A great leap towards liberalism? The Hungarian welfare state

The article analyses the changing role of the Hungarian state by examining the principles and boundaries of government commitment in income maintenance. I test the hypothesis that the welfare regime is liberal and is becoming increasingly more so. The empirical analysis addresses three major issues: the reliance on universal schemes in family support, the nature of poor relief assistance, and the institutional structure of the pension system. I find that these different programs do not add up to constitute any specific type of welfare regime. Rather, the emerging, and still transitory welfare system appears 'faceless'. I claim that a static welfare typology cannot be applied to the Hungarian welfare system and therefore reject the liberal hypothesis.     

Institutions and the gender wage gap: How production and welfare regime moderates the effect of family policy

The aim of this study was to determine whether the effects of work and family reconciliation policy on the gender wage gap are moderated by institutional contexts of production and welfare regime. Using time‐series analysis for 13 countries from 1981 to 2015, the study revealed a strong association between childcare and a lower gender wage gap in the Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs)/social democratic welfare states but not in Liberal Market Economies (LMEs)/liberal welfare states. The study also found that the impact of leave generosity on the gender wage gap in CMEs/social democratic welfare states is less salient than in CMEs/continental welfare states. This study highlights the extent to which family policy affects the gender wage gap hinges on how each country organises its market coordination and welfare institutions and pushes the current literature forward to a question of ‘what kinds of’ family policy matters in ‘which’ production and welfare regimes.     

From the Cradle to the Grave: Funeral Welfare from an International Perspective

This article reports on a pilot study examining funeral welfare for citizens from low income backgrounds. Through a review of funeral welfare provision in 12 capitalist democratic countries it seeks to inform the current system of state support in Britain, arguing that insufficient attention has been given to funeral costs as a policy issue. Mindful of the British welfare state's original ‘cradle to grave’ ethos, such attention is ever more pressing in light of rising funeral costs, an ageing population and projected increases in the death rate. Arguing that funeral costs are an issue of income support, the article draws on Esping‐Andersen's threefold welfare‐regime typology to situate the British system within a comparative study of funeral welfare that identifies similarities and differences both within and between the three welfare‐regime types. On the basis of an empirical example, the article further argues that systems of funeral welfare reflect the relationship between culture, politics and local practice. The findings indicate that the British system is hampered by a discourse of welfare dependency rather than entitlement, which stigmatises those who need support with funeral costs at a time when they are under pressure to ensure that the deceased person receives a ‘dignified’ send‐off.     

Social investment,social service and the economic performance of welfare states

This article begins with an examination of the role of social services as the key instrument of social investment strategy, presenting an empirical analysis of its impact on economic performance. A pooled time series, cross‐section analysis was conducted with the data of 15 welfare states from 1990 to 2007 under the ‘social investment hypothesis’ that more social service orientedness brings about a greater positive effect on the economy. The results show that a larger share of social service spending in the total social expenditure – more social service orientedness – contributes to economic growth and labour market performance, whereas a larger aggregate size of the welfare state may have a negative effect on employment. In conclusion, this study suggests that the relatively ambiguous welfare strategy of social investment could be clarified as a ‘transition from income security to livelihood security’ in which emphasis is placed on social service. Key Practitioner Message: ● This study suggests that the key instrument of social investment strategy is social service; ● The results show that more social service orientedness contributes to economic growth and labour market performance.     

How does economic globalisation affect the welfare state? Focusing on the mediating effect of welfare regimes

In recent years the impact of globalisation on the welfare state has become a major issue in comparative policy studies. Some empirical studies demonstrate a negative relationship between globalisation and the welfare state, while others show adverse findings or a non-significant relationship. The impact of globalisation, however, can be neither uniform nor unidirectional because of the differences in the political economies of individual welfare states. Welfare regimes reflect qualitative differences in arrangements of welfare institutions and the associated enduring configuration of the welfare nexus, suggesting that welfare regimes may influence the impact of globalisation on the welfare state. We scrutinise the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state by sampling 18 affluent countries from 1980 to 2001 and concentrating on the mediating effect of three welfare regime types. Our study provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state using a state-of-the-art analytical technique – the mixed-effect model. Findings suggest that welfare regimes respond differently to the impact of globalisation and therefore mediate the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state. Globalisation negatively affects the welfare state in a social democratic regime, while it marginally affects the welfare state in liberal and conservative regimes.     

