Contested Welfare States
Contested Welfare States

Author: Stefan Svallfors

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-08-29

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0804783179

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The welfare state is a trademark of the European social model. An extensive set of social and institutional actors provides protection against common risks, offering economic support in periods of hardship and ensuring access to care and services. Welfare policies define a set of social rights and address common vulnerabilities to protect citizens from market uncertainties. But over recent decades, European welfare states have undergone profound restructuring and recalibration. This book analyzes people's attitudes toward welfare policies across Europe, and offers a novel comparison with the United States. Occupied with normative orientations toward the redistribution of resources and public policies aimed at ameliorating adverse conditions, the book focuses on the interplay between individual welfare attitudes and behavior, institutional contexts, and structural variables. It provides essential input into the comparative study of welfare state attitudes and offers critical insights into the public legitimacy of welfare state reform.

Review of Stefan Svallfors "Contested Welfare States: Welfare Attitudes in Europe and Beyond"
Review of Stefan Svallfors

Author: Hannes Oswald

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2023-02-09

Total Pages: 11

ISBN-13: 3346809404

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Literature Review from the year 2022 in the subject Politics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,7, Sciences Po Paris, Dijon, Nancy, Poitier, Menton, Havre, course: Seminar: Political Economy of Welfare State Transformations: Comparative Institutional Analysis, language: English, abstract: The book "Contested Welfare States: Welfare Attitudes in Europe and Beyond" by Stefan Svallfors analyses the results of a broad research program on attitudes towards welfare policies across European countries. In eight chapters, the relationship between individual-level and country-level variables and their impact on attitudes toward and evaluations of welfare policies is explored. There are six research projects included in the book. Five of them focus on the European case, while the last one points out differences in welfare state attitudes between Europe and the United States. A comparative analysis can be conducted because cross-national data on attitudes towards the welfare state have recently become available. All of the research projects in the book are based on the module Welfare Attitudes in a Changing Europe of the 2008 European Social Survey. It is assumed that the data is comparable because the questionnaire, although translated into the local language, is the same for all participating countries.

Social Justice, Legitimacy and the Welfare State
Social Justice, Legitimacy and the Welfare State

Author: Benjamin Veghte

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1351899457

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Drawing together leading international experts such as Knut Halvorsen, Robert Y. Shapiro, Stefan Svallfors and Wim van Oorschot, this volume addresses issues of justice and legitimacy in the context of welfare state transformation. The contributors demonstrate that the Western welfare state is not at risk of losing support or encountering fundamental opposition, but does face serious challenges including growing social and ethnic diversity, new social risks, fiscal constraints and contested notions of justice. The volume focuses on four main aspects: attitude formation in cross-national perspective, the just distribution of burdens and benefits, political factors mediating the effects of social attitudes on public policy and challenges to the welfare state stemming from immigration and ethnic diversity. Providing a comparative perspective on the issue, Social Justice, Legitimacy and the Welfare State makes a significant contribution to the literature on the public standing of the welfare state.

Welfare and the Welfare State
Welfare and the Welfare State

Author: Bent Greve

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1317643941

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The welfare state plays a key role in people’s everyday lives in developed societies. At the same time, the welfare state is contested and there are constant discussions on how and to what degree the state should intervene, influence and have an impact on the development of society. Recent years have seen an accelerated transformation of the welfare state in the light of the global financial crisis, demographic change and changes in the perception of the state’s role in relation to social welfare. This raises fundamentally new issues related to social policy and welfare state analysis. This book provides: an introduction to the principles of welfare a conceptual framework necessary for understanding social policy at the macro-level a comparative approach to welfare states globally an overview of new ways to organise and steer welfare states an introduction to welfare state politics and underlying economic framework an account of equality and inequality in modern societies new directions for welfare states The book’s focus on core concepts and the variety of international welfare state regimes and mechanisms for delivering social policy provides a much needed introduction to the rapidly changing concept of welfare for students on social policy, social studies, sociology and politics courses.

Beyond the Welfare State?
Beyond the Welfare State?

Author: Christopher Pierson

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780745619026

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For politicians and policy-makers almost everywhere, the future of the welfare state has forced itself to the top of the political agenda. Beyond the Welfare State? represents a sophisticated and comprehensive introduction to the problems with which these policy-makers must struggle. This new edition of Beyond the Welfare State? has been thoroughly revised and updated drawing on the latest theoretical developments and empirical evidence. It remains the most comprehensive and sophisticated guide to the condition of the welfare state in a time of rapid and sometimes bewildering change. The opening chapters develop a scholarly but accessible review of competing views of the historical and contemporary roles of the welfare state. This evaluation draws upon the most recent empirical research and gives full weight to feminist, ecological and 'anti-racist' critiques. It also develops a clear account of globalization and its contested impact upon existing welfare regimes. The book constructs a distinctive history of the international growth of welfare states and offers a comprehensive account of recent developments from 'crisis' to 'structural adjustment'. The final chapters bring the story right up to date with an assessment of the important changes effected in the 1990s and the prospects for welfare states in the new millennium. This is essential reading for second- and third-year undergraduates and postgraduates in politics, social administration and public policy, sociology and economics, as well as the more general reader interested in the future of the welfare state.

