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Author: David G. Mayes
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Published: 2013-12-27
Total Pages: 271
ISBN-13: 178254657X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs the standard of living has increased, aspirations and financial constraints have required major rethinking. There is considerable disparity between European countries in how they approach the welfare system, with differing concern over aspects such
Author: P. Taylor-Gooby
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2005-08-02
Total Pages: 195
ISBN-13: 0230286011
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.
Author: Anton Hemerijck
Publisher: Comparative Political Economy
Published: 2022
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781788214865
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe European welfare systems, established after the Second World War, have been under sustained attack since the late 1970s from the neoliberal drive towards a small state and from the market as the foremost instrument for the efficient allocation of scarce resources. After the 2008 financial crash, Europe's high tax and generous benefits welfare states were, once again, blamed for economic stagnation and political immobilism. If anything, on the contrary, the long decade of the Great Recession proved that the welfare state remained a fundamental asset in hard times, stabilizing the economy, protecting households and individuals from poverty, reconciling gendered work and family life, while improving the skills and competences needed in Europe's knowledge economy and ageing society. Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic has, unsuprisingly, brought back into the limelight the productive role of welfare systems in guaranteeing basic security, human capabilities, economic opportunities and democratic freedoms. In this important contribution, Anton Hemerijck and Robin Huguenot-Noel examine the nature of European welfare provision and the untruths that surround it. They evaluate the impact of the austerity measures that followed the Great Recession, and consider its future design to better equip European societies to face social change, from global competition to accelerated demographic ageing, the digitization of work and climate change. Book jacket.
Author: Nils Edling
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2019-01-02
Total Pages: 351
ISBN-13: 178920125X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Author: Anton Hemerijck
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 509
ISBN-13: 0199607605
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChanging Welfare States is is a major new examination of the wave of social reform that has swept across Europe over the past two decades. In a comparative fashion, it analyses reform trajectories and political destinations in an era of rapid socioeconomic restructuring, including the critical impact of the global financial crisis on welfare state futures. The book argues that the overall scope of social reform across the member states of the European Union varies widely. In some cases welfare state change has been accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in other instances unpopular social reforms received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions and employer organizations. The analysis reveals trajectories of welfare reform in many countries that are more proactive and reconstructive than is often argued in academic research and the media. Alongside retrenchments, there have been deliberate attempts - often given impetus by intensified European (economic) integration - to rebuild social programs and institutions and thereby accommodate welfare policy repertoires to the new economic and social realities of the 21st century. Welfare state change is work in progress, leading to patchwork mixes of old and new policies and institutions, on the lookout, perhaps, for greater coherence. Unsurprisingly, that search process remains incomplete, resulting from the institutionally bounded and contingent adaptation to the challenges of economic globalization, fiscal austerity, family and gender change, adverse demography, and changing political cleavages.
Author: Peter Flora
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 1981-01-01
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9780878559206
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume seeks to contribute to an interdisciplinary, comparative, and historical study of Western welfare states. It attempts to link their historical dynamics and contemporary problems in an international perspective. Building on collaboration between European-and American-based research groups, the editors have coordinated contributions by economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians. The developments they analyze cover a time span from the initiation of modern national social policies at the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The experiences of all the presently existing Western European systems except Spain and Portugal are systematically encompassed, with comparisons developed selectively with the experiences of the United States and Canada. The development of the social security systems, of public expenditures!and taxation, of public education and educational opportunities, and of income inequality are described, compared, and analyzed for varying groupings of the Western European and North American nations. This volume addresses itself mainly to two audiences. The first includes all students of policy problems of the welfare states who seek to gain a comparative perspective and historical understanding. A second group may be more interested in the theory and empirical analysis of long-term societal developments. In this context, the growth of the welfare states ranges as a major departure, along with the development of national states and capitalist economies. The welfare state is interpreted as a general phenomenon of modernization, as a product of the increasing differentiation and the growing size of societies on the one hand, and of processes of social and political mobilization on the other. It is an important element of the structural convergence of modern societies -- by its mere weight in all countries -- and at the same time a source of divergence by the variations within its institutional structure.
Author: H. Tolga Bolukbasi
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1487507763
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWeighing in on the euro-austerity debate, this book uses case studies from three countries to evaluate the distinctive politics of fiscal policy and welfare state reform during a key period in Europe.
Author: Stein Kuhnle
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-09-02
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 1134614632
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'Crisis'. 'Breakdown'. 'Dismantlement.' Since the 1970's, these have become the catchphrases used to describe the condition of the welfare states in Europe, in academic and media analyses alike. This book provides an alternative, more optimistic interpretation. It aims to increase both theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of recent welfare reforms in areas including Spain, Denmark, the UK, Germany and the EU as a whole. An essential resource for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in the welfare state.
Author: Mary Daly
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Published: 2020-02-28
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 1788111265
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGender equality has been one of the defining projects of European welfarestates. It has proven an elusive goal, not just because of political opposition but also due to a lack of clarity in how to best frame equality and take account of family-related considerations. This wide-ranging book assembles the most pertinent literature and evidence to provide a critical understanding of how contemporary state policies engage with gender inequalities.
Author: Ugo Ascoli
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2015-05-07
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 1447316886
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the Trente Glorieuses era of economic prosperity that followed World War II, Italy grew into one of Europe's--and, indeed, the world's--largest economies. While the more tumultuous decades since have resulted in the rise of the Italian welfare state, Italy remains a globally important economic player and important social policy indicator, but as of yet it has received little academic research attention. This is the first English-language book to explore the evolution of the Italian welfare state, with a particular emphasis on how it has changed since the 2008 economic crisis. Drawing on a variety of social policies--including pension, schooling, higher education, healthcare, and taxation policies--this collection both offers a broad overview of the Italian situation, featuring detailed analysis of the connections between particular policies and their outcomes, and a comparative approach that frames the Italian case within a larger European context.
