The Global Diffusion of Work-Injury Insurance: The Role of Spatial Networks and Nation Building

Work-injury law often marks the beginning of the modern welfare state and as we argue this type of insurance is particularly important to nation-state building: it placates myriad social groups needs and demands while binding them symbiotically with the state. We analyze any first laws and the first instance of social insurance as outcomes in 151 states (1880–2010). Our network diffusion and event history models reveal that spatial proximity and democratization are key predictors of first laws. However, nation-state formation and trade density are additional predictors of social insurance in particular. We conclude with implications of these findings for understanding nation-building within global networks.

Becoming a Continent of Immigration: Charting Europe's Migration History, 1919–2019

Widespread belief in economic liberalism in the second half of the nineteenth century, combined with the development of safer, faster, and cheaper transportation, paved the way for huge migration to occur. Between 1850 and 1914, 55 million people departed Europe, with the vast majority heading to the Americas during what Hatton and Williamson term “the age of mass migration”. According to McKeown, something similar in scale and duration took place at approximately the same time – albeit enduring for slightly longer – involving Indians and southern Chinese moving to Southeast Asia and people from north-eastern Asia and Russia to North Asia. However, “the booming of the guns of August 1914 brought to a sudden close the era during which foreigners were relatively free to traverse borders”, according to John Torpey. States in Europe and North America, in particular, reintroduced passport controls with vigour during World War I and instead of lifting these bellicose measures at the end of the conflict, they generally reinforced them. The United States led the way in introducing such restrictions. Following on from the imposition of the 1917 Literacy Act came the 1921 and 1924 US Immigration Acts, which limited arrivals by introducing quotas for countries. The development in much of Europe of the modern welfare state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century simultaneously gave rise to more restrictive immigration policies in Europe, thereby leading to an even greater distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

Exploring legacies of the baby boomers in the twenty-first century

As the baby boomers neared retirement at the turn of the twentieth century, attention focused on what the future might look like for both them and succeeding generations. Public discourse about boomers often depicts them as a selfish and narcissistic generation that have benefitted from the largesse of the modern welfare state yet seem intent on denying those benefits to their children and grandchildren. Millennials have similarly been condemned as a ‘snowflake’ generation unwilling to accept the responsibilities of full-blown adulthood, though, unlike the boomers, they have experienced the negative effects of late capitalism, such as job insecurity, student debt and housing unaffordability. Sometimes disparities between boomers and millennials have been seen as producing a ‘generations war’. However, using generation as shorthand for what are often more complex issues suffers ‘generationalism’ insofar as it belies intragenerational heterogeneity, among other things. Drawing on sociological conceptions of generation, it is an aim of this article, and the contributions contained in this Special Section, to explore the veracity of claims made around generations, ‘generations at war’ and the legacies of baby boomers.

Understanding Social Insurance: Risk and Value Pluralism in the Early British Welfare State

This article seeks to make two contributions to the understanding of social insurance, a central policy tool of the modern welfare state. Focusing on Britain, it locates an important strand of theoretical support for early social insurance programs in antecedent developments in mathematical probability and statistics. While by no means the only source of support for social insurance, it argues that these philosophical developments were among the preconditions for the emergence of welfare policies. In addition, understanding the influence of these developments on British public discourse and policy sheds light on the normative principles that have undergirded the welfare state since its inception. Specifically, it suggests that the best model, or normative reconstruction, of social insurance in this context is a value-pluralist one, which pursues efficiency and equality or solidarity, grounded in group-based perceptions of risk.

The Evolution of the Israeli Third Sector: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

The expansion and development of the nonprofit sector worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s did not bypass Israel, and, as in other countries, sparked an interest for study to uncover its characteristics and major features. The Israeli population—both Jewish and Arab—has a rich tradition of voluntaristic activity on the individual as well as on the collective (organizational) levels, mostly in the communal context. The modern welfare state created new opportunities and new challenges for such activity within the broad framework of the nonprofit sector. This article aims to review the development of the nonprofit sector in Israel and analyze it within existing nonprofit theories. It takes a historical perspective in looking at its evolution, in light of political, social, ideological, and economic changes in the world and in the country. It discusses the development of policy and government involvement on the one hand and the unique features of Israeli philanthropy, both Jewish and Arab, on the other. It analyzes Israel’s civil society and social movements, as well as social entrepreneurship and their expression in the Third Sector. The article also covers the development of research and education on the Third Sector; it includes a review of research centers, databases, journals, and specific programs that were developed by Israeli universities. Finally, this article summarizes the characteristics of the nonprofit sector in Israel.

