What was the impact of the Second World War on the development of the welfare state? Did Attlee’s pioneering post-war Labour governments create the welfare state and a socialist society? Was there a welfare consensus between Labour and the Conservatives in the period from 1951 to 1979? Was there a welfare revolution during the Thatcher and Major years? What lies at the heart of New Labour’s welfare policy? In Revisiting the Welfare State, Robert Page provides a persuasive, fresh and challenging account of the British welfare state since 1940. His text re-examines some of the most commonly held assumptions about the post-war welfare state and reignites the debate about its role and purpose. Robert Page starts from the premise that the student of social policy can gain a deeper understanding of the welfare state by studying political and historical accounts of the welfare state, party manifestos, policy documents and political memoirs. Drawing from these sources, he provides a clear guide to the changing role of the state in the provision of welfare since 1940. Each of the five chapters is devoted to a particular theme associated with the post-war welfare state, the last of which focuses on the strategy of the New Labour governments of Tony Blair. Written by one of the leading authorities on contemporary social policy, Revisiting the Welfare State is a stimulating guide to the political history of the post-war welfare state in Britain. It is essential reading for students of social policy, social work, politics and contemporary history. It will also appeal to the general reader who is seeking an accessible guide to the political history of the post-war welfare state.

The Dynamic Welfare State makes a case for a radical shift in how we view the roles of both public and private institutions in the United States. It documents the emergence of a third stage in the American welfare state, evident in corporations exploiting markets in healthcare, education, and financial services. Architects of the welfare state envisaged government as the provider of essential services to citizens; however, as the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 show, corporations and the wealthy have become adept at using trade associations, hiring lobbyists, influencing elections, and contributing to think tanks in order to craft public policy that is congruent with industry preferences. Moreover, the influence of "dark money" through political action committees classified by the IRS as "social welfare organizations" in order to obscure the identity of donors is pernicious to democracy. In addition to accounting for the marketization of public policy, The Dynamic Welfare State describes the failure of health and human services professionals to advance the welfare of the public, graphically illustrated by the poverty trap, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and the "school-to-prison pipeline." The status quo is unsustainable, and a reconfigured welfare state is essential if government social programs are to honor their public commitments for the 21st century. In this bold and timely text, David Stoesz illustrates how and why empowerment, mobility, and innovation are themes for a dynamic welfare state that is congruent with the modern day.

This book revisits social theory with a view to highlighting certain essential features of ‘good’ social theory: its ability to raise certain questions, its explanatory power, its critical and reflexive interrogation of concepts, its search for objectivity, its concern to make sense of empirical data and its aim of projecting some degree of generality and abstraction. With particular attention to issues of nationalism, democracy, civil society, state, feminism, neoliberalism, minority rights, environment and North-East Indian society, it considers whether new and more relevant theoretical questions need to be asked. It will therefore appeal to scholars of social theory and political sociology with interests in new approaches to social theory and the development of local or ‘indigenous’ social thought.

How 'free' is the free movement of persons? Why does the law that enables it need to be 'revisited'? This collection of essays, curated by Claire Kilpatrick and Joanne Scott for the European University Institute's 2020 Academy of European Law, addresses these questions. Across different examples - migration, posted workers, social security, Brexit, and Union citizenship - each chapter revisits the categories that have become entrenched in EU law on the free movement of persons and the boundaries that have been constructed as a result. Do they still represent meaningful differences? Are they valuable compass points or inhibitors of progress? Do they ensure comprehensive or fragmented protection of the person? In reconsidering the fundamentals of EU free movement law, the book draws attention to tensions that have not yet been properly resolved: between appropriate difference and problematic discrimination, or between the mythology and the experienced reality of free movement for the people who actually move. Its chapters consider how the free movement of persons connects to and is shaped by the EU legal spaces beyond free movement as well as by the space beyond law. The contributors do not shy away from provoking a rethink of core principles. They interrogate these fundamentals and the changing objectives of the free movement of persons to take up the challenge of doing it better: of making it both more protective of people and more resilient in ethical, systemic, and sociological terms.

"The Investment State proposes a sequel to the welfare state, which addresses the challenges of the 21st century information age"--

Research in Social Factors, also called Environment and Behavior Studies or Person-Environment Relations, is research into the human experience of the built environment. Even since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, as a response to the perceived failures of Modernism, Social Factors continues to ask questions about how people use space, and what meaning that space holds. This edited collection brings together cutting-edge research and contemporary issues into one book. Divided into two parts, the chapters in this collection demonstrate the continuing relevance of, and the wide array of topics in, the field. The first section, History and Future Outlook, addresses the field itself, investigating its history and common terms and updating seminal work. The second section, Perspectives on the User, surveys contemporary research into the human side of design, understanding the built environment through the lens of valuing “the user”, a term which encompasses everyone from Native Americans to children to adults with disabilities to entire cities devastated by tornadoes. Contributors to this volume include emerging and established scholars, as well as practitioners, and touch on issues of sustainability, history, culture, new media, disaster recovery, health, and recreation. This book will particularly appeal to scholars looking to keep abreast of current issues, students of the field endeavouring to understand their chosen subject, and practitioners exploring new strategies in understanding the clients they serve. The array of topics and perspectives examined here demonstrates a renaissance of Social Factors.

In a volume consisting of nearly 50 newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state.

Contemporary accounts of welfare state change have produced conflicting findings and incompatible theoretical explanations. By discussing the most salient aspects of the 'dependent variable problem', this work offers suggestions as to how the problem might be tackled within empirical cross-national analyses of modern welfare states.

In an increasingly risky world the need for social security support is greater than ever. Benefits and tax credits aim to provide protection against economic risks, help families with the costs of bringing up children, enable people to save for retirement, and provide support in old age. Key goals are to redistribute income to alleviate poverty and help people maintain living standards across the lifecourse. Reform of the social security and tax systems has been at the heart of the UK Labour government's aspirations to modernise the welfare state since 1997 with major changes in both policy and administration. This second edition of the important text, Understanding Social Security, reviews these policy developments, giving readers the information and analytical tools to make sense of policy debates and reforms and to evaluate options for the future. The chapters have been extensively updated since the first edition, with new chapters on social security reform, inequalities and social security, and the new 'welfare market'. The main topics covered include: · the social security safety net · racism, ethnicity, migration · social security governance · global social security · social security and the life course · the challenge of childhood poverty · reforming pensions · welfare to work · sickness, incapacity and disability · tax credits · service delivery information technology The book provides a critical examination of social security policy and practice and is essential reading for students of social policy, social work and sociology, as well as policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of social security, welfare-to-work, employment, anti-poverty strategies and welfare rights. It will be of interest to those interested in recent policy developments in these areas, emerging issues and debates, and in wider issues of the modernisation of the welfare state.

Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism offers a theoretical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s new materialist understanding of justice, legality, and rights through the vantage point of his widely invoked but generally misunderstood critique of liberalism. The book begins by reconstructing Marx’s conception of justice and rights through close textual interpretation and extrapolation. The central thesis of the book is, firstly, that Marx regards justice as an essential feature of any society, including the emancipated society of the future; and secondly, that standards of justice and right undergo transformation throughout history. The book then tracks the enduring legacy of Marx’s critique of liberal justice by examining how leading contemporary political theorists such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Nancy Fraser have responded to Marx’s critique of liberalism in the face of global financial capitalism and the hollowing out of democratically-enacted law. The Marx that emerges from this book is therefore a thoroughly modern thinker whose insights shed valuable light on some of the most pressing challenges confronting liberal democracies today.