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As climate change progresses, natural hazards are projected to continue to increase in frequency and intensity, posing a new form of social risk, implicating both the welfare and environmental state and raising the salience of ecosocial policy as a mechanism to attend to the distributional effects of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This study posits a novel conceptual framework for ecosocial policy and offers the US ecosocial safety net as a case analysis. While we conceptualise disaster relief policy as a mode of the environmental state, it includes unique ecosocial policies that constitute the backbone of the US ecosocial safety net. This study describes and compares the developmental and functional synergies between the US welfare and environmental state manifested in the form of an ecosocial safety net by explicating the Individual Assistance Program and the National Flood Insurance Program. Our findings reveal synergies between US disaster relief and welfare, including parallel developmental trends, philosophies of deserving/undeserving, functions of racial capitalism and relationships with economic growth. This study and its conceptual framework of ecosocial policy offer a groundwork for the study of ecosocial policy in other contexts.

ABSTRACT The research's main objectives are to verify systemic differences between OECD countries in terms of their early responses to the COVID‐19 economic challenge and to compare newly established taxonomy with old patterns determined by classifications that can be found in the literature. Research is based on a few methods of cluster analysis—hierarchical clustering and the k‐means method are supplemented with insights derived from the application of c‐means fuzzy clustering. It also applies Rand and Jaccard indices to compare a new taxonomy with existing classifications of welfare states and capitalistic systems. Objective comparison of the new taxonomy with those existing in the literature with the application of statistical methods is the most significant contribution of the article. Results suggest that it is possible to distinguish various strategies for dealing with the COVID‐19 economic consequences in the early period of the pandemic, but demarcation lines between particular clusters significantly differ from the findings of previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People living in situations of homelessness and drug use experience significant barriers when seeking to access services in the Danish welfare state. Yet rarely are journeys to services examined in depth with attention to the factors that may either support or prevent their completion. Towards this aim, the article employs a ‘service journey’ approach by unfolding an ethnographic case study of a service journey pieced together at the street-level. This is achieved through the collective efforts of outreach workers and a man encountered at a drug consumption room in urgent need of medication. The article highlights the role of serendipity in the construction of such ‘street-level’ service journeys. It thus shows how possibilities for initiating or pushing a particular service journey forward occur through serendipitous outreach encounters. Further, it is shown how service journeys of unstably housed people who use drugs are both conditioned by and come up against other shifting everyday ‘itineraries’ of clients as they seek to piece together a living at the urban margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization and technological advancements pose a threat of job loss for native-born citizens, potentially leading to blaming immigrants for economic hardship. This sentiment hinges on the perception that foreign-born residents are not contributing to the host society, often combined with discourse portraying immigrants as competitors regarding welfare benefits. Nevertheless, we have limited knowledge about how labor market risk to job loss is related to anti-immigrant sentiments in tandem with their assessment of the welfare state, such as the deservingness of beneficiaries. Drawing on the European Social Survey, this study examines the relationship between labor market risks, deservingness perception, and anti-immigrant attitudes. First, the extent to which individuals are exposed to job-displacing transformations is negatively associated with a perception of immigrants' contribution to the host society. Second, in contrast, the perception that welfare recipients are deserving is positively associated with an attitude toward immigrant contribution. Third, the association between the labor market risks and the devaluation of immigrants' contributions is stronger among individuals who emphasize the deservingness of beneficiaries. We argue that economic insecurity combined with frustration with the fairness of the social welfare system can drive anti-immigrant attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Trump and Brexit, a dominant narrative emerged that portrayed the rise of right-wing populism as a backlash to neoliberalism. While it is true that right-wing populism emerged during the heydays of neoliberal globalization in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the two is more complex than often assumed. In a series of countries, right-wing populism emerged with, rather than against neoliberalism. The particular combination of "neoliberal populism," however, is still underexplored. Studying this political discourse can help us understand the role of neoliberal ideology in the rise of right-wing populism. As a contribution to this end, this article offers an in-depth analysis of the ideological evolution of the Dutch neoliberal populist Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002). It places the development of his ideas against the backdrop of the Dutch neoliberal turn and shows how his populist establishment critique emerged out of a neoliberal critique of the Dutch corporatist welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention has recently been given to the time sensitivity of trust, current research seems to fall short of examining welfare professionals' experiences of the relation between trust and time. Therefore, this article employs an analytical lens of time and temporality to explore how welfare professionals make sense of trust and distrust in encounters with forced migrant service users in a changing neoliberal welfare state. Empirically, the analysis draws on semi-structured individual interviews with welfare professionals in employment and social service institutions in Finland. Theoretically, I apply a dual framework that leans on the interplay between trust and time. Recognising trust as relational yet fragile, contextual and dynamic, and viewing time as increasingly commodified and accelerated, I show how time impacts and shapes trust in institutional encounters. My analyses uncover four ways in which welfare professionals' sensemaking of trust was linked to time. First, I show how the welfare professionals perceived the foundations of the trusting relationship in relation to time. Second, time and trust were interconnected in the efficient institutional tempo of encounters. Third, when the welfare professionals were replaced, trust was shaped negatively through disruptions to service user relationships in the series of institutional encounters. Fourth, I show how flows of institutional encounters shaped trust both positively