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Policy PointsMultisector collaboration, the dominant approach for responding to health harms created by adverse social conditions, involves collaboration among health care insurers, health care systems, and social services organizations.Social democracy, an underused alternative, seeks to use government policy to shape the civil (e.g., civil rights), political (e.g., voting rights), and economic (e.g., labor market institutions, property rights, and the tax‐and‐transfer system) institutions that produce health.Multisector collaboration may not achieve its goals, both because the collaborations are difficult to accomplish and because it does not seek to transform social conditions, only to mitigate their harms. Social democracy requires political contestation but has greater potential to improve population health and health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the Quebec model of social policy reflect a public opinion more favorable to public services and to income redistribution? To answer this question, the authors use three series of surveys on two core issues of the comparative study of citizens' preferences for the welfare state: support for income redistribution (1986 to 2021) and preferences for the size of public services (2019 to 2023). In all survey series, they observe significantly higher support for redistribution and public services among Quebec respondents than among respondents in other provinces, although respondents in the Atlantic provinces also maintain strong support. Conservative voters and richer citizens are significantly less supportive of public services and redistribution outside Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to review the scientific production on social interventions (SI) in the field of persons with disabilities (PWD) and their families and to analyze its evaluations. To do so, it starts from the context of the social model of care of the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the sustainable development goals, and the evaluation of SI. The methodology proposes a systematic review of the existing literature on SI with PWD and their evaluation, based on the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis (or PRISMA) model, including 19 articles. The results highlight issues such as the scarcity of publications with evaluations, the lack of homogeneity in the evaluation indicators used, the large number of interventions related to intellectual disability, and a large proportion of community interventions. This scoping review assists future research to consider different questions about evaluation indicators and implementation of the social model or social inclusion, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the puzzle of the politics of social policy formation by two post-communist authoritarian regimes in China and Russia. It argues that two interrelated dimensions—which we term the pillars of power and policy—shape social policymaking and change in authoritarian regimes and support authoritarian regime stability. The pillar of power involves autocrats' bargains with the public and elites, while the policy pillar includes bureaucratic and ideational processes. The latter are understood as the way policy actors perceive problems, choose solutions, and frame their policy choices. To demonstrate this empirically, the article analyzes and compares Chinese and Russian housing policies between 1990 and 2020. We find that despite bureaucratic competition within the policy pillar, neoliberal policy beliefs have guided policy while statist measures served to support—in China—and deepen—in Russia—the neoliberal approach focused on private homeownership. Yet, neoliberal measures have been channeled in ways that underpinned and adjusted the authoritarian regime bargains with different segments of the public and the elite within the pillar of power. Policy framing to match social cultural ideas was used in both countries to support public acceptance of the neoliberal measures while underlining the state's care for people's housing needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on policy experimentation has mainly focused on central–local relations; scholars have paid little attention to the interaction between policy experimentation and the public. We argue that policy experimentation can be used by decision makers as an instrument to communicate with the public, facilitating the building of a social consensus regarding controversial policies. We evaluate the effects of the Chinese government's policy experimentation efforts to promote shared responsibility between the state and individuals for the urban pension system on the public's regime support. Evidence from two rounds of a nationwide survey conducted before and after the policy experiment indicates that the policy experimentation has significantly contributed to citizens' acceptance of their individual welfare responsibility. Moreover, the image-building of governmental responsibility via official news, with varied intensity across regions, consolidates the political trust of residents while posing a challenge to local government credibility in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is concerned with the emotional effects of homelessness on women who are mothers. It develops a multi-disciplinary conceptualization of "haunting" to bring understanding to the ongoing grief and trauma associated with losing a home and children. It explores how women's embodied and affective experiences are not just responses to deeply distressing events, but inextricably intertwined with the unfurling of housing and child protection policies, sometimes long after a policy decision (eviction, child removal). Drawing on biographical research with 26 women, the article contributes new insights into both our limited understanding of women's homelessness but also scholarly work that recognizes the diffuse power of social policy and its harms. The article advances a novel understanding of women's lived experience of homelessness by conceptualizing and empirically investigating the emotional effects of policy decisions as hauntings that permeate past, present and anticipated futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributive justice remains a central issue in contemporary welfare states, even more during times of economic hardship and social uncertainty. In this article, we analyze how attitudes toward the principles of normative distributive justice (equality, need, equity, and entitlement) are related to support for the redistribution of resources (Study 2) and attitudes toward social protection policies (Studies 1 and 3). In Study 1 (N = 325), we found that equality and need positively predicted attitudes toward social protection policies while equity and entitlement negatively predicted these attitudes. In Study 2 (N = 49,519), using data from Round 9 of the European Social Survey, we replicated this linking normative orientation toward different distributive justice principles with support for redistribution. We replicated these results in Study 3 (N = 494). In addition, we explored the role of attributions for poverty in the relationship found in Studies 1 and 2. Attributions for poverty mediated the relationship between orientations toward justice principles and attitudes toward social protection policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of stigma has long been a central topic of discussion regarding the low uptake rate of targeted welfare programs. However, empirical evidence examining this claim within Global South countries remains scarce, particularly in Indonesia. Our study employed a qualitative approach, utilizing data from 33 interviews conducted in two areas with high poverty rates, evaluating the extent of institutionalized stigma that deters individuals from claiming Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT/PKH) benefits. