Reforming the Welfare State

Reforming the Welfare State PDF Author: Richard B. Freeman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261913
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.

Reforming the Welfare State

Reforming the Welfare State PDF Author: Richard B. Freeman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261913
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.

Reforming the Welfare State

Reforming the Welfare State PDF Author: Carsten Jensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351058576
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
This book introduces a unique, new dataset on welfare state reforms in the UK, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany from 1974 to 2014. Using a variety of welfare state types in Europe, the authors have systematically investigated core questions that have preoccupied the welfare state literature at least since the 1990s. These include the extent of path dependency in mature welfare states, the usage of so-called "invisible" policy instruments for hiding cutbacks, and the role of partisanship – on whether the ideological color of the incumbent affects policy – which have been analysed in depth by examining the new dataset presented in this book. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners studying, and working in, welfare and the welfare state, and more broadly to political science, sociology and social policy.

The Welfare State in Transition

The Welfare State in Transition PDF Author: Richard B. Freeman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261859
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
Once heralded in the 1950s and 1960s as a model welfare state, Sweden is now in transition and in trouble since its economic plunge in the early 1990s. This volume presents ten essays that examine Sweden's economic problems from a U.S. perspective. Exploring such diverse topics as income equalization and efficiency, welfare and tax policy, wage determination and unemployment, and international competitiveness and growth, they consider how Sweden's welfare state succeeded in eliminating poverty and became a role model for other countries. They then reflect on Sweden's past economic problems, such as the increase in government spending and the fall in industrial productivity, warning of problems to come. Finally they review the consequences of the collapse of Sweden's economy in the early 1990s, exploring the implications of its efforts to reform its welfare state and reestablish a healthy economy. This volume will be of interest to policymakers and analysts, social scientists, and economists interested in welfare states.

Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe

Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe PDF Author: P. Taylor-Gooby
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230286011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.

Transforming the Welfare State

Transforming the Welfare State PDF Author: Jonathan Boston
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
ISBN: 1988545706
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
‘Eighty years ago, New Zealand’s welfare state was envied by many social reformers around the world. Today it stands in need of urgent repair and renewal.’ One of our leading public policy thinkers asks: What might the contours of a revitalised ‘social contract’ for New Zealand look like? Packed full of analysis, Jonathan Boston’s latest BWB Text directs us towards nothing less than a new political settlement. Wide-ranging reform of the welfare state is needed, Boston argues, if we are to address the challenges presented by economic, social and technological upheaval. This quest is made all the more demanding – and pressing – by alarming ecological crises and the need for ‘the good society’ to place intergenerational responsibilities at its heart.

Reforming Child Welfare

Reforming Child Welfare PDF Author: Olivia Ann Golden
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9780877667599
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As the director of the District of Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency, Olivia Golden led reform of a system in federal receivership. Now, in Reforming Child Welfare, she uses her expertise as an administrator, an academic, and an advocate to pinpoint the factors that lead to success. "Writing from the inside," she maintains, "makes it possible to analyze, in retrospect, what we thought we were doing, what it felt like, and what led us to good or bad choices." By sharing her personal story, along with her analysis of the research literature and two other case studies in Alabama and Utah, Golden finds fresh insight on improving outcomes for imperiled children and families.

Reforming Child Welfare in the Post-Soviet Space

Reforming Child Welfare in the Post-Soviet Space PDF Author: Meri Kulmala
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000193667
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This book provides new and empirically grounded research-based knowledge and insights into the current transformation of the Russian child welfare system. It focuses on the major shift in Russia’s child welfare policy: deinstitutionalisation of the system of children’s homes inherited from the Soviet era and an increase in fostering and adoption. Divided into four sections, this book details both the changing role and function of residential institutions within the Russian child welfare system and the rapidly developing form of alternative care in foster families, as well as work undertaken with birth families. By analysing the consequences of deinstitutionalisation and its effects on children and young people as well as their foster and birth parents, it provides a model for understanding this process across the whole of the post-Soviet space. It will be of interest to academics and students of social work, sociology, child welfare, social policy, political science, and Russian and East European politics more generally.

The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe

The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe PDF Author: Silja Häusermann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521192722
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book demonstrates that political exchange and coalition building have become the key ingredients for continental European pension reform.

Stretched Thin

Stretched Thin PDF Author: Sandra Morgen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801475108
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
When the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act became law in 1996, the architects of welfare reform celebrated what they called the new "consensus" on welfare: that cash assistance should be temporary and contingent on recipients' seeking and finding employment. However, assessments about the assumptions and consequences of this radical change to the nation's social safety net were actually far more varied and disputed than the label "consensus" suggests. By examining the varied realities and accountings of welfare restructuring, Stretched Thin looks back at a critical moment of policy change and suggests how welfare policy in the United States can be changed to better address the needs of poor families and the nation. Using ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews with poor families and welfare workers, survey data tracking more than 750 families over two years, and documentary evidence, Sandra Morgen, Joan Acker, and Jill Weigt question the validity of claims that welfare reform has been a success. They show how poor families, welfare workers, and welfare administrators experienced and assessed welfare reform differently based on gender, race, class, and their varying positions of power and control within the welfare state. The authors document the ways that, despite the dramatic drop in welfare rolls, low-wage jobs and inadequate social supports left many families struggling in poverty. Revealing how the neoliberal principles of a drastically downsized welfare state and individual responsibility for economic survival were implemented through policies and practices of welfare provision and nonprovision, the authors conclude with new recommendations for reforming welfare policy to reduce poverty, promote economic security, and foster shared prosperity.

Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era

Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004384111
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Listen to the podcast about Cory Blad's chapter in this book 'Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era'. This book seeks to explore welfare responses by questioning and going beyond the assumptions found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) broad typologies of welfare capitalism. Specifically, the project seeks to reflect how the state engages, and creates general institutionalized responses to, market mechanisms and how such responses have created path dependencies in how states approach problems of inequality. Moreover, if the neoliberal era is defined as the dissemination and extension of market values to all forms of state institutions and social action, the need arises to critically investigate not only the embeddedness of such values and modes of thought in different contexts and institutional forms, but responses and modes of resistance arising from practice that might point to new forms of resilience.