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This book offers a detailed analysis of the efforts made to reduce poverty and social exclusion in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.
'Crisis'. 'Breakdown'. 'Dismantlement.' Since the 1970's, these have become the catchphrases used to describe the condition of the welfare states in Europe, in academic and media analyses alike. This book provides an alternative, more optimistic interpretation. It aims to increase both theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of recent welfare reforms in areas including Spain, Denmark, the UK, Germany and the EU as a whole. An essential resource for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in the welfare state.
In the Trente Glorieuses era of economic prosperity that followed World War II, Italy grew into one of Europe's--and, indeed, the world's--largest economies. While the more tumultuous decades since have resulted in the rise of the Italian welfare state, Italy remains a globally important economic player and important social policy indicator, but as of yet it has received little academic research attention. This is the first English-language book to explore the evolution of the Italian welfare state, with a particular emphasis on how it has changed since the 2008 economic crisis. Drawing on a variety of social policies--including pension, schooling, higher education, healthcare, and taxation policies--this collection both offers a broad overview of the Italian situation, featuring detailed analysis of the connections between particular policies and their outcomes, and a comparative approach that frames the Italian case within a larger European context.
Efforts to ascertain the influence of enlightenment thought on state action, especially government reform, in the long eighteenth century have long provoked stimulating scholarly quarrels. Generations of historians have grappled with the elusive intersections of enlightenment and absolutism, of political ideas and government policy. In order to complement, expand and rejuvenate the debate which has so far concentrated largely on Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, this volume brings together historians of Southern Europe (broadly defined) and its ultramarine empires. Each chapter has been explicitly commissioned to engage with a common set of historiographical issues in order to reappraise specific aspects of 'enlightened absolutism' and 'enlightened reform' as paradigms for the study of Southern Europe and its Atlantic empires. In so doing it engages creatively with pressing issues in the current historical literature and suggests new directions for future research. No single historian, working alone, could write a history that did justice to the complex issues involved in studying the connection between enlightenment ideas and policy-making in Spanish America, Brazil, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. For this reason, this well-conceived, balanced volume, drawing on the expertise of a small, carefully-chosen cohort, offers an exciting investigation of this historical debate.
'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.
Over the last two decades, many changes have happened to the social welfare policies of various industrial countries. Citizens have seen their pensions, unemployment benefits, and general healthcare policies shrink as “belt tightening” measures are enforced. But in contrast, long-term care has seen a general growth in public financing, an expansion of beneficiaries, and, more generally, an attempt to define larger social responsibilities and related social rights. The aim of this book is to describe and interpret the changes introduced in long-term care policies in Western Europe. The volume argues that recent reforms have brought about an increasing convergence in LTC policies. Most of the new programs have developed a new general approach to long-term care, based on a better integration of social care and health care. The book explores increasing public support given to family care work (in the past, the family would take care of the elderly or infirm) and increasing growth and recognition of a extended social care market (by which care has shifted from a moral obligation based on family reciprocity to a paid, professional activity). A new social care arrangement has therefore been developing in Western countries, based on a new mix of family obligations, market provision, and public support. In order to understand such changes, this analysis will take into account the social and economical impact of these reforms.
Fundamentos del estado de bienestar en Europa desde un punto de vista sociológico.
This book demonstrates that political exchange and coalition building have become the key ingredients for continental European pension reform.
It is a commonplace that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this startlingly new historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled, and dependent citizens. During the late nineteenth century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive Era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the nation nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than forty states enacted social spending, labor regulations, and health education programs to assist American mothers and children. Remarkably, as Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of local women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties, and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining afresh the institutional, cultural, and organizational forces that have shaped U.S. social policies in the past, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers challenges us to think in new ways about what might be possible in the American future.
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.