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, our study found no clear link between stigma and the uptake of CCT/PKH programs. We found that the direct experiences of the interviewee with the repeated mistargeting of CCT distribution in sites under examination have eroded the significance of stigma, leading to unashamed claims by beneficiaries, regardless of their eligibility. Furthermore, our research unveiled that the CCT/PKH distribution is not merely an institutional process; it is highly interdependent, influenced by complex personalized meanings among beneficiaries with diverse goals. For example, some beneficiaries use the CCT as collateral to access loans from informal financial institutions, while others use it for socio-cultural purposes. This research contributes to the social policy literature by emphasizing the dysfunction of institutionalized stigma in affecting the decisions of (non-)eligible individuals to access welfare benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contested impact of financial sanctions on Australian employment services, with government evaluation relying on job‐search theory to justify sanctions while research from sociological and psychological perspectives suggests they exacerbate labour market disadvantages and poverty. The division in perspectives reflects both methodological differences and ethical stances within scholarship. Welfare conditionality scholars propose value pluralism as an approach to reach consensus on shared policy goals across disciplines. This article engages in a simulation of the value plural approach to identify evidence gaps in the research and evaluation of sanctions and conditionality in employment services. The article identifies a research and evaluation agenda for conditionality policy, emphasising the importance of reaching a consensus to advance ethically robust policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does inclusion in social policy programs strengthen individuals' support for redistribution, and lead to spillovers in support for future social policy programs? We study a unique dataset of 1,300 Moscow residents to estimate the effect of participating in a government-sponsored redevelopment program on preferences for redistributive social policy. Our design exploits features of the program designed to foster institutional trust by engaging citizens in the policy design process. We report a positive effect: individuals in buildings slated for redevelopment are more likely to agree that the government should reduce income differences between rich and poor, provide for the unemployed, and provide public housing. Our findings suggest that increased trust in the government is a channel through which program participation affects redistribution preferences, show how programs can be used strategically to promote a redistributive agenda, and suggest a pathway for the co-persistence of redistribution preferences and redistributive state policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase due to climate change. Natural disasters and other shocks require well‐developed social protection systems that can cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. International stakeholders advocate for 'Adaptive Social Protection' which links social policy with strategies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This article uses the tax‐benefit microsimulation model INDOMOD to analyse the adaptiveness of the Indonesian social protection system by simulating an income shock caused by a natural disaster and testing reforms to the existing social protection system. We find that the existing system generally performs well in lifting people out of poverty in normal times but does not sufficiently help them to prepare for and cope with shocks. This is especially the case for large households, households with more than two children, people in their 20s and 80s and individuals with a disability. The tested hypothetical reforms reduce the impact of the shock and better target those identified as needing more support but require a substantial increase in social spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutional scholars have long construed the Equal Protection Clause as containing two dueling visions: anticlassification and antisubordination. Scholars advancing the first view contend that the Clause prohibits the government from racially classifying people. But scholars promoting the second view argue that racial classifications are permissible--provided that the government does not engage in racial subjugation. On no issue have these competing perspectives clashed more intensely than affirmative action. Where the anticlassification view deems those policies unconstitutional for exhibiting race consciousness, the antisubordination view finds them permissible because they do not racially subjugate anyone. Conventional antisubordination scholars portray the concept's support for affirmative action as one part of its larger intellectual program that inexorably champions racial egalitarianism. This Article challenges that conventional account by demonstrating that antisubordination's career has been far more protean, complex, and--above all--strange than scholars typically allow. Some of the most reviled opinions in Supreme Court history were predicated upon antisubordination rhetoric, as that concept has been used both to challenge and to maintain racist regimes. Legal luminaries from across the ideological spectrum, moreover, have often contended that affirmative action marks Black and brown people as substandard. Indeed, it is impossible to understand last Term's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College without foregrounding antisubordination's multiplicity. That decision introduced "antisubordination" into the U.S. Reports, reframed how affirmative action subjugates racial minorities, and witnessed the Justices talking past each other by wielding the concept in divergent fashions. Grappling with antisubordination's complexity remains urgent today because the theory has been exported to an ever-growing, astonishingly diverse array of legal domains. This Article contends neither that antisubordination must be abandoned nor that affirmative action should have been invalidated. To the contrary, it explores arguments designed to shore up antisubordination and to provide alternate grounds for affirmative action's constitutionality. It will no longer do, however, simply to ignore antisubordination's considerable complexity. By tracing the winding, peculiar path of antisubordination, this Article not only recasts Justice Clarence Thomas's much-debated jurisprudence but also clarifies