Connecting Welfare Diversity Within the European Social Model PDF Download

Author: Theodōros D. Sakellaropoulos
Publisher: Intersentia nv
ISBN: 9050953697
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This volume is the revised Report, which an international team of experts have prepared for the Greek Ministry of Labour and Social Security in the context of the Greek Presidency of the European Union and presented in the international conference "The Modernisation of the European Social Model. EU Policies and Practices" on 24-25 May 2003, at Ioannina, Greece. The book focuses on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), its relation to other policy tools used in the European Social Policy and its significance for the fomation of a new European Social Model. The chapters follow the emergence, the evolution and analyze the constituent elements of the OMC in the fields of Social Inclusion and Pensions since the Lisbon Summit. During the Portuguese Presidency OMC encountered a cautious response. The OMC idea made substantial progress during the Belgian Presidency. In the Ioannina conference the OMC had full recognition as a tool for the implementation of European Social Policy. Everyone agreed that important social issues were dealt with more effectively through the OMC, especially when the latter is consolidated after the inclusion of the Charter of the fundamental Rights in the new European Treaty. This progress is sufficiently reflected in the present volume, where it is concluded that through OMC the European Social Model gained a new momentum in terms of effectiveness and legitimacy.

Author: Stanisława Golinowska
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783866492790
Category : European Union countries
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
.aside from its significance as a novel perspective on the European Social Model (now understood as an amalgam of interconnected social policy traditions of Western and East-Central Europe, with common underlying ideals and goals), this study presents a complex but highly illuminating picture of the evolving systems of welfare protection at the beginning of the new, more globally aware century. Unable to change the national institutional trajectories and welfare ideologies, the supranational agents (EU) can nonetheless force nations to make constant accommodations in labor and social policies - not so much overriding the distinct features of each country, but rather constantly reminding all Europeans of the ambitious goals and traditions that they share. Making us aware of these complex processes with the help of rich and up-to-date empirical evidence is perhaps the greatest contribution of this book. I recommend it highly to both scholars and experts on comparative social policy around the world. ~ Prof. Tomasz Inglot, Minnesota State U.

Author: Giovanni Bertin
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800378076
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This timely book critically examines the European Social Model as a contested concept and concrete set of European welfare and governance arrangements. It offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of new economic models and existing European investment strategies to address key issues within post-Covid-19 Europe.

Author: Jens Alber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190452072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 674

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Book Description
Since the advent of the European Union, politicians have increasingly emphasized the notion of a European social model as an alternative to the American form of market capitalism, which is seen as promoting economic growth without regard for solidarity and social progress. As this political discourse has advanced, social scientists and academic policy analysts have raised questions concerning the extent to which the E.U. and U.S. social models exist outside the minds of diplomats and politicians seeking to stitch together a common identity. How much unity is there still within Europe after the Eastern enlargements have considerably increased economic and cultural diversity? To whatever extent one might discern a distinct set of commonalities that represent the core of a European approach, how different are the European characteristics of social, economic, and political life from those of America? Addressing these issues, this book systematically analyzes how much European countries and the United States have in common and how much variation we find within the enlarged European Union in eight central spheres of socio-economic and political life: employment, equality/mobility, educational opportunity, integration of immigrants, democratic functioning, political participation, rights to welfare, and levels of public spending. Drawing on empirical analyses by U.S. and European scholars who represent multi-disciplinary backgrounds, each of these topics is put under scrutiny. The results of this study illuminate points of convergence and divergence as seen from the perspectives of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic.

Author: Carl-Ulrik Schierup
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198280521
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare statefacing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging acrossthe EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysisof migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies fordiversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time.Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also implyconvergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East?This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.

Author: Fritz Wilhelm Scharpf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : European Union countries
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"European integration has created a constitutional asymmetry between policies promoting market efficiencies and policies promoting social protection and equality. National welfare states are legally and economically constrained by European rules of economic integration, liberalization, and competition law, whereas efforts to adopt European social policies are politically impeded by the diversity of national welfare states, differing not only in levels of economic development and hence in their ability to pay for social transfers and services but, even more significantly, in their normative aspirations and institutional structures. In response, the "Open Method of Coordination" is now applied being in the social-policy field. It leaves effective policy choices at the national level, but tries to improve these through promoting common objectives and common indicators and through comparative evaluations of national policy performance. These efforts are useful but cannot overcome the constitutional asymmetry. Hence there is reason to search for solutions which must have the character of European law in order to establish constitutional parity with the rules of European economic integration, but which also must be sufficiently differentiated to accommodate the existing diversity of national welfare regimes. The article discusses two such options, "Closer Cooperation" and a combination of differentiated "framework directives" with the Open Method of Coordination."--Abstract on item.

