This study examines and explains the relationship between social health insurance (SHI) participation and out-of-pocket expenditures (OOP) as well as the mediating role the institutional arrangement of SHI plays in this relationship in China. Embracing a new institutionalist approach, it develops two analytical perspectives: determination, which identifies the mechanisms of social health insurance, and strategic interaction, which explores the interaction among social health insurance agencies, healthcare providers, patients, and institutions. It reveals the poor performance of social health insurance in decreasing out-of-pocket health expenditures caused by a trade-off between the reimbursement, behavior management, and purchasing mechanisms of social health insurance programs. Further, it finds that the inequitable allocation of healthcare resources and patients' concerns regarding the benefits offset the strategies used by social health insurance agencies to manage care-seeking behavior. It also discovers that the complex interactions between insurance agencies, doctors, patients and a larger disenabling institutional surrounding restricts the purchasing efficiency of social health insurance. This book is characterized by its unique synthesis of the role of the institutional arrangement of social health insurance in China, the interaction between the stakeholders in health sectors, and of the relationship between healthcare institutions, actors, and policy outcomes. Providing a comprehensive overview, it enables scholars and graduate students to understand the ongoing process of social health insurance reform as well as the dynamics of health cost inflation in China. It also benefits policymakers by recommending a single-payer model based on an evidence-based investigation.

We live in a world that is increasingly characterised as full of risk, danger and threat. Every day a new social issue emerges to assail our sensibilities and consciences. Drawing on the popular Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC) seminar series, this book examines these social issues and anxieties, and the solutions to them, through the concept of moral panic. With a commentary by Charles Critcher and contributions from both well-known and up-and-coming researchers and practitioners, this is a stimulating and innovative overview of moral panic ideas, which will be an essential resource.

The purpose of this contributed volume is to examine the links among research, policy, and change in education in Latin America in the context of the relationships between the economy, politics, and the state in the 1980s. The case analyses will discuss the challenges these societies face in education in their progression towards the twenty-first century.

In its various sections, the book addresses the following questions: How did education respond during the 1980s to the major sociopolitical and economic changes that affected these countries? How did the changes in the 1980s affect the relationships between education, society, and the state, and what lessons can be learned from the interaction between research and policy that may help in understanding the developmental role of education in the 1990s? And is educational research and policy helping to improve the social condition of minorities in Latin America? This volume will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in Latin American studies, educational research, education policy, and educational planning.

Social Policy, Welfare State, and Civil Society in Sweden I-II gives a comprehensive account of the global invention of the welfare state, from the far north of the West to the global East and Southeast, and from its social policy origins to the most recent challenges from civil society. This first volume includes four essays, by now minor classics in welfare state literature. "Before Social Democracy: The Early Formation of a Social Policy Discourse in Sweden" set the stage for a research current that shifted from state welfare to welfare mix and civil society. "Working Class Power and the 1946 Pension Reform in Sweden" examined a key thesis in Peter Baldwin's seminal work The Politics of Social Solidarity, and led to a lively polemic among social historians. The third text was first published (as "Sweden") in volume 1 of Peter Flora's magnum opus Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States Since World War II. The final essay, "The Dialectics of Decentralization and Privatization," is a path-breaking study of the Swedish welfare state's reconstruction in the 1980s. The second volume covers the period since 1988 - "the lost world of social democracy" - and recent changes in comparative welfare state research and the Nordic Model. This work is an updated and enlarged edition in two volumes of Sven Hort's well-known and wide-ranging dissertation Social Policy and Welfare State in Sweden, published under the author's birth name Sven E. Olsson in 1990. This first volume contains the original four essays of the first edition. In praise of the new edition: "This is an impressive, comprehensive and knowledgeable contribution to the analysis of the early history and long-term development of the Swedish welfare state. Through a prime focus on reform actors at various stages we are persuasively reminded that there was a history before the ascendance of Social Democracy from the early 1930s, that the Social Democrats played a crucial role in the expansionary phase, and that one must go beyond theories of class politics to get a proper understanding of the evolution and characteristics of the modern welfare state." - Stein Kuhnle, Professor in Comparative Politics, Hertie School of Governance and University of Bergen "The development of the Swedish welfare state is often sketched in fairly simplistic terms. Professor Hort's analysis remains the most penetrating of the complex and fascinating interplay between politics, social forces, and economic development that explains much of the intricacies of the system that eventually emerged." - Gunnar Wetterberg, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sven E. O. Hort is Professor in Social Welfare at the College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University, Korea. He is an alumnus of Lund University. In Sweden he taught sociology at Linneaus and Sodertorn universities. Currently he is the chief editor of the Swedish journal Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys and a deputy editor of European Societies. With Stein Kuhnle he is the author of "The Coming of East and South-East Asian Welfare States," Journal of European Social Policy (2000).

