Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe

The new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.

'[A] good and enjoyable read...[,] should certainly be considered by anyone interested in welfare reform, ideas, discourses and policy paradigms in Western Europe.' - Social Policy

'This book makes a worthwhile contribution to the debate on the role of ideas in welfare state change...' - Julia S. O'Connor, International Journal of Social Welfare

'...an exposition of an extensive and important piece of research carried out within a rigorously comparative methodology and with carefully developed accounts of its findings.' - Robert Sykes, Social Policy& Administration

Autorentext
ANA ARRIBA Postdoctoral Researcher with the Spanish National Research Council (UPC-CSIS), Madrid, Spain ANDREAS AUST self-employed Social Scientist FRANK BÖNKER Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) and Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Transformation Studies, Germany JOHANNES KANANEN Research Assistant on project Welfare Reform and the Management of Societal Change, University of Kent, UK TRINE P. LARSEN Research Assistant on project Welfare Reform and the Management of Societal change, University of Kent, UK LUIS MORENO Senior Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council, CSIC, Madrid, Spain BRUNO PALIER CNRS Researcher in Centre d'Études de la Vie Politique Française, Paris, France VIRPI TIMONEN Lecturer in Social Policy and Ageing at the Department of Social Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Zusammenfassung
This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.

Inhalt
List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface Notes on Contributors Ideas and Policy Change; P.Taylor-Gooby Paradigm Shifts, Power Resources and Labour Market Reform; P.Taylor-Gooby Policy Paradigms and Long-Term Care: Convergence or Continuing Difference?; V.Timonen The Myth of an Adult Worker Society: New Policy Discourses in European Welfare States; T.P.Larsen Changing Ideas on Pensions: Accounting for Differences in the Spread of the Multipillar Paradigm in Five EU Social Insurance Countries; F.Bönker Towards Activation? Social Assistance Reforms and Discourses; A.Aust & A.Arriba Current Employment Policy Paradigms in the UK, Sweden and Germany; J.Kananen The Europeanisation of Welfare; Paradigm Shifts and Social Policy Reforms; L.Moreno & B.Palier Index