Social Policy Regimes Research Articles

RECONSTRUCTING INCOME STRATA IMPLICIT COALITIONS IN THE EU AND EFTA COUNTRIES

The article, which aims to conduct a multi-criteria cluster analysis to classify countries by income distribution, growth, and implicit income coalition composition, allowed us to reconstruct implicit income coalitions that have benefited relatively more from economic growth. It also provided methodological advances by calculating right-wing policy indices and a centrist policy index to assess the actual social and economic policy regimes in advanced European economies. The highest right-wing policy indices were recorded in Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Poland, and Romania. The most left-wing policies were in Hungary, Greece, and Lithuania. The most centrist policies were recorded in Belgium, Croatia, and Slovakia. The highest policy polarization in favor of the richest and the poorest strata was identified in Germany and Italy. The type of policy implemented was found to have no significant impact on overall economic growth. On average, the strata in the coalition had 8 percentage points higher income growth over the analyzed 4-year period (2015-2019). This difference was generally larger in fast-growing economies. But the high correlation between the growth of coalition members and outsiders showed that outsiders also benefited significantly from economic growth, albeit to a lesser extent. With the exception of four countries outside the eurozone (Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Poland), economic growth was quite inclusive for outsiders and the poorest. A cluster analysis using several criteria allowed us to classify countries by income distribution, growth, and the implicit composition of the income coalition.

The Housing and Living Arrangement Situation of People with Disabilities in Hungary: Regime Characteristics and Individualized Risks

Our study explores the housing situation of people with disabilities based on life course interviews. Although the focus is mainly on present housing issues and challenges, this is set in a longitudinal perspective highlighting the legacies from the socialist period onwards. The study distinguishes three social policy regimes: the state-socialist, the liberal and the illiberal ones, which, on the one hand had different ideas about disability, while on the other hand, applied different housing policies. Results suggest that the housing of people with disabilities depends on a number of aspects which cannot be controlled by our interviewees. Based on the interviews, we identified three key areas which play an especially important role in shaping the housing opportunities of people with disabilities. These are the resources and motivations of the family of origin; the geographic location of the residence; and institution managers, care-workers, roommates around them.

Welfare regimes in twenty-first-century Latin America

AbstractA growing scholarship has documented changes in welfare policy in twenty-first-century Latin America, but no study yet has offered a systematic assessment, using a welfare regime approach, that captures the main trends across countries and over time. For a sample of 17 countries, this study offers a comprehensive tool to measure shifts in social policy regimes, highlighting three dimensions of welfare – inclusion, generosity, and equity – across four policy areas: transfers, health care, education, and family policies. Countries made significant progress in generosity and inclusion, but none improved equity. A cluster analysis based on the three dimensions of welfare offers a new, more precise classification of Latin American countries in welfare regimes in 2002 and 2017. Although the analysis shows minor shifts in country groupings, an increasing reliance on social assistance policies, particularly among the most advanced countries, marks a shift towards what I call compensatory regimes.

Taxation and the Polanyian forms of integration in socialist and postsocialist Hungary

AbstractReciprocity, redistribution, and (market) exchange were the “forms of integration” put forward by Karl Polanyi as a “special tool box” to investigate relations between economy and society where the principle of price‐forming markets is not (yet) dominant. Though intended as the basis for a comparative alternative to the universalist assumptions of mainstream (neoclassical) economics, Polanyi did not make significant use of these concepts to analyze the noncapitalist societies of his day. This article investigates his Hungarian homeland, which in four decades of socialism evolved from Stalinist central planning to a mixed economy in which (re)distribution was supplemented by the expansion of market exchange, with personal taxation playing a negligible role. The constellation of (re)distribution and market has changed significantly in the postsocialist (neoliberal) era, but Scandinavian‐type societal reciprocity has remained elusive. Long after admission to the European Union, Hungarian fiscal and social policy regimes are distinctive as the market form of integration combines with low taxation and political interventions to (re)distribute resources (including transfer income from the EU) to support the formation of a national bourgeoisie. Theoretically, the perspective of the socialist Karl Polanyi is contrasted with that of the liberal institutionalist economist János Kornai.

The Impact of Structural Reforms on Sustainable Development Performance: Evidence from European Union Countries

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic integration organization with standard policies that seek common goals among members, such as convergence and sustainable development. It aims to become a climate neutral economy by 2050. With structural reform implementation, each EU member country can work towards these set goals in accordance with their own welfare. However, a trade-off between the individual welfare goals of a country and the common goals of the EU should be reached. This article analyzes the impact of structural reforms on sustainable development performance in European countries. The article contributes to a gap in the literature because, to date, previous research has examined the effects of structural reforms on economic or environmental measures in groups of nations but has often lacked an adequate sustainable development context. In addition, the clustering of European Union countries according to different social policy regimes requires clarification of the perceptions and knowledge about the influence and usefulness of structural reforms for sustainable development performance. The research uses the panel data of the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom and Sustainable Development Goals agenda from the Eurostat database. The data cover 27 countries of the European Union for a period of 11 years (2010–2020). The research panel includes 297 observations. We found different results regarding the influence of structural reforms on sustainable development performance under different social policy regimes and the regulatory trap for homogeneous sustainable development in the European Union. The paper provides original empirical evidence and specifies the targets of structural reforms in relation to sustainable development. The results provide guidance for policymakers to develop more appropriate and efficient sustainable development policies.