Welfare and the Welfare State
Welfare and the Welfare State

Author: Bent Greve

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-11

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1000764656

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The welfare state is still very much central in people’s everyday lives. The welfare state is at the same time contested and debated, and has often been argued to be in a crisis not only in the wake of the financial crisis. Welfare and welfare states used to be a national issue and prerogative. Today welfare and welfare states are influenced by national as well as regional and global decisions. However, nation states play a decisive role influenced by national preferences and ideas, and, in recent years, populism and welfare chauvinism. This book provides an overview of the central concepts through the lenses of the state, market and civil society. It also provides the reader with knowledge on distribution in societies and how this interacts and influences different groups and their position in society. There are also chapters dealing specifically with central sectors in the welfare states such as health, long-term care and education. The book uses a comparative approach as this better enables one to understand one’s own country's welfare, as well as helping to underline and see the linkages to the impact of global and regional issues on welfare states and their development. Finally, the book presents challenges and future perspectives for welfare states and their development. The book’s focus on core concepts and the variety of international welfare state regimes and mechanisms for delivering social policy provides a much-needed introduction to the rapidly changing concept of welfare for students on social policy, social studies, sociology and politics courses.

The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State
The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State

Author: Nils Edling

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-01-02

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 178920125X

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In discussions of economics, governance, and society in the Nordic countries, “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical concept. However, there has been much less scholarly energy devoted to historicizing this idea beyond its postwar emergence. In this volume, specialists from Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland chronicle the historical trajectory of “the welfare state,” tracing the variable ways in which it has been interpreted, valued, and challenged over time. Each case study generates valuable historical insights into not only the history of Northern Europe, but also the welfare state itself as both a phenomenon and a concept.

Nationalism and Democracy in the Welfare State
Nationalism and Democracy in the Welfare State

Author: Pauli Kettunen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2022-01-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781788976572

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This multidisciplinary book unpacks and outlines the contested roles of nationalism and democracy in the formation and transformation of welfare-state institutions and ideologies. At a time when neo-liberal, post-national and nationalist visions alike have challenged democratic welfare nationalism, the book offers a transnational historical perspective to the political dynamics of current changes. While particularly focusing on Nordic countries, often seen as the quintessential 'models' of the welfare state, the book collectively sheds light on the 'history of the present' of nation states bearing the character of a welfare state. Initial chapters discuss the contested roles and meanings of democracy in the formation of the so-called 'Nordic model' of welfare, exploring its development in connection with rhetorical de-ideologization during and after the Cold War and with concerns about global development. Contributors further examine the ways in which national welfare states and their democratic dimensions are reshaped in the context of post-national regulation regimes of globalized and financialized capitalism. In the final chapters, the book explores the implications of welfare nationalism for cross-border mobility, analysing paradoxes and inherent tensions at the heart of contemporary migration politics. The analyses point to the integral role of nationalism in the formation of the democratic welfare states, as well as in the present-day goals of national competitiveness and security. Providing key theoretical insights for the study of welfare nationalism, this book is essential reading for scholars, researchers and students of the social and political sciences who are interested in the enduring transformation of the welfare state, and particularly those investigating the emergence and growth of the Nordic model. Policymakers and practitioners will also benefit from this multi-layered, empirical account of contemporary policy problems.

Social Reproduction and the City
Social Reproduction and the City

Author: Simon Black

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0820357537

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The transformation of child care after welfare reform in New York City and the struggle against that transformation is a largely untold story. In the decade following welfare reform, despite increases in child care funding, there was little growth in New York’s unionized, center-based child care system and no attempt to make this system more responsive to the needs of working mothers. As the city delivered child care services “on the cheap,” relying on non-union home child care providers, welfare rights organizations, community legal clinics, child care advocates, low-income community groups, activist mothers, and labor unions organized to demand fair solutions to the child care crisis that addressed poor single mothers’ need for quality, affordable child care as well as child care providers’ need for decent work and pay. Social Reproduction and the City tells this story, linking welfare reform to feminist research and activism around the “crisis of care,” social reproduction, and the neoliberal city. At a theoretical level, Simon Black’s history of this era presents a feminist political economy of the urban welfare regime, applying a social reproduction lens to processes of urban neoliberalization and an urban lens to feminist analyses of welfare state restructuring and resistance. Feminist political economy and feminist welfare state scholarship have not focused on the urban as a scale of analysis, and critical approaches to urban neoliberalism often fail to address questions of social reproduction. To address these unexplored areas, Black unpacks the urban as a contested site of welfare state restructuring and examines the escalating crisis in social reproduction. He lays bare the aftermath of the welfare-to-work agenda of the Giuliani administration in New York City on child care and the resistance to policies that deepened race, class, and gender inequities.

Why Welfare States Persist
Why Welfare States Persist

Author: Clem Brooks

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0226075958

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The world’s richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades. Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare state’s demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the world’s most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.