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"welfare politics"
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Conviction or Consent? Tracing the Influence of Coalition Partners on Family Policy under Centre-Right Ministers
Many studies have analysed what could motivate centre-right governments to develop progressive family policies, given their historically traditionalist ideology. Updating classic institutionalist accounts, this article expands the focus beyond centre-right parties formally in charge. It argues that in coalition and minority governments, partisan veto players may act as agenda-setters, design policy reforms and successfully exert pressure to approve them through three mechanisms: agreements for government formation, conditions for government survival and bureaucratic continuity. Drawing on novel empirical data from interviews and document analysis, this article applies deductive process tracing to analyse the German parental allowance reform of 2006 and the Spanish 2017 paternity leave extension. The findings complement existing studies that focus on the agency of centre-right parties as ‘protagonists’ of these reforms, arguing that in some cases they have instead ‘consented’ to reforms proposed and supported by other parties.
Journal Article
State Variation in Child Care Spending Under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Federal Block Grant in the United States: Policy Design and Political Representation
This study investigates why U.S. states vary in their spending of federal funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the primary federal program grant to support low-income families with children. Grounded in fiscal federalism and state welfare politics, the study examines how political and institutional settings shape states’ spending decisions, using panel data from all 50 states from fiscal year 2004 to 2016 and a two-way fixed effects model. The results indicate that policy and political factors significantly impact states’ spending decisions, whereas most socioeconomic indicators do not. In particular, states with a TANF job-search requirement allocate a larger share of TANF funds to child care than those without such requirements. However, this positive effect becomes negative when female legislative representation exceeds a certain threshold. These findings demonstrate that policy design and political representation interact to shape the implementation of federal grants at the state level. The study suggests that state allocation decisions under federal block grants are closely tied to institutional design and political context, with broader implications for welfare governance under federalism.
Journal Article
Overpromising Social Welfare Benefits? Electoral Competition and Welfare Politics in Taiwan
Drawing insights from legislative, electoral and welfare studies, the article investigates whether and to what extent electoral competition affects incumbent politicians’ overpromising of social welfare benefits. For this, Taiwan is chosen as the case and the article examines the fate of elite-level social welfare legislative proposals in the period between 1992 and 2016. Findings drawn from quantitative bill sponsorship patterns demonstrate that political elites tend to propose failure-prone social welfare bills during election periods. Moreover, this tendency grew even more clearly in tandem with the rising levels of electoral democracy. The article argues that the overpromising of social welfare benefits is likely due to cognitive biases on the voter side allowing politicians to make promises without necessarily facing the negative consequences of under-delivery. The article contributes to the comparative welfare state literature by adding much-needed nuance to the existing debates on the relationship between democratic deepening, electoral competition, and the development of welfare politics.
Journal Article
Exploring alternative economic pathways: a comparison of foundational economy and Doughnut economics
A number of intersecting crises are currently ongoing at multiple scales, including increasing inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges of populism and mounting public health threats. These emergencies question our economic model of past decades and provoke a rethinking of the general approach to economic policy from a multi-scalar perspective. In this article, we compare two approaches aiming to rethink economic development policy: foundational economy and Doughnut economics, and consider if and how they complement each other. We conclude that the two approaches are potentially complementary, most prominently in their call for high-income countries to refocus from growth per se to purpose-driven economic strategies that prioritize public services and redistribute incomes. However, they differ in respect to their geographical focus, environmental concerns, and application. To properly address tradeoffs between social needs and environmental effects, foundational scholarship would benefit from deeper engagement with the socioenvironmental perspective presented in Doughnut economics, which stresses the need to consider human-nature interlinkages. In sum, combining different aspects of the two approaches promises to provide a more robust response to contemporary challenges, especially for local policy making.
Journal Article
Constitutional coup : privatization's threat to the American republic
Americans have a love-hate relationship with government. Rejecting bureaucracy--but not the goods and services the welfare state provides--Americans have demanded that government be made to run like a business. Hence today's privatization revolution. But as Jon D. Michaels shows, separating the state from its public servants, practices, and institutions does violence to our Constitution, and threatens the health and stability of the Republic. Constitutional Coup puts forward a legal theory that explains the modern welfare state as a worthy successor to the framers' three-branch government. What legitimates the welfare state is its recommitment to a rivalrous system of separation of powers, in which political agency heads, career civil servants, and the public writ large reprise and restage the same battles long fought among Congress, the president, and the courts. Privatization now proclaims itself as another worthy successor, this time to an administrative state that Americans have grown weary of. Yet it is a constitutional usurper. Privatization dismantles those commitments to separating and checking state power by sidelining rivalrous civil servants and public participants. Constitutional Coup cements the constitutionality of the administrative state, recognizing civil servants and public participants as necessary--rather than disposable--components. Casting privatization as an existential constitutional threat, it underscores how the fusion of politics and profits commercializes government--and consolidates state power in ways both the framers and administrative lawyers endeavored to disaggregate. It urges--and sketches the outlines of--a twenty-first-century bureaucratic renaissance.-- Provided by publisher
Book
The Political Origins of Persistent Elderly Poverty in South Korea
This study explores the origins of pervasive elderly poverty in South Korea, which persists despite the continuous expansion of welfare programs and the consolidation of popular democracy in the country. Predicated upon the historical-institutional details of the development of welfare
programs, this article examines and elucidates how the instrumentalization of welfare policy-making since the onset of state-led industrialization and the progress of electoral democracy since the democratic transition have hindered the implementation of e ective anti-poverty policies. It
argues that the exponential politicization of welfare issues amid the demise of the agenda-setting and implementation capacity of the welfare bureaucracy has resulted in a political preference for low-benefit, quasi-universal solutions without an increase in taxes or contributions, which has
crowded out the policy option of imposing su ciently generous measures targeted at this vulnerable segment of society. As pervasive elderly poverty persists, old-age welfare has been substantially privatized and dualized, compelling seniors to find market-based alternatives or to work in low-paying
precarious labour sectors. Consequently, trust in South Korea's public welfare system has declined, impeding the formation of pro-welfare solidarity despite the overall growth of the universalist welfare system and popular democracy.
Journal Article