and negatively. Thus, this article contributes to the literature on the intersections of trust, time and migration research, particularly in the transformation of the neoliberal Nordic welfare state context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses young people's school-to-work transitions. The analysis draws on data from a Swedish ongoing qualitative longitudinal project spanning over 10 years. In this article, we focus on eight young people who grew up and still live in a small rural inland town in North Sweden where the regional labor market is going through a process of rapid reindustrialization after decades of industrial decline and welfare state retrenchment. The aim of the study is to explore the young rural 'stayers' transitions in a region characterized by strong economic growth, yet with long-standing challenges in terms of social reproduction, focusing on what kind of work they end up with and their speed of establishment on the labor market. At the time of the latest interview all but one of the 8 participants in this study had employment in local or regional industries, however, how fast they had managed to establish themselves on the labor market varied between them. Further, their staying on locally depended largely on regional mobility. We discuss their transitions in relation to the ongoing re-industrialization process in North Sweden but also what implications young stayers' school-to-work transitions might have in relation to the wider social reproduction in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taken together these essays reveal both synergies and contradictions between and within immigration and welfare policies. Several common themes emerge. Firstly, while access to the welfare state is an important signifier of membership, in practice claiming certain state benefits is accompanied by suspicion, surveillance and stigma. The good citizen is a worker citizen. Secondly, the importance of the welfare state in putting the nation into the nation-state: the normative national community imagined as the rightful subject of welfare states is racialised and classed. Thirdly, deservingness functions in both welfare states and immigration regimes to prioritise victimhood rather than rights and redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of social solidarity involves formal and informal practices, with various levels of institutionalisation. It builds on normative assumptions and discourses of reciprocal expectations of mutual help, on (perceived) ideas of sameness or neediness in relation to, among other, class, ethnicity, and/or gender and on notions of deservingness that are entangled in such ideas. In this contribution, we discuss how the intersection between institutionalised social solidarity in European nation-states and notions of deservingness informs who is seen as worthy of being part of welfare arrangements. Where ideas of solidarity and deservingness intertwine with legal categorisations of belonging, the results are exclusionary policies that often restrict migrants' access to national welfare policies, and hence meaningful societal participation. Furthermore, we discuss migrants' experiences with expressions of solidarity beyond the national realm, exploring how ideas about migrants' deservingness become linked to their economic usefulness within the European (integration) project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first keyword, Welfare State, sets out to problematise the term itself. The welfare state is a national construct, a 'national social state' as Etienne Balibar calls it. Thus, transnational or global migration is often construed as a disruptive force, potentially destabilising the welfare state and the nation. This keyword entry critically examines common conceptions of what the welfare state should provide. It delineates some of the ways that migrants (and, more broadly foreign nationals who are not themselves necessarily migrants) are excluded or partially included, with a focus on contemporary EU social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore maternal shame and guilt as affective derivatives of social regulations of motherhood in Iceland, which is internationally perceived as a frontrunner in gender equality. We analyze 450 qualitative questionnaires completed by parents describing feelings of guilt and shame in connection to parenthood. We use 76 questionnaires completed by fathers to contrast and compare to answers from mothers to better understand the affective‐discursive workings of motherhood. The affective‐discursive analytical framework allows us to understand affective pulls, pushes, power dynamics and their social politics. The findings are contextualized in the Nordic welfare state, neoliberalism, the current ethos of intensive mothering. The recurrent thread running through the data is the idea of the ever‐present mother, and under this umbrella concept, we have developed two affective‐discursive themes: (i) the guilt of working (long hours) and having to arrange for childcare and (ii) failing to be 100% present for the child. We conclude that the emotions of guilt and shame are consistently present in mothers' lives, much more so than in fathers' lives, and that this gendered pattern is both caused by and serves to reinforce the age‐old cultural mandate that mothers are primarily responsible for child rearing. The marks of intensive mothering are evident in mothers' description of feeling guilty for everyday tasks such as working, cleaning, studying, arranging for daycare, sending their children to preschool, and attending to their own needs. This gendered pattern suggests that the gender equality cornerstone of the Nordic welfare state might be at risk as important institutions, such as preschools, are perceived as inferior to mothers' constant attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history of the National Health Service from the perspective of the 'crises' it has experienced almost continuously since its foundation in 1948. Three themes are examined: scientific revolution, professional bodies, and, especially, political economy. A concluding discussion suggests that there is scope for rethinking how we envisage the NHS, and the ends it pursues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced welfare states have placed more conditions on the receipt of social protection. This study examines the link between the strictness of unemployment benefit conditionality and immigration. Immigration might increase this through an anti-solidarity effect because it decreases the perceived deservingness of the unemployed and via a fiscal exposure effect where governments attempt to limit the negative financial consequences of immigration. This article examines this relationship by analysing data for 20 OECD countries from 1985–2012. It complements the literature on how immigration challenges welfare states by examining whether immigration affects not only their budgets but also how beneficiaries are treated. The results show that immigration is associated with stricter benefit sanctions. Moreover, unemployment benefits that are greater weaken this conditionality-enhancing effect of immigration. The effects stem largely from how EU countries respond to intra-EU migration, potentially because they are unable to restrict the access to social security of these migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who is responsible for health care? Neoliberal policies