Doing family: Nicaraguan transnational families’ narratives on motherhood

AbstractThis article explores transnational motherhood from the perspective of Nicaraguan migrant workers in Spain and Nicaraguan family members caring for migrant women's children. Our sample included families with children who have special needs, to explore how economically disadvantaged families draw upon migration as a strategy to address educational and physical needs not provided by a weak ‘exclusionary’ social policy regime. Applying the notion of the family display to migrant mothers and their families, our research reveals how gendered expectations of parenting shape their experience and the ways in which they explain and justify the migratory project. Migrants and family members, with certain reservations and limitations, actively reinvent motherhood by (re)constructing financial contribution as a type of caring. Our research also unsettles the classic notion of the ‘other mother’, as respondents describe caring as distributed over extended kin networks.

Moral Geographies of Care across Borders: The Experience of Migrant Grandparents in Australia

AbstractLiterature on transnational grandparenting rarely focuses on how migrant grandparents contribute to the work/care reconciliation of their adult children, how they provide and receive care in contexts of mobility and precariousness, and the ways in which this is shaped by migration and social policy regimes. Drawing on the concept of moral geographies of care, this study reveals how idealized norms of care interact with Australian migration and work/care regimes in complex and contradictory ways to produce configurations of care in migrant families. We conclude that migration and work/care regimes are poorly aligned, compromising migrant families’ well-being and economic security.

Running to stand still? Two decades of trade union activity in the Irish long-term care sector

This article examines the ongoing efforts of trade unions in Ireland to protect and improve the working conditions of personal care workers amid employment and social policy regimes associated with a liberal welfare state. Comparatively low public expenditure on care and the increasing marketisation of care services have undermined the provision of decent work. This article assesses two major union campaigns related to personal care workers over two decades, and reviews the key priorities that have emerged for unions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider whether the outcomes of these campaigns have been converted into enhanced rewards for workers and discuss the continuing challenges for union campaigning.

Migrants and access to health care in Costa Rica

• The paper examines access to health care in Costa Rica by Nicaraguan migrants. • It confronts two opposing views - Nicaraguan migrants overuse public health services and they are discriminated • Based on administrative and unique survey data there is no support for either view. • The incidence of migrant health care use is lower than their share in the population. • There is no evidence of systematic discrimination in access to health care against Nicaraguans based on their nationality. As in most immigrant-receiving countries in the global North, countries in the South face challenges regarding migrant access to social rights and the effect of migrants on the sustainability of the welfare state. In the Latin American context, this holds especially for countries such as Costa Rica, which has one of the strongest social policy regimes in the South and the highest (Nicaraguan) immigrant stock in Latin America. Set in the context of Costa Rica, this paper assesses two views which seem hard to reconcile, and, are common in the country. First, it is claimed that Nicaraguan migrants use public health services disproportionately, thereby threatening the country’s welfare system. Second, pro-migrant rights non-governmental organizations and academics are concerned, primarily based on qualitative studies, that access to health services for Nicaraguan immigrants is limited, and that they are discriminated based on nationality. This paper relies on administrative data and a unique data set representative of Nicaraguan born individuals residing in Costa Rica to examine the validity of both these claims. We do not find support for either. The incidence of migrant health care use is lower than their share in the population and at the same time there is no evidence of discrimination in health care access for migrants based on their nationality. The paper underlines the need for more informed migration debates.

Child‐related family policies in East and Southeast Asia: An intra‐regional comparison

AbstractOver the past five decades, dramatic demographic and socio‐economic changes have taken place in East and Southeast Asian countries, with important implications for the family and its future. Still, little is known about the typical configurations of state support for families in these countries. We examine governments’ strategies for supporting families and reducing the cost of children. Employing hierarchical cluster analysis, we uncover four distinctive family policy profiles—maternity support, poverty‐relief support, employment‐oriented support and encompassing support—and discuss their implication for defamilialisation. What appears less clear are the drivers behind such configurations, but there are indications that fertility concerns, the cultural fabric of a country and the productivist profile of the social policy regime seem to influence the orientation of family policy models. Overall, the development of family policy in East and Southeast Asia seems to be fragmented and characterised by parallel interventions of different types of provenance.

