The cost of becoming a neo-liberal welfare state: A cautionary case of Lithuania

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalija Atas
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Current State ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
The Cost

This article reveals the extent to which western-driven neo-liberal policies have influenced and shaped the current state of the national welfare policies, and consequent socio-economic conditions, in Lithuania. It looks at different stages of welfare state development following the independence of Lithuania before providing an overview of the current national institutional settings and policies. First, it discusses policy reforms that occurred during the transformation from planned to market economy. This part deliberates ideological changes characteristic to that period along with socio-economic impacts of the transformation. Then, it evaluates the more recent welfare state developments that began after Lithuania’s accession to the European Union (EU). The article concludes with an assessment of the key features of contemporary welfare policies and their wider socio-economic outcomes.

scholarly journals A MACRO-COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF WELFARE STATE CONVERGENCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Ágnes OROSZ ◽  
◽  
Norbert SZIJÁRTÓ ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Comparative Assessment ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
State Regime

In this paper, we provide a macro-comparative assessment of welfare state convergence. Using the welfare state regime approach, the paper analyses the development of main welfare state indicators within in the enlarged European Union. In this study we capitalize on descriptive statistics and a single convergence analysis based on standard deviation in order to capture alterations in national welfare models of 26 European countries and among acknowledged welfare regimes. Our fundamental aim is to seize on long-term processes (convergence, divergence, or persistence), so we cover almost a two-decade period starting at 2000. Our results, in general, suggest that convergence among welfare states (different indicator of social spending) of European countries is particularly weak, however convergence inside welfare regimes is significantly stronger apart from the Anglo-Saxon group. The pre-crisis period was characterized by a stronger convergence among European countries as a consequence of economic prosperity and intense EU intervention.

scholarly journals Party Institutionalization and Welfare State Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus B. Rasmussen ◽  
Carl Henrik Knutsen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Development ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article argues that the extent to which political parties are institutionalized shapes welfare state development. Institutionalized parties allow politicians to overcome co-ordination problems, avoid capture by special interests and form stable linkages with broad social groups. These features both enable and incentivize politicians to pursue extensive welfare policies. The study employs measures of party institutionalization and welfare state features to study these proposed relationships. Even when accounting for country- and year-fixed effects and plausible confounders such as electoral system, unionization, regime type and state capacity, the authors find clear relationships between party institutionalization and more extensive and universal welfare states. Focusing on universalism, they find that the relationship is more pronounced when constraints on executives are strong and in democracies, but that it also exists in autocracies. Further, when disaggregating party institutionalization and evaluating mechanisms, the linkages that institutionalized parties form with social groups constitute one important, but not the only relevant, factor.

scholarly journals Disproved or vindicated? Stein Rokkan’s ‘impossibility theorem’ on welfare democracy and European integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ferrera
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Original Argument

In the mid-1970s, the great Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan argued that the consolidation of the national welfare state was going to set definite limits to European integration. While the impetuous strengthening of the latter – from Maastricht to Lisbon – has largely disproved Rokkan’s factual expectations, developments during the last decade seem to have vindicated the theoretical insights which underpinned his original argument. If appropriately re-elaborated, such insights can help us to identify the conditions under which the economic and social dimension of the European Union might be reconciled in the future.

scholarly journals El Estado Social 40 años después: la desconstitucionalización del programa constitucional // The Welfare State 40 years later: The desconstitucionalizacion of the constitutional programme

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (100) ◽  
pp. 769
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Maestro Buelga
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Global Form ◽  
Spanish Constitution ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
The Way

