In this article we explore how Swedish welfare politics within health‐care and rehabilitation has opened up a space for nurses’ and occupational therapists’ professional projects. Using historical data, an analysis of the policy‐making process behind welfare programs central to the professionalization of nursing and occupational therapy is presented. The time period covered is, in the case of nurses, the larger part of the twentieth century, while the modern history of occupational therapists first began in the 1940s. Special emphasis (...) is placed on the corporative nature of the Swedish welfare state and the professional strategies utilized by nurses and occupational therapists in their struggle for jurisdiction. In the article, politicization is identified as a core strategy by which female‐dominated welfare state occupations in Sweden have tried to gain influence over the welfare policy‐making process and their occupations’ jurisdiction. (shrink)

Nursing professionalization is both ongoing and global, being significant not only for the nursing workforce but also for patients and healthcare systems. For this reason, it is important to have an in‐depth understanding of this process and the factors that could affect it. This literature review utilizes a welfare state approach to examine macrolevel structural determinants of nursing professionalization, addressing a previously identified gap in this literature, and synthesizes research on the relevance of studying nursing professionalization. The use (...) of a welfare state framework facilitates the understanding that the wider social, economic, and political system exercises significant power over the distribution of resources in a society, providing a glimpse into the complex politics of health and health care. The findings shed light on structural factors outside of nursing, such as country‐level education, health, labor market, and gender policies that could impact the process of professionalization and thus could be utilized to strengthen nursing through facilitating increased professionalization levels. Addressing gender inequalities and other structural determinants of nursing professionalization could contribute to achieving health equity and could benefit health systems through enhanced availability, skill‐level, and sustainability of nursing human resources, improved and efficient access to care, improved patient outcomes, and cost savings. (shrink)

Abstract An analysis of welfare?state restructuring under conservative governments during the 1980s undermines the notion that the nation?state is being rendered obsolete by economic globalization. The nation?state is still the principal site of political conflict. Yet this conflict has to be analyzed in light of global economic and cultural pressures. Conservative attempts to restructure the welfare state were parallel events within a larger transition in the world economy, but they had decisively distinct national trajectories.

ABSTRACT The welfare state is not just a system of personal insurance but an expression of community, of concern for our fellows. It places some things beyond the question of purchasing power. Yet its structures are often criticised as subverting personal and social cares and responsibilities. Arguably there is a ‘dialectic of self‐destruction’ here, a tendency for the institution to undermine its own support. At the same time this problem is inherent in the capitalist state itself, as (...) is brought out by a study of the philosophers of ‘civil society’ from Mandeville to Greèn. It is schematically argued that the welfare state needs reconstructing as an articulation rather than a substitute for ‘community’. Implications for the class, gender and age structures of society are sketched. (shrink)

Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on the breakdown of the post-war settlement.

QUESTION: We would like to begin this discussion of the welfare state and the future of socialism by asking you about several substantive aspects of your work on the limitations of the welfare state. To begin with, why do you often say that late capitalist systems can neither live with nor without the welfare state? Do you consider this to be their fundamental contradiction?OFFE: A short-hand defintion of a contradiciton is that it is a (...) condition in which certain indispensable elements of a social structure cannot be integrated because they are at odds with each other. So to speak, the social structure paralyzes itself because the elements necessary for its survival at the same time render it impossible. (shrink)

The article analyzes the features of three main models of the welfare state: German, Northern European, and Anglo-Saxon. The author turns to the analysis of these models, first, because the problem of the welfare state in the world is again coming to the fore, and secondly, because social development in the most developed countries, in the author’s opinion, in the future will be largely determined by the values and behavioral models that are embedded in the three (...) main versions of the social state in Europe. From the author’s point of view, the key features of the European social model, which combines these three versions, are respect for rights and human dignity, the ideas of equality and solidarity, the ideas of social and political compromise, and the choice of an evolutionary path of development. According to the author, these features are the main difference between the European model and what characterizes the political culture of Russia with its maximalism and tendency to extremes. The author believes that the social experience of Europe is something that needs to be addressed today in Russian conditions and that can be extremely valuable for us. At the same time, as shown in the article, the welfare state in Europe has important country features. The German model is characterized by an emphasis on maintaining the socio-economic status of the individual – this is a conservative model. The Northern European model is based on the principles of universal equality and universalism – it is a social-democratic model. And the Anglo-Saxon model, based on the low role of the state, on the great importance of civil society, is a liberal model. Nevertheless, despite significant differences, as shown in the article, all these models are characterized by the desire to implement compromise principles, to find a “Golden mean,” which makes them highly effective. (shrink)

