The Survival of the European Welfare State

ISBN-13: 9780415212915 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 268 str.

Stein Kuhnle

Opis

This work seeks to provide a novel perspective on the condition of European welfare states. The challenges to the welfare state are indisputable, ranging from changing demographic, social and family structures to high levels of unemployment, rising entitlements and the growth of social expenditure. Crisis, breakdown and dismantlement have emerged as the catchphrases of both academic and media analyses of the European welfare states. This book challenges the premises behind such reductive attitudes, focusing instead on the survival of the welfare state and its possible future development. An international panel of experts offer transnational and national studies of social policy and welfare reform activities in West European countries during the 1990's, and reach the conclusion that voters and governments are unlikely to allow fundamental elements of the welfare state's architecture to collapse. This book provides an alternative, more optimistic interpretation of the position of the European welfare states on the threshold of the 21st century.

Recenzje

'This book will be a valuable resource for all students, researchers and practitioners interested in the welfare state.' - European Access [February 2002]

Spis treści

Part I: European welfare states in perspective 1. Introduction: growth, adjustments and survival of European welfare states Stein Kuhnle and Matti Alestalo 2. The declining resistance of welfare states to change? Kees Van Kersbergen Part II: National welfare state reforms in the 1990s: comparative and case studies 3. Nordic welfare states in the 1990s: institutional stability, signs of divergence P aring;l Eitrheim and Stein Kuhnle 4. The Finnish welfare state in the 1990s: a long-term perspective Matti Alestalo 5. Welfare crisis and beyond: Danish welfare policies in the 1980s and 1990s J oslash;rgen Goul Andersen 6. Exploring the sustainable limits of public expenditure in the British welfare state Richard Parry 7. Welfare without work? Divergent experiences of reform in Germany and the Netherlands Anton Hemerijck, Philip Manow and Kees Van Kersbergen 8. Implementing major welfare state reforms: a comparison of France and Switzerland - a new-institutionalist approach Fran ccedil;ois-Xavier Merrien and Giuliano Bonoli 9. The Spanish development of Southern European welfare Luis Moreno 10. Reconstructing the welfare state in Southern Europe Maurizio Ferrera Part III: Towards consolidated European welfare states? 11. The treaty on European Union and its revision: sea change or empty shell for European social policies? Gerda Falkner 12. Models for Europe? The lessons of other institutional designs Francis G. Castles 13. The future of the universal welfare state: an institutional approach Bo Rothstein 14. European welfare lessons of the 1990s Stein Kuhnle

O autorze

Stein Kuhnle is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has written extensively and published in many languages on comparative welfare state development in Scandinavia and Europe.