How can we best analyse contemporary welfare state change? And how can we explain and understand the politics of it? This book contributes to these questions both empirically and theoretically by concentrating on one of the least likely cases for welfare state transformation in Europe. It analyzes in detail how and why institutional change has taken Germany’s welfare state from a conservative towards a new work-first regime. Christof Schiller introduces a novel analytical framework to make sense of the politics of welfare state transformation by providing the missing link: the capacity of the core executive over time. Examining the policy making process in labour market policy in the period between 1980 and 2010, he identifies three different policy making episodes and analyses their interaction with developments and changes in such policy areas as pension policy, family policy, labour law, tax policy and social assistance. The book advances existing efforts aimed at conceptualizing and measuring welfare state change by proposing a clear-cut conceptualization of social policy regime change and introduces a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the welfare-work nexus between 1980 and 2010 in Germany. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social policy, comparative welfare state reform, welfare politics, government, governance, public policy, German politics, European politics, political economy, sociology and history.

​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 introduces a unique, new dataset on welfare state reforms in the UK, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany from 1974 to 2014. Using a variety of welfare state types in Europe, the authors have systematically investigated core questions that have preoccupied the welfare state literature at least since the 1990s. These include the extent of path dependency in mature welfare states, the usage of so-called "invisible" policy instruments for hiding cutbacks, and the role of partisanship – on whether the ideological color of the incumbent affects policy – which have been analysed in depth by examining the new dataset presented in this book. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners studying, and working in, welfare and the welfare state, and more broadly to political science, sociology and social policy.

This edited volume provides new empirical evidence of far-reaching changes to welfare states globally, which have changed the boundaries of the 'public' and 'private' domain within the mixed economies of welfare. Various modes of policy intervention are investigated, providing a nuanced account of reforms in the past decade.

This edited volume provides a synthesis on the question of business attitudes towards and its influence over the development of the modern welfare state. It gathers leading scholars in the field to offer both in-depth historical country case studies and comparative chapters that discuss contemporary developments. Composed of six archive-based historical narratives of business’ role in the development of social insurance programs in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and six comparative case studies, this volume also extends the study of business to policy fields that have hitherto received little attention in the literature, such as active labor market policies, educational policies, employment protection legislation, healthcare, private pension programs and work‐family policies. It illuminates why business groups have responded so very differently to demands for increased social protection against different labor market risks in different countries and over time. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of comparative welfare, political science, sociology, social policy studies, comparative political economy and welfare history. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

One of the fundamental challenges facing modern welfare states is the question of work-family reconciliation. An increasing share of mothers work, but many European welfare states do not adequately support the dual-earner model, especially in southern Europe. After 2005, German policy-makers transformed the nature of Germany’s family policy regime through a number of legislative measures, whilst Italy, a country with many similarities, witnessed little change. Using a multi-methods approach, this book addresses the puzzle of why Germany was able to implement far-reaching reforms in this policy area after a long impasse and Italy was not. As such, it delivers a broad, systematic account of these reforms and sheds light on why similar reforms were not also adopted in other similar welfare states at the same time. More generally, it contributes to understanding the determinants of welfare policy change in modern European welfare states. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and professionals working on topics linked to European politics, welfare and work-family policies, comparative politics, social policy, and more broadly to political science and gender studies.

This book analyses the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), one of Europe’s most successful and influential political parties. The CDU might have been expected to struggle in the circumstances of a more diverse, secular reunified Germany, yet it has prospered to an extent almost unparalleled in western Europe. Chapters consider the CDU’s policies (the factors driving them, their variation across Germany, the relationship to women, and the welfare state), its organisational development and change, and its position within the party system. Contributors particularly emphasise the diversity of the CDU, and the way it varies across Germany’s regions. The CDU is compared to other Christian Democratic parties, and special consideration is given to the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). This book was published as a special issue of German Politics.

This Handbook will comprise of 29 original pieces from key contributors to the field of European social policy. It is intended to capture the ‘state of the art’ in European social policy and to generate and contribute to debates on the the future of European social policy in the 21st Century. It will be a comprehensive and authoritative resource for research and teaching covering themes and policy areas including social exclusion, pensions, education, children and family, as well as mobility and migration, multiculturalism, and climate change.

The Handbook examines contemporary trends and issues in the formation of families over the different stages of the life cycle and how they interact with family-oriented social policies of modern welfare states, mainly in the OECD countries of Western Europe, East Asia and the U.S. Focusing largely on family needs in the early stages of the life course, the conventional package of policies tends to emphasize programs and benefits clustered around measures to support marriage, childbearing, care, the reconciliation of employment and childcare during the preschool years. Drawing on a multidisciplinary group of experts from many countries, this book extends the conventional perspective on family policy by also looking at later phases of the family life course. In taking a life course perspective, this Handbook extends the purview to encompass the three main stages of family life. These are (1) cohabitation, marriage and starting a family; (2) the early years of parenting, care and employment, and (3) the period of transitions and later life: family breakdown and intergenerational supports across the life course.

Tony Blair was the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in British history. This book, the third in a trilogy of books on New Labour edited by Martin Powell, analyses the legacy of his government for social policy, focusing on the extent to which it has changed the UK welfare state. Drawing on both conceptual and empirical evidence, the book offers forward-looking speculation on emerging and future welfare issues. The book's high-profile contributors examine the content and extent of change. They explore which of the elements of modernisation matter for their area. Which sectors saw the greatest degree of change? Do terms such as 'modern welfare state' or 'social investment state' have any resonance? They also examine change over time with reference to the terms of the government. Was reform a fairly continuous event, or was it concentrated in certain periods? Finally, the contributors give an assessment of likely policy direction under a future Labour or Conservative government. Previous books in the trilogy are New Labour, new welfare state? (1999) and Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms (2002) (see below). The works should be read by academics, undergraduates and post-graduates on courses in social policy, public policy and political science.