Translator's Introduction Political Theory in the Welfare State [Politische Theorie im Wohl- fahrtsstaat] was originally published (Olzog, Munich) in. ...

The welfare state refers to a concept of a state that focuses on ensuring that a broad range of social rights is provided for all citizens by acting on the social mechanisms and consequences of the market economy. In such a state government plays a vital role in balancing social inequalities by providing or subsidizing social benefits and services. This activity is called social policy. Individual countries are characterized by different welfare state models, goals, (...) values, and groups of beneficiaries. Such a state usually supports a recovery from the difficult situation of the population, which is not, itself, able to take care of their basic needs. (shrink)

Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market’s utilitarian logic can corrupt or ‘crowd out’ altruistic feelings or motivations, what makes us think that the welfare state cannot (...) also be a source of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first re-examine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss’s work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout’s position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss’s arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi’s “critical point” theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein. Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. (shrink)

While the political aspects of the interwar dystopias have received much attention, less focus has been given to the specific correlation to the economic thinking and developments of the period, in particular the prominence of economic planning. This article suggests that such a connection is significant by examining a key Swedish novel from the period, Kallocain, in relation to the early economic theory of the Scandinavian welfare state. The article then relates these findings to links between Brave New (...) World and the thinking of John Maynard Keynes. Finally, the kinds of critique articulated in these fictional works are centered around the citizens’ emotional and interior lives in new planned societies, and around their views on bad, disloyal, or painful feelings. (shrink)

In this article we explore how Swedish welfare politics within health‐care and rehabilitation has opened up a space for nurses’ and occupational therapists’ professional projects. Using historical data, an analysis of the policy‐making process behind welfare programs central to the professionalization of nursing and occupational therapy is presented. The time period covered is, in the case of nurses, the larger part of the twentieth century, while the modern history of occupational therapists first began in the 1940s. Special emphasis (...) is placed on the corporative nature of the Swedish welfare state and the professional strategies utilized by nurses and occupational therapists in their struggle for jurisdiction. In the article, politicization is identified as a core strategy by which female‐dominated welfare state occupations in Sweden have tried to gain influence over the welfare policy‐making process and their occupations’ jurisdiction. (shrink)

Abstract An analysis of welfare?state restructuring under conservative governments during the 1980s undermines the notion that the nation?state is being rendered obsolete by economic globalization. The nation?state is still the principal site of political conflict. Yet this conflict has to be analyzed in light of global economic and cultural pressures. Conservative attempts to restructure the welfare state were parallel events within a larger transition in the world economy, but they had decisively distinct national trajectories.

Hegel’s defense of the welfare state retains appeal when grounded in dialogical human rights ethics defended as true normative ethical theory. His dialectic of trade passes through budding consumer desires in the once sovereign family and trade between households risking market-induced poverty, ending in market regulation by an external welfare state. The dialectic recurs on a higher level as we in domestic civil society turn to foreign products. Market-induced poverty generates an external global welfare (...) class='Hi'>state gradually visible in today’s international financial institutions Hegel did not see. The US has fallen subject to the dialectic of trade, with relative economic decline and a more dialogical relation with the outside world. Yet a welfare state does not replace the market, but protects it against from itself. Entrepreneurship remains key to fighting world poverty. Beside mini-loans, “mini competitive economic colonialism”—neither classical political colonialism nor monopolistic economic neocolonialism—creates new consumer markets in the poorest nations for the products of developed nations, and vice versa: developing nations are not made dependent on a single foreign power or international financial organization, nor forced to generate investment capital domestically by an authoritarian suppression of consumption and democracy, nor forced to sacrifice economic development. (shrink)

These essays explore the history and justification of the welfare state and examine private alternatives to the public provision of aid. Essays focus on the nature of personal responsibility, the impact of identity politics on the welfare state, and the various strategies that have been proposed to deal with the problem of poverty. Others assess the success or failure of public housing, government assistance to veterans, or other specific programmes, suggesting ways of reforming, expanding, or replacing (...) them. (shrink)

