Suchergebnisse

This article explains the popular revolt against austerity in Southern Europe as the outcome of profound politico-economic changes that are shaped by the transformation of the European Union's (EU's) macro-economic governance. It comprises three parts. The first part demonstrates how ordoliberalism – the Germanic variant of (neo)liberal economic thinking – was embedded in the EU's new macro-economic governance, in processes that constitutionalise austerity and remove democratic controls over the economy. The second part examines the impact of austerity-driven reforms on welfare and employment in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. These reforms undermined the social reproduction of Southern Europe's familistic welfare model by destabilising three key pillars of social protection: employment security for households' primary earners; small property ownership; and pension adequacy. The third part analyses the emergence of anti-austerity social politics in Southern Europe, both parliamentary and grassroots, and assesses their effectiveness in light of the collapse of public trust in both EU and domestic political institutions. The article concludes with our reflections on the fragility of EU's integration process under the hegemony of ordoliberalism.

This article explains the popular revolt against austerity in Southern Europe as the outcome of profound politico-economic changes that are shaped by the transformation of the European Union's (EU's) macro-economic governance. It comprises three parts. The first part demonstrates how ordoliberalism – the Germanic variant of (neo)liberal economic thinking – was embedded in the EU's new macro-economic governance, in processes that constitutionalise austerity and remove democratic controls over the economy. The second part examines the impact of austerity-driven reforms on welfare and employment in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. These reforms undermined the social reproduction of Southern Europe's familistic welfare model by destabilising three key pillars of social protection: employment security for households' primary earners; small property ownership; and pension adequacy. The third part analyses the emergence of anti-austerity social politics in Southern Europe, both parliamentary and grassroots, and assesses their effectiveness in light of the collapse of public trust in both EU and domestic political institutions. The article concludes with our reflections on the fragility of EU's integration process under the hegemony of ordoliberalism.

AbstractIn this article, we revisit Karl Polanyi's concept of 'oikos' in order to reconceptualize the role of the family as both a welfare provider and an economic actor in the social reproduction of East and South East Asian welfare capitalisms. Our article is structured in four parts. First, we critically review existing approaches on the characteristics of welfare capitalism in East and South East Asia. We argue that existing approaches tend to isolate family as a welfare provider and neglect how the role of the family is institutionalized as a collective actor. The second part focuses on the role of the family in the social reproduction of welfare capitalism, and explores how, in East and South East Asia, the specific conditions for family's role as an economic actor were institutionalized historically. The third part revisits Polanyi's concept of 'oikos' and how 'householding' constitutes one of the most important forms of economic action allowing us to examine the family as a socio‐economic actor. In the fourth section, we provide an analysis of families' available strategies and discuss evidence related to private education expenditure, household debt and labour market income share. We conclude by highlighting the need to re‐articulate the importance of family as a collective socio‐economic actor that, despite recent reforms and path departures, remains at the epicentre of East and South East Asian welfare capitalisms.

Our article examines the position of middle classes in the social reproduction of southern European political economies in the light of the sovereign debt crisis. The first part analyses the rise of middle classes in southern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. The second part discusses the transformation of southern European political economies after their entry in the European Monetary Union. The third part explores how the fiscal consolidation measures adopted as a response to the sovereign debt crisis contributed to the further undermining of southern European middle classes' income and employment security. We discuss how the new European economic governance challenges the politico-economic foundations of southern European political economies by transforming them into de-facto 'consolidation states' (Streeck, 2013). Using EU-SILC data on disposable income we also demonstrate the differential impact of austerity measures. The erosion of middle classes has accelerated post-crisis, however, the speed and depth of this erosion and its political fallout are not uniform.

AbstractIn this article, we review the EU's significance for social policies in the UK. The EU has a limited legal role or institutional capacity to directly regulate the social policies of its member states. This role is even more limited in the case of non‐eurozone countries. There are a handful of EU policy measures which have had effects on social policy in the UK. However, these effects have not changed the institutional arrangements for making, organising and delivering social policy, which remain firmly in the hands of UK governments. In consequence, a 'Leave' or 'Remain' result has relatively limited implications for social policy, except in the case of specific social groups: notably for UK and other EU nationals who have lived and worked in at least one other EU country. Other EU legislation and regulation is compatible with the current and historical policy preferences of UK governments and political parties.

