State Welfare (state + welfare)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Introduction: social policy, economic growth and developmental welfare

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 4 2001
James Midgley
Although the notion of developmental welfare is not new, it is only in recent times that its central premises have again attracted attention in social policy circles. Since developmental welfare offers an opportunity to challenge the neo-liberal claim that social expenditures harm the economy, and that economic development requires retrenchments in state welfare, more information about this approach is needed. This article discusses the developmental welfare approach with reference to neo-liberalism's current hegemonic influence on social policy. It traces the historical evolution of developmental welfare, discusses its theoretical implications and outlines its practical proposals. [source]


Social Policymaking and Its Institutional Basis: Transition of The Chinese Social Security System

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Ka Lin
This article discusses Chinese social policy development in response to the growth of the market economy. It provides a general overview of the system's evolution in three stages: (1) the pre-reform period when a system of enterprise welfare was in operation; (2) a period of system transition; (3) the stage when state welfare began to take shape. These developmental trends are interpreted on the basis of three types of institutional relations: the State-enterprise relation, the enterprise- (or employer-) employee relation, and the individual/worker-State relation. Moreover, the discussion deals with policy perceptions at each stage of the developmental process. Based on these analyses, it illustrates the transformation of the Chinese social security system in a broad socioeconomic and political context, where China struggled to establish a modern, market-based enterprise system. The paper thus expounds issues of socialism, market forces and the power of organized labour. [source]


New social risks in postindustrial society: Some evidence on responses to active labour market policies from Eurobarometer

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Peter Taylor-Gooby
One result of the complex economic and social changes currently impacting on state welfare is the emergence of what may be termed "new social risks" as part of the shift to a postindustrial society. These concern access to adequately paid employment, particularly for lower-skilled young people, in an increasingly flexible labour market, and managing work-life balance for women with family responsibilities engaged in full-time careers. They coexist with the old social risks that traditional welfare states developed to meet, which typically concern retirement from or interruption to paid work, in most cases for a male "breadwinner". New social risks offer policymakers the opportunity to transform vice into virtue by replacing costly passive benefits with policies which mobilize the workforce, arguably enhancing economic competitiveness, and reduce poverty among vulnerable groups. However, the political constituencies to support such policies are weak, since the risks affect people most strongly at particular life stages and among specific groups. This paper examines attitudes to new social risk labour market policies in four contrasting European countries. It shows that attitudes in this area are strongly embedded in overall beliefs about the appropriate scale, direction and role of state welfare interventions, so that the weakness of new social risk constituencies does not necessarily undermine the possibility of attracting support for such policies, provided they are developed in ways that do not contradict national traditions of welfare state values. [source]


Civil Society or the State?: Recent Approaches to the History of Voluntary Welfare

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002
Alan Kidd
Since the 1970s a drift away from state corporatist solutions to social welfare problems has had its parallel in an academic rediscovery of the voluntary sector. Revived confidence in non,statutory approaches often assumes two things. Firstly, that voluntary action is a vital component in civil society and that civil society itself is an attribute of liberal democracy. These ideas are central to the perceived ,crisis of the welfare state'. They are also related to debates about political culture and the future of democracy with the institutions of civil society cast positively as ,schools of citizenship'. Secondly, it is frequently assumed that there is an opposition in principle between the voluntary and the statutory and in some quarters an assumption (reversing an earlier presumption about the rationality of state welfare) that voluntary action is the superior mechanism (at least morally). The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I want to reflect on the revival of interest in the role of the institutions of civil society in the history of welfare provision. Second, I will survey some recent approaches to voluntary action and ,civil society'. Third, in the process of this survey I discuss the relevance of these approaches to the study of past states of welfare. [source]


LEARNING BY DOING IN THE PRESENCE OF AN OPEN ACCESS RENEWABLE RESOURCE: IS GROWTH SUSTAINABLE?

NATURAL RESOURCE MODELING, Issue 1 2005
CAROL McAUSLAND
ABSTRACT. We examine the relationship between growth, resource abundance and trade when the natural resource is renewable and open access and there is inter-industry learning by doing. We find growth is not sustainable in the closed economy and can be sustained in the open economy only so long as the labor forced engaged in resource extraction shrinks over time. Comparisons of steady state welfare in autarky and free trade reveal that for very high or low world prices of the resource-based good, it is possible for the economy to gain from trade. However if the price is intermediate, it may instead lose. [source]