The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State

The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State PDF Author: P. Bleses
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230005632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
This book breaks new intellectual ground in the analysis of the German welfare state. Bleses and Seeleib-Kaiser argue that we are witnessing a dual transformation of the welfare state, which is caused by the emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Increasingly, the state reduces its social policy commitments towards securing the achieved living standard of former wage earners, which in the past had been the key normative principle of social policy in Germany, while at the same time public support and services for families are expanded.

The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State

The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State PDF Author: P. Bleses
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230005632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
This book breaks new intellectual ground in the analysis of the German welfare state. Bleses and Seeleib-Kaiser argue that we are witnessing a dual transformation of the welfare state, which is caused by the emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Increasingly, the state reduces its social policy commitments towards securing the achieved living standard of former wage earners, which in the past had been the key normative principle of social policy in Germany, while at the same time public support and services for families are expanded.

The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State

The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State PDF Author: Peter Bleses
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN: 9781403917843
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
After discussing the traditional theories explaining welfare state change and continuity, it is argued that the dual transformation of the German welfare state is primarily caused by the emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Without an analysis of the political discourse, social policy change and continuity cannot be sufficiently explained."--BOOK JACKET.

Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform

Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform PDF Author: Sabina Stiller
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9089641866
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book

Book Description
The author of this study argues that key politicians and their policy ideas, through "ideational leadership," have played an important role in the passing of structural reforms in the change-resistant German welfare state.

The Politics of Welfare State Transformation in Germany

The Politics of Welfare State Transformation in Germany PDF Author: Christof Schiller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317227409
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book

Book Description
How can we best analyse contemporary welfare state change? And how can we explain and understand the politics of it? This book contributes to these questions both empirically and theoretically by concentrating on one of the least likely cases for welfare state transformation in Europe. It analyzes in detail how and why institutional change has taken Germany’s welfare state from a conservative towards a new work-first regime. Christof Schiller introduces a novel analytical framework to make sense of the politics of welfare state transformation by providing the missing link: the capacity of the core executive over time. Examining the policy making process in labour market policy in the period between 1980 and 2010, he identifies three different policy making episodes and analyses their interaction with developments and changes in such policy areas as pension policy, family policy, labour law, tax policy and social assistance. The book advances existing efforts aimed at conceptualizing and measuring welfare state change by proposing a clear-cut conceptualization of social policy regime change and introduces a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the welfare-work nexus between 1980 and 2010 in Germany. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social policy, comparative welfare state reform, welfare politics, government, governance, public policy, German politics, European politics, political economy, sociology and history.

Origins of the German Welfare State

Origins of the German Welfare State PDF Author: Michael Stolleis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642225225
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
This book traces the origins of the German welfare state. The author, formerly director at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, provides a perceptive overview of the history of social security and social welfare in Germany from early modern times to the end of World War II, including Bismarck’s pioneering introduction of social insurance in the 1880s. The author unravels “layers” of social security that have piled up in the course of history and, so he argues, still linger in the present-day welfare state. The account begins with the first efforts by public authorities to regulate poverty and then proceeds to the “social question” that arose during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. World War I had a major impact on the development of social security, both during the war and after, through the exigencies of the war economy, inflation and unemployment. The ruptures as well as the continuities of social policy under National Socialism and World War II are also investigated.

Germany

Germany PDF Author: Herbert Kitschelt
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714655888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
This text offers an interpretation of recent German economic performance, asking why the relationship between organized labour and employers, on which the German capitalist system depends, has begun to break down.

Welfare State Transformations

Welfare State Transformations PDF Author: M. Seeleib-Kaiser
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230227392
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
This edited volume provides new empirical evidence of far-reaching changes to welfare states globally, which have changed the boundaries of the 'public' and 'private' domain within the mixed economies of welfare. Various modes of policy intervention are investigated, providing a nuanced account of reforms in the past decade.

The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State

The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State PDF Author: Manfred G. Schmidt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642225284
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of social policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990), followed by an analysis of the “Social Union”, the transformation of social policy in the process of German unification in 1990. Schmidt’s analysis of the GDR also depicts commonalities and differences between the welfare state in East and West Germany as well as in other East European and Western countries. He concludes that the GDR was unable to cope with the trade-off between ambitious social policy goals and a deteriorating economic performance. Ritter embeds his analysis of the Social Union in a general study of German unification, its international circumstances and its domestic repercussions (1989-1994). He argues that social policy played a pivotal role in German unification, and that there was no alternative to extending the West German welfare state to the East. Ritter, a distinguished historian, bases his contribution on an award-winning study for which he drew on archival sources and interviews with key actors. Schmidt is a distinguished political scientist.

Can Germany Be Saved?

Can Germany Be Saved? PDF Author: Hans-Werner Sinn
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262195585
Category : Competition, Unfair
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book

Book Description
This pointed, hard-hitting and incisive analysis of Germany's economic malaise is hardly calculated to win popular applause in Germany. Hans-Werner Sinn finds that Germany's dearest child, the welfare state, is the cause of its economic problems. Many Germans rely on transfer payments, so it is politically unfeasible for politicians to reduce the scope of government spending and correct the distortions it causes. However, the author argues quite convincingly that the welfare state is simply unsustainable in its current form. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone interested in the future of Germany and, for that matter, in the future of the modern welfare state.

The German Welfare State and Globalisation: The Social Construction of Path Dependency

The German Welfare State and Globalisation: The Social Construction of Path Dependency PDF Author: Matthias Mayer
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638533891
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book

Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - Germany, grade: sehr gut, London School of Economics, language: English, abstract: Economic globalisation seems to have intensified the claims that an extensive national welfare state is no longer sustainable under high exposure to global competition. However, the evidence for significant welfare dismantlement in Germany is missing. In this dissertation, I endeavour to analyse, why globalisation does not seem to have had any significant impact on the German welfare state in terms of serious downwards reform. I contend that the actual impact of economic globalisation on the national welfare state depends a great deal, on how it is interpreted domestically. Hence, I would like to regard the impact of globalisation not only as an exogenous force, but also as a result of what national policy makers, media, electorate, etc. interpret it to entail. In other words, although globalisation really seems to strain existing welfare structures, policy makers still have a considerable scope how to react to these pressures. For my endeavour, I introduce a historical institutionalist framework of path-dependency, which I confront with a social constructivist framework. Prima facie, the path-dependency theorem seems to hold for the German welfare state. However, I claim that a social constructivist angle is able to illuminate how the institutional constraints propagated by the path-dependency thesis can be overcome. Institutional constraints continue to impede welfare reform in German only because the German political elite failed to socially construct the imperative of reform in public discourse, leaving the great majority of the German population unwilling to accept fundamental cutbacks in social benefits. I argue that the Schröder administration attempted to legitimise cutbacks in social services through referring to exogenous pressures of globalisation. In addition, the media discusses the increased need for welfare state reform in the context of globalisation. Although, there seems to be a trend of mounting acceptance of welfare reform among the German population, the general level for support of such measures remains low. I attempt to show that the notion of globalisation on its own appears unable socially construct the public acceptance of serious welfare state reform. Hence, the most likely scenario for the near future of the German welfare state seems the absence of reform until the prolonged economic crisis legitimises significant transformations of the current system.