Search results for "Welfare State"

Defamilisation, Dedomestication and Care Policy: Comparing Childcare Service Provisions of Welfare States

2011

PurposeThis paper aims to use perspectives from both mainstream and feminist welfare state research in drafting a conceptual approach for social care research. This approach is then applied empirically to a comparative analysis of childcare provisions of 15 OECD countries.Design/methodology/approachThe concept of dedomestication is developed from a discussion on the notions of decommodification and defamilisation, and it is defined as the degree to which social care policies make it possible for people to participate in society and social life outside their homes and families. In the empirical part of the paper, dedomestication of childcare service provisions of 15 welfare states is measure…

Citizens' participation and community orientation – indicators of social sustainability of rural welfare services

2011

The article discusses the issues of social services in rural areas from a theoretical view point of sustainability paradigms of social work. The ecological crisis existing beyond the ongoing global economic crisis is not separated from the increasing urbanization and weakening perspectives in rural areas. The paper is based on results from a participatory action research project in Finland, which aims at strengthening social service provision in rural areas through citizens' participation and community-orientation. The neoliberal politics of centralization, marketization and privatization are heavily transforming rural regions also in the Nordic welfare states right now. The debates in the …

Welfare State inSpain. Sustainability criteria

2014

The construction of models of universal coverage in Spain and Europe, that established social rights, has offered a period of prosperity, peace and freedom in the second half of the twentieth century that was based on social justice. These values have benefited all of us. Despite the significant achievements that were made, the economic crisis has raised different voices warning about the impossibility of social protection systems. The difficulties of the time and the resource constraints have encouraged an ideological offensive against the welfare state, predicting its end in a short term. Therefore we have to consider that the present moment leads to the review and "deconstruction" of wha…

Local social services in disaster management: Is there a Nordic model?

2017

Abstract The Nordic states have extensive welfare systems in which the local social services are an important component. Despite a growing research on disaster resilience, we lack research examining in systematic way whether and how local social services in the Nordic countries contribute to resilience. Aiming to fill this gap, this article asks whether we can identify a common Nordic model of the role of local social services in disasters, or whether the countries have taken different paths. We use policy documents and legislation to examine the extent to which roles for local social services are embedded in the disaster management systems of the five Nordic countries. We analyze the insti…

Policy Alienation in Frontline Social Work – A Study of Social Workers’ Responses to a Major Anticipated Social and Health Care Reform in Finland

2021

Change in the policy and ideology governing social and health care has been much debated in the Western welfare states, including in Finland, where the public sector has witnessed a shift towards a market and managerial ideology in a climate of austerity. These changes affect organisations as well as individual workers. Social workers implement social policies in their daily work, and are thus positioned in between policies and clients. This may expose them to feelings of unease in the implementation of certain policies. In this study, we apply the policy alienation framework of Tummers and colleagues (2009. “Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: Application in a new Public Management …

A Nordic Welfare State in Post-industrial Society

2009

Working under pressure: economic recession and third sector development in Europe

2016

Purpose – The context conditions for third sector organizations (TSOs) in Europe have significantly changed as a result of the global economic crisis, including decreasing levels of public funding and changing modes of relations with the state. The effect of economic recession, however, varies across Europe. The purpose of this paper is to understand why this is the case. It analyses the impact of economic recession and related policy changes on third sector development in Europe. The economic effects on TSOs are thereby placed into a broader context of changing third sector policies and welfare state restructuring. Design/methodology/approach – The paper focusses on two research questions…

El sector no lucrativo en el marco de la nueva era tecnológica: el desafío del Crowdfunding social en España. Análisis del caso de la asociación Alba…

2017

Los albores del siglo XXI se presentan a las economías y las sociedades en el marco de un desafiante doble cambio de paradigma. Uno, alentado por el neoliberalismo gobernante en gran parte del mundo avanzado, que ha provocado que la propia sociedad admita la arresponsabilidad de las estructuras gobernantes en la prestación de los servicios que componen el Estado del bienestar. Otro, tecnológico, que ha cambiado el modo en que la sociedad se informa, se comunica y se relaciona. Frente a estas dos realidades la sociedad civil ha tomado conciencia de su papel transformador e impulsor de cambios, así como de las crecientes necesidades de atención social que han surgido en este principio de sigl…

Redistribution, selection, and trade

2017

Abstract This paper examines the distributional effects of international trade in a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and a welfare state redistributing income. The redistribution scheme is financed by a progressive income tax and gives the same absolute transfer to all individuals. Ceteris paribus, international trade leads to an increase in income per capita but also to higher income inequality on two fronts. Inter-group inequality between managers and workers increases, and intra-group inequality within the group of managers goes up as well. We show that for a given tax rate, there is an endogenous increase in the size of the welfare state that works against the increas…

Unemployment, taxation and public expenditure in OECD economies

2008

Abstract This paper considers the financing of productive public goods and social benefits through different types of taxes in a model with unemployment. We incorporate unemployment, caused by the wage-setting behaviour of a monopolistic union, in a neoclassical growth model which integrates a quite detailed structure of taxes used to finance productive public expenditures and social transfers and parameterizes the inefficiency of government to transform taxes into public goods or transfers. The main conclusion is that the relationship between unemployment and labour taxes critically depends on the degree of government efficiency and the unions' perception on how taxes determine the welfare…