Transformation: Canadian Social Policy Since 1985

This paper sets out to document and explain the major structural changes which have taken place in Canada's social security system since the mid-1980s. Most major programs have been cut back one way or another, in response to a combination of pressures. Foremost amongst these has been the commitment to reduce federal and provincial government deficits. In addition there have been the consequences of high unemployment and increasing job insecurity, demographic and social changes, and "tax fatigue" on the part of the public. The paper documents major recent changes of social policy both in general—with regard to the changed approach evident at federal level and its effect on social transfers to the provinces—and in respect of key programs, including unemployment/employment insurance, old age pensions/the Canada Pension Plan, and child benefits. The paper next identifies "currents and undercurrents" common to all of the developments commented on: the decline of universality, the practice of "social policy-making by stealth", the evidence of the contemporary Canadian public's "collective ambivalence and loss of memory" in respect of the major, historic social programs. It concludes by urging the case for social reinvestment in genuinely sustainable social policy, in the currently more favourable fiscal climate.     

发展型社会政策及其对我国政府政策制定的启示

20世纪90年代以来,社会政策的理念和实践模式发生了巨大的变化,这集中表现在发展型社会政策理论的形成和实践。发展型社会政策的核心理论是将社会政策看成是一种社会投资行为,注重对人力资本的投资,强调经济发展和社会发展的整合性。本文回顾了发展型社会政策产生的背景,指出发展型社会政策的重要理念,最后指出发展型社会政策对我国政府政策制定的启示。     

Electoral Politics, Ideology and American Social Policy

This article addresses the politics of social policy in the context of the 2004 American presidential election. It examines the divisions in American society and their distinctive agendas. It also explores the record of the Bush administration on key social policy issues and shows how it relates to the broader conservative tradition as well as to the Clinton administration's reform of welfare. Finally, it examines the election results. The article argues that the Bush administration has a distinctive agenda on social policy issues and that its approach is likely to reduce further the role of the social government in the provision of social policy, by emphasizing market forces and philanthropy as well as cutting taxes. It also notes, however, that the Bush administration has taken a strong stance on traditional moral values and that its opposition to abortion and homosexuality is an important part of its political strategy.     

Social Policy for Social Work: A Teaching Agenda

Though social justice is a central goal of the social work profession,the actual involvement of social workers in social change isvery limited. Moreover, training in social policy and policypractice in schools of social work is minimal. As such, practitionerslack the tools needed to analyse existing social problems andpolicies and to enable them to intervene in the policy processin order to better serve the needs of service users. This articleseeks to further social policy teaching within social work educationby engaging in a survey of the existing literature on the subjectand by offering a detailed programme for integrating this subjectinto the social work training system. The literature surveythat serves as a basis for this programme includes a reviewof studies on the dilemmas linked to social policy teaching,on the goals and content of social policy courses in socialwork and on preferred teaching methods in this field.     

Social Policy in a Cold Climate: Health and Social Welfare in Russia

The Russian Federation faces multiple challenges for its health and welfare systems and for the development of social policy responses. This article provides a review of some of the key challenges for social policy in Russia and assesses the adequacy of the responses to date. The author surveys recent developments in health and social welfare and makes recommendations on priorities for Russia's policy‐makers and international funders. A range of public health challenges including drug and alcohol misuse, health in prisons and mental health is discussed; HIV/AIDS is singled out for particular attention. While Russia is increasingly attracting the attention of social scientists in the West, there is uncertainty about models and concepts suitable for the analysis of this complex society. Although empirical trends are largely discussed in this article, it is argued that theoretical development is required and some suggestions are made about concepts of the ‘middle range’ to assist in future analyses. Intermediate theories, such as those relating to the management of personal welfare, and development of resilience in a formerly collectivized context, are identified as having explanatory potential for this task.     

Social Policy in Greece: Rhetoric versus Reform

This paper reviews the major social policy developments in Greece during the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on social security, health and employment policies. It argues that the concept of social policy and the practice of politics have been distorted in this country. Social policy reflects the legacy of a heavily politicized and centralized policy‐making system, an impoverished administrative infrastructure and poorly developed social services. Its emergence is characterized by the pursuit of late and ineffective policies. It lacks continuity, planning and coordination, being oriented towards short‐term political expediency. It is largely insurance‐based, reproducing huge inequalities and institutional arrangements which are behind the times. It provides mainly cash benefits, low‐quality but rather expensive health services and marginal social welfare protection. Moreover, the lack of a minimum income safety net confirms the country's weak culture of universalism and social citizenship. By implication, complex policy and interlocking interest linkages have tarnished the “system” with a reputation for strong resistance to progressive change. At the same time, sources of change such as globalization, demographic developments, new household and family/gender patterns, unstable economic growth, fiscal imperatives, programme maturation, as well as persisting unemployment, changing labour markets and rising health care costs, have produced mounting pressures for welfare reform.     

