Welfare State 3 0

This book identifies specific changes to bring U.S. social policy in accord with the Information Age of the 21st century, in contrast to the policy infrastructure of industrial America. Welfare State 3.0: Social Policy after the Pandemic acknowledges the existing social infrastructure, considers viable options, and provides supporting data to suggest social policy reform by four strategies: consolidating programs, harmonizing applications, expanding equity, and conducting experiments. The book favors discreet, poignant proposals of social programs. In 12 chapters, the text provides an analysis that honors past accomplishments, recognizes the influence of established stakeholders, and concedes program inadequacies, while plotting specific opportunities for policy improvement. In contrast to liberalism’s tendency toward idealism, the book adopts a realpolitik appreciation for social policy. Written by one of the most respected academics of U.S. social policy, this book will be required reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of social policy, social work, sociology, and U.S. politics more broadly.

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the most distinguished contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes several major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different western countries. Current economic processes, the author argues, such as those moving towards a post-industrial order, are not shaped by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to everyone working on issues of economic development and post-industrialism. Its audience will include students and academics in sociology, economics and politics.

Weighing in on the euro-austerity debate, this book uses case studies from three countries to evaluate the distinctive politics of fiscal policy and welfare state reform during a key period in Europe.

This 'Very Short Introduction' discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

​This book offers an analysis of social security in Ireland from 1981 to 2016 - a period of immense economic and social change during which social provisions such as pensions and family benefits were downsized or diluted in many countries. It considers whether this important area of welfare state provision in Ireland changed, and the extent and pattern of change. In the first in-depth account of this aspect of social policy In Ireland, the book sets the welfare state in a historical and comparative context and reviews the impact of globalisation, politics and the financial crash on the scope and generosity of social security. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of welfare state politics and comparative social policy as well as to students of Irish social policy.

This book provides a critical and theoretically-informed assessment of the nature and types of structural change occurring in the Irish welfare state in the context of the 2008 economic crisis. Its overarching framework for conceptualising and analysing welfare state change and its political, economic and social implications is based around four crucial questions, namely what welfare is for, who delivers welfare, who pays for welfare, and who benefits. Over the course of ten chapters, the authors examine the answers as they relate to social protection, labour market activation, pensions, finance, water, early child education and care, health, housing and corporate welfare. They also innovatively address the impact of crisis on the welfare state in Northern Ireland. The result is to isolate key drivers of structural welfare reform, and assess how globalisation, financialisation, neo-liberalisation, privatisation, marketisation and new public management have deepened and diversified their impact on the post-crisis Irish welfare state. This in-depth analysis will appeal to sociologists, economists, political scientists and welfare state practitioners interested in the Irish welfare state and more generally in the analysis of welfare state change.

When American history is divided into discrete eras, the New Deal stands, along with the Civil War, as one of those distinctive events that forever change the trajectory of the nation&’s development. The story of the New Deal provides a convenient tool of periodization and a means of interpreting U.S. history and the significance of contemporary political cleavages. Eisner&’s careful examination of the historical record, however, leads one to the conclusion that there was precious little &“new&” in the New Deal. If one wishes to find an event that was clearly transformative, the author argues, one must go back to World War I. From Warfare State to Welfare State reveals that the federal government lagged far behind the private sector in institutional development in the early twentieth century. In order to cope with the crisis of war, government leaders opted to pursue a path of &“compensatory state-building&” by seeking out alliances with private-sector associations. But these associations pursued their own interests in a way that imposed severe constraints on the government&’s autonomy and effectiveness in dealing with the country&’s problems&—a handicap that accounts for many of the shortcomings of government today.

The modern welfare state is under threat from a variety of fronts. Changing demographic patterns, declining public trust, interest group demands and growing international competition for capital and labour are presenting modern states with intense pressures. This volume examines these competing pressures and offers a coherent analyses of both institutional resilience and institutional change. Adopting an evolutionary approach, this innovative volume demonstrates both how past practices and policies significantly affect the current options and how social and economic forces impinge upon each of these societies in surprisingly different ways. Cross-national in scope and unified in approach, Restructuring the Welfare State examines core issues facing the contemporary welfare state while at the same time significantly advancing historical institutionalist theory.