Resumen:El trabajo analiza las tensiones entre los elementos propios del Estado social insertos en las diversas constituciones de los Estados europeos y los condicionantes económicos impuestos por la Unión europea, especialmente en los últimos años de crisis económica. Uno de los ejemplos estudiados es el de la constitucionalización del principio de estabilidad presupuestaria. Se sostiene en el texto que se ha «desconstitucionalizado» el estado social en España, como consecuencia de estas reformas acometidas en los años de la crisis económica, de manera que se han vaciado de contenido las cláusulas del Estado social previstas en nuestra Constitución.Summary:1. Introduction 2. The meaning of the welfare state clause in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. 3. The rupture in the way social status. 4. The global form of market and the deconstitucionalization of the welfare state.Abstract:The paper analyzes tensions between elements of the Welfare State inserts in the various constitutions of the European States and the economic conditions imposed by the European Union, especially in the last years of economic crisis. One of the studied examples is the constitutionalization of the principle of budgetary stability. It says in the text that it has «deconstitutionalized» the Welfare State in Spain, as a result of these reforms undertaken in the years of the economic crisis, so have emptied of content clauses of the Welfare State provided for in our Constitution.

Institutional Design and Central—Local Strategies: Introducing the New Block Grants System in Norway

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
N Aarsaether
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Financing System ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Central Level

When special grants are replaced by block grants in a central–local financing system, central government steering of the communalized welfare sectors can no longer be based on economic incentives. In this paper the potential for central government control over welfare policies under block-grants conditions is discussed, with particular reference to the change in the Norwegian transfers system. It is argued that, given high ambitions for the welfare state at the central level, a central government may find legislation to be an insufficient means of control, and it may be more likely to search for new types of economic incentives to make the communes perform according to the priorities of the national welfare state. In doing so, however, the central government must find methods of legitimizing a partial return to old practices that do not contradict the principle of block grants.

scholarly journals Welfare State Development in Developing Nations: The Relationship between Organised Labour and International Organisations

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudur Rahman Bhuiyan
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
World Society ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
World Society Theory ◽  
Welfare State Development

This article examines welfare state development and welfare programming in the least-developed nations using the frameworks of power resources theory and world society theory. Power resources theory emphasises the role of organised labour in social policy reforms and distributional decisions, while world society theory focuses on the role of international organisations in welfare programming in developing nations. Through a case study focusing on Bangladesh, this article examines the relative importance of labour movement and international organisations in shaping social welfare policies and programmes in developing nations. While the study finds both theories relevant and useful in the context of developing nations, it suggests that international organisations are less likely to compensate for a weak labour movement in promoting labour rights and policy reforms that are friendly to the working class in those nations.

scholarly journals Welfare State Attitudes and Support for Social Europe: Spillover or Obstacle?

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARON BAUTE ◽  
BART MEULEMAN ◽  
KOEN ABTS
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Spillover Effect ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Welfare Attitudes ◽  
Social Europe ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis study investigates how support for Social Europe is related to citizens’ welfare attitudes. On the one hand, welfare attitudes can spill over from the national to the European level, given that Social Europe aims to achieve similar goals to those of national welfare states. On the other hand, support for the welfare state can be an obstacle, if citizens perceive the nation state and the European Union as competing or substituting governance levels. Using data from the 2014 Belgian National Election Study, we take a multidimensional approach to Social Europe, capturing attitudes toward social regulations, member state solidarity, European social citizenship, and a European social security system. Results demonstrate that citizens who are more positive about the welfare state are also more supportive of Social Europe. However, positive welfare attitudes do not affect all dimensions of Social Europe to the same extent. The spillover effect of support for basic welfare state principles is strongest for policy instruments of Social Europe that are less intrusive to national welfare states (EU social regulations). By contrast, welfare state critique has a stronger impact on support for more intrusive instruments (European social citizenship).

scholarly journals Global social policy: an application of welfare state theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Holden
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
State Theory ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Welfare State Development

AbstractGlobal social policy (GSP) takes different forms from those of national welfare states, since it depends on the activities of an array of international organisations and transnational actors. Three broad theoretical approaches have dominated the literature on national welfare state development: those focused on processes of economic development, industrialisation and urbanisation; those focused on class struggle and political mobilisation; and those focused on the effects of political institutions. This article applies each of these broad theoretical approaches to the development of GSP in order to illuminate the nature of GSP, its likely future development, and the constraints upon such development. It is concluded that the dominant forms taken by GSP will continue to be piecemeal, minimalist and essentially neoliberal for as long as an effective global political movement in favour of a more extensive GSP is absent.

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