A simpler benefits (or tax/benefits) system has always been the ‘holy grail’ of social security reform in the UK.² New social security ministers tend to come into office unable to fathom why their predecessors have been unable to achieve this – and leave office older and wiser. But after the introduction of the new tax credits in 2003 by the Labour government, critiques of the existing system as complex and confusing for claimants increased (eg Community Links et al, 2007; Bennett et al, 2009); and think tanks, and the government itself, developed variations on the idea of a ‘single working-age benefit’...

The scope and make-up of welfare state support for families with children are controversial social policy issues in the British context. However, under the former Labour government, concerns about childhood disadvantage and family functioning moved up the policy agenda. In turn, Labour invested in more universal and targeted family support provision and extended state intervention in childhood and child-rearing. Economic austerity measures, though, and the establishment of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government in May 2010 constitute new policy contexts. After 18 months of Coalition government, this chapter examines the implications for, and recent developments in, family support and child...

Housing policy in Britain has had a precarious relationship with social policy and the welfare state. At times, governments have appeared to believe that housing the population can be left to the market; and, at times, housing has been part of economic rather than social policy. But throughout, housing has had an unavoidable relationship with the modern welfare state. Housing directly relates to two of Beveridge’s five giant evils – Want and Squalor – and indirectly impacts on the remaining three, because action to address Idleness, Disease and Ignorance is more successful where there is effective housing provision. Housing costs also form...

The expansion and growing importance of higher education (HE) in England since the 1980s have prompted numerous reforms aimed at reshaping and restructuring HE and its funding, reflecting the changing ideological, economic and social functions of HE. The proposed reforms to be introduced in 2012/13 in England are by far the most radical and those concerning HE funding and student finances the most far-reaching. This chapter aims to unpack the drivers for these reforms, locating them in a broader historical and policy context. It describes the proposed 2012/13 HE changes and analyses their potential impact against their stated aims.

It...

In mid-July 2010, a few weeks after the creation of the Coalition government, Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Health, issued a heavily leaked White Paper calledEquity and excellence: liberating theNHS (DH, 2010). Despite the fact that its package of proposals had featured in neither the Conservative Party nor Liberal Democrat general election manifestos, the White Paper contained a radical programme of reform for the National Health Service (NHS), contradicting the Conservative Party’s repeated reassurances before the general election that there would be no imposed top-down reorganisation of the NHS as well as an explicit statement to that...

Is there a fundamental contradiction between inclusive welfare policies and immigration? And can universal welfare states accommodate the increasing diversity characterising contemporary societies (Freeman, 1986; Alesine and Glaeser, 2004; Banting and Kymlicka, 2006)? These questions are much disputed in academic and public debate. Some argue that ethnic diversity poses no problem for liberal welfare states, but that it represents a dramatic challenge to social democratic welfare state types, as the latter have historically been rooted in uniform, homogeneous and collective class identities (Necef, 2001). However, a number of studies have been conducted to elucidate this presumed negative relationship, and the...

Over the course of the last two decades, comparative welfare research has dealt with two puzzles. Initially, it was commonplace that Western European welfare states remained remarkably ‘resilient’ despite major fiscal and socio-economic pressures, globalisation, and frontal assaults by austerity governments (see, eg, Castles, 2004). To explain this first puzzle, the ‘new politics’ of the welfare state became synonymous with the politics of ‘blame avoidance’ (Green-Pedersen and Haverland, 2002; Starke, 2006): the persistent popularity of welfare programmes was said to trigger coalitions of welfare defenders, making downward adjustments of post-war welfare settlements, that is, welfare retrenchment, electorally highly risky for...

This chapter gives a broad overview discussion of social policy in the Arab region with the aim of arguing for its viability as a subject of academic study and its legitimacy as an arm of state policy and public intervention. The key units of analysis in the subject of social policy, such as social welfare, citizenship, equality, justice, poverty and rights, have never been more relevant than now, as mass political mobilisation grips Arab countries which have earned that region the bad reputation of being socially and politically backward (Jawad, 2009) – a situation captured figuratively by the image of a...

Chinese engagement in the continent of Africa has grown exponentially in the last decade. Although, historically, China’s trade and economic activities in the region have attracted most attention (Mohan and Power, 2008), it is increasingly recognised that Sino-African cooperation now also embraces development aid and social welfare assistance. However, there is awareness that Chinese assistance in Africa appears to be mediated under a different set of normative premises, institutional actors and policy mechanisms from traditional bilateral and intergovernmental institutions (Chin and Frolic, 2007; Alden et al, 2008; Brautigam, 2008; Davies et al, 2008; Brautigam, 2009) and interest in whether a...

Greece was the first of the countries in the EU periphery engulfed in the so-called sovereign debt crisis that followed the crisis in the financial and banking sectors. The sovereign debt crisis exposed the serious weaknesses of the politico-economic regime that shaped Greece’s development after the end of the military dictatorship in 1974. It also revealed the unprecedented power of unaccountable international financial institutions, banks and agencies to shape the dynamics of government bond markets across the globe and, therefore, the trajectories of national and regional political economies. More fundamentally, the Greek crisis exposed the limits of EU solidarity, and...

Despite experiencing more than a decade of rapid growth and achieving a relatively healthy fiscal position, Spain has been hit hard by the financial crisis and is struggling to recover. The collapse of the housing bubble, which largely drove the so-called Spanish Miracle through high levels of corporate and household debt, led to a sharp increase in unemployment rates and put a share of the banking sector under significant strain.

The crisis was seen as an opportunity to implement a change of productive model towards a more productive knowledge-based economy with which to fund the future of the Spanish welfare...

In 2008, the prolonged economic boom in Ireland came to an end. The global financial crisis collided with a precarious economic growth model and, since then, Ireland has been in almost constant crisis mode. A dramatic drop in economic growth and the insolvency of the banking system precipitated recession and a prolonged programme of austerity, which continues under the European Union (EU)/International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan agreement agreed in late 2010. Crisis has become the new normal, and because the strategy for recovery is seen to be so dependent on external forces and conditions, the situation remains uncertain. This chapter...

What has become known as the ‘Great Recession’ began in the US when the crisis that hit investment banking and other key financial institutions through 2008 developed into a wider economic crisis leading to a massive increase in unemployment. For policymakers, this posed a choice of whether to expand social policy programmes in order to protect people suffering in the economic downturn or to turn to radical welfare state retrenchment to remedy the accelerating problems of deficit and debt (Vis et al, 2011). In the US, the historical evidence as to the likely impact of economic crisis on social policy...

As a small island state, Iceland has not figured prominently in comparative analysis or welfare state modelling and has only recently gained popular notoriety as a result of its economic and environmental volatility. Notwithstanding the parallels between the global effects of volcanic ash clouds and the ballooning detritus of international finance, this chapter focuses on the Icelandic experience of 21st-century financial crisis, and what this might reveal about the development of social policy. Iceland’s position as the earliest country to face post-2008 economic collapse is significant in terms of lessons to be drawn regarding financial regulation and the political process....