Establishing the aims and objectives of a welfare state is an integral part of the political, economic and cultural debate, in particular, the repercussions of a welfare state on economic systems and social institutions; the sociopsychological consequences of a welfare state; and the scope, conditions and definitions of welfare. Some discussions address a theological and religious approach to the issue, specifically the Churches’ teaching on welfare and the Churches’ influence on the birth (...) and development of the welfare state. The Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland [EKD]) has also joined the global discussion. The EKD advocates the welfare institutions; moreover, it stresses the contribution of the Protestant theology and culture to the emergence of the social state in Germany. This article aims to outline the Protestant approach to welfare axiology. Following a brief sketch of the welfare theory, it examines the previous and current Protestant influences on the welfare state and system. It also presents significant attempts to distinguish crucial values and the most serious challenges of the welfare state. The primary sources of the reflection are the recently published documents of the EKD (Denkschrifts), and the source literature. Contribution: The theological proposals of the Evangelical Church in Germany contribute to the axiological and ethical debate on welfare and the social state. The research addresses the focus and scope of the journal of the promotion of multidisciplinary aspects of studies in the general theological area. (shrink)

Does the increasing politicization of ethnic and racial diversity of Western societies threaten to undermine the welfare state? This volume is the first systematic attempt to explore this linkage between "the politics of recognition" and "the politics of redistribution".

Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is (...) measured as women's average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

In this article the author tries to answer the difficult question of the roots of the welfare state. The study of the French example shows that if some roots are ideological, at the same time they are sociological, too. In the article the main streams of ideological roots are described and conclusion is drawn that nowadays sociological issues are very important. The popularity of the welfare state shows that dismantlement is impossible in the democratic States. Yet, (...) its crisis due to its cost in a globalized world asks the question of the balance point between the fight against assistantship and maintenance of the redistributive nature of the welfare state. The answer to that question still remains the key challenge for European politicians. (shrink)

Translator's Introduction Political Theory in the Welfare State [Politische Theorie im Wohl- fahrtsstaat] was originally published (Olzog, Munich) in. ...

Liberal egalitarians tend to be committed both to generous asylum policies and generous, universal welfare states. Yet there may be political, social and economic reasons why there is a conflict in realising both. Asylum seekers may create economic pressures to the welfare state, or undermine national solidarity supposedly necessary to support redistribution. In this paper, I discuss how political theorists should approach these empirical concerns. I take issue with the view that theorists can simply move between ‘realism’ (...) and ‘idealism’ by accepting more or less of reality. Instead, political theorists should seek to offer a critical description of the conflict, which can reveal structures of power that ought to be subject to normative scrutiny. To this end, I discuss two accounts of how the welfare state may justify asylum restrictions in relation to the case of Sweden, a universal welfare state that has recently introduced restrictions on asylum to protect the welfare state. I argue along these accounts that the welfare state is both an important source of political and social order and a foundation of the personal moral experience. Yet a critical analysis also illustrates how these claims weaken as underlying methodological nationalism and bias towards existing power structures are brought to light. Asylum restrictions cannot be justified if they contribute to perpetuating these power structures, which cause some of the conflict with the welfare state in the first place. (shrink)

This book explores contemporary welfare state reform from a moral and philosophical perspective.