since the 1970s seem to place this responsibility increasingly on the individual, in a process that is called responsibilization. The recent literature on neoliberalism, however, has questioned the preference of free-market liberalism for individual responsibility and shows how neoliberals often made common cause with communitarian conservatives on social policies. Melinda Cooper, for instance, has argued in her book Family Values that free-market liberals and social conservatives in the US both identified the family as a 'wholesale alternative to the 20-century welfare state'. This article investigates whether this coalition of neoliberals and social conservatives, who agree on the importance of familial solidarity in addition to market freedom, has also played a role in the making of Dutch health care policies. By tracing how responsibility for long-term care has been allocated in the postwar Netherlands in the specific case of children with (cognitive) disabilities, the author will show how 'the family' has increasingly been embraced by policymakers as the main responsible party. This is remarkable because the Dutch postwar welfare state sought to loosen family ties in favour of individual arrangements. However, attempts by different stakeholders to deinstitutionalize Dutch health care during the 1990s unintentionally moved the state's responsibility for long-term care not so much onto individuals as onto families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syrian refugees and Ukrainian labour migrants are among the increasing number of migrants in Denmark who have enrolled in training programmes to become skilled care workers in response to the Danish state’s initiatives to increase labour supply for public-sector elderly care. However, stricter immigration legislation together with regulations concerning state-financed education complicate training, employment and residence for these migrants. This article explores how the Danish welfare state’s conflicting interests in and attempts at pursuing both a strict immigration policy and securing enough trained care workers in eldercare affect trajectories to skilled care work among foreign nationals residing in Denmark. Based on data from long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we demonstrate how in various ways Syrian and Ukrainian care work trainees with temporary residence face a double-sided uncertainty, as their lives in Denmark are contingent on events and decisions out of their control, such as amendments to immigration and educational policies and legislation. On the one hand, these events and decisions jeopardize the migrant trainees’ and their families’ future in Denmark. On the other hand, they offer opportunities to make new connections and acquire new knowledge and skills, which in the longer run may contribute to improving their lives in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people want the government involved in healthcare. Is this because citizens are concerned about their own vulnerability, the plight of vulnerable others, or both? To test for these concerns, we used representative surveys and experimental economic games. We found robust evidence for concern for others. In surveys, people who worried about vulnerable others wanted more government involvement in healthcare. In experiments, people with the opportunity to subsidize vulnerable others often helped. The evidence for personal concern was more mixed. In surveys, people who were personally vulnerable did not usually want more government involvement in healthcare. In experiments, however, vulnerable people often wanted more healthcare. Additional data suggests that concern for the vulnerable is motivated by social preferences, empathy, and compassion. We discuss how the logic of healthcare is different from other aspects of the welfare state and therefore needs to be studied separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent literature on platform work and the welfare state has stressed that, despite being affected by high‐income insecurity, platform workers cannot easily access social protection. However, it is unclear why platform workers encounter such barriers. This article offers an inductive and empirically based theoretical framework to investigate the obstacles faced by platform workers. It shows that the barriers experienced by platform workers depend on the eligibility criteria, the assessment criteria and the trade‐off between taxation and social protection. The article substantiates these claims by offering both a policy analysis of formal arrangements and a qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of welfare of 101 platform workers in Italy, Sweden and the UK during COVID‐19. The research found that, while many platform workers attempted to access social protection during COVID‐19, platform workers' access to social protection was affected by their positionality as outsiders, which clashes with the eligibility criteria (in Sweden and Italy); by the irregular nature of platform work, which contrasts with the rigidity of the assessment criteria (in the UK, Italy and Sweden); and by the implicit trade‐off experienced by platform workers between minimising taxation and accessing to social protection (in the UK and Italy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalist practices and visionaries have a profound influence on those who are categorized as ‘foreign’ or ‘non‐belonging’ to the nation. Based on ethnographic explorations among Russian‐speakers and people with diverse Middle Eastern backgrounds in Finland, this article revisits the concept of in‐visibility as one possible avenue to expose the everyday struggles for belonging that these populations experience. We explore how dynamics of exclusion and inclusion at work in the wider society engender specific identification patterns that ultimately reproduce and reshuffle hierarchies between people. We argue that in their struggle for belonging, people categorized as ‘foreign’ in the nationalist imagination develop responsive tactics of becoming visible and invisible to cast themselves as full members of the society. However, in doing so, they find themselves tangled into hierarchies and power dynamics of exclusion at the core of strategies of visioning embedded into the social structures of the securitizing racial welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the association of housing configurations reflected by different regimes with more specifically determined elements of the welfare state regime, which are pension regimes. The study aims to answer the question of whether the linkage between housing and pensions can be recognized also at the “regime” level. For this purpose, in our analysis, we review and employ the existing typologies of housing and pension regimes identified in the previous literature. The paper presents the results of empirical research comprising comparisons between housing and pension regimes, with reference to decommodification and stratification, as well as homeownership in 24 welfare states. We found little empirical evidence for the existence of a straightforward correspondence between housing regimes and pension regimes. Nonetheless, our analysis reveals some findings that refer to common characteristics in terms of decommodification and stratification in both domains. This could be also a premise for further research to investigate the nexus between pensions and housing by identifying similarities