Social Capital, Social Funds and Poor Communities: An Exploratory Analysis

Social capital has captured the attention of social policy-makers and development administrators, with its emphasis on social relationships, civic participation, collaborative action and norms of reciprocity. Social funds support small-scale community-based development projects aimed primarily at reducing poverty. This article synthesizes the relevant literature and explores the nexus between social capital and social funds in relation to poor communities. Drawing upon primary research in Jamaica, the article reports the outcomes of eight social fund sub-projects that involved local organizations in community-driven development processes. It analyses the role of social networks and the influence of community power structures in social capital creation. Social policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

虚拟社区知识共享中的博弈问题分析

随着网络的普及,越来越多的人通过网络、通过虚拟社区来获取信息,但并不是所有的人都愿意无条件的将自己的知识贡献出来,让所有人得益。虚拟社区需要采取激励措施才能吸引、保留社区会员的加入和一直参与。     

Social Politics and Policy in an Era of Globalization: Critical Reflections

This paper critically examines the ways in which social policy is said to be affected by globalization. The prevailing approach has been framed in terms of the impact of "external" economic forces on national welfare states. Globalization is said to undermine the economic and political conditions on which welfare states were built, erode national policy autonomy and force the marketization and residualization of welfare states. These predictions are found wanting on the grounds that they share many of the assumptions, and therefore also the faults, of "strong" globalization theory. A more nuanced account of the way in which social politics and social policy are affected by globalization is needed and a global governance perspective is outlined. This, it is argued, better captures the political and institutional environment in which social policy is formulated and implemented. It also recognizes the importance of "local" factors and their interaction with global ones in shaping political responses, including social policy, to globalization. The discussion highlights the enduring power of "local" forces—those which are at the level of and internal to states—and of politics and ideology in shaping the process of globalization and ultimately its implications for welfare states and social policies.     

The Assets Agenda and Social Policy

The assets agenda or asset-based welfare has provoked much interest in recent times. This approach insists that the stock of assets that a person owns is an important element of well-being. The assets agenda is not a unified body of thought. However, there is a common failure to distinguish between these different parts, and this clouds rather than clarifies debates. This article seeks to add analytical clarity to current debates about asset-based welfare. I distinguish between social policy and citizenship, and consider their implications for social policy. This discussion is important because analytical clarity is a precondition for a balanced assessment of asset-based welfare.     

社会政策与社会工作的议题

社会政策与社会工作的研究共同点在于其目的是解决社会问题,从而改善和提高社会福利,一般的研究基于中国背景,更注重实务性;而本文则基于国外发展状况,旨在从理论层面探析影响二者发展的因素。     

Croatian Social Policy: The Legacies of War, State-building and Late Europeanization

This article outlines the differences and commonalities between social policy developments in Croatia and those in Central Europe. In Croatia, issues such as national identities and the redefinition of citizenship, war, state-building and crisis management have produced a complex mix of statist centralization and parallelism of welfare actors at the central and local level. While subject both to neo-liberal pressures to privatize provision, and later to European Union influences, both of these came later, and were more mediated, than in Central Europe. Croatia forms a bridge to studying the uneven welfare arrangements of other countries in South-East Europe, marked as they are by complex governance arrangements and the presence of social development and postwar reconstruction discourses .     

The Search for Coordination: The Case of the Central Policy Review Staff and Social Policy Planning, 1971–77

The Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) attempted to create an ambitious strategy for the horizontal coordination of social policy in the UK during the early 1970s. The attempt – inspired largely by planning, programming and budgeting systems – was a failure, and gave way to a much modified ‘joint framework for social policies’ in 1975. Recent research has compared the CPRS's joint framework approach to the Labour government's promotion of ‘joined‐up government’ (JUG) in the 2000s. This article provides a case study of the CPRS's work on social policy planning, using archival sources. The case study addresses themes that remain significant, particularly approaches to and the politics of horizontal coordination. Finally, the article makes a modest attempt to signal the differences between the 1970s' approach and ‘JUG’.     