Are welfare regimes a useful category? The cross-sectoral variation in social policy in Latin America at the end of the commodity boom

ABSTRACT The literature on welfare and social policy regimes often assumes that countries perform consistently across policy sectors. Is this assumption correct, particularly in the global South? Do countries that do well in a given policy sector do also well in others? This article examines the matter by contrasting pensions with health care in Latin America, clustering countries based on their degree of segmentation in policy outputs. As a region, Latin America is an interesting case to study because of its comparatively high levels of social spending, long history of welfare systems, significant policy transformation in the first decade of the twenty-first century and extensive body of research. Findings show that while some countries do consistently well or poorly across sectors, others report an uneven performance. Questioning overarching generalizations based on the notion of the regime, the paper calls for further comparative analysis on the political economy behind the sectoral change.

FACTORS AFFECTING THE PROVISION OF SOCIAL WORK SERVICES FOR CANCER PATIENTS AT THE VIETNAM NATIONAL CANCER HOSPITAL

The provision of social work service for cancer patients is facing many challenges. Therefore, this study aims to explore factors affecting the provision of social work services for cancer patients at the Vietnam National Cancer Hospital. This is a cross-sectional study that used 10 in-depth interviews, and three focus group discussions to collect data. Our findings showed that the factors such as specialized qualifications of social workers, available facilities, the network of social work collaborators, finance, and policy regimes hindered the provision of social work services for cancer patients at the hospital. Meanwhile, the financial factor contributed to promote social work services for cancer patients at the hospital. Besides, the demands for the provision of social work services for cancer patients were one of the factors that should be considered in the coming time. Our study suggested stakeholders pay more attention to these factors.

The ‘Problem Represented To Be’ in the Social Protection Policy Regimes of Ethiopia

Policy analysis needs to go beyond the conventional ‘problem solving’ approach to interrogating ‘problem representations’ within policy documents. Numerous studies on social protection in Ethiopia, and in sub-Saharan Africa at large have been confined to studying the impact of policy interventions. Studies that aimed to scrutinize policy documents for their ‘problematization’ of issues and ‘problem representations’ in the Foucauldian sense are in dearth. This study used document analysis as a method and Bacchi’s (2009a) ‘What is the Problem Represented to be’ (WPR) model as its analytic frame to interrogate the ‘problem representations’ of the Developmental Social Welfare Policy (DSWP) and the present Social Protection Policy of Ethiopia. The findings suggest that though there is improvement from the earlier to the current policy, ‘problem representations’ of both were limited in terms of what they could deliver, for they were framed by targeting theory, having the ‘resource scarcity’ excuse. This was mainly reflected in the policy regimes’ ‘problematization’ of issues and ‘subjectification’ of beneficiaries.

From shame to blame: institutionalising oppression through the moralisation of mental distress in austerity England

This paper interrogates qualitative data regarding the changing experiences of mental health service and welfare state interventions for those who self-identify as experiencing long-term mental distress. We focus on austerity-related reforms in the English welfare and mental health policy architecture to explore the socio-cultural and material bases of benefit claims-making in relation to long-term illness and incapacity. Recent neoliberal social policy reforms contest the ontological status of mental distress, in effect recasting distress as a ‘moral’ status. This tendency is reinforced via three primary dynamics in contemporary mental health and welfare policy: the delegitimisation of sick role status in relation to mental distress; the foregrounding of individual responsibility and concomitant re-orientation of services towards self-help; and an increasing punitive conditionality. These intersecting processes represent an institutionalisation of ‘blame’ in various policy contexts (Scambler in Sociol Health Illn 31(3): 441–455, 2009; Sociol Rev Monogr 66(4):766–782, 2018), the moral stigmatisation of mental distress and escalating experiences of oppression for mental health service users and welfare recipients. Shifting conceptions of distress are thereby entwined with transformations in social policy regimes and political economies. Presenting distress as a personal failure legitimates austerity-related restrictions on benefit and service entitlements as part of a wider project of neoliberal welfare state transformation.

State and Labour under AKP Rule in Turkey: An Appraisal

ABSTRACTThe political Islamist AKP (Justice and Development Party) has been in power in Turkey since the November 2002 elections. This era brought about significant changes and transformations in many aspects of state‒society and state‒economy relations. However, as far as the state’s management of labour power is considered, the era represented a direct continuity with the post-1980 authoritarian neoliberal restructuring. The party’s policies aimed to make the labour market more competitive, flexible, low-waged, precarious and de-unionized. Economic policies in this term also increased the indebtedness of labourers as a result of the detrimental developments in the labour markets for workers. The AKP also did not hesitate to use state power whenever possible in order to suppress workers’ discontent and strikes. However, the party also enjoyed a considerable amount of working class support as a result of the ‘neoliberal social policy regime’ which attempted to alleviate the detrimental effects in the labour market. Against this background, this article attempts to develop a critical appraisal of state‒labour relations and general trends thereof, and make sense of developments in the labour market during the AKP era.

