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Das Lehrbuch stellt den Wandel der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland in ausgewählten Teilfeldern seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre dar und untersucht diesen aus der Perspektive der Politikfeldanalyse. Ein erster Teil thematisiert Sozialpolitik als Gegenstand der Politikfeldanalyse. Hier werden zentrale Theorien vorgestellt sowie die normativen Grundlagen, die internationale Einordnung und die historische Entwicklung der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland erörtert. In einem zweiten Teil setzen sich Beiträge zu den Teilfeldern "Einkommen und Verteilung", "Arbeitsmarkt", "Gesundheit", "Pflege", "Familie" und "Alterssicherung" mit feldspezifischen Strukturen auseinander, stellen Policy-Wandel seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre dar und nutzen politikfeldanalytische Theorien zu seiner Erklärung. Der Inhalt Sozialpolitik als Gegenstand der Politikfeldanalyse • Normative Grundlagen, Strukturen und internationale Einordnung der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland • Sozialpolitik in Deutschland: Genese und Entwicklungsetappen bis Mitte der 1970er Jahre • Einkommen und Verteilung • Arbeitsmarktpolitik • Gesundheitspolitik • Pflegepolitik • Familienpolitik • Alterssicherungspolitik Die Zielgruppen Studierende und Lehrende der Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften Die Herausgeberin Dr. Renate Reiter ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrgebiet III: Politikfeldanalyse und Umweltpolitik des Instituts für Politikwissenschaft der FernUniversität in Hagen

Active social and employment services are a crucial infrastructure of the welfare state. As these services are designed to help people in need of support to overcome periods of insecurity in their life course, their effective provision has also been seen as an element of the implementation of the social investment (SI) welfare state. However, the transition to the SI state is linked to numerous preconditions. This is especially true with regard to vulnerable people like the long-term unemployed (LTU). The provision of social services that meet the specific needs of this group requires the actors responsible for implementing social and employment policies to have adequate operative capacities. This article compares Germany and France as two European welfare states that – confronted with persistently high long-term unemployment – have taken different reform paths over the last 20 years that partly run counter to their political-administrative systemic conditions and governance traditions to meet this challenge. Empirically, the article draws on a systematic content analysis of selected policy documents and secondary literature. It is shown that the recent German reform path of combining central steering responsibility with local scope for action can be a way to come closer to a social investment-oriented service policy for the LTU. However, the article also reveals that neither state (yet) has the necessary operative capacities for a shift towards an SI state. Overall, the changes in the understanding of the SI paradigm and the welfare state's constant reluctance to invest in implementation capacity make its sustainable application unlikely.

The article analyzes the design and development of health services in Germany and France—two countries with similar welfare states but with striking differences in their national regulatory styles. Using these comparative cases, I show how the interplay of long-term institutional factors and short-term political factors shaped the establishment and development of these regulatory welfare states' (RWS) social services. Specifically, I argue that the discovery of service quality in the 1990s had the potential to accelerate RWS development. In Germany, characterized by a corporatist state tradition and a cooperative regulatory style, the political debate on quality (either as a parameter of competition or as a concept for the professional consolidation of service production) had a greater influence on the design of the national quality regulation system (goals, instruments, processes, institutions) than in France, which is characterized by a state-centered Napoleonic tradition and a directive regulatory style.

Das städtebauliche Bund-Länder-Programm "Soziale Stadt" hat seit seiner Initiierung 1999 in zahlreichen Kommunen politische und administrative Lernprozesse im Hinblick auf die Entwicklung benachteiligter Gebiete angeschoben. Die drastische Reduzierung der Fördermittel durch den Bund im Jahr 2011 bei fortbestehender Unsicherheit der weiteren Förderperspektive konfrontiert die lokalen Akteure mit dem Problem, wie eine Verstetigung des eingeleiteten Policy-Wandels erreicht werden kann. Der Beitrag illustriert anhand von vier Fallstudien, dass weniger die "klassischen" Erklärungsfaktoren der Politikfeldanalyse, sondern vielmehr die Probleminterpretation und der politische Wille die Inangriffnahme oder das Unterlassen von Verstetigungsbemühungen beeinflussen.

'Social investment' as an idea to justify social policy reforms has become more and more accepted in recent years and has decisively shaped agenda setting and policy formulation in European welfare states. The effectiveness of this new welfare state model, however, depends highly on the capacity to provide social services. Social services – job training, counselling and support for care work – are a key component of the social investment model. Drawing on the policy capacity approach, the article provides an analytical framework to study the 'operational core' of the social investment state. This implementation perspective allows us to assess whether governance actors actually have the resources to fulfil the social investment idea of enhancing citizens' freedom to act. Empirically, the article concentrates on two selected European welfare states, Germany and France, countries with similar welfare systems but very different politico-administrative systems, and on two fields of social service provision that are addressed differently in the social investment debate: early childhood education and care (ECEC) and elderly care. Empirically, we use systematic content analysis to intensively study policy documents and secondary analyses. We show that both countries (still) lack policy capacities in these two sectors as a basis for resilient implementation of the social investment paradigm.