Nursing professionalization is both ongoing and global, being significant not only for the nursing workforce but also for patients and healthcare systems. For this reason, it is important to have an in‐depth understanding of this process and the factors that could affect it. This literature review utilizes a welfare state approach to examine macrolevel structural determinants of nursing professionalization, addressing a previously identified gap in this literature, and synthesizes research on the relevance of studying nursing professionalization. The use (...) of a welfare state framework facilitates the understanding that the wider social, economic, and political system exercises significant power over the distribution of resources in a society, providing a glimpse into the complex politics of health and health care. The findings shed light on structural factors outside of nursing, such as country‐level education, health, labor market, and gender policies that could impact the process of professionalization and thus could be utilized to strengthen nursing through facilitating increased professionalization levels. Addressing gender inequalities and other structural determinants of nursing professionalization could contribute to achieving health equity and could benefit health systems through enhanced availability, skill‐level, and sustainability of nursing human resources, improved and efficient access to care, improved patient outcomes, and cost savings. (shrink)

Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on the breakdown of the post-war settlement.

Does the increasing politicization of ethnic and racial diversity of Western societies threaten to undermine the welfare state? This volume is the first systematic attempt to explore this linkage between "the politics of recognition" and "the politics of redistribution".

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

ABSTRACT The welfare state is not just a system of personal insurance but an expression of community, of concern for our fellows. It places some things beyond the question of purchasing power. Yet its structures are often criticised as subverting personal and social cares and responsibilities. Arguably there is a ‘dialectic of self‐destruction’ here, a tendency for the institution to undermine its own support. At the same time this problem is inherent in the capitalist state itself, as (...) is brought out by a study of the philosophers of ‘civil society’ from Mandeville to Greèn. It is schematically argued that the welfare state needs reconstructing as an articulation rather than a substitute for ‘community’. Implications for the class, gender and age structures of society are sketched. (shrink)

The article analyzes the features of three main models of the welfare state: German, Northern European, and Anglo-Saxon. The author turns to the analysis of these models, first, because the problem of the welfare state in the world is again coming to the fore, and secondly, because social development in the most developed countries, in the author’s opinion, in the future will be largely determined by the values and behavioral models that are embedded in the three (...) main versions of the social state in Europe. From the author’s point of view, the key features of the European social model, which combines these three versions, are respect for rights and human dignity, the ideas of equality and solidarity, the ideas of social and political compromise, and the choice of an evolutionary path of development. According to the author, these features are the main difference between the European model and what characterizes the political culture of Russia with its maximalism and tendency to extremes. The author believes that the social experience of Europe is something that needs to be addressed today in Russian conditions and that can be extremely valuable for us. At the same time, as shown in the article, the welfare state in Europe has important country features. The German model is characterized by an emphasis on maintaining the socio-economic status of the individual – this is a conservative model. The Northern European model is based on the principles of universal equality and universalism – it is a social-democratic model. And the Anglo-Saxon model, based on the low role of the state, on the great importance of civil society, is a liberal model. Nevertheless, despite significant differences, as shown in the article, all these models are characterized by the desire to implement compromise principles, to find a “Golden mean,” which makes them highly effective. (shrink)

QUESTION: We would like to begin this discussion of the welfare state and the future of socialism by asking you about several substantive aspects of your work on the limitations of the welfare state. To begin with, why do you often say that late capitalist systems can neither live with nor without the welfare state? Do you consider this to be their fundamental contradiction?OFFE: A short-hand defintion of a contradiciton is that it is a (...) condition in which certain indispensable elements of a social structure cannot be integrated because they are at odds with each other. So to speak, the social structure paralyzes itself because the elements necessary for its survival at the same time render it impossible. (shrink)

This book explores contemporary welfare state reform from a moral and philosophical perspective.

