Regulatory Welfare State Research Articles

A resource‐based perspective on the regulatory welfare state: Social security in the United Kingdom

The article provides a resource‐based perspective on the polymorphic regulatory welfare state. It shows regulatory and fiscal tools applied in the UK social security sector place demands on claimants' resources (i.e., possessions, labor and data) and simultaneously alter behavior in relation to these resources. The analysis exposes an operation that generates new and increasing resource pressures for claimants, providing a deeper conceptualization of a regulatory welfare state. It offers a new perspective on why regulatory and fiscal arrangements perpetuate existing inequalities and suggests an increase in welfare problems as the regulatory welfare state intensifies resource pressures.

The Reassertion of the Regulatory Welfare State: A Preface

The Reassertion of the Regulatory Welfare State: A Preface

Marketization, Regulation, and Equality: Towards an Analytical Framework for Understanding the Equality Impact of Public Procurement

Abstract With the rise of the regulatory welfare state, public procurement gained increasing importance as a tool for the regulation of wages and working conditions and a lever for promoting equality. Yet, despite growing attention to and understanding of public procurement’s relation to equality, existing knowledge remains fragmented. An analytical framework that captures and systematizes the multifaceted interaction between public procurement and equality is still missing. Focusing on conditions of purchasing and obligations set as part of the procurement processes, this article explores the way in which public procurement processes generate equality impacts first through stipulations and practices which are not explicitly linked to equality but generate equality impacts, and second through proactive measures designed to foster equality. It argues that a holistic understanding of public procurement’s equality impact needs to take account of the individual combination of features.

Still a poster child for social investment? Changing regulatory dynamics of early childhood education and care in Denmark and Sweden

AbstractThis paper investigates the regulation of publicly organized early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark and Sweden, through the regulatory welfare state (RWS) framework. The analysis focuses on how alterations in funding and quality of care are shaped by governmental and nongovernmental actors at national and local levels of government. Through focused structured analysis, we examine how various actors have shaped the funding and quality of childcare in Denmark and Sweden, from the early 2000s to 2020, with special attention to the period during and after the 2008 financial crisis. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, concerns about quality in care were raised on the political agenda by various actors in both countries, leading to decisions to improve the quality of care. Yet, the regulatory dynamics differ: In Denmark, the debate led to a decision in 2019, to implement a minimum statutory requirement of regulatory quality standards. From an RWS perspective, this outcome can be qualified as “double expansion,” because regulatory quality standards, and public funding for childcare increased. In Sweden, the debates about quality of ECEC led, in 2016, to political guidelines about quality standard, but with no additional national funds, and no mandatory regulatory quality requirements. Analytically, this can be qualified as “regulatory‐led expansion,” that is requirements for quality standards, although the lack of additional national funds suggests that it will be difficult to improve ECEC quality substantially. The RWS perspective, which focuses on national and municipal levels of governance, also gives insights into hidden inequalities between municipalities regarding funding and quality of ECEC, which are more pronounced in Sweden than in Denmark.

اسلامی فلاحی مملکت میں انتظامی عہدے داروں کی تقرری کا معیار(تحقیقی مطالعہ)

A Welfare state refers to the concept of a state in which a state takes responsibility for the protection of all citizens and their well-being. A welfare state recognizes the security of its citizens as a priority and takes solid steps for it. In the olden days, the states were limited to the interests of the rulers; gradually there were born enlightened human beings who introduced new ideas to the state which improved human life. A new concept was introduced in the state system called the welfare state. For a welfare state, as far as the individuals are important to control all the systems in a state, in which the rules and regulations/principles also have far rich importance in any state. So, the selection of proper/eligible individuals for such a regulatory welfare state is necessary. If any state set aside the basic eligibility criteria while appointing any responsible administrative slot then it will cause the destruction of that state gradually as well society at the end. On the other hand, if any welfare state would strictly follow the eligibility criteria for the given administrative slot and appoint the individuals purely on merit and ability, then it will result in constructive and positive change in that welfare state which boost up the society towards prosperity peace and progress for the sake of humanity.In this manuscript, we tried our best to mention and focus on some qualitative levels/points which must be compulsory while appointing any administrative/key post in any Islamic welfare state to make it prosperous and progressive, keeping in view the interpretation purely from Quran and Sunnah.

