Reforming the Welfare State
Reforming the Welfare State

Author: Carsten Jensen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-27

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 1351058576

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This book introduces a unique, new dataset on welfare state reforms in the UK, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany from 1974 to 2014. Using a variety of welfare state types in Europe, the authors have systematically investigated core questions that have preoccupied the welfare state literature at least since the 1990s. These include the extent of path dependency in mature welfare states, the usage of so-called "invisible" policy instruments for hiding cutbacks, and the role of partisanship – on whether the ideological color of the incumbent affects policy – which have been analysed in depth by examining the new dataset presented in this book. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners studying, and working in, welfare and the welfare state, and more broadly to political science, sociology and social policy.

Enacting Community Economies Within a Welfare State
Enacting Community Economies Within a Welfare State

Author: Teppo Eskelinen

Publisher: Mayflybooks/Ephemera

Published: 2020-03-13

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9781906948511

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The book presents a number of empirical case studies of community economies in the context of a Nordic welfare state to better understand the potential of community economies and the interaction and friction with state governance, and more generally the conditions in which community economies and Nordic welfare states can co-exist and cooperate.

Learning To Live Together: Promoting Social Harmony
Learning To Live Together: Promoting Social Harmony

Author: J. A. Scott Kelso

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-30

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 3319906593

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This book is devoted to the issue of how we can learn to live together in the face of division and conflict. It is dedicated to the life and work of a remarkable human being, Dr Epimenidis Haidemenakis, scientist, statesman, visionary leader, President Emeritus of the International S.T.E.P.S. Foundation and founding father of The Olympiads of the Mind (OM). The monograph consists of a collection of papers presented at the 8th and 9th Olympiads of the Mind held in Washington, DC and Chania, Crete respectively. Distinguished international scholars, government and corporate representatives, leading researchers and academics from multiple disciplines and Nobel Laureates Leon Lederman (Physics, 1988), Martin Perl (Physics, 1995) and Yuan T. Lee (Chemistry, 1986) address a broad range of issues all with the aim of improving the human condition and achieving cooperation among the people of the world. The topics include the environment, sustainability and security; diversity and how to achieve integration and peace among people in a fractured world; the important role of brain research; how to overcome poverty and inequality; how to enhance creativity and improve education at all levels; and how new technologies and tools can be used for common benefit. The culmination of the book is a call to action, to join what one might call the “OM Movement”—bringing the best minds in the world together to create solutions to world issues so that we can all live together in harmony.

The Age of Responsibility
The Age of Responsibility

Author: Yascha Mounk

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-05-09

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0674978293

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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Responsibility—which once meant the moral duty to help and support others—has come to be equated with an obligation to be self-sufficient. This has guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements conditional on good behavior. Drawing on political theory and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why this re-imagining of personal responsibility is pernicious—and suggests how it might be overcome. “This important book prompts us to reconsider the role of luck and choice in debates about welfare, and to rethink our mutual responsibilities as citizens.” —Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice “A smart and engaging book... Do we so value holding people accountable that we are willing to jeopardize our own welfare for a proper comeuppance?” —New York Times Book Review “An important new book... [Mounk] mounts a compelling case that political rhetoric...has shifted over the last half century toward a markedly punitive vision of social welfare.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A terrific book. The insight at its heart—that the conception of responsibility now at work in much public rhetoric and policy is both punitive and ill-conceived—is very important and should be widely heeded.” —Jedediah Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene

The Welfare State
The Welfare State

Author: Paul Spicker

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2000-06-02

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1446266117

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A major orginal work of social theory, this book presents a distinctive and tightly argued theoretical model for understanding the basis of welfare in society. The author develops a theory of welfare based on a series of basic propositions: that people live in society and have obligations to each other; that welfare is obtained and maintained through social action; and that the welfare state is a means of promoting and maintaining welfare in society. Each of these propositions is examined and developed to suggest a clear way of understanding the foundations of social welfare. The book make a lively and informative contribution to debates in social policy, as well as moral philosophy, political theory and social theory.

Welfare States in a Turbulent Era
Welfare States in a Turbulent Era

Author: Bent Greve

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2023-07-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1803926848

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This insightful book provides a systematic analysis of the development of affluent Western welfare states in this turbulent era. It explores the consequences for welfare states of modern crises such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. Most importantly, it investigates how to prioritize scarce resources in the face of many competing demands and argues that there is an urgent need to improve crisis funding whilst at the same time maintaining provision for vulnerable groups. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

The Political Economy of the Welfare State
The Political Economy of the Welfare State

Author: Thomas Wilson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-11-21

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1000477975

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In the early 1980s, the welfare state, for too long regarded as a notable contribution to the establishment of a humane social order, had over the previous decade come under increasing attack. Some of its critics, especially in the UK and the USA, maintained that it had failed to deal satisfactorily with the problem of poverty. Others held that it was over-elaborate, created a psychology of dependence and imposed costs that needed to be reduced as part of a policy of general economic recovery. In a number of countries, cuts had already been imposed or were now contemplated. In this situation it was crucially important to direct attention once more to the basic objectives of the various welfare services from a systematic and comparative standpoint. Originally published in 1982, the authors of this book, one an economist and the other a specialist in social administration, subjected these aims to rigorous analysis and discuss the underlying issues of social philosophy. They then attempt to assess the various methods adopted for their attainment in Britain and comment on those adopted in the USA and in some continental European countries. Although the authors reject the more extreme assertion that the welfare state has been a failure, they point to the need to relate some of the policies followed more clearly to the basic objectives. A number of proposals for reform are put forward which would imply some change of emphasis and should permit a simplification of existing over-complex arrangements.

Who's Afraid of the Welfare State Now?
Who's Afraid of the Welfare State Now?

Author: Anton Hemerijck

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0198875487

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This book primarily explores the welfare-policy responses to the Great Recession, reform trajectories that swept across Europe over the last decade, with a final chapter that focuses on Covid-19 welfare management. The 2008 crash marked a critical stress test for European welfare states with dramatic repercussions, including a massive surge in unemployment, a widening in wage and income disparities, and rising poverty. Hikes in fiscal deficits and public debt, required to pre-empt an economic meltdown, forced policymakers to make painful cuts in welfare services to shore up public finances, thereby jeopardizing welfare support for vulnerable groups. The overall scope of welfare-policy responses is heterogeneous, disparate, and uneven. In some cases, the response to the Great Recession was accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in others unpopular crisis-management measures received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions, and employer organizations. Alongside serious retrenchments, there have been assertive attempts to rebuild social programmes and institutions, to accommodate policy repertoires-not merely domestically but also at the EU level-to the new realities of the knowledge economy and an ageing society. Overall, the long 2010s showed that the future of work and welfare is in our hands: it is perfectly possible to shape this future in such a way as to provide inclusive social security, achieve high employment, advance and maintain human capabilities across the life-course, and fight poverty and inequality.

What We Owe Each Other
What We Owe Each Other

Author: Minouche Shafik

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-08-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 069120764X

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From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.