This book situates culture as a determining factor in the development of diverse welfare states, exploring the impact of traditional familialism on South Korean and Taiwanese programs. This approach provides an important alternative to studies that focus on formal variables– such as industrialization, state intervention, and resource mobilization– that do not explain the key differences between the similar programs. Throughout this book, Wang looks into both the historical development and the present situation of medical welfare programs in South Korea and Taiwan, and she highlights the importance of families in these programs’ development. As East Asian societies continue to age while experiencing fewer births, the search for the most suitable, sustainable, and desirable welfare model in each country will become ever more pressing. Academics and practitioners alike will find this refreshing approach to analysis ideal for building welfare institutions that reflect societal values in addition to economic conditions.

While social welfare programs, often inspired by international organizations, are spreading throughout the world, the more far-reaching notion of governmental responsibility for the basic well-being of all members of a political society is not, although it remains a feature of Europe and the former British Commonwealth. The welfare state in the European sense is not simply an administrative arrangement of various measures of social protection but a political project embedded in distinct cultural traditions. Offering the first accessible account in English of the historical development of the European idea of the welfare state, this book reviews the intellectual foundations which underpinned the road towards the European welfare state, formulates some basic concepts for its understanding, and highlights the differences in the underlying structural and philosophical conditions between continental Europe and the English-speaking world.

This work analyses in a historical and comparative perspective the relationship between the family and the welfare state in two Mediterranean countries: Italy and Spain. Two aims form the focus of the book. Firstly, to open the black box of the family in welfare state analysis, introducing a focus on inter-generational and kin relations. Secondly, to explain why the southern welfare states have offered very low support to families with children by taking into account several factors: the legacy of fascism, the role of the Church, and the specific role played by leftist parties in defining family policy as labour policy.

Why are so many American social programs delegated to private actors? And what are the consequences for efficiency, accountability, and the well-being of beneficiaries? The Delegated Welfare State examines the development of the American welfare state through the lens of delegation: how policymakers have avoided direct governmental provision of benefits and services, turning to non-state actors for the governance of social programs. Utilizing case studies of Medicare and the 2009-10 health care reform, Morgan and Campbell argue that the prevalence of delegated governance reflects the powerful role of interest groups in American politics, the dominance of Congress in social policymaking, and deep contradictions in American public opinion. Americans want both social programs and small government, leaving policy makers in a bind. Contracting out public programs to non-state actors masks the role of the state and enlists private allies who push for passage. Although delegated governance has been politically expedient, enabling the growth of government programs in an anti-government political climate, it raises questions about fraud, abuse, administrative effectiveness, and accountability. In probing both the causes and consequences of delegated governance, The Delegated Welfare State offers a novel interpretation of both American social welfare politics and the nature of the American state.

Welfare state models have for decades been the gold standard of welfare state research. Beyond Welfare State Models escapes the straightjacket of conventional welfare state models and challenges the existing literature in two ways. Firstly the contributors argue that the standard typologies have omitted important aspects of welfare state development. Secondly, the work develops and underlines the importance of a more fluid transnational conceptualisation. As this book shows, welfare states are not created in national isolation but are heavily influenced by transnational economic, political and cultural interdependencies. The authors illustrate these important points of criticism with their studies on the transnational history of social policy, religion and the welfare state, Nordic cooperation within the fields of social policy and marriage law, and the transnational contexts of national family policies. This fascinating work contributes to the understanding of the current changes of welfare states by discussing the relationship between globalized capitalism and social political regulations and by arguing that transnational transformations importantly take place within and between nation states.

This refreshing volume introduces a theory for explaining cross-national differences in the social practice of women (and men) in the areas of family and employment. This provides a theoretical framework for the ensuing comprehensive cross-national analysis of the degree and forms of labour market integration of women in three European countries - Finland, West Germany and the Netherlands - from the 1950s until 2000. Cross-national differences are explained with a focus on cultural change and the development of welfare state, labour markets, the family and social movements. It is evident that change took place along different development paths that were based on deep-rooted historical differences in the cultural ideals of the family. Such historical differences and their explanations also form part of the analysis. The results of this survey contribute to the further development of cross-national sociology on social change, social and gender inequality, welfare state, labour markets and family structures.

countries in this region have been particularly limited (for an exception to this, see Petmesidou & Papatheodorou, 2006). The underlying assumption in this volume is that despite the diversity of welfare states bordering the Mediterranean Sea, some interesting commonalities are shared by these nations. Indeed, in his contribution to this volume Gal has described these nations as belonging to an extended family of welfare states that share some common characteristics and outcomes, one of which is the role of the family. By bringing together case analyses of the welfare states in the Mediterranean which focus on children, gender, and families, we maintain that it is possible to shed light on aspects of social policy that do not necessarily emerge in most discussions of these issues in the literature. The rationale inherent in a volume that focuses on a group of welfare states is of course embedded in the welfare regime typology notion that has dominated much of the comparative social policy literature over the last two decades. The publication of Esping Andersen’s seminal work, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in 1990 (and his related 1999 book), which distinguished between three welfare regimes, became a landmark for comparative work of social policies in various countries. Esping-Andersen regarded his typology as a useful tool for comparison between welfare states because it allowed “for greater analytical parsimony and help[s] us to see the forest rather than myriad trees” (1999, p. 73).

Globalisation, regionalisation, new technology, demography, voters’ expectations and re-structuring of societies are expected to influence welfare state development for years to come. This handbook analyses how different welfare state models and regimes will be able to cope with contemporary and future challenges, providing a variety of evidence based tools that make it essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers alike.

The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe the the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations.