This text seeks to counter the recent vogue for somewhat unsubstantiated speculation about the impact of globalization upon welfare states. Combining both theoretical and empirical analysis it asks 'What is globalization, and how has it been implicated in recent changes to European welfare states?' Covering all the major European welfare systems, it suggests new empirical and theoretical perspectives. Globalization processes exist, but their link with welfare change is complex, and varies both between countries and types of welfare state.

Since the late 1990s, new strategies concerning the role and shape of welfare states have been formulated, many of which are guided by a logic of social investment. This book maps out this new perspective and assesses both its achievements and shortcomings. In doing so, it provides a critical analysis of social investment ideas and policies and opens up for discussion many of Europe's most pressing concerns--such as an aging population, the current economic crisis, and environmental issues-- and whether social investment can provide adequate responses to these challenges.

Poverty, increased inequality, and social exclusion are back on the political agenda in Western Europe, not only as a consequence of the Great Recession of 2008, but also because of a seemingly structural trend towards increased inequality in advanced industrial societies that has persisted since the 1970s. How can we explain this increase in inequalities? Policies in labor markets, social policy, and political representation are strongly linked in the creation, widening, and deepening of insider-outsider divides-a process known as dualization. While it is certainly not the only driver of increasing inequality, the encompassing nature of its development across multiple domains makes dualization one of the most important current trends affecting developed societies. However, the extent and forms of dualization vary greatly across countries. The comparative perspective of this book provides insights into why Nordic countries witness lower levels of insider-outsider divides, whereas in continental, liberal and southern welfare states, they are more likely to constitute a core characteristic of the political economy. Most importantly, the comparisons presented in this book point to the crucial importance of politics and political choice in driving and shaping the social outcomes of deindustrialization. While increased structural labor market divides can be found across all countries, governments have a strong responsibility in shaping the distributive consequences of these labor market changes. Insider-outsider divides are not a straightforward consequence of deindustrialization, but rather the result of political choice. A landmark publication, this volume is geared for faculty and graduate students of economics, political science, social policy, and sociology, as well as policymakers concerned with increasing inequality in a period of deep economic and social crisis.

Welfare states around the globe are changing, challenged by the development of knowledge economies. In many countries, policy-makers' main response has been to modernize welfare states by focusing on future-oriented social investment policies that focus on creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skills and capabilities. Yet, there is massive variance in the development of social investment strategies. The World Politics of Social Investment: Political Dynamics of Reform is the second of two volumes of the World Politics of Social Investment (WOPSI) project, which systematically maps and explains different welfare reform strategies in democratic countries around the world. This volume traces the development of social investment reforms across the regions of Nordic, Continental, and Southern Europe, as well as Central and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America, and North East Asia. The chapters in this volume study the impact of different structural drivers for social investment (e.g., demographic, poverty, demand for skill, or lack of an available workforce), the salience of social investment in the public debates, and the different political coalitions that led to or prevented the adoption of social investment strategies. The chapters are written by leading social policy scholars from different world regions. They all apply a joint theoretical framework (developed in the first of the two volumes) to explain the politics of social investment in a range of contexts and policy fields. Jointly with the first volume, the WOPSI project offers the first worldwide analysis of social investment reforms around the globe.

This book questions whether the recently promoted European 'social investment' strategy is able to regenerate the welfare state, promote social inclusion, create more and better jobs, and help address the challenges posed by the economic crisis, globalisation, ageing and climate change. To assess the diversity, achievements, shortcomings and potentials of social investment policies, it brings together some of the best social policy scholars and well-known policy experts, connecting academic and policy debates around the future of the welfare state. Supported by the Nordic Center of Excellence NordWel and the EU funded Network of Excellence RECWOWE (Reconciling Work and Welfare).

Europe's political landscapes are in turmoil, and new radical parties challenge the established political order. This book locates Europe's contemporary challenges within the longer economic and political trajectories of its 'welfare democracies'. The book argues that it is imperative to understand the specific structures of political competition and voter-party links to make sense of the political and economic turmoil of the last decades. In four distinct European welfare democracies (Nordic, Continental, Southern, and Anglo-Saxon), the political economy, the party system, and the structure of the political space are co-determined in a specific way. Accordingly, different packages of policies and politics and distinct patterns of alignment between core electoral groups and political parties exist in the four welfare democracies and shape the reactions of European welfare democracies to the current turmoil. This volume provides an analytical framework that links welfare states to party systems, combining recent contributions to the comparative political economy of the welfare state and insights from party and electoral politics. It states three phenomena. First, concerning electoral politics, the book identifies a certain homogenization of European party systems, the emergence of a new combination of leftist socio-economic and rightist socio-cultural positions in many parties, and, finally, the different electoral success of the radical right in the north of Europe and of the radical left in the south. Secondly, the contributions to this book indicate a confluence toward renewed welfare state support among parties and voters. Thirdly it demonstrates that the Europeanization of political dynamics, combined with incompatible growth models, has created pronounced European cleavages.

Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies takes stock of the major economic challenges that advanced industrial democracies have faced since the early 1990s and the responses by governments to them. It has three goals: firstly, to further our understanding of how political economies have transformed over the past decades; secondly, to analyse the contribution of governments to these changes, by looking at their growth strategies and thirdly, to highlight and analyse the role of the reforms of welfare systems in this transformative change. In a nutshell, this book maps and provides general understanding of the evolution of growth regimes in advanced capitalist countries. It identifies five main growth regimes in contemporary advanced capitalist economies (three export-led and two domestic demand-led ones). To do so the book combines a supply side approach to economic growth as advocated by the Varieties of Capitalism Literature (OUP, 2001) with a demand side perspective as the recent discussion on growth models has exemplified. It argues that all political economies consist of growth regimes, which are based on a set of institutions that shape the supply side of the economy as well as on demand drivers such as government spending and private consumption. Both supply and demand are heavily shaped by the welfare state which provides for skills through education systems and stimulates demand through high social spending and private pension funds. The book focuses on the analysis of welfare reforms as growth strategies pursued by governments in an era characterised by financialization and the rise of the knowledge economy.