Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe [Hardcover]

The new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface Notes on Contributors Ideas and Policy Change; P.Taylor-Gooby Paradigm Shifts, Power Resources and Labour Market Reform; P.Taylor-Gooby Policy Paradigms and Long-Term Care: Convergence or Continuing Difference?; V.Timonen The Myth of an Adult Worker Society: New Policy Discourses in European Welfare States; T.P.Larsen Changing Ideas on Pensions: Accounting for Differences in the Spread of the Multipillar Paradigm in Five EU Social Insurance Countries; F.B?nker Towards Activation? Social Assistance Reforms and Discourses; A.Aust & A.Arriba Current Employment Policy Paradigms in the UK, Sweden and Germany; J.Kananen The Europeanisation of Welfare; Paradigm Shifts and Social Policy Reforms; L.Moreno & B.Palier Index

'[A] good and enjoyable read...[,] should certainly be considered by anyone interested in welfare reform, ideas, discourses and policy paradigms in Western Europe.' - Social Policy

'This book makes a worthwhile contribution to the debate on the role of ideas in welfare state change...' - Julia S. O'Connor, International Journal of Social Welfare

'...an exposition of an extensive and important piece of research carried out within a rigorously comparative methodology and with carefully developed accounts of its findings.' - Robert Sykes, Social Policy& Administration

ANA ARRIBA Postdoctoral Researcher with the Spanish National Resls"