Contested Welfare States

The welfare state is a trademark of the European social model. An extensive set of social and institutional actors provides protection against common risks, offering economic support in periods of har

Contested States examines how hegemony is created and facilitated through law as well as how people use legal arenas to resist oppression. The essays, written by anthropologists and historians, offer

Changing Welfare States is 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 poli

Changing Welfare States is 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 pol

This book investigates a phenomenon in world politics that is largely overlooked by scholars, namely entities lacking international recognition of their status as independent states. It includes case

The traditionally, and wrongly, imagined vulnerabilities of the welfare state are economic. The true threats are demographic and political. The most frequently imagined threat is that the welfare state package reduces the level and growth of GDP. It does not, according to broad historical patterns and non-experimental panel econometrics. Large-budget welfare states achieve a host of social improvements without any clear loss of GDP. This Element elaborates on how this 'free lunch' is gained in practice. Other threats to the welfare state are more real, however. One is the rise of anti-immigrant backlash. If combined with heavy refugee inflows, this could destroy future public support for universalist welfare state programs, even though they seem to remain economically sound. The other is that population aging poses a serious problem for financing old age. Pension deficits threaten to crowd out more productive social spending. Only a few countries have faced this issue well.

Welfare States and Immigrant Rights deals with the impact of welfare states on immigrants' social rights, economic well-being and social inclusion, and it offers the first systematic comparison of im

Welfare States and Immigrant Rights deals with the policies and politics of immigrants' inclusion and exclusion in six countries representing different types of welfare states: the United States, the

This volume presents a thought provoking analysis of key welfare state issues engaging policy makers across the globe. It provides a unique and comprehensive evaluation of the state of welfare states-

What differences do welfare state variations make for women? How do women and men fare in different welfare states? Diane Sainsbury answers these questions by analysing the situation in countries whose welfare state policies differ in significant ways: the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Building on feminist criticisms of mainstream research, Professor Sainsbury reconceptualises the crucial dimensions of variation, notably those relevant to gender. She determines the extent to which legislation reflects and perpetuates the gendered division of labour in the family and society, as well as what types of policy alter gender relations in social provision. She thereby increases our understanding of how policy mechanisms, especially the bases of entitlement, exclude or incorporate women and offers constructive proposals for securing greater equality between women and men.

In her study of the welfare rights movement, Premilla Nadasen breaks new ground by tracing the history of a distinctive brand of feminism that emerged in the 1960s.

In her study of the welfare rights movement, Premilla Nadasen breaks new ground by tracing the history of a distinctive brand of feminism that emerged in the 1960s.

This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world. In countries with proportional electoral systems the absence or presence of state–church conflicts decided whether class remained the dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively based on socio-economic interests (e.g. religion) was introduced into politics, particularly social policy. The political class-coalitions in countries with majoritarian systems, on the other hand, allowed only for the residual-liberal welfare state to emerge, as in the US or the UK. This book also reconsiders the role of Protestantism. Reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted modern social policy. The Luther

This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world. In countries with proportional electoral systems the absence or presence of state–church conflicts decided whether class remained the dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively based on socio-economic interests (e.g. religion) was introduced into politics, particularly social policy. The political class-coalitions in countries with majoritarian systems, on the other hand, allowed only for the residual-liberal welfare state to emerge, as in the US or the UK. This book also reconsiders the role of Protestantism. Reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted modern social policy. The Luther

By focusing on developments in the Nordic welfare states during the past decade, Nordic Social Policy provides new insights into the evolution of welfare state measures and generally assesses the peop

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the differences and similarities between civil legal aid schemes in the Nordic countries

Gender equality has been one of the defining projects of European welfare states. It has proven an elusive goal, not just because of political opposition but also due to a lack of clarity in how to be

Gender equality has been one of the defining projects of European welfare states. It has proven an elusive goal, not just because of political opposition but also due to a lack of clarity in how to be

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

India's states are the main arenas in which popular expectations around improved health, education and social security collide with electoral politics in an era of economic growth and rising aspiratio

Like many other Western democracies, the Nordic countries have vigorously debated whether it is necessary to find new ways of incorporating ethnic minorities into the larger society, leading to the ne

What is the relationship between women and the welfare state? How do women reconcile paid work and family responsibilities? These questions are of central political concern to nearly all Western industrialised countries and have provoked considerable scholarly disagreement. In this timely book, Dr Arnlaug Leira presents both a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the relationship between women's lives, employment practices and childcare provision. Focusing upon the social construction of motherhood in Scandinavia, Arnlaug Leira shows how, contrary to common perceptions, there is no shared model of welfare policies and women's work. Instead, the position in Norway is significantly different from that in Sweden and Denmark. The author then presents an ethnographic analysis of the lives of working mothers in Norway. She details the complexity of the strategies by which women cope and support one another in combined earning and childcare in a situation where state provision is limited.

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 drastically changed the delivery of social services in the United States for the first time in sixty years. More than a decade later, according to Catholic social ethici