Which dimensions of globalisation have an impact on social expenditure? How do different social welfare policies react to globalisation? This paper addresses these questions focusing on 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 1990–2015 and applying system Generalised Method of Moments to deal with endogeneity. We consider different dimensions of globalisation, economic, social and political, and their potential differentiated impacts on variegated social welfare policies. According to our findings, all the dimensions of globalisation have a positive effect on total social expenditure and on most of its components, although the influence is not statistically significant for social globalisation. The social welfare policies affected by globalisation are old age pensions, incapacity related, family and unemployment benefits and active labour market policies. These results can shed additional light on social and economic outcomes of globalisation such as poverty, inequality, long run growth and economic recovery.

Many south-east European states made the transition from socialist to market economies. All described here had to reform their pension systems to match the new context in which these operated. The experiences of 10 countries are reviewed – seven of which were once part of Yugoslavia. Some countries’ reforms were more radical than others. Five of them merely adapted the Bismarckian systems they had inherited; four others adopted the “three pillar” model that the World Bank had been propagating. One went further than that. The four who followed World Bank model were often forced to backtrack. Whatever the longer-term benefits, they generated their own shorter-term fiscal problems. Nonetheless, the most radical reformer gives some indications of possible ways forward. The south-eastern European states do not have financial markets that can support capitalised/funded pension systems. Nor do they have the resources to pay proportional pensions that, at the same time, keep retired people out of poverty. The article suggests that their governments should concentrate upon improving economic performance to satisfy longer term aspirations and on ensuring that pensioners are able to live properly if not luxuriously by using tax-financed transfer measures. Provision above this level can be secured through savings plans, but it must be accepted that the investments to secure those savings will have to be made abroad.

There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and asks how they fit with models of policy change. The paper illustrates that the Obama administration did adopt an array of anti-poverty measures in the stimulus bill, but these built on existing programmes rather than create new ones and much of the effort was stymied by institutional obstacles. The expansion of the Medicaid program, which was part of the ACA, was also muted by institutional opposition, but it was a more path breaking reform than is often appreciated.

This paper is concerned with the research areas of defamilisation/familisation and adult worker models. It particularly focuses on demonstrating how the study of government pro-employment and decommodification measures for reducing defamilisation and familisation risks faced by women contributes to the examination of the adult worker models. It presents three analytical tasks. The first is to categorise the adult worker models into four types (market-focused, supported, choice-focused and collective consumption) based on different combinations of the pro-employment and decommodification measures. The second is to explore the relative desirability of these four types in enhancing women's well-being. Based on the case example of Hong Kong, the third is to examine issues concerning the application of the adult worker models in the analysis of how the government responds to defamilisation and familisation risks.

The paper is set to examine the state of gender equality in Central Eastern European Countries (CEECs) since accession to the European Union (EU) following the two enlargements in 2004 and 2007, which saw 10 CEECs join the EU. In this context, the paper addresses some implications of transformation, which challenge gender regimes across CEECs. The paper looks at the nature of the policies adopted to ensure gender equality in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and, in particular, using Hungary's and Poland's family policies as a case study, it evaluates whether EU gender equality measures have had an impact on gender equality and justice in CEE and, more generally, whether they have led to new gender equality paradigms.

Over the last few decades, the position of women vis-à-vis the welfare state has changed dramatically. Welfare states have adapted to women's increased labour force participation and to the “new social risks” that characterize postindustrial societies. In this paper, we examine gendered policy developments in the US, focusing on conceptions of vulnerability that inform policies meant to mitigate gendered social risks. Focusing on three policy areas: parental leave, domestic violence and disability, we show that policies increasingly target women's integration into the workforce and self-regulation as strategies to mitigate gendered social risk. We also discuss how these policies rely on individual interventions implemented by what we call punitive therapy practitioners, who encourage women's workforce participation and psychological self-regulation. Finally, we argue that enduring gendered conceptions of vulnerability have shaped the specific designs of policies that emerged in the 1960s–1970s, intensified through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, and persist today.

This paper examines international influences of the Western welfare state on social policy ideas, institutions and reforms in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It identifies three types of Eastern reactions to or interactions with the West: “condemnation” of various “bourgeois” conceptions of social welfare; “competition” or increased attention to redistribution and social needs of the population stemming from the demonstrable successes of Western welfare states; and “creative learning” or implicit acknowledgment that every industrial society, including the Soviet style centrally planned economies, had to adopt at least some elements of modernized social welfare models or policy originally developed in the West. Paradoxically, first the explicit and later more implicit rejection of the Western welfare state, including the social-democratic and various “third way” models, eventually led to the rise of neoliberal and anti-welfare attitudes among many Eastern social policy reformers during the last decade of communist rule and beyond, after 1989.

