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Cover -- Half Title -- Dedication -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- The space and time of this book -- A methodological note -- 1 Uncertainty and Prices -- 1.1 Uncertainty and uncertainty management -- 1.1.1 Time and organic interdependency -- 1.1.2 Mutual exclusion of theoretical foundations -- 1.1.3 The paradox of Keynesian uncertainty -- 1.1.4 Decision guidelines under uncertainty -- 1.1.5 The probability theorem -- 1.1.6 The contextual economic agent -- 1.1.7 Context and normative perspectives -- 1.2 Preference for sticky prices - empirical evidence -- 1.2.1 Confidence and the normative value of predictability -- 1.2.2 Producers' motives for price rigidity -- 1.2.3 Positive effects of sticky prices - examples of further evidence -- 1.2.4 Consumer motives for price rigidity -- 1.3 Uncertainty and its materialization -- 1.3.1 Production costs and Post Keynesian pricing -- 1.3.2 Uncertainty and the preference for sticky prices -- 1.3.3 Confidence and time utility -- 1.3.4 A confidence multiplier -- 2 Demand, Supply and Stability -- 2.1 Macroeconomic stability -- 2.1.1 A comment on the supply side -- 2.1.2 Some macroeconomic premises -- 2.1.3 Tax neutrality -- 2.1.4 Macroeconomic instability - the case of tax increment -- 2.1.5 Macroeconomic instability - the tax cut case -- 2.2 Elaborations in search of stabilizing mechanisms -- 2.2.1 The stock market - a definition -- 2.2.2 The stock market and macroeconomic stability -- 2.2.3 Saving and macroeconomic stability -- 3 Collective Stability -- 3.1 Moral rights and collective intervention -- 3.2 Balancing budgets or rights -- 3.2.1 The right to have vs. the right not to give -- 3.2.2 Purpose and ambition of collective intervention -- 3.2.3 Financing collective intervention -- 3.2.4 Effects of fiscal prudence -- 3.2.5 Charity-based welfare society

A social revolution has taken place in Europe. Women's employment patterns changed drastically the last decades. But they are still different across Europe. Welfare state scholars often presume that diversity and change in women's employment across Europe is based on financial (dis) incentive structures embedded in welfare states. This book shows, by in depth analyses of women's (and men's) employment and care patterns as well as child care services, taxation, leave schemes and social security in four different welfare states (the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium) that this logic does not hold. A mother is not primarily the homo economicus welfare state scholars tend to presume. 'to work or to care 'is above all a moral predicament. What explains better the differences in Europe is to place care centrally and analyse welfare states as cultural agents. In the case of caring and paid employment, welfare states send culturally-defined moral images of good-enough caring in the form of ideals of care. An ideal of care implies a definition of what is good care and who gives it. These ideals of care are embedded in welfare states and their regulations, laws and implementation processes. Each welfare state promotes specific ideals of care. Cultural explanations downplay the role of the state too much. Culture, as is shown, is located within rather than outside the welfare state. The welfare state is not only a notary drawing contracts between the state and citizens or a merchant connecting supply and demand, but also a priest. This book shows, by studying care policy in welfare states, that social policy has an impact on women's and men's division of labour and care. But especially when welfare states are not seen as a financial structures only, but as cultural catalysts. - In How Welfare States Care gaat Monique Kremer in op de verschillen in arbeidsdeelname van vrouwen in Denemarken, Engeland, België en Nederland. Vrouwen zijn dan wel in groten getale de arbeidsmarkt opgegaan, toch zijn er grote verschillen. In Denemarken werken moeders meer dan in Engeland en in Nederland inmiddels meer dan in België, maar dan wel in deeltijd. Vaak wordt gezegd dat verzorgingsstaten het verschil maken. Hoe meer en goedkoper er kinderopvang is, des te meer moeders werken. Hoe meer kostwinnersbeginselen in het belastingstelsels en sociale zekerheid, des te minder moeders werken. Na een analyse van sociale zekerheid, belastingen, verlofregelingen en kinderopvang in de vier landen blijkt deze logica niet helemaal te kloppen. Moeders zijn geen homo economicus maar een homo moralis en kiezen soms zelfs tegen hun economische belangen in. Moeders worden gedreven door een zorgideaal: het belangrijkste is dat er uitstekend voor de kinderen wordt gezorgd als ze werkt. Kremer toont overtuigend aan dat verschillende verzorgingsstaten verschillende idealen van zorg prediken. De culturele boodschap is belangrijker dan de financiële.

The role of the Social Democrats in the establishment of the Scandinavian welfare state has been challenged in recent years. Institutional legacies have conditioned postwar Social Democratic reforms, & the bourgeois parties have played a larger role than so far acknowledged. By exploring the origin of five core policies of the early Danish welfare state, it is shown that policy legacy theses cannot account for the pattern of policy organization. Focusing on party & class dynamics, it is demonstrated that the bourgeois parties, & in particular the Liberals, had a crucial influence on the choice of funding model & administrative structure. The distributional & administrative interests of core constituencies shaped the preferences of the bourgeois parties decisively. 1 Table, 82 References. Adapted from the source document.

Scholars have long debated whether welfare policymaking in industrialized democracies is responsive to citizen preferences and whether such policymaking is more responsive to rich than to poor citizens. Debate has been hampered, however, by difficulties in matching data on attitudes toward particular policies to data on changes in the generosity of actual policies. This article uses better, more targeted measures of policy change that allow more valid exploration of responsiveness for a significant range of democracies. It does so by linking multicountry and multiwave survey data on attitudes toward health, pension, and unemployment policies and data on actual policy generosity, not just spending, in these domains. The analysis reveals that attitudes correlate strongly with subsequent changes in welfare generosity in the three policy areas and that such responsiveness is much stronger for richer than for poorer citizens. Representation is likely real but also vastly unequal in the welfare politics of industrialized democracies.