How is social work shaped by global issues and international problems and how should it address them? This book employs a radical perspective to examine international social work. Globalisation had opened up many issues for social work, including how to address global inequalities, the impact of global economic problems and trends towards neoliberalism. By examining the origins of modern social work, problematising its definition and addressing the care/control dichotomy the book reveals what we can learn from different approaches and projects across the globe. Case studies from the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, Latin America, Australia, Hungary and Greece bring the text to life and allow both students and practitioners to apply theory to practice.

Social Policy, Welfare State, and Civil Society in Sweden I-II gives a comprehensive account of the global invention of the welfare state, from the far north of the West to the global East and Southeast, and from its social policy origins to the most recent challenges from civil society. This second volume aims at the civil society challenge to the welfare state since 1988, or "the lost world of social democracy." It opens with an overview of the three generations of comparative welfare state research, from Harold Wilensky to Gosta Esping-Andersen, Theda Skocpol and onwards. Inspired by the work of Norbert Elias, Karl Polanyi, and Stein Rokkan as well as by Benedict Anderson, Tom Nairn and Elinor Ostrom, the civilizing process and embeddedness of the welfare-industrial complex are scrutinized. The author's key concepts are imagined welfare communities, and common pool resources in (civil) society and state. Privatization trends in Sweden - from take-off to bonanza - and domestic resistance to the powers of the day are then lucidly assessed, and the simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of a once famous welfare state is elaborated with force and vigour. Finally, the cross-national Scandinavian differences are outlined. The five essays of volume II emphasize the historical relativity of social welfare institutions and argue against all developmental metaphysics. This work is an updated and enlarged edition in two volumes of Sven Hort's well-known and wide-ranging dissertation Social Policy and Welfare State in Sweden, published under the author's birth name Sven E. Olsson in 1990. The first volume contains the original four essays and covers the formation and evolution of the Swedish welfare state 1884-1988. In praise of the new edition: "The publication of this book in 1990 marked a turning point in understanding of how the Swedish welfare state should be conceptualized both from a historical and comparative perspective. Its combination of sophisticated theoretical perspectives and in-depth empirical analysis became a model for many later studies of welfare state regimes. Added to the timely new edition is a 'volume II' sequel that updates and deepens the analysis of how the Swedish welfare state has fared during the era of globalization. This new edition is a 'must read' for everyone interested in the history and future of welfare state regimes." - Bo Rothstein, August Rohss Chair in Political Science, University of Gothenburg In praise of the first edition: ..". takes us beyond simple analyses, emphasizing the deep historical roots of social democracy in Sweden and considering the role of ideas, the organization of politics, and the activities of social classes other than labor in building and securing Swedish social policy. Olsson's book presents a comprehensive overview of the development of the Swedish welfare state and a detailed consideration of several key episodes of welfarestate development." - American Journal of Sociology "This is a very scholarly and broad ranging analysis of the postwar Swedish welfare state ... which is invaluable for comparative policy analysis." - Critical Social Policy ..". essential reading for sociologists and political scientists." - Contemporary Sociology Sven E. O. Hort is Professor in Social Welfare at the College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University, Korea. He is an alumnus of Lund University. In Sweden he taught sociology at Linneaus and Sodertorn universities. Currently he is the chief editor of the Swedish journal Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys and a deputy editor of European Societies. With Stein Kuhnle he is the author of "The Coming of East and South-East Asian Welfare States," Journal of European Social Policy (2000).

Since its first issue in 1988, much interesting and inspiring material has been published in "Groupwork." Most of this still says much of use to today's groupworkers, and there is a steady stream of requests for reprints. We are therefore making back volumes of "Groupwork" available in volume form. Authors in this volume include leading academic figures in the field as well as practitioners working in the field. Any groupworker will find this material of enduring interest.

This book challenges the view that there was a smooth and inevitable progression towards liberalism in early nineteenth-century England. It examines the argument used by the high Whigs that the landed aristocracy still had a positive contribution to make to the welfare of the people. This argument came under scrutiny as the laissez-faire state met with serious criticism in the 1830s and 1840s, when the majority of people proved unwilling to accept the `compromise' forged between the middle classes and other sections of the landed elite, and mass movements for political and social reform proliferated. The Whigs' readiness to embrace these pressures kept them in power for sixteen of the twenty-two years between 1830 and 1852, and allowed them to serve as the midwives of the `Victorian origins of the welfare state'. Drawing on a rich variety of original sources, including many country house archives, Peter Mandler paints a vivid composite picture of the high aristocracy at the peak of its wealth and power, and provides a provocative and original analysis of how their rejection of middle-class manners helped them to govern Britain in two troubled decades of social unrest.

This ground-breaking study of the baby boomer generation, who are now entering old age, breaks new ground in ageing research. This post-war cohort has experienced a range of social, cultural, and medical changes in regard to their notions of body, from the introduction of the Pill and the decoupling of sex and procreation to the H-Bomb and Earthrise. Yet, paradoxically, ageing is also universal. This exciting book reflects the intersection of time, ageing, body and identity to give a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the ageing process.

This book addresses how the Conservative Party has re-focused its interest in social policy. Analysing to what extent the Conservatives have changed within this particular policy sphere, the book explores various theoretical, social, political, and electoral dimensions of the subject matter.

Since its first issue in 1988, much interesting and inspiring material has been published in "Groupwork." Most of this still says much of use to today's groupworkers, and there is a steady stream of requests for reprints. We are therefore making back volumes of "Groupwork" available in volume form. Authors in this volume include leading academic figures in the field as well as practitioners working in the field. Any groupworker will find this material of enduring interest.

As wages stagnate but living costs keep rising, the pressure on working people grows more intense. The issue of living standards has become one of the most urgent challenges for politicians in both Britain and America. 'The squeezed middle' brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic to ask what the UK can learn from the US. American workers have not benefited from growth for an entire generation - the average American worker earned no more in 2009 than in 1975. Now British workers are undergoing a similar experience. No longer can they assume that when the economy grows their wages will grow with it. This collection brings together for the first time leading economic and policy thinkers to analyse the impact of different policies on those on low-to middle incomes and to explain what lessons the UK can learn from America's 'lost generation'. This timely book is essential reading for everyone concerned about the living standards crisis, an issue which could decide elections as well as shaping the future for millions of working families.

The eviction at Dale Farm in the UK in 2011 brought the conflicting issues relating to Gypsy and Traveller accommodation to the attention of the world's media. However, as the furore surrounding the eviction has died down, the very pressing issues of accommodation need, inequality of access to education, healthcare and employment, and exclusion from British (and European) society is still very much evident. This topical book examines and debates a range of themes facing Gypsies and Travellers in British society, including health, social policy, employment and education. It also looks at the dilemmas faced in representing disadvantaged minority groups in media and political discourse, theories on power, control and justice and the impact of European initiatives on inclusion. Gypsies and Travellers: Empowerment and inclusion in British society will be of interest to students, academics, policy makers, practitioners, those working in the media, police, education and health services, and of course to Gypsies and Travellers themselves.

In the context of the Care Act 2014, this third edition of the leading textbook on personalisation considers key policy changes since 2009 and new research into the extension and outcomes of personal budgets. Direct payments and personal budgets have developed rapidly, transforming the whole of adult social care. In future, all care will be delivered via a personal budget, with direct payments as the default rather than the exception. As the concepts have spread from adult social care to other sectors, the changes have been controversial and difficult to implement. Front-line practitioners and people using services have struggled to make sense of these ways of working in a challenging financial and policy context. This accessible textbook is essential reading for students, practitioners and policy makers in social work and community care services.

The urban poor suffer many problems beyond pressing financial concerns, including those involving housing, health, and family relationships. Social welfare agencies struggle to cope with the enormity of need presented by individuals and families. The providers frequently lack a framework to guide their priorities and the delivery of services. This volume, based on the authors' close and extensive collaboration with New York's Lower East Family Union, affords a substantive, insightful, and effective approach not only to defining the services needed but also to the delivery thereof. It also examines the cognitive and emotional states which the clients bring as they seek help. Means are provided for establishing priority of needs, assessing the value of preventive services, and formulating family-specific service responses. Potential family dissolution and implicit child welfare concerns are viewed as especially critical and receives extensive constructive discussion.

Stressed, poverty-level families often approach helping agencies in a nearly exhausted condition. The needs of such clients can only be answered, and the last straw avoided, if the agencies are structured to identify the most immediate needs and to supply the understanding, supportive relationship, and the requisite practical assistance. This book, with its extensive base of experience, guides the process wisely. It offers informed hope that the awful conditions of the urban poor can be ameliorated through better planned and effective service delivery, and caring interventions.

