Suchergebnisse

Cover page -- Halftitle page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- 1 INTRODUCTION: CLASS, POWER AND SOCIAL CHANGE -- 2 THE DEMOCRATIC CLASSS TRUGGLE -- 3 WORKING-CLASS MOBILIZATION -- 4 ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION -- 5 SOCIAL ROOTS OF PARTY PREFERENCES -- 6 ELECTORAL GEOGRAPHY -- 7 VOTERS ON THE MOVE -- 8 THE POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT -- 9 SOCIAL POLICY -- 10 AFTER THE HISTORICAL COMPROMISE -- APPENDIX -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- SUBJECT INDEX

Korpi W. Class and gender inequalities in different types of welfare states: the Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP)Int J Soc Welfare 2010: ••: ••–••© 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare.This article considers the role of legislated welfare state institutions as mediators of effects of political and structural forces on citizens' levels of living of relevance to inequalities in health and mortality. The focus is on institutional structures of welfare state programmes relevant to class inequality, as indicated by income inequalities, and to gender inequality, conceived of as differences in agency. I introduce the Social Citizenship Indicator Program, a database providing quantitative and qualitative information on structures of main social insurance programmes in 18 countries from 1930 to 2000, on about 300,000 data points. It is used to delineate types of distributive institutions of relevance for income inequality. Institutions relevant for gendered agency inequality affect choices by women, especially mothers, between unpaid and paid work. Driving forces behind the emergence of differences in distributive institutions are discussed, and patterns of class and gender inequalities are outlined.

The power resources approach, underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist econornies, is challenged by employer-centered approaches claiming employers and cross-class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism.Theoretically and empirically these claims are problematic. In welfare state expansion, employers have often been antagonists, under specific conditions consenters, but very rarely protagonists. Well-developed welfare states and coordinated market econornies have emerged in countries with strong left parties in Iong-term cabinet participation or in countries with state corporatist institutional traditions and confessional parties in intensive competition with left parties. (World Politics / SWP)

The power resources approach, underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist economies, is challenged by employer-centered approaches claiming employers and cross-class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism. Theoretically and empirically these claims are problematic. In welfare state expansion, employers have often been antagonists, under specific conditions consenters, but very rarely protagonists. Well-developed welfare states and coordinated market economies have emerged in countries with strong left parties in long-term cabinet participation or in countries with state corporatist institutional traditions and confessional parties in intensive competition with left parties.

▪ Abstract  The "new-politics" perspective derives welfare state retrenchment from postindustrial changes generating budget deficits and government attempts to benefit cuts, attempts largely resisted by powerful new groups of welfare-state clients. Comparative studies based on social expenditures show little or no role of class-based parties in the retrenchment process. In the power-resources perspective, focusing on the role of distributive conflicts between major interest groups, the post-war European welfare state included full employment in the "Keynesian welfare state," based on a social contract markedly differing from the one in the United States. The return of mass unemployment in Europe constitutes a major welfare state regress and generates government budget deficits. Analyses based on social citizenship rights indicate major retrenchment in some countries, with political parties and welfare state institutions playing significant roles. The return of mass unemployment and cuts in social rights appear as a reworking of the European postwar social contract.

The third quarter of the twentieth century with full employment in most Western countries is a historically unique period, forming The Great Trough in unemployment. This article analyses the beginning, continuation, and demise of The Great Trough, contrasting a supply-and-demand framework derived from economic theory with a power-sensitive approach focusing on long-term positive-sum conflicts involving major interest and reflected in unemployment, inflation, industrial disputes, and the functional distribution of national income. Comparative empirical data from eighteen countries are used in analyses of hypotheses implied by the different theoretical perspectives.

Welfare states in Western countries have shared similar goals, yet the choice of institutions to approach these shared goals has generated protracted power struggles among major interest groups and great cross-country variation in institutional structures. Relating recent debates on new institutionalism to earlier debates on power, this paper outlines an augmented rational-action approach to the explanation of the origins of welfare state institutions and of variations in their degree of path dependence. With a differentiated concept of power costs and the degree of power asymmetry among actors as a central variable, this augmented approach partly combines some salient characteristics of the rational-choice, historical, and sociological versions of new institutionalism. The augmented rational-action approach proves fruitful in understanding conflicts characterizing the emergence and change of major social insurance institutions in 18 rich Western countries since the late 19th century and up to the present. It complements rational-choice institutionalism focused on voluntary cooperation, contracts and conventions.