The Global Diffusion of Work-Injury Insurance: The Role of Spatial Networks and Nation Building

Work-injury law often marks the beginning of the modern welfare state. We argue that work-injury insurance is particularly important to nation state building: it placates myriad social groups’ while binding them symbiotically with the state. We analyze any first laws and first social insurance as outcomes in 150 states (1880-2010). Our network diffusion and event history models reveal that spatial proximity and democratization are key predictors of first laws. However, nation state formation and trade density are additional predictors of social insurance. We conclude with these findings’ implications for understanding nation building within global networks.

Introduksjon

This chapter provides an introduction to the book National Policies and Local Challenges – Organizing Addiction and Mental Health Services. We are interested in how and the extent to which national policy regarding services for people with complex needs, such as people with addiction and mental health problems, is implemented and how these services are organized at the local level. We study addiction and mental health in terms of policy, services and work based on local development processes and national and regional frameworks. The processes observed in our studies can in many ways be said to “mirror” how the modern welfare state addresses other complex problems. Decentralization, user participation and coordination are three key characteristics of development that have significant implications for the design of the service field and set the framework for daily work in local services. The main question underlying our research is: How are governmental policies structured and implemented? This chapter also provides an overview of related questions that frame the various book chapters, followed by a discussion of the book’s structure with a summary of each chapter.

The evolving Korean childcare regime

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to understand changes and progress of the Korean childcare regime by examining the evolutional process of childcare initiatives that were developed since the Japanese colonial rule.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a qualitative-based research design with a particular emphasis on explanatory research. Meanwhile, the data were gathered through the peer-reviewed literature and reports.FindingsThe findings indicate that Korea has had three types of childcare regimes: effective-informal, productivist and inclusive-liberal orientation. It also pinpoints that while the care regime development followed the European regime, the egalitarian society, which is a social prerequisite for modern welfare state-building, has not yet been fully established. This paradoxical situation eventually impedes the development of universal childcare aimed at promoting gender equality and a work-life balance.Originality/valueThis article offers a model and characteristics of the Korean childcare regime dating back to the Japanese colonial period up until the Moon Jae-In administration, where it still receives less attention in most of the social policy literature (see Table 1).

Religion and the Israeli Welfare State: The Case of Burial Services

In recent years, the welfare state literature has been witnessing a “religious turn,” (re)reminding us the pivotal role of religion in shaping the modern welfare state. Notwithstanding its theoretical importance, this turn has been largely confined to European, North American, and antipodean settings. By drawing upon the historical case of Israeli burial services, this study seeks to make a modest step in closing this theoretical and empirical gap. Specifically, its findings point to the historical role of the Judaism in establishing universal burial services, funded by the state and operated almost exclusively by religious burial societies. Moreover, this policy legacy, which already had its roots in the British Mandate rule, is still at work, even in an era of “permanent austerity.” These findings problematize mainstream historical observations, which view the Israeli welfare state as a secular project, by suggesting a more nuanced and progressive role for Judaism in its history.

Problems of Establishing Pension Rights in the Context of Pension Reform

Pension provision of disabled citizens is one of the basic functions of a modern welfare state, which should be based, on the one hand, on constitutional and legal norms, and on the other — on real organizational and administrative mechanisms and should have resources and economic support. The study analyzes economic mechanism and peculiarities of forming the pension rights of insured persons in various employment conditions, taking into account the presence in the compulsory pension insurance system of both pay-as-you-go and funded components. Following the study, a set of measures was developed for state regulation of macroeconomic and institutional factors in order to increase the efficiency of establishing the insurance pension rights in the pension system in the context of demographic aging of the population.