Social Policy and the Welfare State in Sweden. By Sven E. Olsson. Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research, 1990. 238p. - The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy: Through the Welfare State to Socialism. By Tim Tilton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. 280p. $39.95. - The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis. By Allan Carlson. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1990. 235p. $39.95.

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-278
Author(s):  
Jonas Pontusson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
New Brunswick ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Family Politics ◽  
Population Crisis ◽  
The Welfare State

Ideology, Conflict and Social Policy

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Birrell ◽  
Alan Murie
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
The Political ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The Government ◽  
Significant Factors ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTSocial policy in Northern Ireland offers examples of social policies strongly influenced by ideological considerations. There are a number of factors which determine how susceptible services and policies are to ideological influences. Some services are particularly sensitive to ideological values and demands, for example, education. In certain areas the distribution of services and the allocation of resources has been significant in maintaining the political structure. The distribution of administrative responsibility, the absence of pressure from Britain for maintaining parity in social services, and the absence of non-secretarian pressures on the government are other significant factors. The process of analysing problems and formulating social policy reflects deep ideological divisions. This can be contrasted with the rational, empirical and pragmatic models of policy making, implicit in the development of social policy in Britain. With some minor modifications the British model of the Welfare State operates in Northern Ireland. In some areas it operates to serve ends other than those of redistribution or meeting social need. This provides insights into some of the assumptions made about social policy and the Welfare State in Britain.

Comparative Social Policy and Political Conflict in Advanced Welfare States: Denmark and Sweden

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gøsta Esping-Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet, the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

scholarly journals Vorwärts – und nichts vergessen

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (116) ◽  
pp. 411-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lessenich
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
The Core ◽  
Crisis Scenarios ◽  
Post War ◽  
Time Specific ◽  
State Interventions ◽  
The Welfare State

The recent scientific debate on the functions of social policy and the transformation of the welfare state evidences an ever waning sense of the dialectics that lies at the core of modern state interventionism. The consequences of this decline of dialectical thinking on social policy matters are now beginning to affect as well the political discourse on the reform of the welfare state in Germany. This discourse is utterly dominated by onedimensional crisis scenarios and equally one-sided reform proposals, the latter opting for straightforward re-commodification strategies as opposed to the classical, post-war decommodification consensus. In this context, the paper constitutes a plea for regaining consciousness, conceptualizing social policy as what it is and always has been: the at a time specific and historically changing combination of commodifying and de-commodifying state interventions.

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