scholarly journals Retrenchment and restructuring in an age of austerity: what (if anything) can be learned from the affluent democracies?

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (suppl) ◽  
pp. S7-S11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
State Reform ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Welfare State Reform

The article discusses some difficulties of drawing implications from welfare state reform in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for "middle-income countries", and whose welfare states have been less well institutionalized. It is argued that globalization's role in contemporary social policy dynamics were not unimportant, but social processes occurring within national contexts were probably more important. There is not a single "new politics of the welfare state" but distinct political dynamics in different "regimes" or "configurations", which are characterized by different problem loads and different structures of political opportunity. Different factors are crucial in explaining outcomes in different configurations and there is little reason to expect much convergence in social policy outcomes across regime type. Contemporary welfare state reform is depicted as a process of restructuring rather than dismantling, what can encourage the possibilities for developing coalitions advancing multi-dimensional agendas of welfare state reform.

Fixed or Variable Needs? Public Support and Welfare State Reform

2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Reform ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Pension Schemes ◽  
Welfare State Reform

AbstractThe study of welfare state reform has in the last decade been strongly influenced by the ‘new politics’ literature. A fundamental assumption of this literature is that the public has fixed attitudes concerning welfare benefits; however, this may be hard to sustain empirically. Instead, this article argues that public support differs depending on whether a welfare programme aims at relieving fixed or variable needs. By analysing reforms of old-age pension schemes and the introduction of workfare strategies in the United States, France and Denmark, the fruitfulness of this approach is indicated.

Afterword: Welfare State Reform, Recognition and Emotional Labor

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlie Hochschild
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Government Aid ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Welfare State Reform ◽  
Do So

In this themed section, the editors and authors take us far beyond the usual thinking about welfare reform. How, they ask, do politicians want us to feel about welfare reform? How do we think we should feel and how do we feel about it? How does the disabled woman who has lost her government-provided caregiver and ‘hasn't been out of the house since Christmas’, feel about it? Or the man who petitions to restore his lost government aid – but fails to do so? Or the wealthy Dutch tax payer? These are are the sorts of questions that arise in the study of a changing welfare states.

scholarly journals Democratization, post-industrialization, and East Asian welfare capitalism: the politics of welfare state reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Fleckenstein ◽  
Soohyun Christine Lee
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
East Asian ◽  
State Theory ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
State Reform ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Production Regime ◽  
Post War

This review article provides an overview of the scholarship on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. The developmental welfare state theory and the related productivist welfare regime approach have dominated the study of welfare states in the region. This essay, however, shows that a growing body of research challenges the dominant literature. We identify two key driving factors of welfare reform in East Asia, namely democratization and post-industrialization; and discuss how these two drivers have undermined the political and functional underpinnings of the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Its unfolding transformation and the new politics of social policy in the region challenge the notion of “East Asian exceptionalism”, and we suggest that recent welfare reforms call for a better integration of the region into the literature of advanced political economies to allow for cross-fertilization between Eastern and Western literatures.

Social Policy in an Era of Competition

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Global Competition ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Social Policy Reform ◽  
Reform Processes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Welfare State Reform ◽  
Cross National

Welfare states globally have been subjected to reform agendas that have stressed economic competitiveness but how has global competition reshaped welfare states in practice? Providing a new cross-national and international narrative, this book captures the complexity of social policy reform process that has taken place over the past 25 years. Drawing on data relating to multiple countries, the book examines global, cross-national and local cases in order to shed light on the impact of international forces on social policy. The book addresses major theoretical debates about the direction of welfare state reform processes across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and beyond, offering empirically rooted analyses of change and new perspectives on the impact of global competition on social policy.

scholarly journals Universalism in Welfare Policy: The Swedish Case beyond 1990

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-123
Author(s):  
Paula Blomqvist ◽  
Joakim Palme
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Welfare State Reform

Despite its broad usage, universalism as a concept is not always clearly defined. In this article, a multidimensional definition of universalism in social policy is developed, based on four policy characteristics: inclusion, financing, provision, and the adequacy of benefits. In the empirical part of the article, the feasibility of this definition is tested by an analysis of recent changes in the Swedish welfare state, which is typically described as universal but has undergone substantive reforms since 1990. Four social policy areas are examined: pensions, social insurance, health care, and family policy. The results indicate that Swedish welfare policies retain their universalistic character in some dimensions but have become less universalistic in others. This demonstrates that a multidimensional approach is best suited to capture in full the nature and implications of welfare state reform.

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