Bringing Indonesia into the global welfare regime debate: A literature review and future research agenda

Studies on welfare state regimes have been dominated by consideration of rich OECD/European and increasingly East Asian countries/territories, leaving South Asian cases such as Indonesia underexplored. The few existing studies that have explicitly tried to conceptualize the Indonesian welfare regime have resulted in little consensus. To address the resulting lack of clarity, this article reviews scholarly articles relevant to bringing Indonesia into the global welfare regime debate, specifically encapsulating how the country has been classified compared with its East Asia counterparts. Accordingly, we find that existing studies have mainly concentrated on the Indonesian health care and social protection expansion, which has led authors to conclude that this evolution demonstrates Indonesia's transition away from welfare productivism. By contrast, we argue that Indonesia's productivist characteristics have largely prevailed while informal networks, clientelism, strong families, and the limited effectiveness of the civil society movement created a specific social politics in Indonesia. We thus conclude that the causal mechanisms typically attributed to welfare development in more developed welfare geographies, including East Asia, cannot fully explain the evident institutional formation in the Indonesian case. The future research agenda for studying the welfare regimes in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries is discussed.     

From State Security Model to Selective + Residual Security Model: Health care regime shift in urban China

Based on the study of welfare states, welfare regime theory (WRT) has been widely applied to international and regional welfare regimes and to specific‐policy comparative studies. However, the health care system has often been neglected in this area of study. The current study promotes a health care regime approach that is influenced by WRT and incorporates analysis of the level of health care de‐commodification and health equity. Three types of health care regimes were identified in the development of the health care system in urban China: the State Medical Security Model, the Selective Medical Security Model and the Selective + Residual Medical Security Model. This approach provides useful policy implications for the health care reform currently taking place in China. In addition, this analysis contributes to theories in the comparative health policy literature.     

East Asian welfare model refocus? A case study on economic support for the elderly living alone in Taiwan

This article argues that the concept of the East Asian welfare regime can be further developed by examining the changing role of the family in welfare provision. Beginning with a brief literature review of the East Asian welfare model, the family has been regarded as the main welfare provider among East Asian societies. Nevertheless, from a policy‐centred perspective, the oversimplified picture of the East Asian welfare model does not reveal how families actually perform in welfare provision or how the dynamic change in the welfare mix for vulnerable groups under the welfare regime has been accommodated. This article presents a case study and shows that while most elderly people in Taiwan still live with their children, who are also their main means of support, a significant number of them are living alone and that much of the economic support they used to receive from nongovernmental organisation now comes from the state.     

East Asian Welfare Regimes: Testing the Hypothesis of the Developmental Welfare State

Following the three welfare regimes constructed by Esping‐Andersen, many scholars have addressed the question of whether there may be a further type of regime, differing from the categories of liberal, conservative and social democratic, pertaining to other parts of the world. Discussion has centred largely on East Asia and, in particular, on the notion of the developmental/productivist welfare regime. Yet these discussions have been based more on conceptual classification than empirical analysis. This article attempts to fill in the gap, with reference to the developmental characteristics of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. A set of 15 indicators is developed for the factor and cluster analysis of 20 countries, based on data from the 1980s and 1990s. The results indicate the existence of a new group, consisting of Taiwan and South Korea, which is distinct from Esping‐Andersen's three regimes – unlike Japan, which remains a composite of various regime types. Regime characteristics peculiar to the cases of Taiwan and South Korea include: low/medium social security expenditure, high social investment, more extensive gender discrimination in salary, medium/high welfare stratification, a high non‐coverage rate for pensions, high individual welfare loading, and high family welfare responsibility. When compared with Esping‐Andersen's three regimes, the East Asian developmental regime shows similarity with his conservative model, in respect of welfare stratification, while the non‐coverage of welfare entitlements is similar to his liberal model. There is virtually no evidence of any similarity between the developmental welfare regime and Esping‐Andersen's social democratic regime type.     

Introduction to the special issue on welfare conditionality in Australia

Conditionality in Australia’s welfare state has sustained a significant academic critique, including the critique published in this journal. In this Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues, we contribute to the existing critical literature on welfare conditionality. This Special Issue aimed to provide empirical scrutiny into welfare reform and conditionality in Australia. The articles extend our understanding of welfare conditionality’s underpinnings and its lived effects. These case studies illuminate the aspects of welfare conditionality that have not received enough attention: the role of technology, the question of mobility, the relationship with housing and the little thought given to the state’s role in mutual obligation. What is clear is that the individualisation of structural problems is not just a theoretical and political misstep ripe for critique, but leads to the formulation of policies that impact marginalised people’s capacity to shape life on their own terms. Through different empirical foci, all papers in this Special Issue demonstrate how welfare conditionality is put forward as a solution to address the consequences of structural disadvantage.     