within joint housing‐pension regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial judgement bias tests (JBTs) can involve teaching animals that a bowl provides a reward in one location but does not in another. The animal is then presented with the bowl placed between the rewarded and the unrewarded locations (i.e., ambiguous locations) and their latency to approach reflects expectation of reward or 'optimism'. Some suggest that greater 'optimism' indicates better welfare. Performance in JBTs, however, may also indicate a learning history independently from welfare determinants. We hypothesized that dogs' 'optimism' in a follow-up JBT may be impacted by a learning treatment involving additional trials of a different discrimination task. Once enrolled, companion dogs (n = 16) were required to complete three study phases: (1) a pre-treatment JBT, (2) a learning treatment, and (3) a post-treatment JBT. During the JBTs, dogs were presented with five locations: one rewarded, one unrewarded, and three ambiguous (all unrewarded). Dogs were randomly assigned to a trial-based learning task—a nose-touch to the palm of the hand. In the Experimental discrimination treatment phase (n = 8), dogs were presented with two hands in each trial and only rewarded for touching one specific hand. In the Control treatment phase (n = 8), dogs were presented with one hand per trial in alternating sequence and were yoked to dogs in the Experimental group to receive the same number of rewarded and unrewarded trials (to control for possible frustration). Using a repeated measures mixed model with JBT repeated within dog, we found no difference in the change in approach latency to the ambiguous locations between the dogs across treatments. 'Optimism' as measured in this JBT was not altered by the additional discrimination trials used in our study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers concerned with the U.S. welfare state have documented that more localized administration allows for greater geographic variation in public policies as well as the greater potential for racial discrimination to influence policy outcomes. I explore whether key attributes of the local welfare state, capacity and spending, are associated with differences in racialized poverty across localities. I develop a conceptual framework drawing on two sociological traditions: spatial inequality framework and local welfare state theory. Spatial inequality scholarship provides a framework for interrogating why poverty varies across localities and racialized groups. Local welfare scholarship conceptualizes the processes by which local governments impact poverty and how those processes may be highly racialized. Drawing on data from the Census of Governments, I examine all local governments’ capacity and spending across counties in the U.S. and their association with poverty rates among white, Black, and Hispanic populations. I find that local governments’ capacity and spending do matter to understanding differences in racialized poverty. Specifically, racialized groups perceived as more deserving are likely to be the beneficiaries of local government interventions and policies. This study calls for greater attention to the local welfare state as a possible mechanism maintaining racial stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With our analysis of the Korean society we intend to make an innovative contribution to research on intergenerational solidarity by examining how the introduction of welfare policies has changed patterns of intergenerational solidarity. Using aggregated data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Korean General Social Survey, and the Korean Social Survey, we examine the changing character of intergenerational solidarity by focusing on national trends in both societal practice and intergenerational norms from 2002 to 2018. Our findings show that patterns of Korean intergenerational solidarity have modified in various respects. The normative dimension of the familial/filial contract has profoundly changed along with the developing welfare state, shifting from a dominantly filial piety‐centric character to more complementarity contract‐based norms in which children, welfare state and society are all assigned responsibility for the well‐being of parents. Intergenerational "functional" solidarity, however, in terms of the exchange of money and practical support has not de‐filialized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses labour and social reproduction conditions in Bolivian immigrant garment industry sweatshops in São Paulo, Brazil. The analysis contributes to an understanding of the ways in which precarious labour is articulated with a simultaneous precarization of social reproduction. Working conditions in Bolivian immigrant sweatshops include 14-hour or longer workdays, piece-work, low wages and unsafe working environments. Based on the life stories of three Bolivian women migrants in São Paulo, I spotlight the gender-based arrangements of paid work and reproduction upon which the sweatshops are predicated and further detail the reproductive conditions within these sweatshops, which tend to be uncomfortable, unsafe and unhealthy for workers as well as owners. These arrangements blur the dividing lines between the home and the workplace, as well as the distinctions between paid labour and social reproduction. Through this empirical work, I argue that social reproduction can make labour more precarious in contexts such as this one. I further contend that the crisis of social reproduction in peripheric countries extends beyond the retreat of the welfare state, rather constituting a generalized precarization of reproductive conditions that both supports and is supported by extremely precarized labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the evolution of partner preferences in the Dutch mating market from 1841 to 1995, focusing on the rise of the cultural ideal of love-based partner selection. The study examines two hypotheses related to partner selection in modernization theory: the romantic-love hypothesis and the status-attainment hypothesis. These hypotheses are tested with descriptive and multivariate analysis using a database on matrimonial and contact advertisements. The study shows that the transition from instrumental to romantic partner choice was a gradual process, that in the Netherlands only gained momentum in the latter half of the twentieth century coinciding with processes of individualisation and the rise of the welfare state, a century later than earlier literature suggests. First instrumental preferences declined, then romantic preferences grew in importance. Furthermore, while the status-attainment hypothesis predicts an increase in educational preferences over time, the growth was slower and later than expected. These findings challenge both the romantic-love and status-attainment hypotheses and suggest an adjusted combined hypothesis. The study also highlights the role of social status and gender in partner preferences. Advertisers from higher social classes were more likely to express romantic preferences, indicating that wealthier individuals were earlier on inclined to turn love into the cornerstone of their relationships. Women exhibited a stronger emphasis on social status and educational level than men, highlighting gender role ideas of the time with women's financial dependence guiding their preferences for a partner that could provide for them