Liberal egalitarians tend to be committed both to generous asylum policies and generous, universal welfare states. Yet there may be political, social and economic reasons why there is a conflict in realising both. Asylum seekers may create economic pressures to the welfare state, or undermine national solidarity supposedly necessary to support redistribution. In this paper, I discuss how political theorists should approach these empirical concerns. I take issue with the view that theorists can simply move between ‘realism’ (...) and ‘idealism’ by accepting more or less of reality. Instead, political theorists should seek to offer a critical description of the conflict, which can reveal structures of power that ought to be subject to normative scrutiny. To this end, I discuss two accounts of how the welfare state may justify asylum restrictions in relation to the case of Sweden, a universal welfare state that has recently introduced restrictions on asylum to protect the welfare state. I argue along these accounts that the welfare state is both an important source of political and social order and a foundation of the personal moral experience. Yet a critical analysis also illustrates how these claims weaken as underlying methodological nationalism and bias towards existing power structures are brought to light. Asylum restrictions cannot be justified if they contribute to perpetuating these power structures, which cause some of the conflict with the welfare state in the first place. (shrink)

With the demise of socialism in Eastern Europe, the Western welfare state is treated as the unquestionable alternative by most intellectuals. They have yet to come to terms with what Claus Offe, the German sociologist, describes as the contradictions of the welfare state and the persistent crises of crisis management. This paper critically assesses Offe's contribution in light of the recent reforms in ?really existing socialism.?; The author contends that although Offe's neo?Schumpeterian argument goes a long (...) way toward explaining the present instability of the welfare state and the contradictions of state intervention in general, including that of the socialist?interventionist state, Offe does not realize that his analysis casts into serious doubt the claim that the welfare state is a viable corrective to either unbridled markets or state socialism. (shrink)

In this book, Daniel Shapiro argues that the dominant positions in contemporary political philosophy - egalitarianism, positive rights theory, communitarianism, and many forms of liberalism - should converge in a rejection of central welfare state institutions. He examines how major welfare institutions, such as government-financed and -administered retirement pensions, national health insurance, and programs for the needy, actually work. Comparing them to compulsory private insurance and private charities, Shapiro argues that the dominant perspectives in political philosophy mistakenly (...) think that their principles support the welfare state. Instead, egalitarians, positive rights theorists, communitarians, and liberals have misunderstood the implications of their own principles, which in fact support more market-based or libertarian institutional conclusions than they may realize. Shapiro's book is unique in its combination of political philosophy with social science. Its focus is not limited to any particular country; rather it examines welfare states in affluent democracies and their market alternatives. (shrink)

Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is (...) measured as women's average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

Criminal violence is one of the most pressing problems in Latin America and the Caribbean, with profound political consequences. Its effects on social policy preferences, however, remain largely unexplored. This article argues that to understand such effects it is crucial to analyze victimization experiences and perceptions of insecurity as separate phenomena with distinct attitudinal consequences. Heightened perceptions of insecurity are associated with a reduced demand for public welfare provision, as such perceptions reflect a sense of the state’s failure (...) to provide public security. At the same time, acknowledging the mounting costs and needs that direct experience with crime entails, victimization is expected to increase support for social policies, particularly for health services. Survey data from twenty-four Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 2008–12 show that perceptions of insecurity indeed reduce support for the state’s role in welfare provision, whereas crime victimization strongly increases such preferences. (shrink)

Does the welfare state help the poor? This surprisingly simple question often generates more heat than light. By the welfare state, I mean transfer programs aimed at helping the poor through the direct redistribution of income. Defenders of the welfare state often assume that the poor benefit from it, while critics suggest that the losses outweigh the gains. The most notable of such criticisms is Charles Murray's Losing Ground, which suggests that the welfare (...) state has failed to achieve its stated ends. (shrink)