our nation's garbled constitutional discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars commonly link citizens' broader ideological views to their preferences for two opposing approaches to fighting crime: conservatives are believed to support punitive approaches, while progressives support preventative solutions. Yet, other studies indicate that citizens across the ideological spectrum support punitive approaches, often due to instrumental factors such as experiences with and perceptions of crime. This study examines how instrumental factors interact with ideology and determines under what circumstances progressives support punitive candidates. The results of a conjoint experiment fielded in Argentina and Brazil demonstrate that among progressives, the effect of ideology on preferences for punitive candidates is moderated by three instrumental factors: perceptions regarding 1) insecurity, 2) the ineffectiveness of social policy, and 3) gang-driven crime; there are null results regarding the role of victimization. The findings also provide evidence that conservatives prefer punitive candidates regardless of instrumental explanations. The results are validated through an analysis of AmericasBarometer data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Fordist era, trade unions promoted welfare state expansion and coverage against risks for the broader workforce. With the shift to the post-industrial economy, however, new economic groups have been left without representation. This is particularly evident for women: despite a rapid increase in female employment since the 1980s, unions' membership base remains anchored in the male, old and industrial working class. Without the crucial pressure of labour, welfare systems have failed to enhance the reconciliation of work and family life. Under which conditions do unions support the expansion of work-family policies? Marshalling evidence from 20 OECD countries in the 1980–2010 period, this paper investigates the role of political actors in family policy reform. Findings suggest that unions promote the expansion of work-family packages when they are gender-inclusive and have institutional access to policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare reform is perhaps one of the most discussed topics in social policy today. In the 1990s, the health care reforms carried out in many countries of the world mainly separated the provision and financing of health care services, leaving the provision of services to the responsibility of the State Insurance Organization (SHI), which was created from the collected insurance premiums. Healthcare reforms in the field of primary care destroy the structures that ensure the provision of integrated health services (Health Centers) and give priority to preventive health services created by the community in the past under the unique conditions of each country. Although the goal is to direct people to therapeutic services, concepts such as efficiency and freedom to choose a doctor are used as the main arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media is an important arena for policy contestation. Although online social media debates can yield notable power over political processes offline, little research has examined the relationship between policy actors' influence in offline policymaking and social media policy arenas. We explore the relationship between four types of influence: reputational and formal‐institutional influence offline, and broadcasting and boosting influence online. We ask (1) are influential policy actors better able than others to broadcast their own messages on social media? and (2) are they better able than others to boost the broadcasting influence of other policy actors in social media? Using exponential random graph models on survey and Twitter data from the Finnish climate policy domain, we find that actors with high reputational influence in offline policymaking are also influential online, when measuring influence as the ability to broadcast one's own message. The pattern does not hold for those with formal‐institutional influence offline. Additionally, offline influence does not translate to the ability to further shape online influence by making boosting other actors' visibility. Our results suggest that although online influence partially corresponds to influence in policymaking, influence varies across arenas of policy contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Council of Italian Women (CNDI) was an internationally-oriented confederation of women's associations founded in Rome in 1903, which was affiliated with the International Council of Women (ICW). Previous studies on the Italian Council have considered its origins and the biographical aspects of its members in the first half of twentieth-century Italy, while the Council developments and action during the democratic regime of the second half of the twentieth century have been less studied. First, this article aims to understand the impact of female associations on Italian social policy developments by examining the CNDI between 1958 and 1963. The study makes a historical reassessment of an emancipatory narrative, addressing the participation and social demands of Italian women in the context of the 'economic miracle'. Second, this article reflects on the role of NGOs and voluntary activism in shaping welfare state developments in the post-war period. The analysis will use primary and edited sources from the CNDI and the Ministry of Labour held at the Central Archive of the State in Rome. The CNDI represents a significant case study that aids in our understanding women's social demands from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Background Method Findings Conclusion Implications The goal of this research was to map and identify service and social policy needs, gaps, barriers, and enablers for Western Australian custodial grandparent carers.Grandparents are increasingly providing custodial kinship care for their grandchildren, yet there is substantial inconsistency in policy frameworks, systems, and services that offer support to grandfamilies across Australia.This mixed‐methods research project synthesized micro‐ to macro‐level data, including grandparent carer respondents to an online survey, qualitative interviews with stakeholder organization representatives, focus groups with key agency frontline staff, and service, social policy, and legislative mapping.Current focused and generic services do not meet the complex needs of many grandparent carers and their families, particularly informal grandparent carers and those with diverse, intersectional needs.Grandparent carers are an often hidden and marginalized population, with many struggling within a complex policy and service delivery framework that may encompass multiple sectors. There are service, policy, and legislative gaps, particularly for informal grandparent carers and those who may already be experiencing intersectional disadvantage.Holistic, culturally competent, individualized, and flexible service and social policy responses need to be developed to support grandfamilies, as well as further funding, support and legislative recognition for informal grandparent carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the social policy implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for adolescents and young people with disabilities in Ethiopia and Jordan. The article draws on qualitative research interviews carried out in person between November and December 2019 and by phone between April and June 2020 with 65 young people with hearing, visual and physical impairments in urban settings in both countries, complemented by interviews with key informants in government and civil society organisations working with young people. Whilst in Jordan social policy on disability is more developed, and in Ethiopia, systems are still embryonic, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the marginalisation of adolescents and young people with disabilities in both contexts as health, education and social protection systems have been slow to mobilise targeted support and address social exclusion. This article identifies social policy gaps in Ethiopia and Jordan that must be addressed in order to support young people with disabilities during crises. Adolescents and young people with disabilities in lower- and middle-income countries are at high risk of both contracting COVID-19, and being harmed by efforts taken by governments to mitigate the spread of the virus. Our evidence shows that the COVID-19 pandemic response has negatively affected access to education, health care, employment and social protection support for adolescents and young people with disabilities in Ethiopia and Jordan, and magnified social exclusion within the community. In both contexts the pandemic has highlighted the limitations of current social policies for addressing disability-related inequalities quickly and effectively. Support that is targeted to the most marginalised adolescents and young people with disabilities, across education, health, labour and social protection sectors, should be at the forefront of social policy responses in line with the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 to 'leave no one behind'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to address how household debt and contemporary credit markets seem to be the defining elements in the reshaping of social policy both in develop-ing and developed countries. We start off by recalling how the implementation of income policies as the core of a new social protection paradigm has contributed to promote marketbased finance. We take Brazil as a case study to illustrate how this new connection between state guaranteed income policies and credit markets has unfolded resulting in increasing household debt. We show evidence that the connection between household debt and stateprovided monetary benefits is effective and significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary nationalism in the West tends to be understood in ethnic terms and associated with a bottom-up reaction to disliked effects of globalization, in particular migration. But there is also a top-down nationalism that is inherent in states' boundary-policing and – constituting membership policies. This paper draws the contours of a state-level neoliberal nationalism. Its imprint can be found in social policy, citizenship policy, and – the focus of this paper – immigration policy, in particular for the highly-skilled. Neoliberal nationalism combines diversity and meritocracy, and thus a modicum of cultural and economic liberalism. The prefix 'neo' flags the refashioning of political community from solidarity-based to contract-based, conditional on individual contribution and strict reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States after the Great Recession, despite growing attention to low-income households' homeownership vulnerability, the existing works tend to take specific angles and produce only piecemeal evidence. By placing liquid assets' function of mediating financial hardships in the context of homeownership dynamics, I establish a synthesized conceptual framework. Based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I put this framework to a test and find that liquid assets not only reduce the risk of homeownership exit in general but play a pivotal role in accounting for low-income borrowers' elevated rates of exit. I discuss policy implications of the findings at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have motivated an unprecedented level of global advocacy for gender-responsive and gender-transformative social protection systems that buffer individuals from shocks and vulnerabilities. This turn to a systems approach reflects growing recognition that the presence of one or two social protection programmes targeting women does not guarantee that they are protected throughout the course of their lives and over a wide range of contingencies. Relative to the high levels of interest, however, very little empirical evidence exists about what a gender-responsive or transformative social protection system entails in practice. This article departs from existing literature that focuses on the design and impact of discreet social protection instruments, to present a 'state of the evidence' on gender and social protection systems. Drawing on the results of a phased scoping review of academic and policy literature spanning various fields, the article charts the defining features of the existing evidence base, summarizes what is known and identifies pathways for future research. In addition to scholarly analysis, the article offers a comprehensive view of the evidence for policymakers, practitioners, movement leaders and funders working on policy problems from a gender perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth is commonly seen as the main driver of poverty reduction in a global perspective, but its impact varies substantially across cases. Meanwhile, the literature has been relatively silent regarding the role of social policy in explaining this variation. In light of an emerging attention to redistribution and social protection in promoting inclusive growth, this article analyses how government cash transfer systems moderate the effect of economic growth on both relative and absolute child poverty across low- and middle-income countries. The empirical analyses compare trends within 16 countries, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), by means of descriptive analyses and multivariate regression techniques. Findings show that both economic growth and the expansion of government transfer schemes were associated with falling absolute child poverty rates. While the association between growth and relative child poverty was on average more muted, the analyses found growth to be related to reductions in relative child poverty when combined with sufficiently extensive government transfers, while the opposite effect was found in the face of inadequate levels of transfers. The study provides a framework for studying interrelated effects of national institutions and economic processes, with the findings highlighting the fruitfulness of including indicators on social protection policies when inquiring about enabling conditions for inclusive growth in a development context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent, and under what conditions, have workfare reforms shaped public opinion towards the unemployed? This article unpacks the punitive and enabling dimensions of the workfare turn and examines