For years the NHS has been the most trusted of public institutions and the envy of many around the world. But today there is turmoil. Painful shortcomings in clinical care and patient experience, together with funding cuts, threaten to dig deep into service levels and standards. Seventy years of technically advanced medicine provided free to the population has produced a widespread perception of patients as passive consumers of healthcare. This book renews for our times the collective compact that created our public services in the 1940s. Voices from service users and service providers show how this can be done. They offer testimony of what goes wrong and what can be put right when working together becomes the norm. Sections explore new ways of living and working with long-term conditions, more meaningful and effective approaches to service redesign, to use of information technology, leadership, co-production and creating and accounting for quality. Appealing to a wide range of readers, with short, accessible contributions this is a book to provoke and inspire.

Wysong analyzes the nature and extent of the involvement of seven major health and safety professional organizations in the development of the most significant national reform effort in occupational health policy since the OSA Act of 1970: The High Risk Occupational Disease Notification and Prevention Act. The professions have long been a focus of study in sociology; however, this is the first book to examine how the interests and involvement of health professionals' organizations on a national health policy issue are linked to external interests and dynamic contextual factors. By illuminating how professional societies' policy choices are embedded within and shaped by economic and political contexts, Wysong refines prevailing new class interpretations of professionals' interests where policy reforms are concerned. This book should be of particular concern to scholars and researchers involved with medical sociology, the sociology of work, complex organizations, social change, and occupational health policy.

Eclipse of Freedom unravels the dynamics of oppression that frustrates human aspiration, highlights policy linkages that explain unwarranted misery, assesses the human damage caused by dysfunctional social policies and fragmented services, and identifies a progressive mechanism of social transformation. Brij Mohan posits social theory and the human condition in a post-material context that emphasizes peace, justice, and equality as biodiverse needs of the human family. The focus of the study is the structure of oppression: racism, sexism, ageism, classism, as well as poverty, AIDS, homelessness, and other scourges that affect the alienated underclass. Mohan rejects the New World Order as a perversion of Nietzschean logic and challenges scientists, philosophers, and policymakers to think critically and to act responsibly in search of universal freedom.

Published in association with the SPA, Social Policy Review 27 draws together international scholarship at the forefront of addressing concerns that emphasise both the breadth of social policy analysis, and the expanse of issues with which it is engaged. Contributions to this edition focus on the effects of financialisation on services and care provision, policies to address deficiencies in housing and labour markets, and ways in which the study of social policy may need to develop to respond to its changing material concerns. A themed section explores the place of comparative welfare modelling in the context of change over the last quarter of a century to consider where scholarship has been and where it might be going.

"An excellent overview of the problems and needs of the disabled. . . . The volume itself is a clear, concise well-written gathering of otherwise scattered information that should be valuable for years to come. Highly recommended for all libraries." Choice

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Winner of the 2006 Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Organized Section Best First Book Award from the American Political Science Association

Winner of the 2006 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists

""The Politics of Disgust" is a very thoughtful, theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich analysis of the discourse of welfare reform."
--"Political Science Quarterly"

"An important contribution to our understanding."
--"Perspectives on Politics"

aFor those concerned about inequality and democratic theory in America, Hancockas introduction alone, in which she frames the characteristics of politics of disgust, makes the book worthwhile.a
&3151;"Perspectives on Politics"

"Brilliantly conceived and executed. . .[A] stunning work of public policy that, if embraced, could radically change 'welfare'--and America--as we know it."
--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination"

"[A] challenging and disturbing account of the impact of stereotypes in politics. Anyone interested in the means by which the poor, the unpopular, and the alienated are kept from participating in politics to demand better treatment should read this book."
--Frank R. Baumgartner, coauthor of "Agendas and Instability in American Politics"

"[An] excellent and outstanding book; Ange-Marie Hancock has established herself without doubt as a rising star in political science."
--Gerald Horne, author of "Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire"

Ange-Marie Hancock argues that longstanding beliefs about poor African Americanmothers were the foundation for the contentious 1996 welfare reform debate that effectively "ended welfare as we know it." By examining the public identity of the so-called welfare queen and its role in hindering democratic deliberation, The Politics of Disgust shows how stereotypes and politically motivated misperceptions about race, class and gender were effectively used to instigate a politics of disgust.

The ongoing role of the politics of disgust in welfare policy is revealed here by using content analyses of the news media, the 1996 congressional floor debates, historical evidence and interviews with welfare recipients themselves. Hancock's incisive analysis is both compelling and disturbing, suggesting the great limits of today's democracy in guaranteeing not just fair and equitable policy outcomes, but even a fair chance for marginalized citizens to participate in the process.

This text describes the relationship between political authoritarianism and people's welfare in modern China. Based on a study of Chinese political discourse from the 1898 reform period to the present, the book aims to demonstrate that support for authoritarian rule in modern China is best understood when compared to ancient political traditions of authority and welfare that were established in China's late Zhou dynasty by the Confucian philosopher Xunzi (298-238 BC).