An Ethnography of Social Assistance to Ethiopian Children by Non‐governmental Organizations: Types,Adequacy and Predictability

Although in Africa social assistance is provided by both state and non‐state actors, systematic research has paid little attention to the aggregate services provided by the latter. This is so despite the significance of the aggregate size, diversity, investment and coverage of the services provided by non‐state actors in the continent. This article reports on an ethnographic assessment of the nature of aggregate social assistance services provided to Ethiopian children by non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa, taking the cases of services provided by 38 NGOs that run 52 social protection interventions in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. Data collection employed semi‐structured interviews with officers of the 38 NGOs and exploratory interviews with 25 key informants. Analysis of the ethnographic data revealed that social assistance by NGOs was insufficient, unpredictable, erratic and of inferior quality and, hence, failed to meet the conditions that could make social assistance an effective instrument for breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The analysis also revealed that the same social assistance was not large enough to undermine recipients' commitment to work. The article concludes by recommending the establishment of a social welfare system in Ethiopia that can effectively regulate social assistance in order to ensure the quality of design and implementation, and the integration of discreet social assistance projects.     

韩国社会福利法人组织的运作模式研究

在韩国,提供社会福利服务的主体是公共部门和民间部门。公共部门的主体是中央和地方政府,民间部门包括个人、社会福利法人、宗教团体、志愿者团体等。在民间部门中起主导作用,处于核心地位的是社会福利法人组织。在社会福利法人中,国家资源和民间资本结合在一起,共同承担着增进国民福利的责任。本文主要分析韩国社会福利法人的特征,考察韩国社会福利法人发展现状和运营模式,探讨社会福利法人发展过程中存在的问题及改善方案。     

A comparative study of social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong

This article compares social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong. It finds that Macao delivers a higher level of social assistance benefits, whereas Hong Kong has a larger group of social assistance beneficiaries. The Hong Kong Government spends a larger amount on social assistance provision and imposes tougher controls on the recipients, compared to Macao. The results of the comparison indicate that Macao and Hong Kong differ markedly in the type of productivist welfare regime they belong and challenge the assertion that the two welfare systems form a distinct welfare model.     

Social capital and its relevance to the Japanese-model welfare society

Current debates and initiatives relating to the welfare regime in Japan focus on the contributions of informal and community networks. In this article, we adopt the concept of social capital, which is assessed according to three categories – structural social capital, experiential individual social capital and anticipatory individual social capital – in order to evaluate the assumptions and strengths of community in Japan. The findings are based on a small-scale survey conducted in the Greater Kobe area in 2002. The study revealed that the level of structural social capital is 'average' and the level of experiential individual social capital is 'rather low'. However, the anticipatory individual social capital, which is the expectation of future assistance whether conditional or unconditional, is higher than the experiential individual social capital. The findings suggest that, in Japan, people's belief that they will receive assistance in the future has a significant impact on their level of achievement. Such findings may help us understand the nature of the welfare regime in Japan: it depends on a sense of general trust, which effectively supports the informal groups and community networks that provide assistance to their members.     

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.     

Industrial Relations as a Source of Social Policy: A Typology of the Institutional Conditions for Industrial Agreements on Social Benefits

The article's starting point is that the now‐conventional conceptualization of welfare state retrenchment as a shift from state provision of income support to market processes is misleading. Rather, state provision may be replaced by benefits negotiated collectively by trade unions and employers. As a first step to further investigate this development the article suggests a typology of institutional contexts within which industrial agreements on social benefits emerge. This typology is based on Thomas H. Marshall's distinction between political and industrial citizenship. Following the comparative method of the ‘parallel demonstration of theory’, the typology is applied to four countries where collective agreements on social benefits have recently been concluded, namely Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Germany. It is argued that, on the one hand, the state's activity or passivity in labour relations and, on the other hand, the timing of the institutionalization of political and industrial citizenship is decisive for the development of collectively negotiated benefits. The conclusion for comparative welfare state research is that, when viewing policies of welfare state retrenchment, the research should systematically include industrial relations and their historical trajectories in its frame of reference.     

Bonding and Bridging Social Capital Development by Social Workers

ABSTRACT

Developing service users’ bonding and bridging social capital is an increasingly recognized role of social workers. A survey of 570 Chinese service users, sampled from 41 social service units in Hong Kong, provided data for the study. Results demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity in a confirmatory factor model about the measurement of bonding and bridging social capital development, mutuality, and assistance to the community. This evidence for the validity and usefulness of social capital development endorses social workers’ role in developing service users’ social capital. Further research needs to assess the generalizability of the present findings in other sociocultural settings.     

