The main focus of this article is an analysis of whether the opinions of the best-off and worst-off diverge during an economic recession. According to previous studies, economic hardship affects the public's willingness to finance the welfare state but less is known about the kind of cleavages economic problems create between different categories of people. Because Finland suffered the deepest economic recession of the OECD countries during the 1990s it provides an excellent context for this kind of study. The willingness of the better-off to finance benefits important to worse-off people decreased during the research period. Recently many European countries have reformed their social policies to increase selectivism. However, results indicate that this kind of policy can create new, or strengthen existing, cleavages among the public.

In 1996, the US federal government passed welfare reform legislation. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) altered greatly the circumstances under which families can receive public assistance, limiting receipt to 5 years, requiring work after 24 months, and allowing states to impose sanctions and other requirements such as family caps (Greenberg, 1999). Because many countries reforming their social welfare system look to the USA as one possible model, analyses of the effects of US welfare policy on children are of relevance internationally. We find that the population receiving welfare in the USA is highly diverse and that background differences and early experiences explain most of the associations between welfare and poverty and children's outcomes. After taking account of these background differences, we find that children who experienced stable albeit disadvantaged economic conditions did not have worse outcomes than children who were never poor. Nor were children whose families' economic fortunes improved at higher risk for poor outcomes. However, children in families whose financial circumstances declined or fluctuated were more at risk for behavioural problems and scored lower on reading tests than were children who had never been poor.

This paper, drawing on fieldwork carried out in Bulgaria in 1997, examines the impact of Roma/Gypsies and the NGO sector on Bulgarian social policy-making between 1989 and 1997. NGOs emerged during this period as important actors in the field of social policy. They were seen as agents of civil society and as having scope to fill in gaps left by inadequate state welfare. However, a number of problems have also been identified, in terms of limited scope for participation and for long-term development. The paper explores both outside and inside forces that shaped NGO development and in turn social policy-making in Bulgaria in the period 1989–97. The case study of a Roma/Gypsy led NGO reveals this interplay of forces and shows how international, national and local social policy frameworks are both fundamental to and shaped by such NGO activities.

Welfare states are highly innovative when it comes to dealing with care. The range of policies in place across nations is striking as is the degree to which making provision for care cuts across long-standing principles of social provision. This article focuses on care as a policy good, identifying care as an inherently social activity and linking it with different manifestations in and anticipated outcomes of public policy. Care is developed here as one of the key activities connecting state and society. Making provision for care, it is argued, affects a whole series of societal settlements. A consideration of a number of such settlements helps to identify factors which must be taken into account when we assay the relationship between public policy, care and society. The following are primary considerations: choices around receiving care, the choice to give care, gender equity, the legitimising of care, the welfare mix, public as against private expenditure, the demand for and supply of paid and unpaid labour. Having considered some of the main variations which are to be found in European welfare states' handling of care, the article goes on to conjecture about possible outcomes of a range of policy responses on the basis of the above considerations. All provisions have particular strengths and weaknesses but ‘quality’, understood in a broad sense, is elusive to any single measure.

The concept of welfare regimes has become a centerpiece of comparative welfare research. Most criticism of the concept thus far has focused on whether this or that country fits a particular regime type or deserves its own regime category. This article offers a more radical critique of this concept. It argues that most countries practice a disjointed set of welfare policies due to the following typical features of welfare policymaking: (1) the cumulative nature of welfare policies, (2) the diverse histories of policies in different welfare fields, (3) the involvement of different sets of policy actors, (4) variations in the policymaking process, and (5) the influence of foreign models. It concludes that few national welfare systems are likely to exhibit the internal consistency necessary to validate the regime concept, and that policy-specific comparisons may be a more promising avenue for comparative research.

Which societies are prone to be compliant with tax laws? Who is willing to pay more for social solidarity? Based on recent surveys in Argentina and Chile, this research paper contrasts two similar countries that show remarkable differences in tax compliance and commitment to social policies. The analysis of the data supports the hypothesis that social variables associated with trust and legitimacy have an independent effect on social solidarity. By extending standard economic models, I argue that paying taxes is also partially contingent on social values, and on the perceived institutional performance of the public sector.

Contents

1 Social security and income maintenance

2 Health

3 Education

4 Housing and environment

5 Personal social services

6 Law and the treatment of the offender

7 Unemployment and the labour market

8 Race relations

9 The voluntary sector

10 Government

11 Gender

12 Demography