Converging Worlds of Welfare?: British and German Social Policy in the 21st Century
Jochen Clasen
Abstract
The book compares attitudes towards public and private welfare as well as developments in three social policy domains in the United Kingdom and Germany since the 1990s. Focusing on aspects such as fairness and social justice, it investigates to what extent perceptions towards the welfare state and collective forms of solidarity have changed in the context of profound social and economic change. Reviewing developments in family, pensions, and labour market policies, and taking account of both public provision as well as the role of companies, it asks whether the two countries have become more s ... More
The book compares attitudes towards public and private welfare as well as developments in three social policy domains in the United Kingdom and Germany since the 1990s. Focusing on aspects such as fairness and social justice, it investigates to what extent perceptions towards the welfare state and collective forms of solidarity have changed in the context of profound social and economic change. Reviewing developments in family, pensions, and labour market policies, and taking account of both public provision as well as the role of companies, it asks whether the two countries have become more similar to each other since the 1990s. The chapters illustrate a considerable degree of policy dynamics, including far-reaching change in some areas which challenges conventional depictions of traditional welfare models. However, despite some degree of convergence in areas such as family policy, important cross-national differences in the provision and role of social policy remain.
Keywords:
welfare capitalism,
Germany,
the United Kingdom,
family policy,
pension policy,
occupational welfare,
policy convergence
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199584499 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584499.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jochen Clasen, editor
Professor of Comparative Social Policy, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
Author Webpage
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