This study seeks to determine the effectiveness of the active labour-market policies (ALMPs) of employment-oriented welfare states contribute to the financial soundness of welfare states. Even if they are insignificant, overall, the results show that ALMPs lead to higher employment rate and sounder public finances as could be expected by the central idea of employment-oriented welfare states. However, extending ALMPs does not always create a virtuous circle among government interventions, employment rate and fiscal soundness. That is, the results for employment and public finances depend on how the government intervenes in the labour market. We argue that the critical point goal should be to improve employability, not just to increase the employment rate.

This paper analyses the politicisation of the Eurozone crisis in Finnish public debate, in May-November 2010. We emphasise how the mainstream parties responded to the radical right Finns Party's framing, in addition to two context factors: first, the constraints posed on domestic policymakers by EU and EMU-level decisions, and secondly, the sharp, economic downturn, encouraging a zero-sum interpretation of distributive claims. To trace actor positions, we analyse 1183 actor-issue statements coded from Finland's main newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. Our findings suggest that radical right-wing parties can benefit from the high salience of socio-economic issues, if distributive conflict can plausibly be portrayed as a in- and out-group conflict, and that the mainstream parties did not only adopt nationalistic rhetoric as a response to the radical right-wing Finns Party's framing, but were responding to a constraints such as the diminished room for maneuver in the EMU, moving them towards the Finns Party's position.

In 1965 and 1966, the United States and Canada adopted single-payer models of government insurance for physician and hospital services – universal in Canada, but restricted to certain population groups in the US. At the time, the American and Canadian political economies of health care and landscapes of public opinion were remarkably similar, and the different policy designs must be understood as products of the distinctive macro-level politics of the day. Subsequently, however, the different scopes of single-payer coverage would drive the two systems in different directions. In Canada, the single-payer system became entrenched in popular support and in the nexus of interest it created between the medical profession and the state. In the US, Medicare became similarly entrenched in popular support, but did so as part of the larger multi-payer private insurance system. In the process universal single-payer coverage became politically iconic in Canada and taboo in the US.

For those disadvantaged by bias and barriers based on socioeconomic status (SES), constitutions can provide a defense against discrimination and a foundation for greater equality in social, economic, and political life. In light of the near-global commitment to a multi-dimensional poverty reduction agenda and the increased inclusion of marginalized groups in constitution-drafting processes, this article examines how 193 constitutions address SES and how this has changed over time. The majority of constitutions guarantee equal access to primary education across SES (59%) and prohibit discrimination on this basis (58%). Fewer guarantee access to healthcare (20%), equal rights in employment (15%), eligibility for legislative office (4%), and voting rights (4%) across SES. Constitutions adopted after 1990 are considerably more likely to protect equal rights across SES than older ones. However, 25% of constitutions – including 17% of those adopted since 1990 – restrict political participation based on socioeconomic characteristics.

The aim of this article was to use an interpretivist approach to analyse the state–citizen nexus in general and the conflict between civil and social rights imposing restrictions on people’s freedom of movement during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nordic countries: Sweden (restrictions were voluntary and relied on nudging and individual implementation), Norway (restrictions of movement were for everyone and was enforced by authorities), and Finland (restrictions of movement were for the capital region and was enforced by authorities). Sweden focused more on upholding the civil rights vis-à-vis social rights whereas in Norway and Finland social rights have trumped civil rights in the face of the pandemic. Thus, the analysis suggests that the Nordic countries cannot be understood as monoliths in all respects. The article thereby contributes to a greater understanding of how the Nordic governments prioritise civil and social rights differently when they are forced to choose.

The main purpose of this article is twofold: (1) an examination of welfare regimes using a bottom-up approach, which enables a comprehensive analysis of welfare production based on recipients perceptions; and (2) an examination of more than one type of welfare-mix coexisting inside the national level across policy sectors. A classification of welfare regimes is carried out following a bottom-up approach and relying on the basis of the importance of welfare providers to satisfy social risks and promote well-being. Three traditional (e.g. state, market, family) and one alternative welfare providers (e.g. community) are considered. Data is collected through twenty semi-structured interviews in seven marginalised communities of Puerto Rico. The results show five configurations of intra-national welfare-mixes across the following welfare areas: housing, nourishment, health, education, maternity/paternity, disability, work-unemployment and older-age. This paper contributes to the theoretical proposals of intra-national welfare regimes, and alternatives providers in the welfare-mix.