and their children. Moreover, the research demonstrates that religion and civil status did not significantly influence the internalization of love-based partner choice. The article concludes by emphasizing the significance of matrimonial and contact advertisements as valuable sources for comprehending the quest for a partner in the past and suggests potential avenues for future research based on these advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoints of interestIn this article, we build upon a historical and critical analysis of de-institutionalisation strategies, representing a fundamental shift in disability policy and practice starting in the 1960’s. We state that de-institutionalisation has commonly been interpreted and translated as a vital ‘transition’ – referring to the dismantling of residential care and institutions – in rights discourse, policy, and (self-) advocacy. Whereas de-institutionalisation currently often interferes with neo-liberal welfare state reforms, we argue that the focus on ‘transition’ tends to ignore controlling and oppressive institutional care cultures that circulate in a variety of settings, whether ‘community based’ or not. In this article, we elaborate on Francois Tosquelles’ Institutional Pedagogy as a theoretical framework to radically ‘transform’ (residential) care in a wide variety of settings. Our analysis is based on qualitative interviews with residential care providers and (self-) advocacy groups, and offers a more in-depth insight in the complexities of de-institutionalisation as ‘transformation’.The common interpretation of de-institutionalisation states that large institutions for citizens with a disability need to be dismantled. It is claimed that institutions should be replaced by care and support in society to realise human rights for all.The article examines how closing down institutions hasn’t changed institutional ways of thinking, like oppressive and controlling ways of acting. It also has not facilitated inclusive relations. We state that de-institutionalisation should also focus on transforming the culture of residential institutions, no matter where this care and support are organised.The article uses a theory of Francois Tosquelles, Institutional Pedagogy, to rethink and transform institutions.The research builds on interviews with board members of care organisations that are changing, and with (self-) advocacy groups in Flanders.The article describes the need to transform residential institutions in a radical way. After all, residential care might still be the choice or last resort for citizens with a disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The October 2024 issue of Politics & Policy (P&P) features a collection of scholarly articles covering various regions around the world. The articles have undergone a rigorous peer review process and have been selected for their strengths in engaging both specialists and generalist readers. The issue highlights three significant themes: welfare policy, violence and democracy concerns in sub-Saharan Africa, and political cohorts and generational analysis in the United States. The editor encourages readers to explore the articles for engaging arguments, literature reviews, and theoretical insights. [Extracted from the article]

Party political conflict plays an essential role in shaping welfare policies, while they are simultaneously also shaped by these policies. As political parties grapple with the wicked challenges of our times, new forms of solidarity and solidarity conflicts arise across welfare regimes. Despite their significance, these dynamics have not received much recent attention. Our article aims to fill this gap. Through content analysis of party manifestos, we compare the solidarity frames of political parties within and between three distinct welfare regimes—Flanders (Belgium), Sweden, and the United States. Our results confirm our expectations drawn from political feedback literature: while party ideology influences parties' solidarity frame preferences and solidarity conflicts between parties, these preferences and conflicts are also influenced by a welfare regime's societal solidarity norms. Our article highlights the value of analyzing solidarity frames and political solidarity conflicts within welfare‐state regimes to better understand welfare politics and policies. Related Articles: König, Pascal D. 2015. "Moral Societal Renewal or Getting the Country Back to Work: Welfare State Culture as a Resource and a Constraint for Policy Discourse." Politics & Policy 43(5): 647–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12130. Mioni, Michele, 2021. "The 'Good Citizen' as a 'Respectable Worker:' State, Unemployment, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom and Italy, 1930 to 1950." Politics & Policy 49(4): 913–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12425. Wagle, Udaya R. 2014. "The Heterogeneity Politics of the Welfare State: Changing Population Heterogeneity and Welfare State Policies in High‐Income OECD Countries, 1980‐2005." Politics & Policy 41(6): 947–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12053. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which disability benefit programs provide an adequate standard of living to those with work-limiting disabilities has long been overlooked in social policy research. This paper presents a framework for assessing disability-related decommodification and then applies that framework to an analysis of the Social Security Disability (SSD) programs in the United States. The paper draws on survey data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to administrative records from the Social Security Administration, and further compares the U.S. estimates to those from 27 other countries. The results indicate that more than 50 percent of older adults of working-age with work-disabilities in the U.S. do not receive SSD benefits, though rates of benefit receipt are higher than the average across other high-income countries. Those that receive SSD benefits, moreover, experience greater difficulty achieving an adequate standard of living, as measured by an index of financial security, than those with similar characteristics in the U.S. who do not receive disability benefits. The paper thus provides a framework for future policy research on benefit adequacy, while evaluating the availability and generosity of disability benefits in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I explore the idea that the state should love its citizens. It should not be indifferent towards them. Nor should it merely respect them. It should love them. I begin by looking at the bases of this idea. First, it can be grounded by a concern with state subordination. The state has enormous power over its citizens. This threatens them with subordination. Love ameliorates this threat. Second, it can be grounded by the state's lack of moral status. We all have reason to love everyone. But we beings with moral status have an excuse for not loving everyone: we have our own lives to lead. The state has no such excuse. So, the state should love everyone. I then explore the nature of the loving state. I argue that the loving state is a liberal state. It won't interfere in its citizens' personal spheres. It is a democratic state. It will adopt its citizens' ends as its own. It is a welfare state. It will be devoted to its citizens' well-being. And it is an egalitarian state. It will treat all its citizens