53,816 research outputs found
The Double Crisis of the Welfare State
No full textThe UK welfare state is under unprecedented attack from (1) harsh spending cuts, focussed particularly on benefits and services for women, children, low-paid people and claimers of working age, and (2) a profound restructuring programme, which is fragmenting services and embedding private provision across the state sector. It is proving surprisingly difficult for pro-welfare state actors to make a case for generous state welfare that is both inclusive and electorally attractive. This paper analyses why this is so and what can be done about it. It discusses trends in the development of the welfare state and in discourse about the problems it faces, the trilemma that pro-welfare policy-making faces, various new directions in policy and a reform programme that might help build a more inclusive welfare discourse. The arguments are necessarily compressed in a paper of this length. More extended discussion and further evidence is available in Taylor-Gooby (2013a) with background in Taylor-Gooby 2013b, c, 2012a to d and Taylor-Gooby and Stoker 2011
The End of the Welfare State?: Responses to State Retrenchment
No full textThroughout the world, politicians from all the main parties are cutting back on state welfare provision, encouraging people to use the private sector instead and developing increasingly stringent techniques for the surveillance of the poor. Almost all experts agree that we are likely to see further constraints on state welfare in the 21st Century.
Gathering together the findings from up-to-date attitude surveys in Europe East and West, the US and Australasia, this revealing book shows that, contrary to the claims of many experts and policy-makers, the welfare state is still highly popular with the citizens of most countries. This evidence will add to controversy in an area of fundamental importance to public policy and to current social science debate
Introduction: Themed Section on Social Welfare and Social Democracy
No full textFor much of the post-war period, the advanced industrial nations of Europe congratulated themselves on having it both ways: successful capitalist economies which also provided effective welfare states – affluence plus social justice. Commentators have traditionally seen social democracy as the friend of social welfare. More recently, the virtuous liaison of social democratic politics with successful democratic welfare capitalism has been called into question. Welfare states face pressures from economic globalisation, population ageing, spending constraint and changes in labour markets and in family patterns; it is argued that traditional social democratic approaches find it difficult to pursue policies that will enable welfare states to adapt and continue to combine high social standards with economic growth in the changed conditions of the twenty-first century. In short, the social democratic welfare state is outmoded
New Social Risks in Post-Industrial Society
No full textDetailed analysis of attitude survey and other data from a range of European coutnries to show that responses to flexible labour market increasingly structured by post-industrialis
Choice and Values: individualized rational action and social goals
No full textFor excellent reasons, in response to pressures from social, economic and political changes, welfare states are undergoing reform. A central theme in the new policies, particularly influential in the UK, is the use of incentives through activation programmes and reforms to public sector management to promote rational responsible choices by both service users and providers. The theoretical underpinning of this approach relies on a model of people as plural in their values, but holding values that are independent from social context and institutional framework. Policy seeks to harness those values to produce desired behaviour. This article focuses on two relevant literatures. Analyses of rational action at an individual level by economic psychologists, evolutionary biologists and game theorists indicate that the context in which choices are framed influences responses. Further work by economic sociologists and social psychologists suggests that the values that guide behaviour have an important social element as normative systems embodied in institutional frameworks. The norms appropriate to market interactions typically differ from welfare norms, so that different value frameworks and responses apply. The implication is that the transition to quasi-market and individualised incentive systems risks damaging the norms that sanction support for distant but vulnerable groups. The article falls into three sections: reviewing the background to reform and the emergence of an emphasis on individualised rational choice, considering each of the literatures mentioned above and discussing policy consequences
Trust and Welfare State Reform: the example of the NHS
No full textThis article discusses the impact of New Public Management on public trust in welfare state institutions, using the example of NHS reform. Discussion of trust in public institutions across political science, psychology and sociology indicates that it is based on both rational/objective considerations (competence and capacity to deliver the service) and affectual/subjective factors (shared values, belief that the trustee shares the trustor's interests). The New Public Management foregrounds individual responsibility and incentives for both suppliers and users of services, in the NHS example in quasi-markets, management by target and patient choice. These accord with an individualized market rational-actor model rather than with affective considerations. Analysis of attitude survey data on the NHS confirms that rational/objective and affectual/subjective factors contribute to public trust in this field. However, a comparison between perceptions in England, where the internal market has been vigorously pursued, and Scotland, where the purchaser/provider split was discarded after devolution, indicate that the market does not offer a royal road to perceptions of superior quality in the objective factors. Conversely, the more market-centred system can make progress in relation to the more subjective affectual factors
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