In this unique and provocative contribution to the literatures of political science and social policy, ten leading experts question prevailing views that federalism always inhibits the growth of ...social solidarity. Their comparative study of the evolution of political institutions and welfare states in the six oldest federal states - Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the US - reveals that federalism can facilitate and impede social policy development. Development is contingent on several time-dependent factors, including degree of democratization, type of federalism, and the stage of welfare state development and early distribution of social policy responsibility. The reciprocal nature of the federalism-social policy relationship also becomes apparent: the authors identify a set of important bypass structures within federal systems that have resulted from welfare state growth. In an era of retrenchment and unravelling unitary states, this study suggests that federalism may actually protect the welfare state, and welfare states may enhance national integration.
This book, originally published in 1978, constitutes a genuinely comparative study of the world's only truly succesful democratic socialist parties: the Social Democraic Parties of Denmark, Norway ...and Sweden. The measure of achievement is not merely political success, the fact that in Scandinavia the Social Democrats have become 'natural parties of goverment', for just as importantly, the author shows that a political success grounded on the symbiotic relationship between party and trade union movement has been the foundation for a higher level of welfare state provision and egalitarian striving than in virtually any other advanced Western nations.
It is a book for friends and foes of democratic socialism alike; for the former to provide an understanding of the tasks ahead and for the latter to know the enemy better.
Part 1: Achievements 1. The Political Dominance of Social Democracy 1.1. The Relative Strength of the European Social Democratic Parties 1.2. The Emergent Scandinavian Labour Movements 1.3. The Road to Power 1.4. The Mechanisms of Social Democratic Ascendancy 1.5. New Problems and New Parties 2. Equality and Welfare in Capitalist Society 2.1. Taking an Agnostic Approach 2.2. Devising a Measure of Welfare State Provision 2.3. The Data and an Interpretation 2.4. Dimensions of Equality and Welfare in Scandinavia 2.5. Capitalism and the Social Democratic Image of Society Part 2: Origins 3. Paradoxes of Scandinavian Political Development 3.1. Class and Party in Scandinavia 3.2. The Politics of Virtuous Circles 3.3. The Weakness of the Right
This article suggests that an alternative to a social rights of citizenship approach to comparing welfare states is to use disaggregated programme expenditure data to identify the diverse spending ...priorities of different types of welfare state. An initial descriptive analysis shows that four major categories of social spending (cash spending on older people and those of working age; service spending on health and for other purposes) are almost entirely unrelated to one another and that different welfare state regimes or families of nations exhibit quite different patterns of spending. The article proceeds to demonstrate that both the determinants and the outcomes of these different categories of spending also differ quite radically. In policy terms, most importantly, the article shows that cross-national differences in poverty and inequality among advanced nations are to a very large degree a function of the extent of cash spending on programmes catering to the welfare needs of those of working age. Adapted from the source document.
This article focuses on the notion that the policies and politics of states and nations constitute distinct worlds or clusters. We begin by examining the concept of clustering as it has emerged in ...the literature on policy regimes and families of nations. We then address a series of empirical questions: whether distinct worlds persist in an era of policy convergence and globalisation, whether policy antecedents cluster in the same ways as policy outcomes and whether the enlargement of the EU has led to an increase in the number of worlds constituting the wider European polity. Our main conclusions are that country clustering is, if anything, more pronounced than in the past, that it is, in large part, structurally determined and that the EU now contains a quite distinct post-Communist family of nations.
This article addresses the question of how unexpected national and international emergencies — the ‘black swans’ of war, economic depression, hyperinflation and, more prospectively and topically, ...terrorist incidents and environmental catastrophes — affect the character of welfare state interventions and welfare state development. We do have clear evidence of such effects in the past: hyperinflation in Germany made that country particularly inflation averse; the Great Depression was a stimulus to welfare state development in countries such as Sweden and New Zealand; and the Second World War was a key factor in the subsequent development of the post-war British welfare state. However, the impact of emergencies is, at best, a very minor theme of welfare state analysis and one largely left to historians of the welfare state, suggesting that such effects are no longer considered to be a major factor shaping welfare state development and that welfare states are like ‘elephants on the move’, rarely significantly thrown off course by particular events. The article speculates on why that might be, noting the importance of the timing of the emergency, its type, size, and the extent and character of prior welfare provisions. The article concludes by examining the implications of this analysis for our understanding of the likely impact of possible future emergencies of a terrorist or environmental character and of the proper political response to such emergencies.
This article examines whether or not OECD welfare states have converged since 1980. Making use of a variety of concepts of convergence, we analyse the development of a broad range of quantitative ...welfare state indicators, including several expenditure-based indicators, revenue patterns, benefit replacement rates and decommodification. Contrary to what one might expect from much of the theoretical literature, we find that, although there is evidence of moderate welfare state convergence, it is limited in magnitude, various in directionality and contingent upon the indicator under examination. Overall, our findings do not provide any strong evidence either for a race to the bottom or for the Americanization of social policy, the two most common convergence scenarios encountered in supposedly informed public policy commentary.
Over the past two decades, a decline in birth rates in advanced industrialized societies to levels well below those required for population replacement has been accompanied by a major change in the ...cross-national incidence of fertility. This has, in turn, given rise to a massive transformation in traditional cross-national patterns of relationships between fertility and other variables. Whereas previously the countries with the highest period fertility rates were those in which family-oriented cultural traditions were most pronounced and in which women's labour market participation was least, these relationships are now wholly reversed. This study uses data for 21 OECD countries to provide a more thorough and systematic mapping of the linkages between fertility, cultural values, economic structure and social policy than has hitherto been attempted in the literature, while simultaneously addressing some of the theoretical and methodological issues that arise in explaining a reversal of this magnitude. It argues that seemingly anomalous linkages with cultural traditions and employment structure are consequences of women's changing work and family preferences and of cross-national differences in the adoption of family-friendly public policy.
First published in 1971, this is a clear, straightforward introductory discussion of the importance of sociological knowledge, and particularly sociological theory, for the understanding of political ...life. The topics covered include sociology and the discipline of politics, the elementary forms of political life, and the relationship between theory, evidence and insight. Francis Castles also looks at functionalism and the analysis of conflict as sociological meta-theories, and at the idea of anomie and the theory of mass society.
The book should be of prime interest to students of politics and to students of the social sciences in general.
1. Sociology and the Discipline of Politics 2. The Elementary Forms of the Political Life 3. On Theory, Evidence and Insight 4. Functionalism as Metatheory 5. The Analysis of Conflict as a Metatheoretical Orientation 6. Anomie and the Theory of Mass Society
This volume, first published in 1967, offers a new approach to the study of pressure groups, whose importance in the British political system has been increasingly recognised in recent years. Francis ...Castles seeks to throw light on this topic, firstly by examining the theoretical approaches to an understanding of their role in the political process and secondy by presenting a number of specific studies. For the first time, in one small volume, the reader can become acquainted with pressure groups in continental Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, the totalitarian countries, and the emergent nations. The study is comprehensive in itself and also an invaluable guide to more detailed work in this field of political science.
1. Pressure Group Theory and its Problems 2. The Emergent Nations 3. Totalitarianism 4. Continental Europe - The Politics of Immobility 5. Scandinavia 6. The Anglo-American System - The Autonomous Interest Group 7. Attitude Groups in Britain 8. Conclusion
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