Lineages of the Iranian Welfare State: Dual Institutionalism and Social Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran

This article examines the relationship between welfare and state governance in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. It argues that the contemporary set of social welfare organizations in Iran arose as a corollary to post‐revolutionary state formation, particularly during the 1980–8 war with Iraq. The Revolution itself resulted in a process of ‘dual institutionalization’ where new revolutionary organizations appeared in tandem with the inherited bureaucracies of the Pahlavi Monarchy, and both sets of institutions were directed by the new regime towards social welfare in areas relatively untouched by the ancien régime. These institutions were locked in place by the exigencies of the long war that followed, and most have continued to the present. This is followed by a discussion of the main developmental outcomes of the past three decades in Iran in literacy, health and poverty. The article concludes by discussing how the successes and shortcomings of the Islamic Republic's welfare system are consequential for understanding broader developments in Iran today.     

Neither Hybrid nor Unique: A Reinterpretation of the East Asian Welfare Regime

Some researchers have been convinced that welfare developments in East Asia, especially Japan and Korea, can be fitted into the existing three worlds of welfare model, while others have insisted that existing welfare regime theories are not able to explain East Asian welfare regimes. This article assumes that we need to go beyond both of these traditional explanations. In the welfare state research fields, welfare regime approaches tend to focus on specific contextual conditions and cross‐national differences. As a result, they tend to overemphasize history at the expense of theory. This article tries to combine deductive causal modeling with an institutional–historical context by identifying the contingent rent political game model and deducing important characteristics of East Asian welfare regime from this model. This model opens out the possibility of change in East Asian welfare regimes following the processes of democratization and globalization. Details of this are given in the conclusion.     

Child welfare workers who are exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs: how do they do it?

In response to a study of Canadian child welfare workers that unexpectedly found participants scoring high on a measure of emotional exhaustion (burnout) and, at the same time, high on overall job satisfaction, this paper reviews research that has investigated these constructs in the social work literature as well as in selected studies from sociology, social psychology, management and women’s studies. The review reveals that some previous studies also report the coexistence of high levels of emotional exhaustion and strong job satisfaction in child welfare and social worker samples. Several studies have suggested that individual characteristics, including finding reward in helping others, having a commitment to the mandate of child welfare and believing that one’s labour is ‘making a difference’, contribute to satisfaction with child welfare work in spite of work overload and emotional exhaustion. Attributions regarding causes of exhaustion, coping strategies and goal orientation may also attenuate the expected negative effects of emotional exhaustion. Considerable evidence supports the positive influence of variables organizational managers can control, including job autonomy, supportive supervisors, workload, promotional opportunities and perception of personal safety. The degree to which this phenomenon is associated with female socialization and the ‘ethic of care’ underlying social work is discussed. Implications for child welfare research, practice and policy are offered.     

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.     

Protective legislation: The “third pillar” of the welfare state

Welfare states are built upon three central social policy pillars: (1) income programs, including an assortment of income maintenance and security benefits; (2) social services, comprising a diverse constellation of provisions, which furnish care such as health care and education, and “in kind” benefits; and (3) protective legislation, encompassing a dense web of proactive and preventative laws, rights, and entitlements, such as health and safety legislation, minimum wage laws, child protection acts, rent controls, and laws governing evictions and foreclosures. Despite its centrality to the welfare state and to our well‐being, this third pillar has received considerably less attention in comparative social policy research. The dominant welfare state typologies have focused almost exclusively upon income measures and, more recently, on social services, to construct their welfare state categories or “worlds” of welfare while largely neglecting this crucial third pillar. A greater focus on protective welfare legislation can help sharpen the distinctions among welfare states within and across the welfare worlds, which is particularly valuable in light of the ongoing erosion of the other two pillars over the past few decades.     