Regulatory capitalism, extinctions and China

Is it possible to manage economic crises, ecological crises and security crises without larger welfare and regulatory states? Growing a regulatory welfare state is one thing polities can do to avert ecological collapse. My perspective goes beyond narrow meanings of welfare. In the medium term, economies can be reshaped so that jobs are created less by investment in the production of material things, more by growth in human services. Shifting the shape of the economy so more of the jobs are for nurses, teachers, carers reduces emissions. Financialized capitalism pushes workers and whole economies into levels of debt they cannot manage when crises arrive. Understanding these dynamics helps grasp why authoritarian capitalist economies accomplished a wider economic growth lead over liberal economies this century, and in the case of China, a lead in green innovation. This is a different pattern from previous centuries. Investing in more jobs to steer capitalism and steer welfare sit alongside more jobs in the human services as imperatives to avert cascades to ecological, security and economic crises, and to authoritarianism. While there is enormous path-dependence of momentum toward extinctions, mutual inter-penetration of growth path-dependencies among institutions of the market, welfare and of regulation might be mustered to counter it.

Access to Justice for Vulnerable Workers and Citizens in Public/Private Governance Regimes: Lessons from the Regulatory Welfare State in the Netherlands

Abstract Mixed public/private governance regimes in social security are complex, legally intricate, and difficult to manage. This may operate as an obstacle for individual claimants when they want to protect themselves against decisions or actions of private actors or wish to enforce individual entitlements. Hence, individuals rely heavily on the corrective function exercised by the courts. Paradoxically, policies that create a public/private governance structure are not always geared towards strengthening access to justice for the individual. On the contrary, in the Netherlands, legislative changes and administrative practices purposefully raise the barriers to bringing cases to the independent judiciary. In this article, we analyse the relationship between the complex public/private governance regimes in social security and access to justice. It is argued that the policies should consider strengthening access to courts to counterbalance the weakened position of workers and vulnerable citizens.

Changing Expectations? The Change in the Role of the Welfare Ministry in the Regulation of Personal Social Services

Many welfare states have increased their regulatory role, but little attention has been given to historical changes in the regulatory role of government ministries. This study embraces a mezzo perspective and explores the regulatory role of the Welfare Ministry of Israel in the field of personal social services, asking the following questions: 1) What are the changes in regulatory expectations versus practices over the last five decades? and 2) How can we explain these changes and their outcomes? The study is based on the qualitative analysis of comptroller reports and other resources. It reveals a growing gap between society’s expectations of the Ministry as a regulator and the Ministry’s capacities over five decades. Notably, it points to the variety of regulatory spaces that have appeared in a regulatory welfare state. The Israeli case is relevant for other countries that have experienced processes of outsourcing and privatization in the welfare state and whose ministries had to change their role.

Missing in Action: Bridging Capital and Cross-Boundary Discourse

The regulatory welfare state illuminates path dependencies and tendencies to mutual growth in markets, welfare, and regulation. This article uses two specific welfare-to-work programs, one in Korea and one in Australia, to illustrate the institutional interconnections that are in play within the regulatory welfare state. Governance of these programs is hampered by lack of discursive capacity to identify where problems exist and how they can be fixed. When faced with new programs, implementers look to higher authorities to make sense of and to solve the problems on the ground, but authorities are blinded by old institutional categories that pit market mentalities against welfare mentalities with regulation as an ideological tool, rather than an integral part of solutions. Transparency and cross-boundary listening are necessary to create the bridging capital to make these programs work and reconnect democratically elected governments with their citizens.

