Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing ...thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture.
InCultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens. To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffmann places them in an international comparative context. He explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world.
The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.
The Internet is a critical part of the societal infrastructure in the Nordic region – giving rise to increasing concerns about the growing power of global tech corporations that supply the foundation ...for the region’s evermore digitalised welfare states. Yet, we lack empirical evidence for understanding, discussing, and ultimately regulating the changing power structures surrounding Internet-based communication. Presenting a novel framework for analysing and comparing the four largest Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden – this book provides nuanced insights into what we think we know about digital power and control. Identifying the main gateways into contemporary digital societies, we follow the constant flows of data – from the individual user connecting to a network operator that then passes the data on through local, terrestrial networks, Internet exchange points, and submarine cable routes, to the servers of a given website and app that in turn send the requested data back and collect a wide range of metadata in the process. This allows us to identify the key market actors and regulatory arrangements that shape the evolution of digital communication systems. What we find is a significant historical shift in the ways basic communication resources are organised and controlled in welfare states. Alongside the rapid digitalisation of Nordic societies, new gatekeepers have entered the stage while former ones have stepped into the background, established regulatory frameworks have lost their previous efficacy, and commercial forms of governance have taken over. Yet, we also find that the four countries – that are so often described as a homogeneous whole – have followed different institutional and infrastructural paths on their way to digitalisation, resulting in different degrees of disruption, globalisation, and state involvement.
This book, based on brand new data from a major study and long-standing collaboration between a number of prominent European scholars, provides a fresh perspective on the future of the welfare state ...across the EU. Through detailed case-study analysis, it analyses the emergence of new social risks alongside traditional needs. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/019926726X/toc.html Contributors to this volume - Peter Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent, Canterbury Trine Larsen, University of Kent, Canterbury Giuliano Bonoli, University of Friebourg Luis Moreno, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid Virpi Timonen, Trinity College, Dublin Bruno Palier, CEVIPOF, Paris Christelle Mandin, CEVIPOF, Paris Andreas Aust, Humboldt-University, Berlin Frank Boenker, Viadrina University, Frankfurt-oder-Maine
The aim of this study was to determine the degree to which welfare state regime characteristics explained the proportional variation of self-perceived health between European countries, when ...individual and regional variation was accounted for, by undertaking a multilevel analysis of the European Social Survey (2002 and 2004). A total of 65,065 individuals, from 218 regions and 21 countries, aged 25 years and above were included in the analysis. The health outcomes related to people's own mental and physical health, in general. The study showed that almost 90% of the variation in health was attributable to the individual-level, while approximately 10% was associated with national welfare state characteristics. The variation across regions within countries was not significant. Type of welfare state regime appeared to account for approximately half of the national-level variation of health inequalities between European countries. People in countries with Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon welfare regimes were observed to have better self-perceived general health in comparison to Southern and East European welfare regimes.
This book 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 immigrants' social rights ...across welfare states. To study immigrants' social rights the author develops an analytical framework that focuses on the interplay between 1) the type of welfare state regime, 2) forms of entry, or entry categories, and 3) the incorporation regime regulating the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants. The book maps out the development of immigrants' social rights from the early postwar period until around 2010 in six countries representing different welfare state regimes: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark. Part I addresses three major issues. The first is how inclusive or exclusionary welfare state policies are in relation to immigrants, and especially how the type of welfare state and incorporation regime affect their social rights. The second issue concerns changes in immigrant rights and the direction of the change: rights extension versus rights contraction. The third issue is how immigrants' social rights compare to those of citizens. Part II shifts from policies affecting immigrant rights to the politics of the policies. It examines the politics of inclusion and exclusion in the six countries, focusing on social rights extension and contraction and changes in the policy dimensions of the incorporation regime that impinge on immigrant rights.
Sozialstaat in Gefahr Klundt, Michael
Sozial extra,
01/2024, Volume:
48, Issue:
2
Journal Article
ZusammenfassungIm bisherigen System der Familienleistungen erhalten die Reichsten am meisten und die Ärmsten am wenigsten. Derweil sind im System der Grundsicherung immer noch keine bedarfsgerechten ...Regelleistungen für Kinder vorgesehen und der Kinderzuschlag wie auch das Bildungs- und Teilhabepaket erreichen seit Jahren regelmäßig nicht einmal die Hälfte der berechtigten Kinder. Diesen dringenden Reformbedarf versuchen Konzepte einer Kindergrundsicherung zu bearbeiten, um Kinderarmut wirksam zu vermeiden und zu vermindern. Damit verbundene Fragen, Potenziale und Probleme einer Kindergrundsicherung hinsichtlich von Armut und Sozialstaatsentwicklung sind das Thema dieses Extrablicks.
This article reviews the literature on the causes of welfare state expansion in democratic middle‐income countries across the Global South since the 2000s. After discussing challenges to measuring ...welfare state change, the article reviews research in political science and sociology and discusses nine potential causes of recent welfare state expansion, namely (a) economic development, (b) fiscal capacity, (c) democracy, (d) partisan ideology, (e) labour unions, (f) social mobilization, (g) cultural homogeneity, (h) institutional architecture, as well as (i) welfare rights and norms. The review thus reveals that recent welfare state expansion in democratic middle‐income countries has been driven by a similar set of causes as post‐war welfare state expansion in the Global North. The pronounced expansion of non‐contributory social policies has, in some contrast, also been characterized by more bipartisan and transnational political dynamics. The article concludes by outlining avenues for future research and by calling for more scholarly attention to the consolidation and testing of existing theories.
This paper is about the justification for social housing and, more broadly, different considerations for universalist provision of public goods. Globally, social housing has undergone a retrenchment ...phase in recent decades; it has been impacted by the financialisaton of housing and critiques claiming social housing is an inefficient and unfair use of public money. Nevertheless, as examples from Finland show, social housing still has a recognised role as part of welfare state policies. To understand how social housing advocates operate in this strained position, this paper analyses interview data collected from 23 experts in the field of social housing. The analysis—which draws on Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of public justification—shows that social housing officials are consistent in their views, emphasising decommodification of housing and supporting tenants' equal right for home and citizenship. These notes are interpreted through the tradition of the Nordic conception of welfare states. The findings open new opportunities to discuss connections between cultural legacies and divergent considerations for provision of welfare.
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