Search results

In Michael Lipsky’s intriguing analysis of the performance of public bureaucracy – in his classic Street-level Bureaucracy (1980) – he shows, for example, the professional discretion they apply may not only involve adapting policy to the individual case, meet real needs in the population, prevent patients, clients, students or users from getting access, etc., but at the same time both have profound policy implications and take very ‘political’ forms. In this chapter, I argue that it is regrettable that Lipsky did not establish a comparative framework for his study. Based on my own ethnographic research in local politics and bureaucratic practice in the municipal world in Norway, I look more closely at the relative autonomy of street-level bureaucracy within the context of universalism – a hallmark of the Nordic welfare state model (Esping-Andersen 1998, 2009) – and explore how it is utilised. The Nordic welfare states are among the most ‘service intense’ states in the Western world, and the personnel working directly with patients, students, clients, etc., play a major role in linking ‘the state’ to the population (Papakostas, 2001, Vike et al., 2002). Thus, the role of the Nordic welfare state’s street-level bureaucracy as a key interface between the state and the population is hard to overestimate (Leira & Sainsbury, 1994). Moreover, as universalism also tends to stimulate what we may call a culture of strong claims (to services) among the population at large, street-level bureaucrats may be able to form strong alliances with other actors, and thus play an important part of the dynamics of power in local politics – where fundamental policy principles such as universalism is at stake.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether social capital inequalities are smaller in more extensive welfare states.

The paper analyses data from European/World Values Surveys.

No effect of welfare stateness on social capital inequality is found.

An extension of the analysis with a broader range of welfare states might show effect.

This is the first time in literature that the relationship between welfare stateness and social capital inequality is empirically studied.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU).

The authors use micro-data from two rounds of a multinational survey conducted in these countries in 2010 and 2016. The outcome variable of interest is the willingness to pay more taxes to support the welfare state. The authors define the welfare state broadly, and focus on support for three main domains of the welfare state, namely, support for the needy, public healthcare and public education. Binomial regression is used to establish influence of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support.

The authors find that both interpersonal and institutional trust have positive influences on strengthening support for the welfare state against a number of alternative explanations for public support for the welfare state. These positive effects remain the same for all three domains under investigation, namely, helping the needy, public healthcare and public education. Furthermore, these positive effects were observed both in the relatively less developed countries of the FSU and in the more developed Eastern European countries. Moreover, the positive effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on support for the needy, public healthcare and public education were found to grow over time.

The findings indicate that the benefits of nurturing social capital will likely be substantial. Decision-makers, politicians, welfare state administrators and multinational founders (e.g. the UN and World Bank) should acknowledge the role played by trust in influencing the citizenry’s support for the allocation of financial resources toward the development and maintenance of the welfare state. The findings imply that welfare state reforms could prove be more effective within a social context where levels of trust are high. Thus, special attention should be paid to initiatives aimed at developing strategies to build trust.

Social welfare reforms in post-communist transitional countries may fail without active strategies aimed at nurturing institutional trust. One way to nurture institutional trust is through making additional efforts at enhancing the levels of accountability and transparency within a society as well as through increasing citizen engagement. Another way to build increased levels of trust is to take part in a variety of initiatives in good governance put forth by multinational initiatives.

As far as the authors know, this is the first paper which studies effect of interpersonal and institutional trust on support of the welfare state using a large and diverse sample of 27 countries over the period of five years. This is the first study which focuses on post-communist countries where trust is inherently low.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of church in relation to state in providing support for needy.

The analysis takes place in a Nordic welfare state context between two recessions in the early 1990s and late 2000s. The welfare state regime hypothesis suggests that the kind of traditional assistance the church lends to the poor would die out in the course of “socio‐democratic” welfare state development, a statement analogous with the secularization hypothesis.

With data on the volume of poverty alleviation activities of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church it is shown that after decades of marginalization, the role of the church's poverty alleviation became more pronounced after the recession in the early 1990s and continued to do so throughout the economic collapse of 2008.

The results give ground to challenge the conventional clear cut conception of the universal Nordic welfare state model.

European welfare state research has focused on the links between religious values, religious cleavages and the shaping of the welfare state but has mostly ignored the role of faith‐based institutions in improving welfare. The current economic crisis may provide religious institutions a window of opportunity to expand their poverty alleviation activities.