how changes to the rights and obligations of the unemployed have influenced related policy preferences. To do so, it presents a novel dataset on these reforms across a diverse set of welfare states and investigates potential feedback effects by combining our data with four waves of survey data from Europe and North America. Results suggest that while enabling measures generate more lenient attitudes towards the unemployed, punitive measures have no clear effect on public opinion – but they do accentuate the gap between the preferences of high- and low-income individuals. This leads us to conclude that the trend towards punitive and enabling measures since the 1980s has not broadly undermined solidarity with the unemployed, though it has increased income-based polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As interest in universal basic income (UBI) policy has peaked in recent years, the study of public support for such a policy is rapidly developing. While recent studies recognise the multidimensionality of the UBI proposal, we still know little about to what extent support for UBI is unambiguously supported or rejected. We show that the public holds distinct but related opinions towards three dimensions of UBI: universalism, redistribution and unconditionality. The higher and lower educated are equally ambivalent towards the policy, suggesting a lack of political entrenchment towards UBI in Dutch society. Post hoc comparisons show that key demographics and constituencies support some dimensions while rejecting others, enabling both compromise and division on the issue. Despite these distinct controversies, however, the strong correlation between attitudinal dimensions suggests that survey experiments tend to overstate the degree of multidimensionality by ignoring the strong commonalities in support for policy aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental, social, and governance ("ESG") philosophy is the zeitgeist of our time. The rise of ESG investments came against the perceived failure of the government to adequately promote socially important goals. And so, corporations are now being praised and credited for stepping up where the government has fallen short. In this Essay, we contend that the standard narrative of ESG suffers from a major flaw. The reason for this discrepancy is taxes. The companies that are widely perceived as saviors of the ESG era are in fact the cause of some of the main deficiencies ESG seeks to redress. Astoundingly, public corporations--many of which have the highest ESG scores and are the largest recipients of ESG fund investments--are also the biggest tax avoiders. As this Essay shows, through the exploitation of legal loopholes and other grey areas, these companies increasingly deprive governments of the funding needed for the provision of public goods and the promotion of important societal policies, exacerbating administrative inefficiencies and deepening societal inequality--outcomes that are starkly at odds with ESG principles. To address this paradox, this Essay advocates incorporating tax-avoidance behavior into ESG ratings. It also argues that tax considerations should be accorded considerable weight not only by ESG rating agencies but also by institutional investors who shoulder part of the fault for the existing state of affairs. Implementation of this proposal would not only rectify incongruities within ESG investment but also provide the public with a more robust and accurate representation of a company's genuine ESG standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents some of the findings from a Teacher Innovation Project undertaken by faculty members at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville (Spain), entitled 'Humanising the policies and (re) creating the applicability of rights.' The purpose of this project was to promote Social Work students' learning about the praxis of human rights from a critical perspective and the applicability of social policies in society. For the final product of the project, we collected narratives through the use of techniques such as group discussion and interviews with professionals and excluded groups, to create videos that presented an approach to basic concepts and the opinions of teachers and students. Once the project ended, we continued the investigation in order to evaluate the impact of the lessons using the material we created. We developed a questionnaire to find out the perceptions of the next year's students on subjects related to the initial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with innate variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex traits or disorders or differences of sex development) have any of a wide range of innate physical traits that differ from medical and social norms for female and male bodies. Responses to these physical differences create experiences and risks of stigmatisation, discrimination, violence, and harmful medical practices intended to promote social and familial integration and conformity with gender stereotypes. As is evident globally, the Australian policy response to the existence and needs of people with innate variations of sex characteristics has been largely incoherent, variously framing the population as having disordered sex development in need of "fixing", and a third sex/gender identity group in need of recognition, with only recent engagement by intersex community-controlled civil society organisations. This paper presents an overview of the context and goals of the intersex human rights movement in Australia. Australian intersex community organisations have sought to apply human rights norms and develop new infrastructure to address key health and human rights issues, and necessitating new ways of resolving policy incoherence. Together with human rights, mental health, and public health institutions, they have called for significant changes to medical models of care and reform to research and classification systems. Intersex community organising and resourcing have made a tangible difference. The Australian Capital Territory is the first jurisdiction in the country to move ahead with reforms to clinical practice, including a legislative prohibition of certain practices without personal informed consent, oversight of clinical decision-making, and investment in psychosocial support. A national community-controlled psychosocial support service has also commenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we propose a novel conceptualization of homeownership in the United States as a special commodity, whose consumption involves a two-stage process: homeownership entry wherein the ability to consume is pivotal, and homeownership retention wherein the outcome rests on economic security. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we test this conceptualization with consumption ability being proxied by income and economic security by liquid wealth. Three hypotheses are verified: (1) income predicts first-time renters' chance of becoming homeowners but has weakened influence on homeownership retention; (2) liquid wealth constitutes the central determinant for first-time homeowners' ability to avoid going back to renting; and (3) nonliquid wealth fails to exhibit a significant impact on either homeownership stage. By revealing the two separate stages of different homeownership dynamics, this study is the first to systematically explore the built-in contradiction of capitalist housing markets. Policy implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on authoritarian stability and legitimation has highlighted the role of propaganda and information control, national identity politics, participation technologies and other communication strategies autocrats use to shape public opinion. The authoritarian tool kit is, incomplete if we do not account for governance-related measures. Focusing on authoritarian social policy and contributing to the literature on the authoritarian welfare state, this study measures the political effects of unconditional and conditional cash transfers, specifically focusing on child subsidies, that the Russian government has increasingly integrated into its policy tools. Social policy and child support earn the government political dividends in terms of shoring up public support and have acquired added significance over the last few years. It is part of the current social pact that enables authoritarian resilience during Russia's war against Ukraine and that is made possible by the actions at the federal, regional, and municipal levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Europe, or the social dimension of the European Union (EU), has been receiving increasing attention in academic debates. This special issue introduction discusses Social Europe through the analytical framework of multi‐level governance while asking, perhaps controversially, whether Social Europe has the potential to become a fully‐fledged welfare state. This introduction also summarises the articles included in this special issue which focus on different governance levels, including EU institutions, member states, national parties, economic sectors, workers and the general public. On this basis, the introduction identifies sources of challenges and opportunities for Social Europe from various levels of governance. We conclude that the needs and demands become more diverse when we move from European institutions to the citizens. Notably, obstacles from one governance level often carry over to another governance level. Consequently, it becomes much more difficult to design welfare policies on the EU level that work for everyone. While a more evolved EU‐level welfare state may be possible in the future, substantial obstacles make it difficult to achieve in the short run. Hence, future research should examine the multi‐level structure of Social Europe in more detail to better grasp what Social Europe can and cannot deliver and why. Such research is not only relevant in the European Union but also in other multi‐level governance systems across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Pillar of Social Rights sits at the fulcrum of EU social policymaking. This article aims to explore its legal and political character, how it was shaped in the adoption process and its place within Social Europe. The key argument is that the Social Pillar builds on but also critically modifies previous initiatives present within the broader EU governance framework, notably in the European Semester. Key political actors like Commission President Jean‐Claude Juncker and parliamentary rapporteur Maria João Rodrigues contributed to the adoption process not only through their long‐held political views but also by bringing to bear their own critical reflections on previous EU initiatives. Methodologically, the article relies on 15 interviews with policy experts and uses an interdisciplinary approach based on legal analysis, process tracing and actor‐centred constructivist theory. The contribution of the article is threefold: (1) it helps to better understand the EU's social flagship initiative and the modifications of its governance approach compared with previous initiatives, (2) it sheds new light on the tensions and opportunities of social policymaking within the EU and (3) it shows the added value of actor‐centred constructivist approaches on a theoretical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the public opinion literature on Social Europe is growing, so far, it relies on quantitative survey evidence that hides some of the arguments and motivations lying behind the standardized results. This article reveals through qualitative research that 'welfare Euroscepticism' (i.e., opposition towards Social Europe) needs more attention in the literature and explains why. Specifically, this article uses qualitative focus group discussions on Social Europe collected in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain (134 participants in total). The participants filled out a quantitative survey before the discussions started and these survey results are in line with the usual public opinion literature on Social Europe, that is, relatively supportive of the social dimension of the EU. However, multi‐faceted welfare Eurosceptic attitudes appeared throughout the discussion. While participants may support the general idea of a Social Europe, they are highly critical about how it actually works in practice. The analysis reveals that the public is sceptic towards both harmonizing social policies on the EU level and redistributive social policy instruments on the EU level. Three overarching and partly overlapping rationales appear to drive welfare Euroscepticism: (1) economic self‐interest, (2) cultural ideology and (3) the democratic deficit. The results emphasize the public preferences for more conditional redistributive policies and the need to make Social Europe more visible to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do national political parties vary in their views on Social Europe? I focus on an aspect that has received less attention despite its growing prevalence—EU regulations with ambitions to diminish social inequality to encourage social convergence among Member States. Since the Juncker Commission, the European Commission has become increasingly active in pursuing this aspect of Social Europe. Thus, understanding parties' positions on this aspect of Social Europe has become more important. However, current literature lacks measures of national party stances towards Social Europe, and explanations for these stances. Here, I use data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (2006, 2009, 2014 and 2019) to develop an indirect measure of party positions on Social Europe. Leveraging studies in party politics and EU politics, I propose that party families and national economic conditions may affect parties' positions on Social Europe. The analyses suggest substantial variation in parties' positions on Social Europe both within and across party families. The analyses also demonstrate that socialist and green parties support Social Europe most, whereas radical right parties support it least. Lastly, I do not find systematic evidence that national economic conditions influence parties' support for this aspect of Social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital labour platforms transform work and employment relations in many ways. Crucially, they renounce the role of the employer, leading to a redefinition of traditional categories of actors and their roles in social policy and dialogue. Using the example of the EU proposal for