Between Poor Relief and Human Capital Investments – Paradoxes in Hybrid Social Assistance

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are often being promoted for their simultaneous advantages of short‐term income protection and long‐term human capital investments. Yet, existing evaluations have largely failed to test the underlying programme theory, and few empirical case studies have explored inherent contradictions and ambiguous consequences of this hybrid approach. To further understand the programmes' social policy implications, this study identifies and analyzes such ambiguities and paradoxical consequences in the case of Uruguay's CCT‐programme, Asignaciones Familiares (AFAM). Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with beneficiaries and members of the commission who designed the programme, this study reveals major paradoxes in AFAM's design and implementation caused by various endogenous factors. Relevant to social policy in general, and CCT‐evaluations in particular, findings also indicate that the hybrid social assistance approach may have perverse effects on the programme's twin objectives.     

Welfare Stigma of Social Assistance on Women Recipients in Urban China

Abstract

In urban China, the study of the welfare stigma of poor females receiving social assistance is neglected. An in-depth interview method was used with 16 urban female assistance recipients aged 16–70?years old in the city of Chengdu to examine the forms and the consequences of welfare stigma on them. The purpose of the study is to examine the issue of welfare stigma of female assistance recipients in urban China by means of empirical evidence. The findings suggest that female assistance recipients suffer from welfare stigma in three forms: identity stigma, treatment stigma, and procedure stigma. The three kinds of stigmas mingled with each other are imposed on the female assistance recipients and make them victims of constructed welfare stigma. Welfare stigma does not affect the decision to apply for assistance to meet basic living expenses. Suffering from welfare stigma positions female recipients in a state of isolation and exclusion. The study’s results suggest that efforts should be made to reduce and eliminate welfare stigma of social assistance on female assistance recipients in urban China. Future study should be broadened to consider the comparison of the stigma on female recipients with that on male recipients.     

Retrenchment, Expansion and the Transformation of Mexican Social Protection Policies

Social protection policies in Mexico have been transformed since 1988 through partial retrenchment of social insurance and significant expansion of targeted or means-tested social assistance. These changes reflect a substantial redefinition of social protection through incremental changes in policy. The changes reflect the abandonment of the goal of developing an employment-based, universal welfare regime, which had been pursued by Mexican governments as late as the 1970s. Instead, recent administrations have moved towards the redefinition of Mexico's welfare regime into a residual, means-tested model with significant private provision of benefits and services. This shift in social protection is consistent with the change in Mexico's overall economic development strategy and increasing political competition in the process of democratization.     

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.     

Deservingness in the eye of the beholder: A vignette study on the moderating role of cultural profiles in supporting activation policies

People support welfare policy if its beneficiaries are perceived as deserving of support. This study found that individuals’ cultural worldviews play a role in assessing the deservingness of welfare recipients. We investigated whether four different cultural profiles find some beneficiaries to be more deserving than others and how this relates to support for social rights (welfare benefit, retraining, job coach) and obligations (mandatory volunteering). A Dutch vignette experiment showed that reasons for supporting social rights differ between people with different cultural profiles: equality advocates grant support if beneficiaries are needy, while the centre and trusting groups do so when beneficiaries reciprocate. We found that irrespective of deservingness, people with equality‐advocating and trusting profiles tend to be more supportive of social rights, whereas socially discontented citizens tend to emphasise the importance of obligations. In general, obliging beneficiaries to do volunteer work was deemed appropriate by almost all respondents in the study, whereas their cultural values determined the ways in which they considered social rights to have been earned.     

Social Justice and the Reform of Social Security

There have been massive increases over the years in expenditure on the public services loosely grouped together as the “welfare state”, but widespread dissatisfaction persists. This article is a critique of the proposals for reform presented in the Report of the Commission on Social Justice, set up by the late John Smith. The report contains a sweeping condemnation of existing arrangements and puts forward a series of recommendations ranging from the health service to decentralization in government and from employment policy to benefits for the elderly. As was perhaps inevitable, some are more precisely presented than others. An important example of the more fully specified proposals is one to establish what would, in effect, be a means-tested “pension guarantee”but with “means”so defined as to exclude capital and with much improved “disregards”. Another is the endorsement of the proposals to extend social insurance to part-time workers—a proposal which raises some controversial issues. There is much in this report that deserves close attention, and it is, therefore, all the more unfortunate that its proposals are not presented in the form of a quantified plan for social policy. Even for the first five years or so of the fifteen the Commission has in mind, there is no attempt at quantification. The importance of economic growth is rightly stressed, but “faster growth”can become a panacea that obscures the need for choice, not only between private and public expenditure but also between the various components of public policy itself.     