The Welfare State is a key policy issue of the 1990s. The essays in this book depart from much of the recent economic debate in emphasising the positive contributions of the Welfare State, and in assessing its efficiency in relation to the objectives which it is intended to achieve. These objectives are not just the alleviation of poverty but more broadly the provision of security and the redistribution of income. Part A of the book sets the (...) current debate in the context of the current evidence about income inequality and poverty in Europe. Part B analyses the existing role of the Welfare State, with particular reference to retirement pensions and unemployment benefit. Part C investigates proposals for reform and security. What is the case for greater targeting? How can we design a social safety net? What is the future of European social protection policy? (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This paper re-examines the import of Rawls’s theory of justice for private sector institutions in the face of the decline of the welfare state. The argument is based on a Rawlsian conception of justice as the establishment of a basic structure of society that guarantees a fair distribution of primary goods. We propose that the decline of the welfare state witnessed in Western countries over the past forty years prompts a reassessment of the boundaries of the (...) basic structure in order to include additional corporate institutions. A discussion centered on the primary good of self-respect, but extensible to power and prerogatives as well as income and wealth, examines how the legislator should intervene in private sector institutions to counterbalance any unfairness that results from the decline of the welfare state. (shrink)

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to “positive liberty,” are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny (...) the usefulness of this familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also “welfare-state” liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional “welfare-state liberals” such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that “freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end.” To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the “classical-liberal welfare state” claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to “correct market failures” in the provision of welfare. (shrink)

State provision of “merit goods” and of narrowly targeted cash payments has higher priority than large universal cash grants. Analysis of the Swedish budget shows that advanced countries do not have the taxing capacity to do both at once. Other problems with cash payments schemes include the disincentive to work for pay, reducing taxpaying capacity, and retrograde effects on gender equality. After the achievement of a welfare state, rises over time in productivity may gradually open up room (...) in the national budget for universal cash payments. (shrink)

This article gives a review of the welfare state and analyzes whether it is being undermined by the impact of increasing ethnic and racial diversity.

First published in 1991, _Beyond the Welfare State?_ has been thoroughly revised and updated for this new edition, which draws 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 offer a scholarly but accessible review of competing interpretations of the historical and contemporary roles of the welfare state. This (...) evaluation, based on the most recent empirical research, gives full weight to feminist, ecological, and "anti-racist" critiques and 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. (shrink)

Some Romanian feminist scholars argue that welfare policies of post-communist states are deeply unjust to women and preclude them from reaching economic autonomy. The upshot of this argument is that liberal economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state. How should we read this dissonance between Western and some Eastern feminist scholarship concerning distributive justice? I identify the problem of dependency at the core of a possible debate about feminism and welfare. Worries about (...) how decades of communism have shaped citizenry feed feminists' suspicion of the welfare state and fears of paternalist policies. I criticize the arguments in favour of neoliberal policies and I suggest a crucial distinction between legitimate, universal forms of human dependency and dependencies that result from particular social arrangements. (shrink)

In this article the author tries to answer the difficult question of the roots of the welfare state. The study of the French example shows that if some roots are ideological, at the same time they are sociological, too. In the article the main streams of ideological roots are described and conclusion is drawn that nowadays sociological issues are very important. The popularity of the welfare state shows that dismantlement is impossible in the democratic States. Yet, (...) its crisis due to its cost in a globalized world asks the question of the balance point between the fight against assistantship and maintenance of the redistributive nature of the welfare state. The answer to that question still remains the key challenge for European politicians. (shrink)

Jeffrey Friedman broaches a number of criticisms of Libertarianism as a conceptual basis for opposing the extensive modern welfare state, examining several variants and concluding that they are fundamentally unsupported. He opts for a “consequentialist” view of foundations. Nevertheless, he thinks that the modem welfare state is subject to effective critique along such lines. But rational contractarian individualism works and does provide foundations for libertarianism, while “consequentialism” is an ill‐defined theory.that is quite unpromising for the proposed (...) critique; nevertheless, Friedman's empirical and economic critique of the welfare state is valid. (shrink)

