The Spanish Welfare State in European Context

The Spanish Welfare State in European Context PDF Author: Ana Marta Guillén
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317014979
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
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.

Challenges to European Welfare Systems

Challenges to European Welfare Systems PDF Author: Klaus Schubert
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319076809
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 854

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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive analyses of the challenges all European welfare systems have been facing since 2007, combining in-depth country-based studies and comparative chapters. It focuses on: 1) the economic and financial crisis, 2) demographic change, and 3) the balance between avoiding risks and opening up opportunities in social policy. The results show that European welfare systems tend to face the same challenges in different ways and that also their responses to those challenges differ considerably. Although the EU also plays a part in shaping national welfare systems, it becomes evident that European welfare systems are by no means converging: in terms of social policy, national diversity within Europe is still a major factor that will shape future developments in European welfare systems.

The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare States

The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare States PDF Author: Manuela Naldini
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135775699
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This work analyses in a historical and comparative perspective the relationship between the family and the welfare state in two Mediterranean countries: Italy and Spain. Two aims form the focus of the book. Firstly, to open the black box of the family in welfare state analysis, introducing a focus on inter-generational and kin relations. Secondly, to explain why the southern welfare states have offered very low support to families with children by taking into account several factors: the legacy of fascism, the role of the Church, and the specific role played by leftist parties in defining family policy as labour policy.

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.

The Transformation of Welfare States?

The Transformation of Welfare States? PDF Author: Nick Ellison
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134765703
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
'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 New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe

The New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe PDF Author: Mariely López-Santana
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438454694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Until recently, studies of changes in the welfare state have tended to focus on transformations in the nature of social policies and their level of generosity. The New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe concentrates on an often overlooked dimension: territorial and governance transformations. Employing detailed case studies and more than seventy-five interviews, Mariely López-Santana captures how a variety of postindustrial countries across both sides of the Atlantic have transformed the postwar organization of their labor market policy settings through decentralization, centralization, and delegation reforms. These changes have in turn changed the role of national and subnational levels of government, as well as nongovernmental actors, in the organization, management, and provision of labor market policies and services. López-Santana's multidisciplinary, comparative, and multilevel approach to welfare state change is an original and important step forward in our understanding of welfare reforms enacted since the mid-1990s.

The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain

The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain PDF Author: Davide Vampa
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319390074
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book is a study of the increasing territorial variations in the development of sub-national welfare systems that have occurred as an effect of the decentralization of health care and social assistance policies in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. The author examines the political factors that underlie these variations by combining cross-regional and cross-country comparisons using mixed methods. Vampa’s main finding is that regionalist parties have played a key role in sub-national welfare building and have used social policy to strengthen their legitimacy in the political struggle against central authorities. In this context, functional political competition between Left and Right has been partly replaced by territorial competition between Centre and Periphery as the main determinant of social policy making. Additionally, mainstream left-wing parties have been torn between maintaining territorial uniformity in social protection and responding to demands for more extensive social services tailored to the needs and preferences of specific regional communities. This book will be of use to academics and policy makers interested in political economy, devolution/decentralisation, welfare, and party politics.

Changing Welfare States

Changing Welfare States PDF Author: Anton Hemerijck
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199607605
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
Changing Welfare States is is a major new examination of the wave of social reform that has swept across Europe over the past two decades. In a comparative fashion, it analyses reform trajectories and political destinations in an era of rapid socioeconomic restructuring, including the critical impact of the global financial crisis on welfare state futures. The book argues that the overall scope of social reform across the member states of the European Union varies widely. In some cases welfare state change has been accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in other instances unpopular social reforms received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions and employer organizations. The analysis reveals trajectories of welfare reform in many countries that are more proactive and reconstructive than is often argued in academic research and the media. Alongside retrenchments, there have been deliberate attempts - often given impetus by intensified European (economic) integration - to rebuild social programs and institutions and thereby accommodate welfare policy repertoires to the new economic and social realities of the 21st century. Welfare state change is work in progress, leading to patchwork mixes of old and new policies and institutions, on the lookout, perhaps, for greater coherence. Unsurprisingly, that search process remains incomplete, resulting from the institutionally bounded and contingent adaptation to the challenges of economic globalization, fiscal austerity, family and gender change, adverse demography, and changing political cleavages.

The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective

The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective PDF Author: Ugo Ascoli
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447334442
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
There is a need to understand the Italian welfare state, but as yet it has received little academic research attention. The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective is the first book to explore the evolution of Italy's welfare state in the decades since the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (1945–75). It offers a rare overview and analysis of the Italian situation based on an in-depth study of the main social policy fields (including education, higher education and taxation policies), a detailed analysis of the connection between policies and their outputs/outcomes and a comparative perspective framing the Italian case within the European context. This is the first English-language book to take a comparative look at the Italian welfare state as a whole since the 2008 economic crisis, It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers, as well as students.

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2015

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2015 PDF Author: David Natali (OSE)
Publisher: ETUI
ISBN: 2874523747
Category : European Union countries
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The sixteenth edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play has a triple ambition. First, it provides easily accessible information to a wide audience about recent developments in both EU and domestic social policymaking. Second, the volume provides a more analytical reading, embedding the key developments of the year 2014 in the most recent academic discourses. Third, the forward-looking perspective of the book aims to provide stakeholders and policymakers with specific tools that allow them to discern new opportunities to influence policymaking. In this 2015 edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play, the authors tackle the topics of the state of EU politics after the parliamentary elections, the socialisation of the European Semester, methods of political protest, the Juncker investment plan, the EU’s contradictory education investment, the EU’s contested influence on national healthcare reforms, and the neoliberal Trojan Horse of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).