Quiet Politics of Employment Protection Legislation? Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition, and the Regulatory Welfare State

Political parties and party competition have been important factors in the expansion and retrenchment of the fiscal welfare state, but researchers have argued that regulatory welfare is not part of political debate among parties. We explore this claim theoretically, and then empirically examine it in the case of employment protection legislation (EPL) in twenty-one established democracies since 1985. EPL is a mature and potentially salient instrument of the regulatory welfare state that has experienced substantial retrenchment. We test three prominent mechanisms of how electoral competition conditions partisan effects: the composition of Left parties’ electorates, the strength of pro-EPL parties, and the emphasis put on social justice by pro-EPL parties. We find that the partisan politics of EPL is conditioned by electoral competition under only very specific circumstances, namely when blame sharing becomes possible in coalitions between EPL supporters.

The Expansion of Regulation in Welfare Governance

This article provides an historical and theoretical account of the emerging regulatory welfare state, which is greatly understudied in contemporary regulatory and welfare research. We analyze the interplay between the welfare state and the regulatory state in an age in which regulation is expanding through liberalization, privatization, and the new public management of social services. We then provide a multi faceted framework for understanding the regulatory welfare state and discuss its implications in terms of 1) the normative social goals of the state; 2) the ways in which social policy is delivered through institutions; and 3) the implications of the framework for individuals’ rights and duties.

Organizing Competition: Regulatory Welfare States in Higher Education

Governments around the world have turned to higher education to sustain economic development and social welfare. This article uses the concept of the regulatory welfare state (RWS) to examine how state authorities in the United States and Germany have sought to spur structural changes in the education sector. I argue that policy-makers in both countries have pursued the goal of organizing competition among universities by combining fiscal and regulatory policies that strengthen universities’ self-reliance, rivalry, and decentralized decision-making. The analysis shows that understanding cross-national patterns of institutional transformation requires putting countries’ evolving regimes of state-university relations into historical perspective, and that states’ shifting governance strategies are important drivers of higher education’s contemporary reimagination. It also clarifies how regulatory approaches to welfare provision have fostered the re-composition of public infrastructures, raising pressing questions about the quality and scope of the welfare that regulatory approaches promote.

A Gender Equalizing Regulatory Welfare State? Enacting the EU’s Work-Life Balance Directive in Denmark and Poland

This article examines the implementation of the European Union’s (EU) work-life balance directive in Denmark and Poland through examining the earmarking of paid parental leave. This enables us to assess whether the EU could be emerging as a gender equalizing regulatory welfare state (RWS). Our analysis points to tensions arising when regulatory decisions are made at a higher level of governance but require implementation and funding at lower levels of governance. In both countries, there are similar parental leave schemes ex-ante, and major actors had similar initial stances on parental leave, favoring stagnation. Yet the plans to implement show how the actors’ positions changed, and the likely result is extended parental leave, with payment (known as double expansion) and more gender-equal participation (degenderization) in parental leave. Although in two different institutional settings, the similar outcome suggests that these changes are due to the European Union acting as an emerging RWS, which influences Member States’ regulatory instruments with fiscal elements.

Is Service Quality a Driver of the Regulatory Welfare State? Policies for Health Services in Germany and France

The article analyzes the design and development of health services in Germany and France—two countries with similar welfare states but with striking differences in their national regulatory styles. Using these comparative cases, I show how the interplay of long-term institutional factors and short-term political factors shaped the establishment and development of these regulatory welfare states’ (RWS) social services. Specifically, I argue that the discovery of service quality in the 1990s had the potential to accelerate RWS development. In Germany, characterized by a corporatist state tradition and a cooperative regulatory style, the political debate on quality (either as a parameter of competition or as a concept for the professional consolidation of service production) had a greater influence on the design of the national quality regulation system (goals, instruments, processes, institutions) than in France, which is characterized by a state-centered Napoleonic tradition and a directive regulatory style.

Measuring and Comparing the Regulatory Welfare State: Social Objectives in Public Procurement

This article constructs an index that translates the substance of policy documents into numeric values across three dimensions of regulation—a qualitative assessment of policy substance, its potential impact, and enforcement of regulation—which aims to capture the strength of social objectives in the economy. It draws on theories of economic regulation and literature on the welfare state to develop a general understanding of social objectives. The use of the index is illustrated through public procurement regulation in two European countries (France and Germany) and shows an overall increase in the strength of social objectives. It also highlights systematic differences in country priorities in the regulation of their economy. The index demonstrates that social regulation can be measured and compared in a meaningful way within and across countries.

