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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 is the first comprehensive overview of the waves of protest
mobilization that spread across Europe in the wake of the Great
Recession. Documenting the extent of these protests in a study
covering thirty countries, including the issues they addressed and
the degree to which they replicated each other, this book maps the
prevalence and nature of protest across Europe, and explains the
interactions between economic and political grievances that lead to
protest mobilization. The authors assess a range of claims in the
literature on political protest, arguing that they tend both to
overstate the importance of anti-austerity sentiments and
underestimate the relevance of political grievances in driving the
protest. They also integrate a study of the electoral and protest
arenas, revealing that electoral mass politics has been heavily
influenced protest mobilization, which amplified electoral
punishment at the polls.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on
capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism
(Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism
(1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges
advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways
political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the
last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist
democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping
deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure,
and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view,
allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural
transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of
change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist
and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to
a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political
economy research.
This book challenges existing theories of welfare state change by
analyzing pension reforms in France, Germany, and Switzerland
between 1970 and 2004. It explains why all three countries were
able to adopt far-reaching reforms, adapting their pension regimes
to both financial austerity and new social risks. In a radical
departure from the neo-institutionalist emphasis on policy
stability, the book argues that socio-structural change has led to
a multidimensional pension reform agenda. A variety of
cross-cutting lines of political conflict, emerging from the
transition to a post-industrial economy, allowed governments to
engage in strategies of political exchange and coalition-building,
fostering broad cross-class coalitions in support of major reform
packages. Methodologically, the book proposes a novel strategy to
analyze lines of conflict, configurations of political actors, and
coalitional dynamics over time. This strategy combines quantitative
analyses of actor configurations based on coded policy positions
with in-depth case studies.
This book challenges existing theories of welfare state change by
analyzing pension reforms in France, Germany, and Switzerland
between 1970 and 2004. It explains why all three countries were
able to adopt far-reaching reforms, adapting their pension regimes
to both financial austerity and new social risks. In a radical
departure from the neo-institutionalist emphasis on policy
stability, the book argues that socio-structural change has led to
a multidimensional pension reform agenda. A variety of
cross-cutting lines of political conflict, emerging from the
transition to a post-industrial economy, allowed governments to
engage in strategies of political exchange and coalition-building,
fostering broad cross-class coalitions in support of major reform
packages. Methodologically, the book proposes a novel strategy to
analyze lines of conflict, configurations of political actors, and
coalitional dynamics over time. This strategy combines quantitative
analyses of actor configurations based on coded policy positions
with in-depth case studies.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on
capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism
(Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism
(1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges
advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways
political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the
last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist
democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping
deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure,
and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view,
allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural
transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of
change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist
and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to
a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political
economy research.
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