Effectiveness of Local Governance: Interactions Between Social Capital and Institutional Structures

This paper critically evaluates the debate on what makes local governments more effective, higher social capital (such as trust, reciprocity, and informal social networks) or stronger institutional structures (such as democratic processes, ombudsman, and social audits). Empirical analysis of a decentralized welfare scheme in India, the Andhra Pradesh Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (APREGS), using the latent variable path analysis modeling approach reveals that creation of formal democratic institutional channels in itself does not impact governance performance. Rather, it is mediated by complex institutional and social capital issues. For example, formal information dissemination activates social capital, leading to effective local governance. However, this (higher social capital and better institutions) does not automatically lead to empowerment or trust in the local government. The influence of the economically and politically powerful mediates this relationship. These and other results, cumulatively, highlight the complexity involved in the effectiveness of government empowerment initiatives. The paper calls for a fresh and wider debate on decision‐making dynamics in rural India, especially the interaction between government institutions, social capital, and the historical societal dynamics.     

The Politics of Social Policy Language

A number of scholars have recently shown that key social policy concepts like ‘welfare state’ are both vague and problematic. Drawing on the international literature on the role of ideas in social policy, this article compares the development of two major policy concepts in two countries where the language of social policy is openly contentious: the USA and France. Focusing on the last three decades, the article discusses the meaning and development of the concepts of ‘social security’/‘sécurité sociale’ and ‘welfare state’/‘État‐providence’ in both countries. As suggested, these two concepts have long been controversial, in part because they are typically involved in the inherently political drawing and redrawing of the contested boundaries of state action. Overall, the article explains how the comparative analysis of social policy language can help scholars adopt a more reflexive approach.     

The Facets of Social Capital

The emergence of the two facets of social capital, the individual and the collective, has contributed to much of the confusion in the field of social capital. The overall objective of this article is to elaborate on a theoretical model aiming at clarifying some bridges between the facets and dimensions of social capital previously suggested in the literature. Initially, the article shortly presents and discusses some important definitions of social capital. Furthermore, limitations and shortcomings of previous definitions are discussed. Moreover, a theoretical model is elaborated on suggesting that social capital comprises social resources that evolve in accessible social networks or social structures characterized by mutual trust. This model also emphasises some of the potential dark sides of social capital. The presented definition does not definitively address the theoretical uncertainties in the field; however, it suggests that a resource‐oriented notion of social capital could be useful in bridging the facets of social capital.     

中国式“福利依赖”的制度设计探源——北京市城市居民最低生活保障制度案例研究

本文通过对北京市25户低保家庭的长期跟踪调查,总结分析了中国制度背景下福利依赖的类型及原因。中国低保制度把多种福利与低保资格捆绑在一起,收入和资产审查缺乏可操作性,制度设计上促进就业政策基本失效。以上这几方面构成了福利依赖的制度设计原因。从这个意义上来说。中国的福利依赖原因很大程度上并不是救助福利丰厚,而是福利缺失所致。即失去低保资格会使家庭的很多风险失去保护,并且我国缺乏家计调查和工作福利制的可操作性,这些与发达国家有关“福利依赖”问题的争论有着根本的区别。     

The Public's Changing Perceptions of the Condition of Social Welfare in Hong Kong: Lessons for Social Development

In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the Hong Kong government introduced welfare reforms to ease the pressure from fiscal challenges and swelling welfare rolls; at the same time, to maintain its development credentials, it made an effort to adhere to its colonial tradition on the provision of welfare. The government adopted various strategies to garner popular support for promoting economic development as the primary goal and for promoting social harmony under the concept of ‘helping people to help themselves’. This article examines Hong Kong people's changing perceptions of the condition of social welfare in the past decade. Using a multidimensional developmental welfare approach and data from two opinion surveys conducted in 1997 and 2008, the study finds that Hong Kong people expressed a relatively high level of satisfaction about their own lives, but varying degrees of reservation about the problem of poverty, government provision of social welfare, and opportunities for social mobility. As a result of the sectorally unbalanced welfare reforms, which are biased against the disadvantaged, some of these perceptions have become more negative in recent years. Socially vulnerable people, especially the lower classes, are now more critical of the condition of social welfare, and such feelings seem to be intensifying. It is thus suggested that special attention to the issue of class should be paid in social development programmes to ensure social equality and social justice.     

论社会管理体制对我国社会工作职业化进程的制约

社会工作职业化的推进需要制度的保障。从社会管理体制的视角看,我国社会工作职业化的推进受到诸多制度制约,包括自上而下的行政化社会管理模式的制约,以管理代替服务导致社会工作的工作领域及职责难以明确界定的制约,"大政府、弱政府"状态的制约,财政理念的制约,社会福利行政体系(民政系统)的实际社会工作对社会工作者职业化的制约等。