The reproduction conditions of capitalism are hard to specify, the phrase itself being too abstract to be meaningful. Another way to find the specific distinguishing features of capitalist reproduction conditions is to seek the same conditions in a socialist economy. Socialists will tend to want a more comprehensive welfare state, but the lack of a welfare state will not mean that the economy is not socialist. Reproduction conditions of both types of economy would be very similar, the reproduction of labour power being achieved by a variety of arrangements either more or less harsh, or more or less comprehensive, without damaging the economy. The welfare state is seen as a desirable feature of socialism in its own right, rather than because of its economic contribution.

Evaluates changes in the welfare system in Sweden, the UK and the USA over a decade, basing arguments on the divergence of economic globalization and domestic forces. Presents brief economic snapshots of each country, stating quite categorically that the welfare state is an impediment to capitalist profit‐making, hence all three nations have retrenched welfare systems in the hope of remaining globally economically competitive. Lays the responsibility for retrenchment firmly at the door of conservative political parties. Takes into account public opinion, national institutional structures, multiculturalism and class issues. Explores domestic structures of accumulation (DSA) and refers to changes in the international economy, particularly the Bretton Woods system (Pax Americana), and notes how the economic health of nations mirrors that of the US. Investigates the roles of multinationals and direct foreign investment in the global economy, returning to how economic policy affects the welfare state. Points out the changes made to the welfare state through privatization, decentralization and modification of public sector financing. Concludes that the main result has been an increase in earnings inequality and poverty.

The ideational connections between social democracy and basic income is the theme of this article. Social democracy is not a fixed doctrine, but as a movement it shares some key ideas with the policy of basic income, like solidarity, equal opportunity, freedom and social security. Due to current challenges emerging from waves of digitalisation, globalisation, etc., the support for a universal basic income has taken off, but not among social democratic politicians. The article argues that the social democratic policy of full employment implies an increasingly tough work orientation that is challenging to reconcile with de-commodifying social rights, which has characterized social democratic welfare states. It is further argued that a strict reciprocity-based policy has not proven effective in getting people into work on a permanent basis, and that the current challenges require new policy ideas. Two alternatives are discussed: guaranteed jobs and a basic income. The article argues that the lack of enthusiasm for the last option among social democrats is based on the misconception that a basic income will harm people's motivation to work, their self-respect, the social economy and the principle of justice. The article sheds light on this misconception. In the closing remarks, the proposal for an ‘emergency basic income’ is considered in view of the current global corona crisis.

Attention to the role of institutions in the construction of racial inequality suggests that the status of racial groups in society results not necessarily from the mobilization of racist ideology but from the normal workings of social and political arrangements. (Lieberman, 1998)In the Post-Civil Rights context, all politics are racial. (Omi & Winant, 1994)

This study aims to investigate the resilience of Italian companies one year after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak by examining the companies' choices and opinions regarding the welfare state, criminal approaches and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the pandemic.

The authors proposed a conceptual framework based on a combination of private vs public protection and business resilience theory and adopted a concurrent embedded mixed-method approach, using an online survey of 219 entrepreneurs.

The authors find the respondents showing high resilience to the crisis and strongly unaffected by organised crime's (OC's) predatory role; the State seems to have quickly and effectively met the financial needs of sampled Italian companies, at least in the short term.

Whilst welfare can be highly effective for companies to combat crime, regulators should recognise that public protection may decrease with time, leaving companies open to long-term challenges.

The authors believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature because this is the first study to explore how entrepreneurs deal with financing problems in a context characterised by a strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and OC pressure.

The expansion of social welfare in advanced capitalist countries following the Second World War has been phenomenal. Concomitant to this is the mushrooming of comparative social research devoted to the analysis of welfare states. The central question in comparative policy discourse has been the search for the determinants of social welfare development. There is no consensus over the structural determinants for welfare efforts. However, the literature on comparative social policy has identified a significant number of variables which spur social policy development: industrialization, urbanization, modernization, working‐class mobilization, union strength, state and its particular structure, open economy, diffusion, military spending, and national ideology (Wilensky & Lebeaux, 1965; Wilensky, 1975; Uusitalo, 1984; Wilensky, 1985; Flora, 1987; O'Conner, 1988; Esping‐Andersen, 1990; Pierson, 1991; Wong & Daley, 1991; Janoski & Hicks, 1994).