a directive on improving working conditions in platform work, this article examines how this redefinition is materialising in practice among social partners in order to understand its implications for the future of social dialogue and legislation. While previous research focused on the status of workers, this study takes a complementary view by considering the employer side as a key counterpart in a functioning employment relationship. The actor‐approach is used to analyse the views and positions of EU social partners and how their prerogatives are affected by the blurring of the role of the employer and the redefinition of traditional categories of actors in social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal social citizenship is limited in how it enables us to think about informal social citizenship and informal welfare. This informal perspective is important in all contexts where access to social rights is negotiated through local and transnational spaces, and where the state is a relatively minor player. By drawing on work on moral economy (Scott, 1976) and informal welfare (Gough and Wood, 2006) the article aims to propose a new theoretical model to understand the nature and social practice of both informal citizenship and welfare. This model departs from a western-centric understanding of nation-state-based citizenship and national welfare states, adopting instead the perspective that informal social citizenship and welfare have existed independently of the nation state as long as there have been human communities. Formal citizenship together with formal welfare rights represent just one particular crystallization of such informal practice. Our proposed model highlights the interdependent (rather than evolutionary) relationship between formal welfare at national level and informal welfare practices at local and transnational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the population ages and supportive services are increasingly delivered in home- and community-based settings, greater demands are placed on family caregivers. This essay introducing the special issue of the Journal of Aging and Social Policy discusses signs of progress on policies to ease the burden on family caregivers. It introduces a series of articles that reflect the growing body of research on caregiver-related policy actions. These actions range from expanding access to paid family leave and payment for providing care, to ensuring access to better data about family caregivers and improving the post- hospital discharge experiences of rural and underserved caregivers. It also explores a major conundrum around caregiving policy – why progress on family caregiving policy has been so slow, despite its clear importance to the health and welfare of those who receive supports, as well as to those providing supports. In addition, the essay discusses developments, such as Biden administration actions and the RAISE Family Caregiver Advisory Council, indicating that the political dynamic around caregiving has changed, concluding that this is a uniquely hopeful time for family caregiver-related policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commuting, the spatial mismatch between work and residential locations, necessitates integrated urban and transport policies to mitigate its societal impacts. While cross-border commuting (CBC) is increasing and governance of border regions is on the rise beyond national borders, no systemic review of this specific commuting pattern exists. We aim to consolidate the CBC literature accumulated over the years into a coherent and synthetic framework. Our systematic review assembles an inaugural comprehensive corpus of cross-border commuting literature. It reveals three transversal key topics (transport-oriented topic, qualitative approaches versus a lack of quantitative data, and a large majority of European papers) and four sub-topics (patterns, determinants, impacts and policies). Moreover, we consolidate findings through meticulous mapping of evidence, where most links are traced between the determinants and the level of flows across borders. Finally, the discussion offers directions for future research, with an exhortation to explicitly link policies to sustainability and social concerns, and the necessity for standardised datasets for methodological comparability across cases and in alignment with general commuting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Codesign is an increasingly common term in Indigenous education policy settings. However, it is unclear exactly what it means and how it is enacted. This systematic review examined 15 papers relevant to codesign in the context of Indigenous education, clearly distinguishing between codesign as a process and a method. These papers provide a snapshot of the various ways codesign is conceptualised, enacted as a process and evaluated in Indigenous education settings. In this paper, we respond to these three areas of codesign to inform a more nuanced framework to help policymakers and practitioners in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In recent decades, Europe has seen a steady increase in psychiatric diagnoses, which, besides affecting the population in many ways, also challenges the organization of welfare. This paper explores how welfare classification processes impact the contemporary production of mental (ill) health and social inequality in the German welfare state. Methods: Based on comprehensive ethnographic research in the public mental healthcare landscape in Berlin between 2011 and 2017, this paper discusses in detail the case of a mandatory prescription of a psychosocial rehabilitation measure for Ms Reisch, a psychiatric service user and ethnographic research partner. The analysis draws on the methodological approach of praxeography to examine how this case challenges the social determinants of mental health framework and the conceptual work of the sociology of inequality on which the categories of welfare are largely built. Results: The paper highlights the essentializing properties of social categories, whether in the sociology of inequality or in social and mental health policy. It also demonstrates the strength of praxeography to expose how multiple welfare categorization processes shape experiences and events of dis/ability in practice, potentially contradicting the stated intentions of social policy. Conclusion: The results suggest that the attachment of categories to people in public welfare needs to be changed to make public administration more flexible to responding to the situated processes that bring about differentiations of equal and unequal in practice. The paper, therefore, encourages social inquiry into the potentialities of a post-categorical social policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visibility of populations, policies, and the state matters greatly for questions of power, inequality, and democratic life. This article builds on existing scholarship by examining how visibility operates as a lever and effect of social control in a racially and economically stratified society. By doing so, the article identifies a paradox. Race- and class-empowered groups often pressure state actors to implement punitive policies or otherwise visibly contain and control disadvantaged populations. But