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Lecture notes Key challenges to the welfare state ()
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In this document you will find all lectures given by Marcel Hoogenboom and his colleagues + extra notes taken during the lectures
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Hoorcollege 1What is a welfare state:
- One of the most powerful institutions of the 20th century and beyond
- The result of a long historical development
- Today:
- Knowing and understanding its development, both then and now
- Knowing and understanding major social changes and how these challenge
the welfare state today and in the future
- What a welfare state is and what it should be is highly contested
3 definitions of a welfare state:
- Van Doorn (1978): “The welfare state embodies the formulation of a social
guarantee: society, organized as a nation state, guarantees all citizens a reasonable
standard of living.”
- Wilensky (1975): “The essence of the welfare state is government protected
minimum standards of income, nutrition, health, housing, and education assured to
every citizen as a political right, not as charity."
- Thoenes (1962): “The welfare state is a society type, which is characterized by a
democratic system of government care, which guarantees the collective social
welfare of its subjects, while the capitalist production system remains largely
unaltered.”
- Only in democracies? If so, why? → the welfare state originated from a period
where most workers were labors and they organized themselves in labor
unions, purpose welfare state: protecting people from becoming poor, this is
linked to democracy
- Is the government the only provider of welfare state services? → in Belgium
there is a labor union instead of the government who helps people who get
unemployed. The health care in the Netherlands is organised by private
entities
- What is “collective”? Who is part of the collective? → Migrants are not always
part of collective
- Only in capitalist countries? If so, why? → things could be traded on a free
market by everyone
Components welfare state:
- Social security
- Unemployment, sickness and disability benefits
- Pensions
- Maternity and parental leave
- Social assistance (everybody is entitled to it (bijstand))
- Health care
- Collective health insurance
, - Funding of hospitals, rehabilitation centers
- Education
- Funding of schools, universities
- Student grants
- Compulsory education laws
- Social housing
- Funding of/subsidies for affordable homes
- Property regulations
- Social welfare
- Elderly people’s homes
- Community centers
- Debt assistance
- Shelters for homeless people
- Etc etc?
- Mortgage deduction (the middles classes welfare state)
- Tax cuts
This course is about the interrelationship between the welfare state and social change:
- Then: the origins of the welfare state
- Now: welfare state change
-
The origins of the welfare state (1)
Social change: three drivers:
- Industrialization:
- From agriculture to industry
- Migration and urbanisation
- Individualisation:
- Disintegration of traditional communities
- Quest for individual rights
- Rise of the nation/national state:
- Bureaucracy and control
- Quest for national unity
The origins of the welfare state (2)
- Bismarck’s start (Germany, 1880s):
- First social insurance acts in history
, - Protection of blue-collar workers
- 1900-1940: other countries follow
- After World War II: further expansion:
- More categories of populations covered (non-workers, women etc.)
- Schemes become more generous
- The Golden Age of the welfare state (1950s-1970s)
The origins of the welfare state (1)
Gøsta Esping Andersen:
- The three worlds of welfare capitalism (1990)
- Institutional differences between welfare states:
- Who is entitled to what and when? (= “eligibility”)
- Generosity: benefit levels
- Immunization from market dependency (“decommodification”)
- Three welfare state regime types:
- Liberal welfare state
- All citizens covered (but means-tested)
- Generosity: low
- Decommodification: low
- Examples: UK, Ireland, USA, Australia
- Conservative welfare state
- Mainly (male) breadwinners covered
- Generosity: rather high
- Decommodification: medium
- Examples: Germany, France, Austria
- Social democratic welfare state
- All citizens covered
, - Generosity: high
- Decommodification: high
- Examples: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Esping Andersen and his critics:
- “Types are caricatures”
- What about:
- Southern Europe: the family
- Eastern Europe: communist past
- Hybrids: the netherlands
- 1 It is too rigid
- 2 Esping Anderson’s typology is outdated because it was made a long time
ago
The welfare state after the golden age:
- The crisis of the welfare state (1975 - present?)
- Economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s
- The rise of neo-liberalism
Welfare state reform:
- 1980s and early 1990s:
- Spending cuts
- Restriction of access
- Late 1990s and 2000s:
- New organizational structures
- New policy types: activation, socialization, etc
- 2010s and 2020s:
- Preparing for ‘aged society’
- Facing calamities (financial crisis, COVID-19, etc)
This course: five processes of social change
1. Post-industrialization:
a. Services, flexibilization and life-long-learning
b. The end of the steady job?
2. (Hyper-) individualization:
a. Welfare state and individual choice
b. Activation and participation
3. Gender
a. Labour market participation of women
b. De-familiarization
4. Ageing
a. Population ageing and “de-greening”
b. Rising health care costs and labour shortages
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