The Reassertion of the Regulatory Welfare State: A Preface

The preface presents the main themes of this special issue. It starts by presenting the argument that the welfare state and the regulatory state are not dichotomies, arguing that both regulation and fiscal transfers for social purposes are increasing, particularly after the financial crisis of 2007, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 crisis. Then it moves to introduce the articles that compose this special issue, their arguments, and their theoretical and empirical contributions.

Politics, Markets, and Modes of Contract Governance: Regulating Social Services in Shanghai and Chongqing, China

Inspired by the concept of the regulatory welfare state, this article identifies four primary modes of governance in regulating contract processes and contract implementation (market-based, hierarchical, professional, and relational), and compares contract governance modes in Shanghai and Chongqing. We find that the governments in these two localities prioritize and integrate the hierarchical and relational modes, relying less on the market-based and professional modes of governance. The emphasis on the hierarchical-relational mode advances the values and mechanisms of trust, adaptation, and alignment with top-down priorities, but may hinder public and legal accountability. We argue that the dynamics of political context and market condition affect the formation and effectiveness of hybrid modes of contract governance, and we advise that regulators in different countries should factor in such dynamics when designing contract governance modes in the regulation of social services.

The rise of the Swiss regulatory healthcare state: On preserving the just in the quest for the better (or less expensive?)

AbstractPolitical theories of the modern state describe a rise of the regulatory healthcare state, balancing the imperatives of cost control and quality assurance and welfare norms such as solidarity. This paper analyses the unique case of Switzerland, where the rise of the regulatory healthcare state occurred late and incompletely, with the adoption of the Federal Health Insurance Law in 1994. The Swiss federal state pursues the social objective of universal access to healthcare through social health insurance regulation. This paper demonstrates that economic efficiency has not been the primary goal of healthcare coverage within the Swiss regulatory healthcare state despite rising costs. As another exceptional feature, Switzerland has diverged from the traditional path of judicial behavior in the regulatory state. This paper critically dissects how the Swiss Federal Court has become a crucial actor, imposing limits on access to healthcare and shaping decision‐making criteria for social regulation, such as cost‐benefit and cost‐impact analysis. Through this judicialization of limit‐setting, the judiciary engages in an ongoing constitutional dialogue on the limits of the regulatory welfare state and its sustainability for the future.

Imagining the Post-colonial Lawyer: Legal Elites and the Indian Nation-State, 1947–1967

AbstractA key feature of British rule in India was the formation of a class of elite metropolitan lawyers who had an outsized role within the legal profession and a prominent position in Indian politics. This paper analyzes the response of these legal elites to the shifting social and political terrain of post-colonial India, arguing that the advent of the Indian nation-state shaped the discursive strategies of elite lawyers in two crucial ways. First, in response to the slipping grasp of lawyers on Indian political life and increasing competition from developmentalist economics, the elite bar turned their attention towards the consolidation of a national professional identity, imagining an ‘Indian advocate’ as such, whose loyalty would ultimately lie with the nation-state. Second, the creation of the Supreme Court of India, the enactment of theConstitution of India, and the continuous swelling of the post-colonial regulatory welfare state partially reoriented the legal elite towards public law, particularly towards the burgeoning field of administrative law.

The Expansion of Regulation in Welfare Governance

This article provides a historical and theoretical account of the emerging regulatory welfare state, which is greatly understudied in contemporary regulatory and welfare research. We analyze the interplay between the “welfare state” and the “regulatory state” in an age in which regulation is expanding through liberalization, privatization, and the new public management of social services. We then provide a multi-faceted framework for understanding the regulatory welfare state and discuss its implications in terms of 1) the normative social goals of the state; 2) the ways in which social policy is delivered through institutions; and 3) the implications of the framework for individuals’ rights and duties.