scholarly journals Implementing Regenerative Standards in Politically Green Nordic Social Welfare States: Can Sweden Adopt the Living Building Challenge?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 738
Author(s):  
Mara Forsberg ◽  
Clarice Bleil de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
National Board ◽  
Living Building Challenge ◽  
Regenerative Design ◽  
Building Standards ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper focuses on understanding the place for regenerative building standards within the context of politically green Nordic social welfare states. To this end, it examines the particular case of adopting the Living Building Challenge (LBC), an iconic example of regenerative design standard, in Sweden. An extensive document analysis comparing the Swedish building and planning regulations as well as the Miljöbyggnad national certification system with the LBC, shows overlaps and barriers the standard can face when adopted in the country. Barriers are validated and further discussed in interviews with one of the few architects trying to achieve a certified LBC building in Sweden and Swedish public authorities from the Boverket (Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning). Results from the document analysis and interviews show barriers to implement the LBC in Sweden are a product of a conscious political and ideological decision from the welfare state which considers infrastructure, and all its potential sustainable versions, a public good to be provided to all and funded by all. This premise contrasts with the self-sufficient approach promoted by the LBC, which in this particular aspect, can be interpreted as a threat to the welfare state.

The Rise of Block-Granting as a Tool of Conservative Statecraft

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Block Grant ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.

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.

scholarly journals Economic Globalization and the Welfare State in Affluent Democracies, 1975–2001

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brady ◽  
Jason Beckfield ◽  
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
State Expansion ◽  
State Variation ◽  
State Models ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
The Welfare State

Previous scholarship is sharply divided over how or if globalization influences welfare states. The effects of globalization may be positive causing expansion, negative triggering crisis and reduction, curvilinear contributing to convergence, or insignificant. We bring new evidence to bear on this debate with an analysis of three welfare state measures and a comprehensive array of economic globalization indicators for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 2001. The analysis suggests several conclusions. First, state-of-the-art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era. Second, most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects, but a few affect the welfare state and improve models of welfare state variation. Third, the few significant globalization effects are in differing directions and often inconsistent with extant theories. Fourth, the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors. Fifth, the effects of globalization are not systematically different between European and non-European countries, or liberal and non-liberal welfare regimes. Increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred, but globalization does not clearly cause welfare state expansion, crisis, and reduction or convergence. Ultimately, this study suggests skepticism toward bold claims about globalization's effect on the welfare state.

Public and Private Social Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Incorrect Measurement ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Distributional Impact ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.

Western welfare states watched from the East during the Cold War: condemnation, competition, and creative learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Inglot
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The West ◽  
Creative Learning ◽  
The Cold War

This paper examines international influences of the Western welfare state on social policy ideas, institutions and reforms in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It identifies three types of Eastern reactions to or interactions with the West: “condemnation” of various “bourgeois” conceptions of social welfare; “competition” or increased attention to redistribution and social needs of the population stemming from the demonstrable successes of Western welfare states; and “creative learning” or implicit acknowledgment that every industrial society, including the Soviet style centrally planned economies, had to adopt at least some elements of modernized social welfare models or policy originally developed in the West. Paradoxically, first the explicit and later more implicit rejection of the Western welfare state, including the social-democratic and various “third way” models, eventually led to the rise of neoliberal and anti-welfare attitudes among many Eastern social policy reformers during the last decade of communist rule and beyond, after 1989.

scholarly journals REGULATIONS IN THE SOCIAL WELFARE STATE: NORDIC COUNTRIES AND TURKEY EXAMPLE

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nagihan Ozkanca Andic ◽  
Ekrem Karayilmazlar
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

The Public Expenditure/GDP ratio is one of the most significant metrics that measure the state's share of the economy. It can be said that there is an interventionist state type in countries where this rate is high, or it can be argued that the share of the public sector in the economy is low in countries where this rate is low. It is also possible to argue that the countries' economic, sociological, and political factors play an essential role in determining this ratio. Regulations, which are the most important tools of the welfare state, may arise through economic controls as well as through social policies. This study aims to find an answer to the question of whether this situation is possible for a developing country such as Turkey while Nordic countries, which determine a system different from other welfare models, succeed in raising social welfare without giving up the principles such as equality and justice that they have despite the globalization effect. The data obtained by various methods were subjected to comparison using the Data Envelopment Analysis method in order to achieve this purpose. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0777/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

scholarly journals Social innovation as a policy response to restructure the welfare state

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Doğa Başar Sariipek ◽  
Gökçe Cerev ◽  
Bora Yenihan
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The State ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Welfare State

The focus of this paper is the interaction between social innovation and restructuring welfare state. Modern welfare states have been reconfiguring their welfare mixes through social innovation. This includes a productive integration of formal and informal actors with support and leading role of the state. This collaboration becomes significantly important since it means the integration of not only the actors, but also their capabilities and resources in today’s world where new social risks and new social challenges have emerged and no actor can overcome these by its own. Therefore, social innovation is a useful tool in the new role sharing within the welfare mix in order to reach higher levels of satisfaction and success in welfare provision. The main point here is that this is not a zero-sum competition; gaining more power of the actors other than the state – the market, civil society organisations and the family – does not necessarily mean that the state lost its leading role and power. This is rather a new type of cooperation among actors and their capabilities as well as their resources in welfare provision. In this sense, social innovation may contribute well to the debates over the financial crisis of the welfare state since it may lead to the more wisely use of existing resources of welfare actors. Thanks to social innovative programs, not only the NGOs, but also market forces as well as citizens are more active to access welfare provisions and social protection in the broadest sense. Thus, social innovative strategies are definitely a solid step taken towards “enabling” or “active” welfare state.

Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Stuart White
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Core ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter seeks to clarify some of the core ethical arguments surrounding welfare states. The analysis focuses on three key values. First, we will consider the concept of need. What are basic needs? How do we conceptualize and measure them? Do citizens have rights to what they need? Second, we focus on principles of equality and, third, we look at arguments surrounding the implications of the welfare state for liberty. A final section concludes by noting some normative issues moving increasingly to the forefront of debate. A changing global political context raises new issues about the international salience of these issues, questions which national welfare states have found it difficult to address.

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