Regímenes de política social en América Latina: una revisión crítica de la literatura

El artículo analiza los principales aportes de la literatura académica acerca de los regímenes de políticas sociales que se configuraron en los países latinoamericanos desde inicios del siglo XX hasta la actualidad. Se concentra en la variación en los regímenes de políticas sociales a nivel intrarregional, a lo largo del tiempo, así como en los factores políticos que explican esos resultados. Tras la identificación de tres etapas en el desarrollo de las políticas sociales, el estudio destaca los desafíos que hoy en día se plantean en materia de protección social, los principales aportes y vacíos en la literatura, así como asuntos a profundizar en una futura agenda de investigación.

Housing market (in)stability and social rented housing: comparing Austria and Ireland during the global financial crisis

Since the 1970s the prevalence and duration of housing market booms has increased in developed countries as has the busts which followed them. These developments and particularly their occurrence in a large number of countries simultaneously were key contributors to the global financial crisis of 2008. The literature on this crisis has focused primarily on the role of mortgage markets and home-ownership in driving housing booms and busts and also on the countries which have experienced the strongest busts, particularly in the English-speaking world. Despite the large number of social rented dwellings in Western Europe, the role of this sector has been largely neglected in the literature as has developments in countries unaffected by the crisis. This article aims to address these omissions by examining the interaction of social housing and the housing market in Ireland, which experienced a spectacular housing market boom in the 1990s, and bust in the 2000s and Austria which has a long tradition of housing market stability. It argues that social housing played an important but contrasting role shaping the housing market dynamics in these two countries. In Ireland social housing was pro-cyclical—it accelerated the housing market boom and intensified the bust; whereas Austrian social housing had a counter cyclical impact on the housing market and thereby helped to promote price stability. These outcomes were partially reflected in the different social housing policy regimes in use in these countries—Austria represents a ‘unitary’ and Ireland a ‘dualist’ housing regime in Kemeny’s (From public housing to the social market: rental policy strategies in comparative perspective, Routledge, London, 1995) typology. In addition, the sources of finance for social housing and the demand-side or supply-side orientation of subsidies were also important drivers of these contrasting outcomes.

Social policy and welfare regimes typologies: Any relevance to South Africa?

This paper revisits Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes typology and applies it to the South African context. To argue its case, it refers to and uses the construct of colonialism of a special type. The paper notes that unlike other African coun- tries, Esping-Andersen’s framework resonates with South Africa’s social policy and welfare regime because of its unique history that partly stems from coloni- alism of a special type. It argues that social policy in present-day South Africa continues to reproduce colonial and apartheid socio-economic outcomes due to path dependency. The paper asserts that path dependency has largely been shaped by colonialism of a special type. The discussion then concludes that South Africa straddles the liberal and social democratic welfare state regimes and classifies it as a hybrid welfare regime.

Social Policy and Different Dimensions of Inequality in Turkey: A Historical Overview

In Turkey, as in most other societies without mature welfare states, social policy has acquired a novel significance in the context of the late twentieth century economic globalization and the social policy environment has gone through a major transformation especially under the AKP government, which has been in power since 2002. This article presents a discussion of this transformation and explores the relationship between social policy and different dimensions of inequality in contemporary Turkey. It is argued that the emerging social policy regime, although in some ways more inclusive than the former one, is laden with significant inequalities of class and gender, which are shaped by the flexible employment patterns associated with a market-oriented economic strategy and the culturally conservative outlook of the AKP government.

Disaggregating the Developing Welfare State: Provincial Social Policy Regimes in China

Summary Local variation in social welfare provision appears in myriad contexts around the world. And yet, our attempts at conceptualizing welfare regimes focus on the national level. In China, local authorities have shaped social policy implementation since economic reforms. In this paper, I answer three questions about subnational variation in social policy provision in China: (1) Have Chinese provinces diverged in their social policy provision?; (2) How do provincial social policy regimes differ from one another?; (3) What explains variation in provincial social policy spending? To answer the first question, I conduct a cluster analysis of provincial social policy spending data. I find that provinces systematically diverge in their social policy priorities. While some provinces invest in education to develop human capital and promote economic growth, others emphasize poverty alleviation. I propose a typology to conceptualize these tendencies. I then test for these divergent approaches using between-effects regression models of provincial social policy spending. Although provincial wealth and needs sometimes play a role in allocations for social policy, I find that economic development strategy and social instability are associated with distinct approaches to social welfare spending. These distinct provincial welfare regimes have implications for the adoption, implementation, and ultimately, effectiveness of social policy in China.