equally. This constitutes a powerful third argument, an abductive argument, for the ideal of the loving state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of animal shelter employees to identify poor welfare states in kenneled dogs is crucial for the mitigation of suffering. Animal shelter employees (n = 28), animal behavior professional (n = 49), and the general public (n = 41) watched 10 videos of kenneled dogs then rated the welfare of the dogs, stated the rationale for their score, indicated how they would improve the welfare, and rated the feasibility of improvements. Professionals gave slightly lower (poorer) welfare scores compared to the public (z = -1.998, p = 0.046). Shelter employees (z = -5.976, p < 0.001) and professionals (z = 9.047, p < 0.001) used body language and behavior to explain their welfare scores more than the public. All three populations mentioned the addition of enrichment to improve the welfare, however, shelter employees (z = -5.748, p < 0.001) and professionals (z = 6.046, p < 0.001) mentioned it significantly more. There were no significant differences in the perceived feasibility of changes. Future research should explore possible reasons for the lack of welfare improvements within animal shelters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to the EU's labour market and the principle of freedom of movement for persons (FMP) produced a mismatch for some countries of origin of migrants: Emigration of s cale decreased the resource base for the welfare state nationally while not sharing responsibility for social citizenship with the EU level. The countries of Lithuania and Romania are insightful for studying the political consequences of this mismatch. Surprisingly, collective actors from politics, social partners, and civil society hardly identified EU responsibility for emigration and its externalities. In contrast, solutions for the mismatch are sought at the domestic level. There, actors find themselves in a conundrum: Options for restricting FMP are politically unfeasible, measures for retaining the population hard to finance, and a cut back of some benefits unavoidable. Ultimately, this mismatch may lead to a vicious cycle in which emigration and the decreasing quality of social citizenship reinforce each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an original perspective on the origins and formation of the modern welfare state, arguing that the openness of national economies had a critical influence upon the kind of social insurance policies each country would adopt before World War I. If we classify Western national economies into two typical types, the free-trade open economy (FOE) and the protectionist closed economy (PCE), depending on their trade policy, we can make two hypotheses. FOE, which is under heavy pressure from international competition, is more sensitive than PCE to the increase in employers' cost. Therefore, hypothesis (1) is: PCE would precede FOE in introducing social insurance which involves considerable cost increases for employers. Hypothesis (2) is: if FOE dares to undertake a social insurance scheme, they would likely create social insurance that relies on general tax revenues to mitigate cost increases for employers. On the contrary, PCE can undertake social insurance schemes that involve considerable cost increases for employers more easily than FOE, as protective tariffs countervail their cost increases to some extent. Through the comparative analysis of all major Western countries, this article demonstrates the validity of these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the impacts of different types of family benefits expenditures on the positive relationship between female employment and fertility rates in developed welfare states. It does this by theorizing how these family benefits align with welfare state regimes' preferences for different normative gender-role ideologies. Rather than treating family benefits as a monolith, this article investigates the impact of disaggregated expenditures in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) family policy database (1. services and in-kind benefits, 2. child-related cash benefits and 3. tax-based financial support for children) on both female employment and fertility rates. This is done using pooled time-series analysis covering the period 2000–9. The analysis yields evidence that expenditure most reflecting a 'full egalitarian' gender ideology including service and in-kind benefit provision has the most positive association with female employment and fertility due to an emphasis on defamiliarization. The picture for child-related cash benefits is mixed due to the presence of cash transfer provisions not employment-contingent captured in the indicator. In contrast, tax-based financial support for children harms female employment, reflecting a maternalistic 'traditional' ideological orientation, but is positive for fertility rates indicating a moderate pro-natal effect of tax-based financial support for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Social determinants of health are finally getting much-needed policy attention, but their political origins remain underexplored. In this article, the authors advance a theory of political determinants as accruing along three pathways of welfare state effects (redistribution, poverty reduction, and status preservation), and they test these assumptions by examining impacts of policy generosity on life expectancy (LE) over the last 40 years. Methods: The authors merge new and existing welfare policy generosity data from the Comparative Welfare Entitlement Project with data on LE spanning 1980–2018 across 21 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They then examine relationships between five welfare policy generosity measures and LE using cross-sectional differencing and autoregressive lag models. Findings: The authors find consistent and positive effects for total generosity (an existing measure of social insurance generosity) on LE at birth across different model specifications in the magnitude of an increase in LE at birth of 0.10–0.15 years (p < 0.05) as well as for a measure of status preservation (0.11, p < 0.05). They find less consistent support for redistribution and poverty reduction measures. Conclusions: The authors conclude that in addition to generalized effects of policy generosity on health, status-preserving social insurance may be an important, and relatively overlooked, mechanism in increasing LE over time in advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assetization of essential goods brings to high-income countries the logics of scarcity that have been dominant for long in low-to-middle income countries—fostering the rise of new forms of activism. Will this new activism strengthen already existing social movements or weaken them through more moderate politics? Building on interviews and the observation and mapping of activist events, we investigate this question through the case of pharmaceuticals. We detail how the assetization of pharmaceutical drugs has triggered the constitution of a new 'flank' in the access to medicines (A2M) movement—pharmaceutical transparency activism. We argue that transparency activism has expanded the contestation of the pharmaceutical state of affairs, by bringing into the broader A2M movement countries that were previously at the core of global pharmaceutical chains. Our article illuminates how the assetization of essential goods