Beyond the Welfare State?

Beyond the Welfare State?
Author: Christopher Pierson
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1998
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780271018614

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.

The Decline of the Welfare State

The Decline of the Welfare State
Author: Assaf Razin
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2005-01-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262264365

An analysis of the welfare state from a political economy perspective that examines the effects of aging populations, migration, and globalization on industrialized economies. In The Decline of the Welfare State, Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka use a political economy framework to analyze the effects of aging populations, migration, and globalization on the deteriorating system of financing welfare state benefits as we know them. Their timely analysis, supported by a unified theoretical framework and empirical findings, demonstrates how the combined forces of demographic change and globalization will make it impossible for the welfare state to maintain itself on its present scale. In much of the developed world, the proportion of the population aged 60 and over is expected to rise dramatically over the coming years—from 35 percent in 2000 to a projected 66 percent in 2050 in the European Union and from 27 percent to 47 percent in the United States—which may necessitate higher tax burdens and greater public debt to maintain national pension systems at current levels. Low-skill migration produces additional strains on welfare-state financing because such migrants typically receive benefits that exceed what they pay in taxes. Higher capital taxation, which could potentially be used to finance welfare benefits, is made unlikely by international tax competition brought about by globalization of the capital market. Applying a political economy model and drawing on empirical data from the EU and the United States, the authors draw an unconventional and provocative conclusion from these developments. They argue that the political pressure from both aging and migrant populations indirectly generates political processes that favor trimming rather than expanding the welfare state. The combined pressures of aging, migration, and globalization will shift the balance of political power and generate public support from the majority of the voting population for cutting back traditional welfare state benefits.

The Political Economy of the Welfare State in Latin America

The Political Economy of the Welfare State in Latin America
Author: Alex Segura-Ubiergo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2007-06-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1139464612

This book is one of the first attempts to analyze how developing countries through the early twenty-first century have established systems of social protection, and how these systems have been affected by the processes of globalization and democratization. The book focuses on Latin America to identify factors associated with the evolution of welfare state policies during the pre-globalization period prior to 1979, whilst studying how globalization and democratization have affected governments' fiscal commitment to social spending. In contrast with the Western European experience, more developed welfare systems evolved in countries relatively closed to international trade, while the recent process of globalization that has swept the region has put substantial downward pressure on social security expenditures. Health and education spending has been relatively protected from greater exposure to international markets and has actually increased substantially with the shift to democracy.

The Comparative Political Economy of the Welfare State

The Comparative Political Economy of the Welfare State
Author: Thomas Janoski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1994-01-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521436021

Time-series analysis - Pooled time-series and cross-sectional analysis - Event history analysis - Boolean analysis.

Comparing Welfare Capitalism

Comparing Welfare Capitalism
Author: Bernhard Ebbinghaus
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2004-01-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134521545

This book challenges the popular thesis of a downward trend in the viability of welfare states in competitive market economies. With approaches ranging from historical case studies to cross-national analyses, the contributors explore various aspects of the relationships between welfare states, industrial relations, financial government and production systems. Building upon and combining comparative studies of both the varieties of capitalism and the worlds of welfare state regimes, the book considers issues such as: *the role of employers and unions in social policy *the interdependencies between financial markets and pension systems * the current welfare reform process. It sheds new light on the tenuous relationship between social policies and market economies and provides thought-provoking reading for students and scholars of Comparative Politics, Public Policy, the Welfare State and Political Economy.

The Moral Economy of Welfare States

The Moral Economy of Welfare States
Author: Steffen Mau
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2004-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134370555

This book investigates why people are willing to support an institutional arrangement that realises large-scale redistribution of wealth between social groups of society. Steffen Mau introduces the concept of 'the moral economy' to show that acceptance of welfare exchanges rests on moral assumptions and ideas of social justice people adhere to. Analysing both the institution of welfare and the public attitudes towards such schemes, the book demonstrates that people are neither selfish nor altruistic; rather they tend to reason reciprocally.

Euro-Austerity and Welfare States

Euro-Austerity and Welfare States
Author: H. Tolga Bolukbasi
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1487507763

Weighing 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.

The Politics of Advanced Capitalism

The Politics of Advanced Capitalism
Author: Pablo Beramendi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2015-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316300757

This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.

The Political Economy of the Irish Welfare State

The Political Economy of the Irish Welfare State
Author: Fred Powell
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2017-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1447332911

This book analyzes the changing shape of Irish society over the hundred years since the 1916 rising, arguing that there are distinctive master patterns that characterize its development of a welfare state that triangulates among church, state, and capital. Fred Powell charts the influence of social movements that resisted oppressive power structures, including the labor and feminist movements, organizations working for the rights of tenants and the homeless, survivors of institutional abuse, groups of asylum seekers and refugees, and activists for gay rights and minority and ethnic cultural rights. The tension between these groups and the more conservative institutions that have dominated Ireland raises major questions about whether an inclusive welfare state is possible in a quasi-religious society.

Welfare State Reform in Southern Europe

Welfare State Reform in Southern Europe
Author: Maurizio Ferrera
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2005-02-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134347316

This book offers a detailed analysis of the efforts made to reduce poverty and social exclusion in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.