Scholars have long debated whether welfare policymaking in industrialized democracies is responsive to citizen preferences, and whether such policymaking is more responsive to rich than to poor citizens. These debates have been hampered, however, by difficulties in matching data on attitudes towards particular policies to data on changes in actual policy generosity. This paper uses better, more targeted measures of policy change that allow more valid exploration of responsiveness for a significant range of democracies. It does so by linking multi-country and multi-wave survey data on attitudes towards health, pension and unemployment policies, to data on actual policy generosity, not just spending, in these domains. This reveals that attitudes strongly correlate with subsequent changes in welfare generosity in the three policy areas, and that such responsiveness is much stronger for richer than for poorer citizens. Representation is likely real but also vastly unequal in the welfare politics of industrialized democracies.

The post‐financial crisis decision‐making of Britain's Labour Government represents an interesting case of the more general tensions embedded in welfare reform strategies under macroeconomic pressures of financialization. It continued to find additional sources of funding out of current taxation to finance enhanced levels of short‐term frontline services, yet this was always against the backdrop of attempting to facilitate greater long‐term affordability through negotiating the switch to increasingly self‐sufficient welfare citizens. These twin policy objectives provided the backdrop for New Labour's opposition to the Bank of England's post‐financial crisis arguments for forcibly separating banks' trading practices from their depository business. It was in this way that increasing welfare state sources of future bank instability became apparent. In Britain at least, attempts to juggle conflicting short‐term and long‐term policy priorities have resulted in the displacement of the most obvious manifestations of welfare state fiscal crisis into other areas of the public finances.

Institutions, customs, laws are often, and sometimes implausibly, credited with efficiency. They serve a good purpose and if they had not arisen, we would have invented them. The claim is reassuring, though it may be no more than a pious lie. The creation of the state by social contract, and the adoption of supposedly rational customs by primitive peoples, serve as examples. Interpreting the welfare state as a mutual insurance scheme from which all can expect to profit is a classic of the kind.

Contributing to debates on the unpredictability of middle-class attitudes and their changing relations with the welfare states in Europe, this book identifies key trends in the literature and considers the impact of recent welfare reforms on the middle class.

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Welfare State as a Social Compromise.-Chapter 2: Four Worlds of Latin American Welfare States -- Chapter 3: The Political Economy of the Statist and Socio-Corporatist Welfare States -- Chapter 4: The Political Economy of the Commodified, the Familiarist and hybrid Welfare States -- Chapter 5: The Latin American Health Systems -- Chapter 6: The Welfare State and the Wage Relation in Latin America -- Chapter 7: The Welfare State and Gender -- Chapter 8: Conclusions.

A travers une etude surtout du systeme de transferts fiscaux, nous tentons de comprendre le r6le redistributeur de 1'Etat canadien dans les annees contemporaines. Nous faisons l'inventaire des facteurs qui ont module la structure des politiques sociales diveloppee disle debut des annees soixante‐dix. Nous evaluons les modes de pression majeurs au cows des dix dernikres annCes en vue d'un changement dans les outils de redistribution, pourensuite mesurer I'impact de ces pressions sur la substance des politiques sociales et surle r d e redistributeur de I'Etat. Dans notre article, nous identifions un mouvement evident vers une plus grande inCgalitC dans les revenus du marche. Cependant, aucune des pressions structurelles ou ideologiques recentes sur I'Etat indique clairement une attCnuation des buts redistributeurs; les reactions ont CtC plut6t multi‐directionnelles et ont tendu vers un accroissement. Au milieu des annees quatre‐vingts, les changements de politiques n'avaient pas vraiment altC:C I'impact global des systkmes de transferts fiscaux, qui continuaient i neutraliser I'inPgalitC croissante au niveau des revenus du marche, suite i la plus profonde crise Cconomique des dernikres decennies. On est force de conclure quetoute interpretation des politiques sociales comme instruments de stabilite socio‐politique a encore force de loi au Canada.This paper examines the redistributive role of the Canadian state in the contemporary period, focussing in particular on the tax‐transfer system. The paper surveys the factorsthat shaped the structure of social policy that had developed by the early 19705, examines the major pressures for change in redistributive instruments during the last ten years, and then analyses the impact of those pressures on both the substance of social policy and the overall redistributive role of the state. The paper identifies clear movement towards greater inequality in market incomes. However, none of the structural or ideological pressures on the state in recent years points unambiguously towards a dramatic retreat from redistributive goals, and the policy response has tended to be multi‐directional and for the most part incremental. At the mid‐point of the 19805, policy changes had not significantly altered the overall impact of the tax‐transfer system, which continued largely to neutralize the growing inequality in market incomes inherent in the deepest economic crisis in over four decades. This evidence suggests that interpretations of social policy as an instrument of social and political stability in Canada retain considerable force.

The role of gender as a source of social stratification within and between welfare states is increasingly being paid attention to in the welfare state regimes debate. Defamilisation has emerged as a potentially important concept in this context, as it enables the comparison and classification of welfare states in terms of how they facilitate female autonomy and economic independence from the family. However, the methodology used, or the understanding of the concept, limits existing defamilisation typologies. These typologies have therefore been unable to provide an accurate examination of welfare state variation using this concept and, indeed, have in some ways undermined and devalued the usefulness of defamilisation. This article uses cluster analysis to build upon previous research and resurrect the concept of defamilisation. In contrast to existing work in this area, the analysis produces a five‐fold typology of welfare state regimes. This typology differs in many ways from existing models of welfare state regimes, although some core countries emerge as regime ideal types. The article concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of cluster analysis, and defamilisation, for welfare state modelling and future research in this area.