Jeffrey Friedman broaches a number of criticisms of Libertarianism as a conceptual basis for opposing the extensive modern welfare state, examining several variants and concluding that they are fundamentally unsupported. He opts for a “consequentialist” view of foundations. Nevertheless, he thinks that the modem welfare state is subject to effective critique along such lines. But rational contractarian individualism works and does provide foundations for libertarianism, while “consequentialism” is an ill‐defined theory.that is quite unpromising for the proposed (...) critique; nevertheless, Friedman's empirical and economic critique of the welfare state is valid. (shrink)

State provision of “merit goods” and of narrowly targeted cash payments has higher priority than large universal cash grants. Analysis of the Swedish budget shows that advanced countries do not have the taxing capacity to do both at once. Other problems with cash payments schemes include the disincentive to work for pay, reducing taxpaying capacity, and retrograde effects on gender equality. After the achievement of a welfare state, rises over time in productivity may gradually open up room (...) in the national budget for universal cash payments. (shrink)

Is capitalism compatible with democratic equality? Rawls’s critique of welfare-state capitalism implies a negative answer. I argue that Rawls’s critique fails and that welfare-state capitalism can satisfy the demands of democratic equality. I articulate a social democratic interpretation of the ideal of democratic equality and show that it justifies welfare-state capitalism. This argument also implies that welfare-state capitalism can satisfy the demands of democratic equality as interpreted by Rawls’s justice as fairness. So, (...) whether we accept Rawls’s interpretation of democratic equality or the social democratic alternative, welfare-state capitalism can satisfy the demands of democratic equality. (shrink)

The welfare state refers to a concept of a state that focuses on ensuring that a broad range of social rights is provided for all citizens by acting on the social mechanisms and consequences of the market economy. In such a state government plays a vital role in balancing social inequalities by providing or subsidizing social benefits and services. This activity is called social policy. Individual countries are characterized by different welfare state models, goals, (...) values, and groups of beneficiaries. Such a state usually supports a recovery from the difficult situation of the population, which is not, itself, able to take care of their basic needs. (shrink)

Does the welfare state help the poor? This surprisingly simple question often generates more heat than light. By the welfare state, I mean transfer programs aimed at helping the poor through the direct redistribution of income. Defenders of the welfare state often assume that the poor benefit from it, while critics suggest that the losses outweigh the gains. The most notable of such criticisms is Charles Murray's Losing Ground, which suggests that the welfare (...) state has failed to achieve its stated ends. (shrink)

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to “positive liberty,” are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny (...) the usefulness of this familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also “welfare-state” liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional “welfare-state liberals” such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that “freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end.” To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the “classical-liberal welfare state” claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to “correct market failures” in the provision of welfare. (shrink)

The Welfare State is a key policy issue of the 1990s. The essays in this book depart from much of the recent economic debate in emphasising the positive contributions of the Welfare State, and in assessing its efficiency in relation to the objectives which it is intended to achieve. These objectives are not just the alleviation of poverty but more broadly the provision of security and the redistribution of income. Part A of the book sets the (...) current debate in the context of the current evidence about income inequality and poverty in Europe. Part B analyses the existing role of the Welfare State, with particular reference to retirement pensions and unemployment benefit. Part C investigates proposals for reform and security. What is the case for greater targeting? How can we design a social safety net? What is the future of European social protection policy? (shrink)

While the political aspects of the interwar dystopias have received much attention, less focus has been given to the specific correlation to the economic thinking and developments of the period, in particular the prominence of economic planning. This article suggests that such a connection is significant by examining a key Swedish novel from the period, Kallocain, in relation to the early economic theory of the Scandinavian welfare state. The article then relates these findings to links between Brave New (...) World and the thinking of John Maynard Keynes. Finally, the kinds of critique articulated in these fictional works are centered around the citizens’ emotional and interior lives in new planned societies, and around their views on bad, disloyal, or painful feelings. (shrink)

This article gives a review of the welfare state and analyzes whether it is being undermined by the impact of increasing ethnic and racial diversity.

Criminal violence is one of the most pressing problems in Latin America and the Caribbean, with profound political consequences. Its effects on social policy preferences, however, remain largely unexplored. This article argues that to understand such effects it is crucial to analyze victimization experiences and perceptions of insecurity as separate phenomena with distinct attitudinal consequences. Heightened perceptions of insecurity are associated with a reduced demand for public welfare provision, as such perceptions reflect a sense of the state’s failure (...) to provide public security. At the same time, acknowledging the mounting costs and needs that direct experience with crime entails, victimization is expected to increase support for social policies, particularly for health services. Survey data from twenty-four Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 2008–12 show that perceptions of insecurity indeed reduce support for the state’s role in welfare provision, whereas crime victimization strongly increases such preferences. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore the moral foundations and the political prospects of the welfare state in the United States. Among the questions addressed are the following: Has public support for the welfare state faded?