Does a more generous welfare state make people happier and increase their life satisfaction? Available empirical research gives a clear and positive answer to this question. This goes counter to many arguments that the welfare state creates a culture of dependency, leads to heavy-handed bureaucratic intrusions into private life, creates problems concerning personal integrity, is bad for economic growth, implies stigmatization of the poor, and crowds out civil society and voluntarism. This counterintuitive result is explained by (...) to which degree social programs are universal in the coverage and structure. Four common misunderstandings of universal welfare states are discussed and refuted: This it is too costly for the economy, that it cannot be combined with individual choice, that it does not redistribute in favour of the poor and that it should be detrimental to economic growth. Using a "social mechanism" approach, it is argued that the relation between subjective well-being and universal welfare states operates in a complicated causal pattern with two other variables, the degree of corruption and the level of social trust in society. This approach is used to explain why empirically, countries tend to cluster so that countries with large and mostly universal welfare state programs also have low levels of corruption, a high degree of social trust, and high levels of happiness and social well-being. And vice versa, why countries with smaller welfare systems tend to be higher on corruption, have lower levels of social trust, and lower levels of social well-being. (shrink)

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann argued that the law functions as society’s immune system by regulating conflicts that threaten the certainty of expectation structures. In this article, we argue that law itself has become a target of new social immune mechanisms. Since the 1980s, welfare states have increasingly seen their own structures as a threat. Today, the ideal is a public sector consisting of organizations that constantly emerge anew by selecting the structures that fit each specific moment, case, and citizen. To (...) protect public sector organizations against their own structures, ‘potentialization’ now functions as a social autoimmune mechanism by initiating a constant search for new openings and possibilities. This critique of structures includes a critique of legal structures like rights. Looking at the Danish law of early retirement as our empirical case, this paper analyzes, how the tension between law and ‘potentialization’ is built into the law itself. While the law gives citizens certain rights to early retirement, it simultaneously ‘protects’ against the same rights by potentializing citizens. ‘Potentialization’ here functions as a mechanism that protects the operations of a system against its legal structures. It functions by ‘un-relating’ those operations from the structures. This means that when citizens claim their right to pensions, the social workers can reject them on the grounds of a right to a future that is not foreclosed and ‘parked’ on a pension. The paper’s contribution is to show how potentialization works by dissolving even fundamental legal expectations. This profoundly transforms the relationship between the citizen and the public sector. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. (...) The region should still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

Property-owning democracies combine the regulative and redistributive functions of the welfare state with the governmental aim of ensuring that wealth and capital are widely dispersed. John Rawls, political philosophy’s most famous property-owning democrat, argued that property-owning democracy was one of two regime types that best realized his two principles of justice, though he was notoriously vague about how a property-owning democracy’s institutions are meant to realize his principles. To compensate for this deficiency, a number of Rawlsian political philosophers (...) have tried to add institutional and policy content to the idea. While their efforts have advanced the discussion, few have criticized the soundness of these attempts. This article attempts to fill the void. I claim that, in comparison to welfare-state capitalism, property-owning democracy is both prohibitively impractical and unjust on Rawlsian grounds. I first argue that property-owning democracy is economically ineffective. Even granting the assumptions of Rawlsian ideal theory, property-owning democracies generate bad incentives and face severe information problems in comparison to more market-friendly welfare states. Further, in nonideal theory the motivations of political officials and citizens will likely be corrupted by the temptation to abuse the awesome state power at their disposal. Second, I argue that property-owning democracy is unjust relative to welfare-state capitalism. The three principles used to defend property-owning democracy—the difference principle, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the “political liberty” proviso—do not vindicate property-owning democracy and may even prohibit it. Welfare-state capitalism does much better. (shrink)

Establishing the aims and objectives of a welfare state is an integral part of the political, economic and cultural debate, in particular, the repercussions of a welfare state on economic systems and social institutions; the sociopsychological consequences of a welfare state; and the scope, conditions and definitions of welfare. Some discussions address a theological and religious approach to the issue, specifically the Churches’ teaching on welfare and the Churches’ influence on the birth (...) and development of the welfare state. The Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland [EKD]) has also joined the global discussion. The EKD advocates the welfare institutions; moreover, it stresses the contribution of the Protestant theology and culture to the emergence of the social state in Germany. This article aims to outline the Protestant approach to welfare axiology. Following a brief sketch of the welfare theory, it examines the previous and current Protestant influences on the welfare state and system. It also presents significant attempts to distinguish crucial values and the most serious challenges of the welfare state. The primary sources of the reflection are the recently published documents of the EKD (Denkschrifts), and the source literature. Contribution: The theological proposals of the Evangelical Church in Germany contribute to the axiological and ethical debate on welfare and the social state. The research addresses the focus and scope of the journal of the promotion of multidisciplinary aspects of studies in the general theological area. (shrink)

