Restructuring The Welfare State

Restructuring The Welfare State
Author: B. Rothstein
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230109241

The modern welfare state is under threat from a variety of fronts. Changing demographic patterns, declining public trust, interest group demands and growing international competition for capital and labour are presenting modern states with intense pressures. This volume examines these competing pressures and offers a coherent analyses of both institutional resilience and institutional change. Adopting an evolutionary approach, this innovative volume demonstrates both how past practices and policies significantly affect the current options and how social and economic forces impinge upon each of these societies in surprisingly different ways. Cross-national in scope and unified in approach, Restructuring the Welfare State examines core issues facing the contemporary welfare state while at the same time significantly advancing historical institutionalist theory.

Governing Children, Families and Education

Governing Children, Families and Education
Author: M. Bloch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113708023X

This is a collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy. The book discusses the new patterns of governing associated with the notions of welfare, care, and education that emerge during the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first-centuries. The issues examined are, among others, the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change. While representing many different locations and traditions, contributors work within a variety of critical theoretical perspectives that critique our cultural ways of reasoning about the care and education of the child, the role and practice of the state, and the social and cultural construction of citizenship and nationhood.

Restructuring Welfare Governance

Restructuring Welfare Governance
Author: Tanja Klenk
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-10-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783475773

This volume brings together cutting-edge scholarship on an under-researched and topical issue. Quasi-marketization and managerialization of welfare organizations are found to constitute common reform trends in many European countries and across social policy domains, following similar timings albeit with different intensities. The analysis, carried out at the meso and micro levels, reveals that ex-post control by states has been strengthened, managers are becoming relevant or even central actors, while professionals in public welfare institutions are seeing their role and autonomy challenged.' - Ana M. Guillén, University of Oviedo, Spain 'In the contemporary welfare state public management has become a profession of its own. At the same time professionals in public welfare bureaucracies have incorporated market considerations and managerial objectives in their daily work. This current evolution of welfare governance, path dependent as it is, has been documented thoroughly in this book, both in depth and from a comparative perspective. It makes the book a must read for all who are interested in the welfare state and care about its future.' - Peter Hupe, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands 'This edited collection on welfare governance across Europe will prove itself invaluable for research and teaching purposes. It usefully brings together the whole range of social sciences in a series of well organized, evidenced and argued chapters. The book is organized into two parts, the first focusing on the impact of marketization and managerialization across Europe and across sectors within the welfare state, while the second half focuses on the professions and the emerging human resource management issues. Both are crucial aspects of the new governance and together deliver a coherent and comprehensive set of papers addressing a highly pertinent set of questions for policymakers, analysts and managers for the next decade and will become recommended reading for the students, the welfare state, social and health policy as well as public sector management and administration.' - Mike Dent, Staffordshire University, UK Quasi-markets and managerial steering techniques have spread in the provision of welfare state services and are now a salient feature. This innovative book explores the introduction and impact of marketization and managerialism in social policy by adopting a dual perspective - one on regulation and governance, the other on human resources - covering five fields of social service delivery. Welfare governance (for example, welfare mix, regulation, employment conditions and customer involvement) has changed significantly in the past decade. In particular, the new governance models not only clash with traditional ideas of bureaucratic regulation but also with the norms and standards of professional service delivery. The fact that the labor force in welfare organizations is made up of 'professionals' implies that the introduction of new modes of welfare governance often results in organizational conflicts. The editors and contributors collectively assesses these processes not only by comparing different policy fields and countries, but also by taking a close look inside organizations, examining the coping strategies of professionals, and how they adapt to new models of governing welfare organizations. An ideal compliment to undergraduate and postgraduate study, Restructuring Welfare Governanceis essential reading for scholars in the fields of social policy, public administration and comparative welfare state analysis. Contributors: K. Baadsgaard, V. Burau, F.A. Ceravolo, B. Jantz, H. Jørgensen, T. Klenk, E. Kuhlmann, R. Moscati, M. Noordegraaf, I. Nørup, E. Pavolini, T. Peetz, M. Rostan, U. Schimank, A. Stanchi, C. Teelken, H. Theobald, M. Thunnissen, M. Turri

Gender, Social Care and Welfare State Restructuring in Europe

Gender, Social Care and Welfare State Restructuring in Europe
Author: Jane Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429849400

Published in 1998. Social provision in all European countries has faced increasing scrutiny during the 1990s. Focusing on gendered aspects of welfare state restructuring, each contributor examines the way in which the welfare state of his or her country has been restructed over the past decade, concentrating on services for elderly people and for children. Each chapter outlines the shifts in the mixed economy of welfare and describes the degree to which there has been greater decentralization moves towards a different style of public management or the introduction of market principles. The changes in the provision of services for elderly people and children is described for the same period. Finally, women's position as paid providers of services, as unpaid carers and as recipients of services is analyzed. This book investigates the idea that the move towards "marketization" in many countries is having a disproportionately detrimental effect on women whose leverage on the market tends to be weak.

Restructuring the Welfare State

Restructuring the Welfare State
Author: Virpi Timonen
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781781957301

"Virpi Timonen investigates both the changes that have taken place in central social policies in the areas of pensions, unemployment policies, social and health servcies, and the political and structural reasons for the pattern of policy change that emerged. A critical evaluation of the roles of globalization, political mechanisms and power relationships in shaping these social policies in Finland and Sweden is also featured.".

Gendered Paradoxes

Gendered Paradoxes
Author: Amy Lind
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2015-11-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271076364

Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its “free market” strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country’s poor, including women’s groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women’s participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women’s activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and “unfinished” cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women’s community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist “issue networks” in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.

The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State
Author: Asbjørn Wahl
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2011
Genre: Welfare state
ISBN: 9781783711024

In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neo-liberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjorn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare.Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neo-liberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top-down control.As well as being a fascinating study in its own right that will appeal to students of economics and politics, The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State also points to an alternative way forward for the trade union movement based on concrete examples of struggles and alliance-building.

Transformations of the Swedish Welfare State

Transformations of the Swedish Welfare State
Author: B. Larsson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2012-01-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230363954

Using an analytical framework based on Foucault's concept of governmentality and through unique case-studies, this volume explores the ongoing transformations taking place in the Swedish welfare state.

Why Welfare States Persist

Why Welfare States Persist
Author: Clem Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226075958

The world’s richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades. Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare state’s demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the world’s most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.

Economic Restructuring and Family Well-being in Rural America

Economic Restructuring and Family Well-being in Rural America
Author: Kristin E. Smith
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271048611

"A compilation of policy-relevant research by a multidisciplinary group of scholars on the state of families in rural America in the twenty-first century. Examines the impact of economic restructuring on rural Americans and provides policy recommendations for addressing the challenges they face"--Provided by publisher.