Social Policy Review 32

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
British Society ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
International Social ◽  
The Welfare State

This book presents an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year. The book considers current issues and critical debates in the UK and the international social policy field. It contains vital research on race in social policy higher education and analyses how welfare states and policies address the economic and social hardship of young people. The chapters consider the impacts of austerity on the welfare state, homelessness, libraries and other social policy areas. The book begins by asking what are the pressing racial inequalities in contemporary British society and to what extent is social policy as a discipline equipped to analyse and respond to them. It then discusses the key analysis and messages from the Social Policy Association (SPA) race audit, looking at the challenges facing the discipline, and moves on to examine the experience and views of young British Muslim women in Sunderland. Attention is given to the ‘othering’ of migrants, family welfare resources on young people's transition to economic independence, youths' labour market trajectories in Sweden, innaccessibility to community youth justice in England and Wales, benefits entitlement of different UK families, and the book concludes with the final chapters focussing on the impacts of austerity.

scholarly journals The Business-Social Policy Nexus: Corporate Power and Corporate Inputs into Social Policy

2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEVIN FARNSWORTH ◽  
CHRIS HOLDEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Corporate Power ◽  
National Competitiveness ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Business Influence ◽  
The Welfare State

It is increasingly impossible to understand and explain the shape and delivery of contemporary social policy unless we consider the role of business. Several factors have been at work here. First, many of the changes in social policy introduced since the 1970s have been in response either to business demands or more general concerns about national competitiveness and the needs of business. Second, globalisation has increased corporate power within states, leading to transformations in social and fiscal policies. Third, business has been incorporated into the management of many areas of the welfare state by governments keen to control expenditure and introduce private sector values into services. Fourth, welfare services, from hospitals to schools, have been increasingly opened up to private markets. Despite all this, the issues of business influence and involvement in social policy has been neglected in the literature. This article seeks to place corporate power and influence centre-stage by outlining and critically reflecting on the place of business within contemporary welfare states, with a particular focus on the UK. Business, it argues, is increasingly important to welfare outcomes and needs to be taken into account more fully within the social policy literature.

From Welfare States to Planetary Well-Being

2021 ◽  
pp. 900-920
Author(s):  
Ian Gough
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Basic Services ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
The Welfare State

This final chapter concentrates on global environmental challenges to rich-country welfare states: climate breakdown and associated ecological disasters. These common threats add two new raison d’êtres for welfare states: first, that the security and equity they seek should be sustainable through time; second, that their scope is broadened to take account of global equity and well-being. With a few notable exceptions, these fundamental questions have been ignored in the social policy community. I argue here that we need to transform our understanding of social policy in four ways, each more difficult than the previous one. First, we need to develop novel eco-social programmes to tap synergies between well-being and sustainability via transformative investment programmes such as a Green New Deal. Second, we need to recompose consumption in rich countries in two ways: to realize the best principles of the welfare state by extending the range of universal basic services and to work towards a private ‘consumption corridor’ to end waste, meet basic needs, and reduce inequality. Third, we must develop strategies of ‘reduce and redistribute’ to adapt welfare systems for a future of slower, if not negative, economic growth. And finally, we need to develop a global equity framework to meet climatic and ecological threats in a globally just way that recognizes current international inequalities.

The Scandinavian Origins of the Social Interpretation of the Welfare State

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Welfare State

If a question can be mal posée, surely an interpretation can be mal étendue. This has been the fate of the social interpretation of the welfare state. The cousin of social theories of bourgeois revolution, the social interpretation of the welfare state is part of a broader conception of the course of modern European history that until recently has laid claim to the status of a standard. The social interpretation sees the welfare states of certain countries as a victory for the working class and confirmation of the ability of its political representatives on the Left to use universalist, egalitarian, solidaristic measures of social policy on behalf of the least advantaged. Because the poor and the working class were groups that overlapped during the initial development of the welfare state, social policy was linked with the worker's needs. Faced with the ever-present probability of immiseration, the proletariat championed the cause of all needy and developed more pronounced sentiments of solidarity than other classes. Where it achieved sufficient power, the privileged classes were forced to consent to measures that apportioned the cost of risks among all, helping those buffeted by fate and social injustice at the expense of those docked in safe berths.

Putting ‘the social’ back into social policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Corbett ◽  
Alan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Education System ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meaning And Purpose ◽  
The Uk

This chapter illustrates how the dominant neoliberal approach to economic and social policy in the UK is becoming increasingly fragmented with a generation of people set to experience worse living standards than their parents. This includes a decline in social mobility within and across generations, a vast chasm emerging between the haves and have nots, a long term squeeze on wages and living standards, health crises relating to underfunding, and the move towards a mechanical learning based secondary education system geared towards a low wage, low skill economy. As a result, it is important to reassess the meaning and purpose of social policy and where it fits within the overall direction of contemporary British society.

Comparative Social Policy and Political Conflict in Advanced Welfare States: Denmark and Sweden

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gøsta Esping-Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet, the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

International Class Conflict and Social Policy

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Social

The history of welfare states is marked by divisions between capital and labour and these divisions are replicated at the international level. At the heart of these divisions is enduring class interests which accord different priorities to social and economic factors. That these divisions exist is neither surprising, nor necessarily a problem; the problem, this paper argues, is the increasingly high priority given to business interests by ever more powerful international governmental organisations. This paper presents an analysis of power in the global economy before investigating the social policy preferences of key international capital and labour organisations. It argues that international class mobilisation has failed to produce very much of a compromise on the part of capital, and that, if anything, international social policy discourse is today even closer to business than it has ever been.

From Solution to Problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-193
Author(s):  
Peter C. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Western World ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

The 1970s and 1980s saw two important changes in the West German discussion of the welfare state. First, global trade put direct economic pressure on expensive welfare states in the western world. Second, the social science discussion of the welfare state shifted to a language of systems, which no longer viewed the welfare state as a tool of state or society, but asked about how systems of social policy could have unintended consequences—how social solutions could pose their own problems. Young Marxists, breaking with the SPD, questioned the possibility of a welfare state that could aid workers under capitalism; conservative state theorists questioned whether democracy, with its demands for state solutions, could paralyze the state. The result was a more complex reading of how the modern word created complex challenges for individuals and states alike, especially well articulated in the work of Kaufmann and Luhmann.

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

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.

Social Policy Review 18

2006 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
British Society ◽  
Policy Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century

A hundred years after its philanthropist founder identified the social evils of his time, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation initiated a major consultation among leading thinkers, activists and commentators, as well as the wider public. This book examines the underlying problems that pose the greatest threat to British society in the twenty-first century.

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