Download Free The Quest For A Divided Welfare State Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Quest For A Divided Welfare State and write the review.

This book deals with the quest for a divided welfare state in Sweden. The prime example is the rapid rise of private health insurance, which now constitutes a parallel system characterized by state subsidies for some and not for others. This functions as a kind of reverse means-testing, whereby primarily the upper classes get state support for new types of welfare consumption. Innovatively, Lapidus explains how such a parallel system requires not only direct and statutory state support but also indirect support, for example, from infrastructure built for the public health system. He goes on to examine how semi-private welfare funding is dependent on private provision and how the so-called 'hidden welfare state' gradually erodes the visible and former universal welfare state model, in direct contrast to its own stated goals. Who benefits from privatized welfare? How are the privatization of delivery and the privatization of funding linked? How does this impact public willingness to pay tax? All of these questions and more are discussed in this accessible volume.
Publisher Description
Typologies of welfare state regimes place France and Germany on the one hand, and the United States on the other in very different categories. All nevertheless share an essential feature: they traditionally depend on business for both the funding and management of health insurance. It is the private element of the “divided welfare state” that is today in the most severe crisis as corporations on both sides of the Atlantic seek to shed this responsibility and expense in a world of globalized competition. This paper presents preliminary analysis of the question and proposes hypotheses for future research through a comparison and contextualization of the evolution of health insurance policy in Germany, France and the United States since the mid-1990s. While path-dependent institutional differences provide the best explanation for variations in public policy, the paper concludes, differences in the behavior of individual firms are better understood through an approach focused on legitimating ideas. American firms, unlike their French and German counterparts face a conflict of legitimacies, caught between a commitment to a firm-led welfare capitalism that they can no longer afford and an ideological opposition to the extension of government budgetary and regulatory power that they increasingly need.
The Divided Welfare State is the first comprehensive political analysis of America's system of public and private social benefits. Everyone knows that the American welfare state is less expensive and extensive, later to develop and slower to grow, than comparable programs abroad. American social spending is as high as spending in many European nations. What is distinctive is that so many social welfare duties are handled by the private sector with government support. With historical reach and statistical and cross-national evidence, The Divided Welfare State demonstrates that private social benefits have not been shaped by public policy, but have deeply influenced the politics of public social programs - to produce a social policy framework whose political and social effects are strikingly different than often assumed. At a time of fierce new debates about social policy, this book is essential to understanding the roots of America's distinctive model and its future possibilities.
'Globalization', institutions and welfare regimes -- The challenge of globalization -- Globalization and welfare regime change -- Towards workfare? : changing labour market policies -- Labour market policies in social democratic and continental regimes -- Population ageing, GEPs and changing pensions systems -- Pensions policies in continental and social regimes -- Conclusion : welfare regimes in a liberalizing world.
'. . . the book makes clear that there is a consensus on the need for and desire for change'-PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
Following the death of Franco, Spain underwent a transition to democracy in the mid-1970s. Although a rapid process of modernization occurred, the Spanish welfare state was seen, until fairly recently, as relatively underdeveloped. However, given the progressive Europeanization and expansion of Spanish social policy, questions arise as to whether the Spanish welfare system should still be considered as peripheral to West European welfare states. This volume is divided into three sections. The first section deals with broad trends in the evolution of the Spanish welfare state. To begin with, the consolidation path of social protection policies is explored. Attention is also paid to the process of Europeanization. Furthermore, the analysis explores advances in gender equality policies. In the second section, attention is turned to governance issues, such as collective bargaining, the interplay among levels of government, the welfare mix and public support for social policies. The third and final part of the book addresses five main challenges facing the Spanish welfare state in the 21st century, namely, the need to enhance flexicurity; to achieve a better work-family balance; to coordinate immigration policies with existing social protection; to tackle the persistence of high rates of relative poverty; and to face intense population ageing, both in terms of increasing needs for care and the reform of the pension system.
The welfare state rests on the assumption that people have rights to food, shelter, health care, retirement income, and other goods provided by the government. David Kelley examines the historical origins of that assumption, and the rationale used to support it today.
Why do some countries construct strong systems of social protection, while others leave workers exposed to market forces? One of the most robust findings of the comparative political economy literature is the claim that the more political resources are controlled by the left, the more likely a country is to have generous, universal welfare states. In contrast, this book argues, through in-depth case studies of Portugal and Spain, that the strength of the far left is an important and overlooked determinant of social protection outcomes.--Résumé de l'éditeur.
In many European countries, processes of individualisation have contributed to transforming the middle class into a multitude of people, a sort of ‘middle mass’ with an unstable social identity and radical activism. The different ‘worlds’ of European welfare states seem progressively less able to manage this new kind of middle-class activism. This book is an essential contribution to ongoing public and academic debates on the unpredictability of middle-class attitudes and on their changing relations with the welfare state. Identifying key trends in the literature, it considers the impact of recent welfare reforms on the needs and preferences of the middle class.