This paper examines the causes of prominent radical political options and behaviors that are already visible on a daily basis in the European Union. In public discourse there is a simplified belief that the primarily responsibility for this lies with the immigrants and fear caused by terrorist attacks carried out in Europe or the old European latent nationalism. Although these elements undoubtedly contribute to the development of radicalism, the author argues that the key sources for this issue should be found (...) in the difficulties encountered by the European national welfare states. This is the source of ever-greater mutual intolerance among the citizens of the European Union, which can take on various forms of political, cultural, ideological and physical conflict. On the basis of these arguments the author concludes that the European Union is indeed in a historic milestone but the real danger of the European Union?s disintegration is not primarily in cultural, civilization, confessional, security or geopolitical sources, but this source should first be sought through the prism of the European national social states and the expectations of citizens referring to them. nema. (shrink)

Analyses of the global financial crisis that assign causality to the erosion of parts of the welfare state that protected individuals miss the importance of macro level regulation that protected firms and the financial system from itself. Post-Depression macro level regulation of finance prevented the emergence of mismatched maturities where deposits lacked state guarantees, and thus prevented runs on banks or near-banks. A balance sheet approach shows that macro regulation linked long duration liabilities in housing finance to (...) long duration assets. Deregulation permitted the reemergence of mismatched maturities, providing both a necessary and sufficient condition for the current financial crisis. (shrink)

The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector. According to the influential social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon, however, there is also a deeper and less familiar reason for the crisis of the welfare state. He shows here that a fundamental practical and philosophical justification for traditional welfare policies--that all citizens share equal risks--has been undermined by social and intellectual change. (...) If we wish to achieve the goals of social solidarity and civic equality for which the welfare state was founded, Rosanvallon argues, we must radically rethink social programs. Rosanvallon begins by tracing the history of the welfare state and its founding premise that risks, especially the risks of illness and unemployment, are equally distributed and unpredictable. He shows that this idea has become untenable because of economic diversification and advances in statistical and risk analysis. It is truer than ever before--and far more susceptible to analysis--that some individuals will face much greater risks than others because of their jobs and lifestyle choices. Rosanvallon argues that social policies must be more narrowly targeted. And he draws on evidence from around the world, in particular France and the United States, to show that such programs as unemployment insurance and workfare could better reflect individual needs by, for example, making more explicit use of contracts between the providers and receivers of benefits. His arguments have broad implications for welfare programs everywhere and for our understanding of citizenship in modern democracies and economies. "For more than two decades Pierre Rosanvallon has been analyzing the development and the crisis of the 'welfare state,' combining precise, specific knowledge with philosophical and historical depth in a way that is rare among social policy analysts.... [A] subtle and informed book."--From the foreword by Nathan Glazer. (shrink)