In this article, we review the EU's significance for social policies in the UK. The EU has a limited legal role or institutional capacity to directly regulate the social policies of its member states. This role is even more limited in the case of non-eurozone countries. There are a handful of EU policy measures which have had effects on social policy in the UK. However, these effects have not changed the institutional arrangements for making, organising and delivering social policy, which remain firmly in the hands of UK governments. In consequence, a 'Leave' or 'Remain' result has relatively limited implications for social policy, except in the case of specific social groups: notably for UK and other EU nationals who have lived and worked in at least one other EU country. Other EU legislation and regulation is compatible with the current and historical policy preferences of UK governments and political parties.

This report provides an overview of recent and current research in the field of society, social policy and welfare in the European Union. It identifies the contributions of four sub-fields of research in, respectively, comparative welfare state studies, comparative social policy, political economy and sociology, and EU studies. The report identifies key gaps in existing research, including problems arising forom the lack of knowledge integration and conceptual innovation across disciplines. The report identifies three current trends in social policy and welfare in the Union with significance for our understanding of the EU and the UK, all of which are relatively under-researched and/or their policy and social implications are not well understood. First, the changing patterns and characteristics of social inequality within and across member states, as well as the ways these are shaped by new developments in the political economy of welfare in the EU. Second, the development and extension of markets in social protection and public services in the EU single market. Third, the development of transnational, private and informal social protection by EU residents. In relation to how these trends might be addressed in research, we identify the need to develop a "third generation of comparative research", to integrate comparisons of the interaction of EU-level and member-state policymaking across countries and across policies. Finally, recommendations are provided as to how existing and future research in these areas might be better utilised and its policy impact enhanced.

Résumé.L'expression «métarégulation« décrit un mode de gouvernance transnationale des relations professionnelles, qui est le produit des efforts faits pour résoudre les contradictions entre les conventions collectives nationales et la liberté des Etats membres de l'UE de fournir des services et de détacher des travailleurs à l'étranger. La norme qui sous‐tend cette métarégulation est la concurrence non seulement entre les travailleurs des Etats membres de l'UE, mais aussi entre les réglementations du travail de ces derniers. Après avoir défini les concepts de «pouvoir structurel« et d' «espace social«, les auteurs commentent des cas empiriques illustrant la métarégulation progressive des relations professionnelles dans l'UE, et démontrent comment le rapport de forces asymétrique entre les travailleurs et le capital se creuse en faveur de ce dernier.

Resumen.El término «metarreglamentación» describe un modo de gobernanza transnacional surgido en un intento de resolver el conflicto entre las normativas laborales y la libertad de provisión de servicios y de desplazamiento de trabajadores en toda la Unión Europea. Se sustenta en el principio de competencia, no solo entre trabajadores de diversos Estados miembros, sino también entre sus normativas laborales. Basándose en los conceptos de poder estructural y campo social, el artículo examina casos empíricos que ilustran la metarreglamentación paulatina de las relaciones laborales en la UE y demuestran que la asimetría que caracteriza las relaciones de poder entre trabajo y capital se está ampliando a favor de este último.

Abstract."Meta‐regulation" describes the transnational governance of industrial relations emerging from attempts to resolve conflicts between national collective agreements and EU Member States' freedom to provide services and post workers abroad. The norm underpinning such meta‐regulation is competition, not only between workers from different EU Member States but also between States' labour regulations. Using the concepts of "structural power" and "social field", the authors discuss judicial decisions that illustrate the gradual meta‐regulation of industrial relations in the EU and show how the power asymmetry between labour and capital is growing in favour of the latter.

Latin America has emerged as a social policy 'laboratory' in recent decades and most prominent among the social policy innovations developed in the region are the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes (Cecchini et al., 2015; Borges Sugiyama, 2011; Martínez Franzoni et al., 2009). They have been widely promoted by international organisations across the world as policy instruments that enhance human capital and the agency of participants while reducing poverty and inequality and promoting co-responsibility and self-help in the long-term (see Sandberg, 2015; Bastagli, 2009; Lomelí, 2008, 2009).

The literature on social protection in Latin America – and more specifically on Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) – is substantial and growing as, increasingly, more academics from around the world seem to be attracted to social policy developments in the region and the role of CCTs in these developments. As the articles in our themed section cite many of the key sources on particular aspects of CCTs, we chose in this guide to highlight those sources we consider essential for any academic interested to investigate CCTs and, more broadly, the development of social policies in Latin America for research or teaching purposes.