This book is a critical analysis of Australian family policy issues. The argument of the book rests on three cardinal principles. The first is that the family is a miniature society, a social unit. The second is that in producing, caring for, and educating children the family contributes to the good of the wider society. The third is that in caring for dependants – young or old – the family is a welfare institution. The general thrust of the book (...) is in favour of the principle of financial support for families with children, but with equity between separated and divorced families and intact families. (shrink)

Motivated by a deep sense that injustice and inequality are wrong, liberals and reformers in the Western political tradition have focused their energies on policies and programs which seek inclusion: extending the suffrage to those without property; seeking to treat women the same as men, and blacks the same as whites; trying to ensure that as few as possible are excluded from economic opportunity due to lack of resources. Under current conditions, such demands for inclusion take two primary forms, especially (...) in the United States. One is a commitment to using the state to equalize the life chances of individuals. The other is a call for treating groups which have experienced discrimination with full respect. The former leads to the welfare state, while the latter is produced by, and in turn produces, what is commonly called identity politics, the politics of recognition, or the politics of presence. (shrink)

This study is the first to explicitly assess the connections between welfare state spending and the gendered and classed dimensions of unpaid care work across 29 European nations. Our research uses multi-level model analysis of European Quality of Life Survey data, examining childcare and housework burdens for people living with at least one child under the age of 18. Two key findings emerge: First, by disaggregating different types of unpaid care work, we find that childcare provision is more (...) gendered than classed—reflecting trends toward “intensive mothering”. Housework and cooking, on the contrary, demonstrate both gender and class effects, likely because they are more readily outsourced by wealthier individuals to the paid care sector. Second, while overall social expenditure has no effect on hours spent on childcare and housework, results suggest that family policy may shape the relationship between gender, income, and housework. Specifically, family policy expenditure is associated with a considerably smaller gender gap vis-à-vis the time dedicated to housework: This effect is present across the income spectrum, but is particularly substantial in the case of lower income women. (shrink)

We are now seeing a new wave of literature about the “crisis” of the welfare state. In the earlier wave, some critics charged that social spending significantly detracted from macro‐ or microeconomic performance, while others challenged the legitimacy or efficacy of welfare programs; a third group worried about the effect of macroeconomic problems on the viability of the welfare state. None of these criticisms can be said to have been satisfactory, and continued reiterations of them (...) betray a lack of cross‐national perspective and a priori reasoning about empirical matters. Works with greater historical depth and more recent studies constitute a much‐needed reaction against the “crisis” literature. (shrink)

In the early 1980s the “welfare state crisis” was a point of reference common to many European countries with advanced public social policy arrangements. In most of them the scope of expansion of social expenditure had already been reigned in after the first oil price shock in the mid-1970s. But it was the impact of the second oil price crisis, with low or negative economic growth rates and another steep rise in unemployment in the early 1980s which provided (...) considerable ammunition for critics of the welfare state in many European countries and which triggered off the crisis debate. The latter was particularly pronounced in countries with centre-right and neo-liberal governments at the time and probably most outspoken in the UK. From the start of her first period in office Margaret Thatcher was explicit about her ambition to “roll back the frontiers of the state” and to give much more room for individual and private forms of social protection. In her first election manifesto in 1979 the welfare state was singled out as part of the problem rather than part of the solution to economic and social difficulties which Britain faced at the time. In short, it seems entirely appropriate to take the early 1980s as a starting point and to focus on the UK as the country in which there was arguably more pressure on traditional social policy structures than anywhere else in Europe. (shrink)

Discusses the justification for a minimal welfare state independent of political rhetoric from the right or the left.

To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies, which have surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make up an (...) increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions. These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected by the preferences and power of unions and employers. (shrink)