The responsiveness of social policies in Europe

The responsiveness of social policies in Europe
Author: Menno Fenger
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1447305760

This comparative study explains how public policies in welfare states have been affected by social and economic factors including secularization, globalization, and changes in the preferences and ideologies of citizens. Illuminating developments across Europe with insights drawn from their case study of the Netherlands, the authors show that policymakers must continually balance the changing and often conflicting interests of multiple institutions and social forces. Their insights make essential reading for academics and students interested in the institutional development of social policies.

Accomplishing Cultural Policy in Europe

Accomplishing Cultural Policy in Europe
Author: Christopher Mathieu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000635430

This book investigates the activities undertaken by the variety of actors that contribute to accomplishing cultural policy in Europe. These range from policy formulation and administration at the national and local levels, to artistic and cultural production activities to institutional governance. Arts and culture are an essential component to individual and collective quality of life. States, regions and municipalities increasingly recognize this intrinsic importance, as well as the instrumental values of the arts and culture. This has led to an increased interest in cultural policy, usually focusing on the policy process and policy effects. How cultural policy is accomplished is a matter of correspondingly increased importance, but less researched and understood. This volume shows how accomplishing cultural policy encompasses a vast expanse of activities, all unique but bound together as part of the continuous process of producing publicly subsidized art and culture for social and aesthetic purposes. The chapters also explore a range of thematic tensions that commonly arise in accomplishing cultural policy, such as the commercialization of arts and culture and counter-reactions; the challenges and means of promoting inclusiveness; the politics and effects of funding of the arts and culture; and good governance and vested interests in the arts and culture. Read together, these vivid case studies present a broad and unique picture of the wider and interconnected accomplishing process by expounding on the middle-ground between the policy formulation process and artistic and cultural production. Adding a novel conceptual formulation to studies of cultural policy, this book will appeal to practitioners, scholars and advanced students with interests in the sociology of the arts and culture, arts and culture management, cultural policy and cultural governance.

Health at a Glance: Europe 2020 State of Health in the EU Cycle

Health at a Glance: Europe 2020 State of Health in the EU Cycle
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-11-19
Genre:
ISBN: 926481194X

The 2020 edition of Health at a Glance: Europe focuses on the impact of the COVID‐19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the resilience of European health systems to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to contain and respond to the worst pandemic in the past century.

Assuring the Quality of Health Care in the European Union

Assuring the Quality of Health Care in the European Union
Author: Helena Legido-Quigley
Publisher: World Health Organization
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9289071931

People have always travelled within Europe for work and leisure, although never before with the current intensity. Now, however, they are travelling for many other reasons, including the quest for key services such as health care. Whatever the reason for travelling, one question they ask is "If I fall ill, will the health care I receive be of a high standard?" This book examines, for the first time, the systems that have been put in place in all of the European Union's 27 Member States. The picture it paints is mixed. Some have well developed systems, setting standards based on the best available evidence, monitoring the care provided, and taking action where it falls short. Others need to overcome significant obstacles.

Handbook of European Social Policy

Handbook of European Social Policy
Author: Patricia Kennett
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2017-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178347646X

This Handbook will comprise of 29 original pieces from key contributors to the field of European social policy. It is intended to capture the ‘state of the art’ in European social policy and to generate and contribute to debates on the the future of European social policy in the 21st Century. It will be a comprehensive and authoritative resource for research and teaching covering themes and policy areas including social exclusion, pensions, education, children and family, as well as mobility and migration, multiculturalism, and climate change.

Degrees of Democracy

Degrees of Democracy
Author: Stuart N. Soroka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521868335

This book develops and tests a 'thermostatic' model of public opinion and policy and examines both responsiveness and representation across a range of policy domains in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, concluding that representative democratic government functions surprisingly well.

Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe

Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe
Author: Martin Heidenreich
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2016-01-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783474920

A central goal of European activation policies is to provide coherent and actively inclusive employment and social services. This book offers new insights on the effective governance and implementation of such policies. Utilizing empirical studies from six European welfare states, expert contributors explore how different institutional contexts influence localized service delivery and how local authorities deal with the associated coordination challenges. Acknowledging that neither decentralization nor provider networks necessarily prevent fragmented service provision, Martin Heidenreich and Deborah Rice illustrate that an understanding of the European budgetary context, as well as individual network brokerage, is vital for a successful integration of employment and social policies at the local level. Timely and engaging, this innovative book will provide new theoretical perspectives and invaluable empirical materials for academics and students in the field of comparative social policy. Policy makers and officials will also appreciate the editors’ practical approach.

The European Union in the 21st Century

The European Union in the 21st Century
Author: Stefano Micossi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789290799290

The contributors to this book are all members of EuropEos, a multidisciplinary group of jurists, economists, political scientists, and journalists in an ongoing forum discussing European institutional issues. The essays analyze emerging shifts in common policies, institutional settings, and legitimization, sketching out possible scenarios for the European Union of the 21st century. They are grouped into three sections, devoted to economics and consensus, international projection of the Union, and the institutional framework. Even after the major organizational reforms introduced to the EU by the new Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force in December 2009, Europe appears to remain an entity in flux, in search of its ultimate destiny. In line with the very essence of EuropEos, the views collected in this volume are sometimes at odds in their specific conclusions, but they stem from a common commitment to the European construction.

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2015

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2015
Author: David Natali (OSE)
Publisher: ETUI
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2015-09-23
Genre: European Union countries
ISBN: 2874523747

The sixteenth edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play has a triple ambition. First, it provides easily accessible information to a wide audience about recent developments in both EU and domestic social policymaking. Second, the volume provides a more analytical reading, embedding the key developments of the year 2014 in the most recent academic discourses. Third, the forward-looking perspective of the book aims to provide stakeholders and policymakers with specific tools that allow them to discern new opportunities to influence policymaking. In this 2015 edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play, the authors tackle the topics of the state of EU politics after the parliamentary elections, the socialisation of the European Semester, methods of political protest, the Juncker investment plan, the EU’s contradictory education investment, the EU’s contested influence on national healthcare reforms, and the neoliberal Trojan Horse of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Challenges On the Path Towards Sustainability in Europe

Challenges On the Path Towards Sustainability in Europe
Author: Vesna Žabkar
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2020-12-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1800439725

Challenges on the Path Towards Sustainability in Europe offers a theoretical and empirical approach to addressing sustainable development, providing rich data analysis at cross-country level, as well as practical examples from the European context.