creates forms of activism that have significant impact on existing social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite expecting countries to rely on welfare measures in the aftermath of financial crises, one should not ignore the possibility of fiscal retrenchments due to the constraints that those crises may bring. This article analyses that issue by assessing the impact of financial crises on governmental social spending and its components (healthcare, education and social protection) using a panel of 108 countries from 1991 to 2019. An important contribution of this study is that it assesses the effects of different types of financial crises (banking, currency and debt) in addition to distinguishing between developed and developing countries. The findings indicate that while developed countries neutralise the adverse effects of crises by increasing social spending, developing countries tend to shrink outlays—in particular healthcare and social protection—when financial crises strike, despite the associated negative consequences on human and social well‐being. Moreover, debt crises proved to be more detrimental to social spending than banking and currency crises in developing countries. An important policy implication arising from our analysis is that governments should maintain a high level of fiscal balance in normal times to be able to finance welfare state expansion programmes during periods of financial crises, especially in emerging/developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on financialized growth, two models are often presented as complementary but opposing: some countries drive their domestic demand through debt, while others grow on the basis of exports. In this research, we identify Sweden as a country that in the midst of the financial euphoria preceding 2008 combined these two models simultaneously. By identifying this "debt&export-led" growth model, we add richness and taxonomic complexity to the literature on financialized growth models. That said, this research contributes especially to the debate on the Swedish growth model, revealing a "hybrid" model that resulted from the interaction of two sets of factors: i) the presence of a successful exports sector, driven by a commensurate regulatory framework in a context of strong international demand; and ii) the manner in which financialization operated in Sweden, through a historic increase in private debt levels simultaneous with a partial dismantling of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that comprehensive welfare states are effective at bridging ethnic divisions and promoting political tolerance of marginalized groups. Do these results hold up in the face of the great influx of migrants into European welfare states following the 2015–16 refugee crisis? In this case study of Sweden, we map the general level of political tolerance and test various individual‐level explanations for it. Based on a survey of about 3500 citizens, our results show that the level of ethnic antipathy in Sweden is low. Other groups, however—such as supporters of the Sweden Democrats, a radical‐right party—are widely disliked, as are abortion opponents and anti‐vaccinationists. The individual‐level explanations we have tested—in connection with threat perceptions, civic and political engagement, and socio‐economic factors—turn up mixed results. Our conclusion is that the results we have found reflect something of a liberal‐democratic backlash, whereupon a certain kind of political intolerance has become widespread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews with 41 informants, this article presents an analysis of whether, how and why everyday news use is constrained by everyday conditions of poverty in the "media welfare state" of Norway. While prior news avoidance studies indicate that socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens are among the groups in society who use little or no news daily, the relationship between news media habits and precarious life conditions is largely unexplored by media and journalism scholars. This study nuances assumptions of this demographic as being systematically disconnected from the realm of news—yet highlights the variety of poverty-related factors restricting their news engagement. By problematizing the relationship between choice and access underlying much news avoidance research, it argues that limited news consumption in the poverty demographic—even within favorable conditions—must be understood as a product of multilevel constraints rather than choice. In this way, the article offers new empirical insight into the news use and avoidance of a critical demographic seldom studied before, while challenging dominant framings of the precariat as news avoiders and as disconnected citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loneliness in old age is a multifaceted issue influenced by personal, social, and environmental factors, necessitating a holistic approach. However, most research has predominantly focused on individual-level risk factors, with limited attention given to institutional factors such as social policy. This study investigated how social policies impact loneliness among older adults. Multi-level analysis was conducted using data from the 2017 wave of International Social Survey Programme, involving 6,337 older adults from 23 OECD countries. The analysis revealed that higher public spending on welfare and old-age pensions significantly reduces the likelihood of loneliness among older adults. These findings confirm the protective role of generous social policies in addressing old-age loneliness. They underscore the need for long-term changes in welfare systems to enhance the public response to the significant social risk posed by old-age loneliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the emergence of welfare states, and the origins of social protection in healthcare, have been examined extensively for Global North countries, there is much less research with a global perspective. Addressing this gap, this study provides a descriptive and analytical account of the characteristics of healthcare systems as they were introduced worldwide. Using original and unpublished data, the study classifies healthcare systems according to the main actor type in regulation, financing, and service provision. We find two worlds of healthcare regulation – a state-regulated and a societally-regulated. Adding the financing dimension yields six clusters of healthcare regulation and financing. Based on regulation, financing, and service provision the classification reveals the existence of 12 healthcare system types. While systems that rely on societal actors mainly emerged prior to the mid-twentieth century, state-based systems have characterized system introductions since then. The classification of healthcare systems in 165 countries shows that only a limited number of actor combinations can be found empirically. However, it still presents greater variety than previous studies focusing on the Global North. The notable historical and regional patterns in the choice of healthcare system types can serve as a starting point for further research on healthcare system development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the emerging history of 'community' in post-war Britain by considering what was known as 'social development' in Britain's new towns, with particular reference to Milton Keynes between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. This