This article discusses how the Hong Kong government used a double-attachment strategy to develop welfare to work measures for lone parents; and demonstrates how this discussion could contribute to the study of the cultural and political economy perspectives on East Asian welfare regimes. It shows that the Hong Kong government developed welfare to work measures with reference not only to the New Deal for Lone Parents in the UK, but also to certain traditional Chinese principles. In view of the Hong Kong government's attempt to attach its welfare policies to its own tradition and to the thinking of Western world, it is argued that both cultural and political economy perspectives are significant in the study of East Asian welfare regimes. Moreover, it is important to have a realistic understanding of the uniqueness of East Asian countries in the ways they organize welfare even though there are similarities with Western countries.

There is a vast social policy literature on how Canada and the United States share key characteristics associated with the liberal welfare regime such as significant reliance on both social assistance and tax-subsidized private benefits and services. Yet, a closer look at these two countries points to key differences in areas such as fiscal federalism, health care, old-age pensions, and family benefits. This special issue of the Journal of Comparative and International Social Policy looks at recent social policy developments in Canada and the United States in ways that further illustrate the broad similarities, but also the key cross-national differences in policy design and real-world consequences, between these two countries. This Introduction explains why Canada and the United States are “unidentical twins” in social policy before discussing the contributions comprising this special issue.

This paper aimed to ascertain parental evidence of impact of policy on worst forms of child labour (WFCL) in rural and urban Ghana amongst 460 participants: I utilised 400 survey participants whose children were/were not involved in child labour and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques and applying the Stata Version 13 software. I also utilised 60 government officials; NGO representatives; and both parents whose children were/were not involved in child labour. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents (10), stakeholders (10), focus groups (30); and participant observation techniques (10) were utilised to gather the needed data and purposively sampled across rural areas (Ankaase, Anwiankwanta and Kensere), and urban areas (Jamestown, Korle Gonno and Chorkor) in Ghana. Interviews were recorded, transcribed utilising a framework approach as the main qualitative data analysis method. Parental evidence suggests that new laws, legislative reforms, programmes and activities have helped to reduce WFCL in Ghana.

In this special issue, authors present and discuss the findings of a series of recent national and EU cross-national empirical studies on public support for basic income. As such, the special issue offers new and innovative insights on such support and its individual and contextual drivers. The articles employ heterogeneous data and methods and therefore, as a whole, navigate the multi-dimensional nature of (opinions on) basic income. Three of the contributions use unique survey data to study the levels of support for basic income among various European populations and the complex ideological and social divides that explain such support. The other two contributions use qualitative data, from democratic fora, focus groups and in-depth interviews, to explore how citizens interpret basic income and what types of arguments they use in favour or against the implementation of the policy.

The article develops a discourse about equality for children and their recent evolution from adult-centred consideration to definition as a separate, critical constituency as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with their child-focused goals and targets. Challenges implementing equality and fairness are discussed, from the World Summit for Children (WSC) in 1990 to the nearly simultaneous ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which gives children agency through its legally binding clauses, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The article reviews past lessons learned and the post-2015 agenda debate, from which worldwide agreement evolved about multidimensional poverty and an equality roadmap. The article suggests social accountability processes to achieve lasting SDG targets. It provides a methodology for implementing social accountability actions, accompanied by examples to mobilise communities and encourage child and youth participation at the local level.

Have increasing levels of conditionality fundamentally changed the attitudes of the unemployed towards social security, work obligations and welfare dependency? Both neopaternalist and governmentalist theorising suggests that workfare policies should have shifted this group's conceptions of self-interest over time yet previous evidence has been rather mixed. This article makes a fresh contribution to the literature by drawing upon New Zealand Election Study data (1990–2014) and New Zealand qualitative data (2007–2008; 2014) to analyse the attitudes of “undeserving” unemployed benefit recipients who are subject to work obligations over 21 years and by comparing their attitudes to those of “deserving” benefit recipients not subject to work obligations (the retired and students) and wage/salary earners. It finds a notable hardening of unemployed people's attitudes towards some welfare dependency propositions over time and evidence of “self-governing rationalities” being adopted by some unemployed individuals but, overall, attitudes amongst this group remain nuanced and ambivalent.