This book analyzes how recent welfare state transformations across advanced democracies have shaped social and economic disparities. The authors observe a trend from a compensatory paradigm towards supply oriented social policy, and investigate how this phenomenon is linked to distributional outcomes. How - and how much - have changes in core social policy fields alleviated or strengthened different dimensions of inequality? The authors argue that while the market has been the major cause of increasing net inequalities, the trend towards supply orientation in most social policy fields has further contributed to social inequality. The authors work from sociological and political science perspectives, examining all of the main branches of the welfare state, from health, education and tax policy, to labour market, pension and migration policy.

This book examines the extent to which international organizations have shaped reforms in education and training in federalist countries with regards to policy convergence. In advanced democracies, international organizations have become increasingly influential in government activity. This also applies to policy fields that have traditionally been nearly exclusively regulated by the nation-state. How strong is their influence in policy fields like education where they rely on purely soft governance to stimulate national policies? From a political science perspective, three major initiatives are analyzed: the OECD's PISA study, the European Bologna process and the European Union's Copenhagen process. Within a few years, these initiatives have contributed to deep transformations within the education arena. This book elucidates the processes in which nation-states comply with these initiatives, using the examples of Switzerland and the United States. div>

This book analyzes how recent welfare state transformations across advanced democracies have shaped social and economic disparities. The authors observe a trend from a compensatory paradigm towards supply oriented social policy, and investigate how this phenomenon is linked to distributional outcomes. How - and how much - have changes in core social policy fields alleviated or strengthened different dimensions of inequality? The authors argue that while the market has been the major cause of increasing net inequalities, the trend towards supply orientation in most social policy fields has further contributed to social inequality. The authors work from sociological and political science perspectives, examining all of the main branches of the welfare state, from health, education and tax policy, to labour market, pension and migration policy.