article traces the roots of social development in the activities and ideas of the voluntary sector during the 1920s and 1930s and notes how they were co-opted by the state during the 1940s and 1950s. The 'mark 1' new towns of that period in some cases took steps to promote social development, understood in terms of an active community life and civic engagement, but the practice was particularly promoted in 1967 by a government committee, which called for new towns to be based on clear social plans as well as physical land-use proposals. In making this argument, the committee reflected a wider train of thought, which had already informed the likes of the Parker Morris report on housing; in essence, they scaled up Parker Morris' approach from the home to the urban level. These ideas were especially influential in Milton Keynes, whose planners and administrators took a broad, even philosophical view of their role. This article considers the extent to which social development was as much about individual aspiration and opportunity as communal activity and also explores the role of the voluntary sector. In so doing, it makes observations about the nature of the post-war state as an enabler, rather than a universal provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guinea pigs in intensive production generates an imperative necessity of physio-pathological bases for diagnosing their state of welfare, health, and production; those which are available for this species are referred to as laboratory or companion animal. The aim of this research is to determine changes in hematological and blood metabolites profiles in relation to age of Cavia porcellus reared in intensive system at 660 masl in humid tropic. For this purpose, forty 15-120 days old guinea pig in healthy conditions from the inti x Peru lines born in the humid tropic were used and the evaluation ages were 15-21, 22-35, 36-60 and 61-120 days. Blood samples were obtained by puncture of the cephalic vein; profiles of erythrocytes (RBC), total leucocytes (WBC), lymphocytes, granulocytes, hematocrit, hemoglobin, MCV, MCH and MCHC indices were determined. In serum, profiles of glucose, total protein (TP), albumin, total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides, total bilirubin (TB), and direct bilirubin (DB), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were determined. Hemoglobin profile, MCH and MCHC indices increased as age increased (p < 0;05) and the erythrocytes, leucocytes, hematocrit, hemoglobin profiles and MCV, MCH, MCHC indices showed the narrower interval ranges in the 15-35- and 61-120-days old guinea pigs. Profiles of TP, DB and AST showed increase with age (p < 0;05) and the DB, AST, ALT, and TC profiles showed the narrower interval range at 36-120 days old. The hematological and blood metabolites profiles of guinea pigs raised in intensive system in humid tropical conditions show significant changes with production age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fish welfare is a critical issue that needs to be addressed by the rapidly growing aquaculture industry. Scientific knowledge regarding the natural behaviors of species and the conditions in which they are kept in farms is essential for improving their welfare in aquaculture. To provide a consistent overview of the welfare of farmed fish, the organization fair‐fish has created the online platform fair‐fish database, which gathers ethological knowledge categorized into profiles of farmed aquatic species. The WelfareChecks on this platform are profiles based on criteria that are rated based on the likelihood and potential of the species to experience a high level of welfare in aquaculture systems, together with the certainty about the findings. A score (WelfareScore) is calculated from these ratings, serving as a reference to identify knowledge gaps, assess welfare, and suggest ways to improve it. Here, we performed an in‐depth analysis of the species with WelfareChecks already published in the fair‐fish database based on their respective WelfareScores. In general, although just a small percentage of farmed aquatic species (~5%) have at least a 20% chance of experiencing a good level of welfare under minimal aquaculture conditions, 60% of them have at least some potential to achieve good welfare under high‐standard conditions, with more than a third of the species (~37%) having at least a 20% potential. Despite that, several species exhibit a very high frequency of low chances and potential for experiencing good welfare levels under aquaculture conditions, besides a low degree of certainty based on literature reviews. Furthermore, many others show a very frequent occurrence of unclear or nonexistent knowledge in their profiles. The current welfare state is therefore poor for the majority of farmed aquatic species; yet, there is considerable potential for improvement. However, many species are very unlikely to achieve good welfare, even under high‐standard conditions. Importantly, large knowledge gaps remain for an accurate assessment of the welfare of several farmed species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a value-added tax (VAT), which supports a welfare state, was officially introduced in Japan in 1989, earlier attempts to implement this tax system failed. This study looks in-depth at why Japan was slower than other countries to implement a VAT. The tax authorities' debates during the 1960s and 1970s are reviewed to understand why other attempts to introduce a VAT failed. Implementing the VAT would require a shift from the ideology centering on a direct tax to acceptance of indirect taxes and justification for a general consumption tax's superiority over specific consumption taxes. Four influential factors are identified. First, in 1960, the ideology centering on a direct tax made a VAT inherently inferior. Second, in the 1968, "Break Fiscal Rigidification Campaign" created a revenue-neutral path for indirect tax increases but favored specific consumption taxes. Third, the Fundamental Issues Subcommittee conceptualized "high benefit/high cost" in the early 1970s and established the VAT's superiority over specific consumption taxes based on a study of overseas travel to European Commission countries. However, the VAT was abandoned due to external shocks. Fourth, the attempts to link the VAT with fiscal reconstruction in the late 1970s faced strong opposition from consumers, small businesses, and the ruling party. Failure to introduce the VAT in the 1970s eliminated the possibility of using it to raise taxes in the early 1980s. The findings reveal that Japan's failure to introduce the VAT closed a door to a "high benefit/high cost" type of Western-style welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses various articles in the issue on topics including the trial of an English scam artist, the history of the Zulu people, and America's welfare state, and it mentions the nineteenth century dress that appears on the cover of the journal.

This article is a commentary of essays by Salem Elzway, Salonee Bhaman, and Bobby Cervante included in this issue of American Historical Review on the topic of the modern American welfare state. The commentary author touches on the effects of automation on the worker in Elzway's work, the unique case of Bhaman’s look at HIV/AIDS under this lens and how it lead to positive change via activism, and emphasizes fragmentation in Cervantes’s essay on Texas colonias.