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Governments in Europe responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by expanding their welfare systems to protect health, jobs, and incomes. The varied initiatives embody the principle of solidarity and demonstrate how welfare programs serve as a form of collective insurance against risk. But the twin health and economic crises also exposed gaps in coverage for many, including migrants and gig economy workers. Fiscal austerity, enforced by the European Union, has long constrained efforts to close those gaps.

Robust welfare systems preserved jobs and ensured universal health care, but the pandemic exposed gaps and the need for revitalized social compact for a changing labor market.

In recent decades, governments have made labour markets sites of immigration enforcement through employer sanctions and other measures. In some countries, unions and employers' associations facilitate implementation of these initiatives, while in others they openly or tacitly resist cooperation. This paper explores these patterns of cooperation and resistance through analysis of six countries. The method used is qualitative comparative analysis, using primary and secondary sources that include newspaper coverage, government reports, union documents and scholarly accounts. The explanation centres on the degree of social partner embeddedness in government decision-making and economic management. In countries with institutionalized, coordinated relationships between the social partners and the state, this coordination extends to implementation of employers' sanctions. In systems with less institutionalized cooperation, employers and unions are less likely to assist the immigration control objectives of state officials. These practices also affect migrants' ability to live within a society, making them not only a form of immigration control, but also important for migrant wellbeing.

A new book lays blame for the weak social safety net on political rhetoric that justifies government aid as an individual right and not a public good–a tradition that dates back to the New Deal.

Congress presents an array of hurdles to potential legislation. This paper reconsiders that view in light of some important changes made to health policy in the past three decades. The passage of these reforms reflects changes in the functioning of Congress, including the construction of greater bureaucratic capacity and centralization of power in the hands of party leaders. The findings of the paper have implications for scholars of the American state, who tend either to ignore Congress or to view it as a source of political fragmentation. Congress should be thought of as an important component of the overall state apparatus and it is not only a veto player, but also at times an agent of reform. Adapted from the source document.

Aux États-Unis, on peut déplorer l'absence de politiques publiques destinées au plus grand nombre qui aideraient les parents ayant un emploi. In fine , la plupart des familles sont tributaires des marchés privés et des employeurs pour concilier vie familiale et vie professionnelle. Dans ces conditions, les familles à revenus élevés ont davantage que les autres accès à des modes de garde d'enfants de qualité et elles sont plus susceptibles de travailler pour des employeurs enclins à leur consentir des périodes de congés. Ces familles ont aussi les moyens de payer des personnes faiblement rémunérées, essentiellement des femmes, pour garder leurs enfants et pour accomplir des tâches ménagères, et les femmes mieux nanties peuvent ainsi conserver leur emploi rémunéré. En conséquence, non seulement le système américain n'aide pas la plupart des familles à gérer leurs conflits entre famille et travail, mais il exacerbe les inégalités de revenus.

What explains the surprising growth of work-family policies in several West European countries? Much research on the welfare state emphasizes its institutional stickiness and immunity to major change. Yet, over the past two decades, governments in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have introduced important reforms to their welfare regimes, enacting paid leave schemes, expanded rights to part-time work, and greater investments in child care. A comparison of these countries reveals a similar sequence of political and policy change. Faced with growing electoral instability and the decline of core constituencies, party leaders sought to attract dealigning voter groups, such as women. This led them to introduce feminizing reforms of their party structures and adopt policies to support mothers' employment. In all three cases, women working within the parties played an important role in hatching or lobbying for these reforms. After comparing three countries that moved in a path-shifting direction, this article engages in a brief traveling exercise, examining whether a similar set of dynamics are lacking in two countries—Austria and Italy—that have moved more slowly in reforming these policies. Against the prevailing scholarly literature that emphasizes path dependence and slow-moving change, this article reveals the continued power of electoral politics in shaping redistributive policies.