Globalization, Regionalism and Social Policy

This paper explores the implications of globalization for social policy, and teases out those elements of globalization which have impinged most on it. Then it explores the most important ways in which globalization has had an effect on social policy. Seven issues are explored—the way in which globalization has highlighted and/or created new problems, its contribution to hollowing out the state, the way in which it has altered the balance of power between capital and labour, its contribution to stimulating an ideology of competitiveness, its re-establishing of the importance of trade in discussions about social policy and, finally, the way in which it has helped to make the maintenance of social order a new priority. The paper then explores the possibilities for supranational or regional social policy. It examines the case for moving towards such a policy and the problems of so doing.     

社会工作职业化与社会政策

社会工作职业化目前在中国存在社会认同度不高、专业服务组织机构欠缺、社会工作职业制度不健全、高校人才培养与实际部门不衔接以及本土化的社会工作理论亟待建立等问题。社会政策作为支持弱势群体、解决社会问题、促进社会公正的制度化模式,从政府的政策性角色和社会立法这两个维度出发来解决社会工作职业化过程中面临的问题,在推进社会工作职业化进程中起着举足轻重的作用。     

Review Article: Perspectives on Australian Social Policy

Books reviewed in this article:
B. Cheers Welfare Bushed: Social Care in Rural Australia
A.Jamrozik and L. Nocella The Sociology of Social Problems: Theoretical Perspectives and Methods of Intervention
R. Hugman Social Welfare and Social Value
J. S. O'Connor, A. S.Orloff and S. Shaver States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States     

Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective

Since the beginning of the 1980s, historical institutionalism has emerged as one of the most influential theoretical perspectives in social policy studies. Although their work is insightful, most institutionalist scholars tend to relegate policy ideas to the back of their theoretical constructions dealing with welfare state development. The objective of this paper is to show how institutionalist scholarship can pay greater attention to ideational processes without abandoning its core assumptions about the structuring impact of political institutions and policy legacies on welfare state development. If institutions truly influence policy‐making, policy ideas matter in and beyond the agenda‐setting process. Related to existing policy legacies, perceived problems mesh with policy alternatives grounded in a specific paradigm. When stressing the need to reform, and promoting new alternatives, policy entrepreneurs draw on existing ideological repertoires to frame these alternatives. The ability to successfully frame policy alternatives can become a decisive aspect of the policy process. A discussion of recent European and North American policy debates illustrates these claims.     

Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America: A Review of Recent Trends

Most Latin American countries have extensive social policies which absorb high levels of state spending. Despite this, Latin America continues to suffer from high levels of inequality in terms of income and access to basic services. This article explores this apparent paradox. It focuses on three aspects of social policy in the region: patterns of resource allocation, the distribution of welfare entitlements and differing capacities to take advantage of these entitlements. It applies this framework to study the distributional effects of education, health and social security policies, paying particular attention to recent changes and developments. The article shows that these three factors combine in various ways to benefit higher-income groups and exclude the poor. Recent changes have marginally improved provision for low-income groups, but the fundamentally inegalitarian nature of social policy in the region remains largely unchanged and unchallenged.     

Extending the Pillars of Social Policy Financing to Aged Care

Against the background of a recent resounding rejection of substantial increases in user contributions for funding long-term residential care in Australia, and especially of measures that could require realization of housing assets, this paper examines the scope for extending to long-term care the "pillars" approach to financing of retirement incomes and health care. The two latter areas are funded through pillars of general revenue, private insurance, social insurance by way of compulsory levies, and direct user contributions, whereas long-term care is financed only by a large pillar of general revenue and a smaller pillar of user contributions which are themselves drawn largely from transfer payments. Examination of the various pillars in each area suggests that there is limited scope for extending private insurance and user contributions in long-term care, but that there are several social policy grounds for incorporating a social insurance pillar. However, while discussion of social insurance options is growing in several quarters, the current political climate offers little prospect for the adoption of such a scheme.     

Cultural Traditions and the Scandinavian Social Policy Model

This article assesses the extent to which cultural interpretation may be useful in understanding social policy models. By surveying cultural traditions, the study explores the context in which the Scandinavian social policy model was developed. The study investigates the institutional legacies of Scandinavian agrarian societies and identifies certain cultural traits, making observations as to their implications for the social policy model. The study does not intend to establish any “causal relation” between specific historical phenomena and the modern welfare states, but regards cultural traditions as forming the “contextual basis” for the operation of a welfare state system. Hence this is not merely a case study of Scandinavia, but a methodological undertaking that could play a significant role in broadening the scope of the study of social policy.