Hegel’s defense of the welfare state retains appeal when grounded in dialogical human rights ethics defended as true normative ethical theory. His dialectic of trade passes through budding consumer desires in the once sovereign family and trade between households risking market-induced poverty, ending in market regulation by an external welfare state. The dialectic recurs on a higher level as we in domestic civil society turn to foreign products. Market-induced poverty generates an external global welfare (...) class='Hi'>state gradually visible in today’s international financial institutions Hegel did not see. The US has fallen subject to the dialectic of trade, with relative economic decline and a more dialogical relation with the outside world. Yet a welfare state does not replace the market, but protects it against from itself. Entrepreneurship remains key to fighting world poverty. Beside mini-loans, “mini competitive economic colonialism”—neither classical political colonialism nor monopolistic economic neocolonialism—creates new consumer markets in the poorest nations for the products of developed nations, and vice versa: developing nations are not made dependent on a single foreign power or international financial organization, nor forced to generate investment capital domestically by an authoritarian suppression of consumption and democracy, nor forced to sacrifice economic development. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine whether the Welfare State project has failed and how this apparent failure is intrinsically connected to the rise of citizen discontent. By tracing the historical roots of the Rechtsstaat and its development into the Welfare State, we highlight how the increasing gap between grand promises and their limited fulfillment has fueled widespread discontent. The much-acclaimed Welfare State seems to have transformed itself into a Malaise State, marked by a (...) dual institutional failure: the inability to universalize its promises and the lack of political responses to the social discontent caused by that first incapacity. In this context, what was once considered a collective social desire has become (hyper)individualized within a “turboglobalized” world, inverting the traditional relation in which public improvement had the capacity to positively impact private life. Despite this, the responsibility of governments remains justified, as the transfer of power through democratic elections inherently carries the condition of accountability. However, democracy by itself seems unable to resolve these crises, especially when it comes to the well know populisms that carry out the so-called policies of disconcertment. Traditional institutional structures and power divisions also fall short, as the crisis of liberal democracy transcends national borders, becoming a shared Western dilemma. This scenario presents a paradox: while liberal democracy struggles with its self-created problems, abandoning its core values risks descent into tyranny. How, then, can we bridge the democracy gap while remaining democratic? We identify that a forward-thinking State philosophy, rooted in institutional (re)imagination and a reconstruction of the political and conceptual foundations of power, offers a viable pathway for addressing these impasses and envisioning effective solutions. (shrink)

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann argued that the law functions as society’s immune system by regulating conflicts that threaten the certainty of expectation structures. In this article, we argue that law itself has become a target of new social immune mechanisms. Since the 1980s, welfare states have increasingly seen their own structures as a threat. Today, the ideal is a public sector consisting of organizations that constantly emerge anew by selecting the structures that fit each specific moment, case, and citizen. To (...) protect public sector organizations against their own structures, ‘potentialization’ now functions as a social autoimmune mechanism by initiating a constant search for new openings and possibilities. This critique of structures includes a critique of legal structures like rights. Looking at the Danish law of early retirement as our empirical case, this paper analyzes, how the tension between law and ‘potentialization’ is built into the law itself. While the law gives citizens certain rights to early retirement, it simultaneously ‘protects’ against the same rights by potentializing citizens. ‘Potentialization’ here functions as a mechanism that protects the operations of a system against its legal structures. It functions by ‘un-relating’ those operations from the structures. This means that when citizens claim their right to pensions, the social workers can reject them on the grounds of a right to a future that is not foreclosed and ‘parked’ on a pension. The paper’s contribution is to show how potentialization works by dissolving even fundamental legal expectations. This profoundly transforms the relationship between the citizen and the public sector. (shrink)

Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market’s utilitarian logic can corrupt or ‘crowd out’ altruistic feelings or motivations, what makes us think that the welfare state cannot (...) also be a source of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first re-examine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss’s work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout’s position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss’s arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi’s “critical point” theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein. Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. (shrink)

This study is the first to explicitly assess the connections between welfare state spending and the gendered and classed dimensions of unpaid care work across 29 European nations. Our research uses multi-level model analysis of European Quality of Life Survey data, examining childcare and housework burdens for people living with at least one child under the age of 18. Two key findings emerge: First, by disaggregating different types of unpaid care work, we find that childcare provision is more (...) gendered than classed—reflecting trends toward “intensive mothering”. Housework and cooking, on the contrary, demonstrate both gender and class effects, likely because they are more readily outsourced by wealthier individuals to the paid care sector. Second, while overall social expenditure has no effect on hours spent on childcare and housework, results suggest that family policy may shape the relationship between gender, income, and housework. Specifically, family policy expenditure is associated with a considerably smaller gender gap vis-à-vis the time dedicated to housework: This effect is present across the income spectrum, but is particularly substantial in the case of lower income women. (shrink)