Levels or worlds of welfare? Assessing social rights and social stratification in Northern and Southern countries

Since Esping‐Andersen's Three Worlds, it has become a truism of welfare state research that welfare states do not vary linearly along a single dimension but have to be conceptualized as multidimensional phenomena that cluster into types caused by the political economy of class coalitions. However, when moving beyond the 18 original countries of Esping‐Andersen's analysis, the situation is less clear. Although additional worlds have been identified in the Global North and the Global South, these are usually not conceptualized along the same dimensions as the original three worlds and are rarely empirically compared with them. This paper tackles these omissions by explicitly comparing Northern and Southern countries within Esping‐Andersen's framework. It poses the question whether the central insight of welfare state research, namely, that there are not just gradual differences between welfare states, but different types with qualitative differences, expands beyond classic welfare states. Based on newly generated data on social rights and social stratification, we employ cluster analysis with 45 Northern and Southern countries. This analysis produces mixed results. We do find different types of welfare states with qualitative differences, but these do not fully correspond to Esping‐Andersen's Three Worlds. Moreover, our findings also point to a conceptual issue in welfare regime research: regimes are not just defined and measured in terms of different logics of welfare provision but also take into account degrees of welfare stateism. We argue that this issue is poised to become ever more pressing with the geographical expansion of welfare state research.     

The Contributions of the Health Decommodification Typologies to the Study of the East Asian Welfare Regime

Since Esping‐Andersen presented the three worlds of welfare typology thesis, the study of the classification of welfare regimes has been dominated by his work and the debates surrounding it. This article is concerned with two important responses to his work. The first response is the development of welfare typologies based on the principle of decommodification. The second response is the concern that East Asian countries are underrepresented in the 18 members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) studied by Esping‐Andersen. As a result, there are calls for expanding the scope of the studies on the classification of welfare regimes to those in East Asia. This article makes contributions to these two responses by presenting two analytical tasks. The first task is to develop two health decommodification typologies based on two different methods (cluster analysis and Esping‐Andersen's index‐based regime construction). Both of them cover the 18 OECD members studied by Esping‐Andersen and four tiger economies (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second task is to demonstrate that the two health decommodification typologies provide important information for the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all‐encompassing East Asian welfare regime, namely the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the 18 OECD countries studied by Esping‐Andersen (1990 ) and the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems between East Asian countries.     

Response to: 'New Directions in child protection and family support in Western Australia: a policy initiative to re-focus child welfare practice'

This paper is a response to ‘New Directions in child protection and family support in Western Australia: a policy initiative to re‐focus child welfare practice’, written by Nigel Parton and Richard Mathews and published in Volume 6(2) of Child and Family Social Work. Parton and Mathews’ paper describes the policy and provides an analysis of its impact on child protection practice. They find the policy to have been successful on a number of different dimensions. This paper subjects their findings to a broader lens of analysis and arrives at conclusions somewhat different to those of the authors.     

New challenges for the welfare state: The emergence of youth unemployment regimes in Europe?

In this article we discuss the emergence of ‘youth unemployment regimes’ in Europe, that is, a set of coherent measures and policies aimed at providing state responses to the problem of unemployment and, more specifically, youth unemployment. We classify these measures and policies along two main dimensions: unemployment regulations and labour market regulations. Using original data, we show how seven European countries locate on these two dimensions as well as within the conceptual space resulting from the combination of the two dimensions. Our findings show cross‐national variations that do not fit the traditional typologies of comparative welfare studies. At the same time, however, the findings allow for reflecting upon possible patterns of convergence across European countries. In particular, we show some important similarities in terms of flexible labour market regulations. In this regard, the recent years have witnessed a trend towards a flexibilisation of the labour market, regardless of the prevailing welfare regime.     

Redefining Welfare: Australian Social Policy and Practice

The present paper outlines and analyzes Australia's welfare reform policies as they have been implemented over the past decade. While there have been numerous social policy initiatives over this period, welfare reform provides an interesting site for analysis and review. This suite of policies and programs is of particular importance from several standpoints. First, its target groups – those needing income security assistance, including the unemployed, people with disabilities, and single parents – are historically and traditionally of concern to social work and social welfare. Second, welfare reform policies have had significant impact on social welfare agencies, and the social workers and welfare workers employed in them. Finally, welfare reform has had a wider impact on inequality in Australia and our attitudes to those in need. This paper first provides a brief overview of the context of Australian social policy and welfare, its origins and current situation. It then outlines the key operational elements of welfare reform and how it has been implemented. The third section of the paper offers a critical analysis of these policies and programs and finally poses some questions and issues requiring further discussion and research.