cases, there have also been real improvements in the generosity of cash assistance, particularly in the case of non-contributory pensions, and in the quality of healthcare services. However, the least progress has been made toward equity. With very few exceptions, new non-contributory programs were added to the traditional contributory ones; severe inequalities continue to exist in the quality of services provided through the new and the traditional programs.

Paul V. Dutton,Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 251 pp. $65.00 cloth; $27.00 paper.

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 194-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herrick Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Funded Pensions ◽  
Private Government ◽  
Second World

Comparative studies of social policy usually portray the French welfare state as lagging behind most of its counterparts in Western Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century. The sheer complexity of the French system, moreover, with its baroque mixture of separate private, government and quasi-public funds, made it exceptional as well. Yet tardiness and complexity by no means prevented the French from expanding social insurance at an especially rapid clip in the decades following the Second World War. By 1980 France spent more on social security as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than any country in Europe except Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. Today the French are among Europe's most stalwart defenders of publicly funded pensions and health insurance. Given its unimpressive beginnings, how did the French welfare state become such a heavyweight?

scholarly journals Lo stato sociale nel pensiero politico contemporaneo. Il Novecento

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio De Boni
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Economic Welfare ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

The idea of the welfare state, that is of a state tangibly committed to the economic welfare of the citizens, became progressively established in western thought in the twentieth century. Running counter to the tradition of thought in which politics and economics were two separate and independent spheres, various political cultures pressed for an acknowledgement of social rights and the duty of the state to intervene to protect the weaker brackets of the population. The first of these was social democracy, followed by a liberalism which became increasingly "social" in line with Christian thought, through to the phenomenon of the "totalitarian welfare state", when even absolutist states elaborated policies designed to incorporate the proletariat in the national order. This book is part of a larger work intended to address the issue of the welfare state in contemporary political thought. Following the volume dedicated to the nineteenth century (FUP 2007), this book deals with the period from the turn of the century up to the formulation of one of the most consummate and organic projects of welfare state ever conceived: that elaborated by Beveridge in England during the Second World War. THE THREE VOLUMESI: Lo stato sociale nel pensiero politico contemporaneo L'Ottocento Lo stato sociale nel pensiero politico contemporaneo. Il Novecento Parte prima: Da inizio secolo alla seconda guerra mondiale Lo stato sociale nel pensiero politico contemporaneo. Il Novecento Parte seconda: dal dopoguerra a oggi

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.

Keynes and the Welfare State

2012 ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Roger E. Backhouse ◽  
Bradley W. Bateman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Face ◽  
Utilitarian Approach ◽  
Recent Financial Crisis ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper considers the question of what influence J.M. Keynes had on the evolution of the welfare state after the Second World War. First it weighs whether his non-utilitarian approach to economic theory and welfare measurement had an impact on the growth of the welfare state. Then it considers whether the influence came through Keynes's advocacy of deficit spending. After rejecting both of these explanations the role of full employment in sustaining the welfare state is weighed. The paper concludes with a consideration of what might be necessary in preserving the welfare state in the face of the recent financial crisis and the sovereign debt crises that have emerged subsequent to the crisis.

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