they also tend to decry and disavow the necessary public costs of these disciplinary interventions. This creates a conundrum for authorities: how to satisfy popular demands for social control while concealing resource commitments. We use the term disciplinary tensions to describe the contradictory political desires that state actors must navigate to maintain legitimacy with privileged constituents. We examine two state projects that, in different ways, crystallize this dilemma: the expansion of low-income housing development in New York in the 1960s and 1970s and state prison construction in California in the 1980s and 1990s. In both episodes, officials responded to disciplinary tensions by turning to covert public finance options: specifically, revenue bonds, which seemingly detach policy from conventional tax-and-spend public finance. We argue that these cases shed light on the shifting nature of power as finance has come to pervade all aspects of government and covert governing tactics supplement and supplant society's more direct practices of social control. Revenue bonds, in particular, allow governing actors to appease and placate the populace by reconfiguring the state's disciplinary power so that social control appears to pay for itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal Credit signalled a revolution in the delivery and costs of welfare provisioning. UC aimed to reduce spending on welfare, but in doing so now threatens the stability of a functioning and cohesive society. Over recent years, and most notably during the COVID‐19 pandemic, it has become ever clearer that adequate social security is vital to the functioning of society, as well as to the health and well‐being of the population. Yet this period has also served to highlight the fragility and insufficiency of welfare in the United Kingdom. This article explores how the current welfare crisis, is associated with UC. In this article, we also consider the uncertainty that UC has created in most recipients. We argue that there are other ways to support the most vulnerable in society, and that we are now at that critical juncture in needing to make significant change. Universal Basic Income (UBI) offers one such alternative by offering stable, individual, non‐means tested, and unconditional money transfers, to all citizens. Over the last decade, there have been multiple experiments around the world trialling basic income, each of which has a specific focus, or target population, as different elements of a UBI were scrutinised. In this article, we reflect upon what we consider to be the potential shortcomings of the current welfare system in the United Kingdom as a move away from its origin, arguing that the United Kingdom is now primed for UBI to be considered a fair and legitimate way to provide social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse how different governments have dealt with situations, labelled as 'crises' in the international and national discourses. More specifically, we analyse how the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments framed and dealt with their social policies during the 2008 'financial crisis', the 2015 'refugee crisis', and the 2020 'Covid crisis'. We argue that sometimes governments and the mass media frame the situation as a crisis, when objectively it would be hard to argue empirically that there really was a crisis. At other times, according to objective criteria, there is ample evidence that there is indeed a crisis, but the government tries to deny it for political reasons. Despite differences in objective conditions and differences in political constellations, none of the policymakers in the three countries took advantage of the windows of opportunity that the alleged crises presented to carry out path‐changing social policy? changes. Instead, the changes we rather small and usually only temporary; thus, showing the importance of path dependency even during crisis situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare state crises have long fascinated researchers. This introduction distills the special issue's insights on this enduring topic. Overall, the articles indicate that future debates surrounding crisis types and responsive policies will remain important. Simple or singular crisis explanations prove elusive. Uncertainty persists regarding whether crises are episodic or constant and occur on macro or micro levels. Diverse welfare regimes further complicate crisis interpretations. Perhaps academic discourse should shift from "crisis" frameworks towards framing pressures as ongoing variations. These encompass struggles over legitimacy, demographic changes, financing dilemmas, and societal battles over resources and options. Specifically, the articles reveal the limitations of sweeping crisis narratives, emphasizing the complex, gradual pressures shaping social policies. Welfare systems balance simultaneous stresses rather than experiencing overarching crises. Even pivotal events rarely trigger seismic shifts, as continuity typically prevails over radical departures. In summary, this special issue provides nuance to welfare state debates by delving into multifaceted, incremental change rather than superficial crisis rhetoric. The articles underscore the diversity of pressures and responses across varied regimes, challenging simplistic crisis notions. This highlights the need for constant welfare state adaptation despite the absence of outright crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has traditionally influenced the social and employment policies of Member States through regulation, leaving redistribution to national welfare states. The latter have, however, been gradually weakened by global socioeconomic change and by the expansion of EU market integration. A series of crises over the last 15 years made a bad situation worse: the longue durée erosion of the capacity of European welfare states has morphed into acute social aftershocks, especially in peripheral countries. After the austerity reflex in the early 2010s, the EU introduced new policy instruments with market‐correcting rationales that go beyond the regulatory approach. This article revisits the creation and functioning of four of these instruments that represent EU‐level capacity‐building in the social policy domain: the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, the Youth Guarantee, the Just Transition Fund and SURE (the temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency). We argue that the EU increasingly provides 'buffer mechanisms' to support stressed national welfare states in tasks they would otherwise be unable to accomplish, and we identify the political factors that drive the expansion of this 'buffering' logic in EU social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Better data are fundamental to improving the effectiveness of policies. Drawing on examples from nutrition, education, criminal justice and income support, I discuss how data access has contributed to policy improvements. Data linkage across departments can also help ensure that policymakers are focussed on the right policy goals, rather than merely those that are easiest to measure. As governments increase the rigour of evaluation, quality data will be crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]