Author: Serena Romano
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317033221
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This volume presents a new perspective for discussing the European social contract and its main challenges, bringing together single-nation and comparative studies from across Europe. Presenting both theoretical discussions and empirical case studies, it explores various aspects of social cohesion, including social protection, the labour market, social movements, healthcare, social inequalities and poverty. With particular attention to the effects of the international economic and financial crisis on social cohesion, particularly in the light of the implementation of so-called ’austerity measures’, authors engage with questions surrounding the possible fragmentation of the European model of social cohesion and the transformation of forms of social protection, asking whether social cohesion continues to represent - if it ever did - a common feature of European countries. Breaking new ground in understanding the future of Social Europe and its main dynamics of change, The European Social Model Adrift will appeal to scholars of sociology, social policy and politics, with interests in social cohesion, the effects of financial crisis and the European social model.

Author: Walter Lorenz
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3847412779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
The book offers explanations and clarifications for the bewildering variety of titles and job profiles in the social professions in Europe. It presents them both as a product of specific national welfare arrangements and as a sign of a special kind of professional autonomy that so far helped to correct national welfare trends. Now this autonomy is once more called for in the light of the complete re-structuring of all European welfare states and a European model of social work could deliver impulses for real alternatives to growing exclusion and inequality.

Author: Philip B. Whyman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136286209
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This book seeks to analyse the development of the European Union (EU), which was founded upon the principle of the free movement of capital, goods, services and people in 1957. Its central thesis is that, from a practical and theoretical point of view, such a basis is fundamentally at odds with the creation of an interventionist regime that the construction of a social Europe would require. The authors argue convincingly that - economically: the EU does not currently possess the budget or the economic tools to pursue such a strategy; politically: close to none of the institutions of the EU have backed such a policy; practically: conservative and neo-liberal forces (among member states and the institutions of the EU) have repeatedly thwarted any moves in this direction. In reality, the Single Internal Market, Economic and Monetary Union, enlargement, the Lisbon Agenda and European Constitution projects all prioritise supply-side measures and expanding the scope of the market rather than the boosting of demand and other economic intervention. Consequently, constructing a social Europe in the face of this would appear problematic. Hence, in both theory and practice, the idea that there can be a social Europe vis-à-vis neoliberalisation is a contradiction in terms. This controversial book will be an educating and refreshing read for advanced students and academics involved with European politics, the European Union, European Economics and Economic instititutions.

Author: B. Maydell v.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540297723
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
‘Enabling Social Europe’ examines how the paradigm of the ‘enabling welfare state’ might offer a new perspective for European social policy in the decades to come. The ‘enabling’ concept is perceived as going beyond that of mere ‘activation’, thus also embracing policies aimed at increasing personal autonomy, individual responsibility and social inclusion by endowing individuals with the resources and capabilities needed to manage and balance their life courses in a better way. The study is distinguished by a unique collaboration of social and economic policy experts coming from a wide range of disciplines: economics, law, sociology, political science, and philosophy. The authors seek to shed new light on whether European social policy ought to play a role in the future and, if so, what sort of role that could be. They convincingly argue that despite an implicit normative consensus on the ‘European social model’, there is still room for a multifaceted world in which welfare regimes can maintain their own path-dependent ways of achieving a fair and just society with a high level of welfare for all. The empirical part of the book contains an appraisal of policies and reforms with a view to the ‘enabling welfare state’ approach in four important policy areas: health care, old-age security, family policy, and poverty prevention. Within each sector, the authors compare the policies and practices of two countries attributable to different regime types: Germany and the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany, Finland and Estonia, and Belgium and Denmark. This book is highly recommendable not only for scholars and policymakers active in this field, but also for students of welfare and labour economics, sociology, social policy, political science and law.