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This book offers an innovative analysis of the ways in which the relationship between citizens and welfare states - social citizenship - becomes more dynamic and multifaceted as a result of Europeanization and individualization. Written by interdisciplinary contributors from politics, sociology, law and philosophy, it examines the transformation of social citizenship through a series of illuminating case studies, comparing Nordic countries and other European nations. Dealing with the following areas of national and European welfare policy, legislation and practice: activation – reforms linking income maintenance and employment promotion scope for participation of marginal groups in deliberation and decision-making impact of human rights legislation for welfare and legal protection against discrimination and social barriers to equal market participation coordination of social security systems to facilitate cross-border mobility in Europe pension reform – efforts to make pension systems sustainable. Citizenship in Nordic Welfare States will be of interest to students and researchers of social policy, comparative welfare, social law, political science, sociology and European studies.
Throughout the world, governments are restructuring social and welfare provision to give a stronger role to opportunity, aspiration and individual responsibility, and to competition, markets and consumer choice. This approach centres on a logic of individual rational action: people are the best judges of what serves their own interests and government should give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The UK has gone further than any other major European country in reform and provides a useful object lesson. This book analyses the pressures on social citizenship from changes in work and the family, political actors, population ageing, and the processes within government in the relentless international process of globalization that have shaped the response. It examines the various social science approaches to agency and argues that the logic of rational action is able to explain how reciprocity arises and is sustained but offers a weak foundation for social inclusion and social trust. It will only sustain part of the welfare state. A detailed assessment of empirical evidence shows how the outcomes of the new policy framework correspond to its theoretical strengths and limitations. Reforms have achieved considerable success in delivering mass services efficiently. They are much less successful in redistributing to more vulnerable low income groups and in maintaining public trust in the structure of provision. The risk is that mistrustful and disquieted voters may be unwilling to support high spending on health care, pensions and other benefits at a time when they are most needed. In short, the reform programme was undertaken for excellent reasons in a difficult international context, but risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Changing labour markets, welfare policies and citizenship readdresses the question of how full citizenship may be preserved and developed in the face of enduring labour market pressures. It: clarifies the relationship between changing labour markets, welfare policies and citizenship; discusses possible ways in which the spill-over effect from labour market marginality to loss of citizenship can be prevented; specifies this problem in relation to the young, older people, men and women and immigrants; offers theoretical and conceptual definitions of citizenship as a new, alternative approach to empirical analyses of labour market marginalisation and its consequences; highlights the lessons to be learned from differing approaches in European countries.
This book compares workfare policies in the United States and 'active labor policies' in Western Europe that are aimed primarily at the long-term unemployed, unemployed youth, lone parents, immigrants and other vulnerable groups often referred to collectively as the 'socially excluded'. The Europeans maintain that workfare is the best method of bringing the socially excluded back into mainstream society. Although there are differences in terms of ideology and practice, Joel F. Handler argues that there are also significant similarities, especially field-level practices that serve to exclude those who are the least employable or lack other qualifications that agencies favor. The author also examines strategies for reform, including protective labor legislation, the Open Method of Coordination, the reform of social and employment services, and concludes with an argument for a basic income guarantee, which would not only alleviate poverty but also provide clients with an exit option.
This volume analyses citizenship in relation to recent changes in European welfare states. It examines concrete changes in social rights and citizenship roles, and offers normative investigations of citizenship.
This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.
This book demonstrates that political exchange and coalition building have become the key ingredients for continental European pension reform.
The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.
Includes 20 selections, reflecting the thinking and research in welfare state studies, these readings are organized around a series of debates - on welfare regimes, globalization, Europeanization, demographic change and political challenges.
The ’Golden Age' of the welfare state in Europe was characterised by a strengthening of social rights as citizens became increasingly protected through the collective provision of income security and social services. The oil crisis, inflation and high unemployment of the 1970s largely saw the end of welfare expansion with critical voices claiming the welfare state had created an unbalanced focus on the social rights of individuals, above their responsibilities as citizens. During the 1980s many western countries developed contractual modes of thinking and regulation within welfare policy. Contractualism has proved a significant organising principle for public reforms in general, and for social policy reforms in particular as it embraces both a way of justifying certain welfare policies and of constructing specific socio-legal policy instruments. Engaging with both the critique of the welfare state and the subsequent policy responses, expert contributors in this book examine contractualism as a discourse, comprising principles and justifying ideas, and as a legal and social practice. Covering the international debate on conditionality they discuss European experiences with active social citizenship ideas and contractualism providing individual case studies and comparisons from a wide range of European countries.