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This article addresses the question of how unexpected national and international emergencies -- the 'black swans' of war, economic depression, hyperinflation and, more prospectively and topically, terrorist incidents and environmental catastrophes -- affect the character of welfare state interventions and welfare state development. We do have clear evidence of such effects in the past: hyperinflation in Germany made that country particularly inflation averse; the Great Depression was a stimulus to welfare state development in countries such as Sweden and New Zealand; and the Second World War was a key factor in the subsequent development of the post-war British welfare state. However, the impact of emergencies is, at best, a very minor theme of welfare state analysis and one largely left to historians of the welfare state, suggesting that such effects are no longer considered to be a major factor shaping welfare state development and that welfare states are like 'elephants on the move', rarely significantly thrown off course by particular events. The article speculates on why that might be, noting the importance of the timing of the emergency, its type, size, and the extent and character of prior welfare provisions. The article concludes by examining the implications of this analysis for our understanding of the likely impact of possible future emergencies of a terrorist or environmental character and of the proper political response to such emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that an alternative to a social rights of citizenship approach to comparing welfare states is to use disaggregated programme expenditure data to identify the diverse spending priorities of different types of welfare state. An initial descriptive analysis shows that four major categories of social spending (cash spending on older people and those of working age; service spending on health and for other purposes) are almost entirely unrelated to one another and that different welfare state regimes or families of nations exhibit quite different patterns of spending. The article proceeds to demonstrate that both the determinants and the outcomes of these different categories of spending also differ quite radically. In policy terms, most importantly, the article shows that cross-national differences in poverty and inequality among advanced nations are to a very large degree a function of the extent of cash spending on programmes catering to the welfare needs of those of working age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the notion that the policies and politics of states and nations constitute distinct worlds or clusters. We begin by examining the concept of clustering as it has emerged in the literature on policy regimes and families of nations. We then address a series of empirical questions: whether distinct worlds persist in an era of policy convergence and globalisation, whether policy antecedents cluster in the same ways as policy outcomes and whether the enlargement of the EU has led to an increase in the number of worlds constituting the wider European polity. Our main conclusions are that country clustering is, if anything, more pronounced than in the past, that it is, in large part, structurally determined and that the EU now contains a quite distinct post-Communist family of nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a critique and analysis of recent OECD research by Adema and Ladaique identifying the impact of taxes and private benefits on social spending. By using the techniques of multivariate modelling, we show that both gross public and net private expenditures are strongly influenced by partisan incumbency, although in opposite directions, and that the more we net out the effect of taxes, the less politics matters and the more spending is shaped by socio-economic forces. In a second stage of the analysis, we show that the crucial mechanism of welfare state redistribution is the taxation of gross social expenditure and demonstrate that this effect is almost entirely political in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historical development of the Australian welfare state with a view to identifying the role that Australia's federal constitutional arrangements have played in shaping that development. Theoretical paradigms have been unanimous in their prognoses: that federal states are likely to be slow in developing welfare state programmes and typically spend less on them than unitary states. But recently it has been argued that federal institutions may have a “ratchet effect” of slowing down the pace of change, irrespective of its direction. The purpose of this chronological account of significant stages in the development of the Australian welfare state is to use the unfolding of historical events — far too rich in nuance and detail to be captured in quantitative modelling — as a test-bed for establishing whether, and, if so, to what extent, federalism has impacted on the trajectory of Australian welfare state development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Over the past two decades, a decline in birth rates in advanced industrialized societies to levels well below those required for population replacement has been accompanied by a major change in the cross-national incidence of fertility. This has, in turn, given rise to a massive transformation in traditional cross-national patterns of relationships between fertility and other variables. Whereas previously the countries with the highest period fertility rates were those in which family-oriented cultural traditions were most pronounced and in which women's labour market participation was least, these relationships are now wholly reversed. This study uses data for 21 OECD countries to provide a more thorough and systematic mapping of the linkages between fertility, cultural values, economic structure and social policy than has hitherto been attempted in the literature, while simultaneously addressing some of the theoretical and methodological issues that arise in explaining a reversal of this magnitude. It argues that seemingly anomalous linkages with cultural traditions and employment structure are consequences of women's changing work and family preferences and of cross-national differences in the adoption of family-friendly public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from a major contradiction in the literature on recent public sector development. On the one hand, globalization theory is read as implying major tendencies towards the retrenchment of the public sector and a 'race to the bottom' in social spending. On the other hand, comparative studies are largely unanimous in arguing that such tendencies have not occurred. To gain greater purchase on the realities of recent public sector trends, we disaggregate data for public expenditure change in 19 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 1997. We then develop a series of models of the factors determining expenditure trends over this period. The findings presented here provide no evidence that exposure to international trade leads governments to down-size their public sectors and suggest that the main influences on contemporary expenditure patterns have been unemployment, economic growth and catch-up from prior expenditure level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the nature of the linkage between economic policy outcomes and levels of popular satisfaction in both economically advanced and less advanced societies. Inadequacy of affluence in determining subjective well-being; Probing of continued electoral relevance of an economics-first policy making.

Explores the influence of the political right on public income maintenance expenditure (PIME) and equality. Measurement of the redistributional impact of direct taxes and social security contributions; Difference between indicators of inequality of pre-tax and post-tax money income accruing to households; Correlation between levels of urbanization and increases in PIME and changes in inequality.

Comments on the correlations between the concepts of rationality, personal space and political order. Identification of analytical difficulties that need to be resolved before practitioners of the discipline could acknowledge the pertinence of a concept which promises a revolutionary appraisal of the nature of politics and the state; Challenge to the evaluative premises of a discipline from a paradigm.

The article focuses on the policy consequences of proportional representation in New Zealand. Such consequences involve the country's decision to shift from First-Past-the-Post to a proportional system of representation. The transition is found to be a result from the lack of generally accepted theory concerning the integration of electoral systems, democratic processes, and outcomes and the lack of substantial evidence on which a theory is to be based. The problem with theory is its indirectness as a guide to the policy consequences of proportional representation (PR).

Studies the reality of welfare state policy convergence by comparing recent policy developments in Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand. Welfare state policies of the three countries; Disadvantages of welfare state growth; Arbitration in welfare state; Absence of convergence in social security policy among three nations; Author's conclusions.

In response to Rob Watts' critique of my work as being that of a non-historian and as being structural-functionalist in orientation, I simply plead guilty. I suggest, however, that there are extenuating circumstances in the fact that my work on the Australian welfare state is in no way intended to be a contribution to historical studies, but is rather a contribution to comparative social policy research utilising the proper sociological tools for that task. On the other hand, I plead wholly innocent of Watts' other charge that my research findings have somehow deflected Australian historians from their proper research tasks. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary--and Watts provides none--any defects in the work of historians of the Australian welfare state must be attributed to the deficiencies of that discipline and its practitioners, not to the influence of non-historians such as myself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the comparative social policy literature, the Australian welfare state has, with only a few exceptions, been characterised as lagging far behind most other advanced nations. After providing a survey of the main themes of that literature, the paper uses the example of paid compensation for periods of absence from employment due to sickness to illustrate the complexities of characterising Australian social policy development in comparative perspective. Whilst Australia is shown to have been a latecomer in providing social insurance and sickness and as remaining an exceptionally low spender on social insurance sickness benefits, it is also shown to have developed a very different, and, until quite recently, not necessarily inferior, social policy strategy for catering to the sickness needs of its population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]