Claus Offe is one of the leading social scientists working in Germany today, and his work, particularly on the welfare state, has been enormously influential both in Europe and the United States. Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on the breakdown of the post-war settlement.The political writings in this book are primarily (...) concerned with the origins of the present difficulties - what Offe calls the 'crises of crisis management' - of welfare capitalist states. He indicates why in the present period, these states are no longer capable of fully managing the socio-political problems and conflicts generated by late capitalist societies and discusses the viability of New Right, corporatist, and democratic socialist proposals for restructuring the welfare state.The book also offers fresh and penetrating insights into a range of other subjects, including social movements, political parties, law, social policy, and labor markets. There is an interview with Claus Offe, prepared especially for this volume, and a substantial introductory chapter by John Keane which links the essays and explores Offe's central themes.Claus Offe has researched and lectured widely throughout Europe and North America and is Professor in the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. John Keane is an editor of Telos and Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Sociology at the Polytechnic of Central London. This book is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Public insurance is both everywhere and nowhere. It is everywhere in the sense that it is omnipresent in industrialised societies: public health insurance, unemployment benefits and pensions. It is a sizeable part of modern nations’ public budget . It has permeated our understanding of societal institutions to the extent that now access to public insurance coverage is understood as being a struggle for equality and equal citizenship .Public insurance is only one aspect of a broader phenomenon: the transformation of modern (...) societies into insurance societies, i.e. societies that are orientated toward risk-management . Nevertheless, public insurance is at the core of the welfare state as insurance system. Paul Krugman once said of the modern state that it is ‘an insurance company with an army’ while David Moss argues that government is the ultimate risk manager ( .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

This article presents an overview of the institutional architecture and the organizing principles of the German welfare state, which is widely and rightly considered to be the model case of North West European Continental welfare states. The author's ambition is to be both systematic and historical in his presentation, emphasizing the process in which different layers of the historically evolved structure serve certain functions, such as poor relief, the protection of workers at work, the protection of workers (...) outside of work, the determination of wages, and the level of employment. In the second part of the essay, the question under discussion is of what happens to this structure under the impact of German unification, European integration, economic `globalization', and lasting labor market disequilibrium. The third and final part outlines a policy proposal that aims at the strengthening of social citizenship rights which replace the `worker' as the reference unit of social protection with the `citizen'. (shrink)

These essays explore the history and justification of the welfare state and examine private alternatives to the public provision of aid. Essays focus on the nature of personal responsibility, the impact of identity politics on the welfare state, and the various strategies that have been proposed to deal with the problem of poverty. Others assess the success or failure of public housing, government assistance to veterans, or other specific programmes, suggesting ways of reforming, expanding, or replacing (...) them. (shrink)

With the demise of socialism in Eastern Europe, the Western welfare state is treated as the unquestionable alternative by most intellectuals. They have yet to come to terms with what Claus Offe, the German sociologist, describes as the contradictions of the welfare state and the persistent crises of crisis management. This paper critically assesses Offe's contribution in light of the recent reforms in ?really existing socialism.?; The author contends that although Offe's neo?Schumpeterian argument goes a long (...) way toward explaining the present instability of the welfare state and the contradictions of state intervention in general, including that of the socialist?interventionist state, Offe does not realize that his analysis casts into serious doubt the claim that the welfare state is a viable corrective to either unbridled markets or state socialism. (shrink)

In Europe, telecare is the use of remote monitoring technology to enable vulnerable people to live independently in their own homes. The technology includes electronic tags and sensors that transmit information about the user's location and patterns of behavior in the user's home to an external hub, where it can trigger an intervention in an emergency. Telecare users in the United Kingdom sometimes report their unease about being monitored by a ?Big Brother,? and the same kind of electronic tags that (...) alert telecare hubs to the movements of someone with dementia who is ?wandering? are worn by terrorist suspects who have been placed under house arrest. For these and other reasons, such as ordinary privacy concerns, telecare is sometimes regarded as an objectionable extension of a ?surveillance state.? In this article, we defend the use of telecare against the charge that it is Orwellian. In the United States, the conception of telecare primarily as telemedicine, and the fact that it is not typically a government responsibility, make a supposed connection with a surveillance state even more doubtful than in Europe. The main objection, we argue, to telecare is not its intrusiveness, but the danger of its deepening the isolation of those who use it. There are ways of organizing telecare so that the independence and privacy of users are enhanced, but personal isolation may be harder to address. As telecare is a means of reducing the cost of publicly provided social and health care, and the need to reduce public spending is growing, the correlative problem of isolation must be addressed alongside the goal of promoting independence. (shrink)