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Critical juncture and historical legacies: Insights and methods. By Collier, D., & Munck, G. L. (Eds.), London: The Rowman & Little-field Publishing Group, Inc. 2022. pp. 1–473. $92.70 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781538166147 Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Tauchid Komara Yuda
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Health systems in the COVID‐19 crises: Comparative patterns of NHS satisfaction and preferences for public health action in Scotland and England Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Christopher Deeming
It is often claimed Scotland is more social democratic in outlook compared to England, if this is the case then we might expect to find differences in public attitudes towards health and social justice, reflecting the growing health policy divergence between the two nations. Comparative attitudes towards healthcare in Scotland and England are worthy of close scrutiny here, given the different reform
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Trajectories among recipients of social assistance in Norway: A local approach Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Espen Dahl, Thomas Lorentzen, Åsmund Hermansen, Andreas Roaldsnes
1 INTRODUCTION A local perspective on individual work and welfare careers has become more urgent in the past decades due to recent political, economic and social developments (Heidenreich & Rice, 2016). In general, the Nordic welfare regime is more service oriented than other welfare regimes. To state the obvious, service provision and use take place at the local level. As Andreotti and Mingione (2016)
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Variations in Social Europe? National political parties' positions on EU‐level social regulations Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Zhen Jie Im
How do national political parties vary in their views on Social Europe? I focus on an aspect that has received less attention despite its growing prevalence—EU regulations with ambitions to diminish social inequality to encourage social convergence among Member States. Since the Juncker Commission, the European Commission has become increasingly active in pursuing this aspect of Social Europe. Thus
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European long‐term care marketisation: A political economy framework Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Julien Mercille
The study of European long‐term care (LTC) marketisation is dominated by institutional and ideational perspectives. In contrast, political economic theoretical frameworks have received little attention. This is paradoxical, because marketisation is an inherently political economic phenomenon. The financialisation of LTC systems, the growth of private for‐profit providers and the rise in cross‐national
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The politics of social policies in Portugal: Different responses in times of crises Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Jorge Caleiras, Renato Miguel Carmo
Portugal has been confronted with a succession of crises in recent years. This article explores the differences in the way that, in Portugal, the welfare regime tackled the Great Recession context (financial, euro, sovereign debt, structural adjustment crises) and COVID-19 crisis through very different policy responses. The fact that the governments in office acted differently when faced with realities
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In search of a job—But which one? How unemployed people revise their occupational expectations Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Didier Demazière
Conducting a job search implies the identification of a target—an intended job. However, this assumption has been little studied, and just two main conclusions have been drawn, namely: jobseekers have an incentive to adjust their targets to the jobs available, and returning to work tends to lead to occupational downgrading. This article explores how job search experiences shape and alter targets. Biographical
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Spaces of subsidiarity: A comparative inquiry into the social agenda of Cohesion Policy Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Steven Ballantyne, Lorenzo Mascioli
Cohesion Policy—the European Union's (EU) policy platform for regional and local development—represents a major yet often neglected instance of Social Europe. In this article we inquire into the delivery of Cohesion Policy projects concerned with social policy objectives. Specifically, we ask: how are these projects delivered? Building on the literature of subsidiarisation in social policy, we theorise
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Does employment assistance promote employment of the impoverished in China? Evidence from a mixed methods approach Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Shencheng Wang, Yongzheng Yang, Baochen Liu
The issue of employment is extremely significant, and employment assistance programs work for special social assistance and employment support for the impoverished in China. Are employment assistance programs, particularly those providing job recommendations and free vocational training, effective in promoting employment in China? This study answers this question using a mixed methods approach. Logistic
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Crisis? What crisis? Social policy when crises are and are not crises in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Steven Saxonberg, Tomáš Sirovátka, Eduard Csudai
In this article, we analyse how different governments have dealt with situations, labelled as ‘crises’ in the international and national discourses. More specifically, we analyse how the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments framed and dealt with their social policies during the 2008 ‘financial crisis’, the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, and the 2020 ‘Covid crisis’. We argue that sometimes governments and
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Crisis in the UK National Health Service: What does it mean, and what are the consequences? Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Ian Greener, Martin Powell
There have been more-or-less continual suggestions that the UK National Health Service (NHS) has been suffering from one kind of crisis or another since its creation in 1948. If we are to understand the problems the NHS faces, then we need to empirically investigate what kinds of crises it has faced, if such crises have patterns to them, and whether or not they tend to lead to policy change. This article
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Quantity over quality? How economic factors and welfare state interventions affected job insecurity and job quality before, during and after the economic crises Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Lorenza Antonucci, Hyojin Seo, Martin Strobl
This article uses multilevel analysis of 24 European countries to examine the effects of macroeconomic variables (GDP and unemployment) and welfare state interventions (active and passive labour market policies) on job insecurity and job quality in Europe from the mid-1990s until the last 2021 COVID crisis. The paper makes a distinction between the crisis of the welfare state and the reaction of welfare
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Once again: Are welfare states in crisis? Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-19 Bent Greve
Welfare state crises have long fascinated researchers. This introduction distills the special issue's insights on this enduring topic. Overall, the articles indicate that future debates surrounding crisis types and responsive policies will remain important. Simple or singular crisis explanations prove elusive. Uncertainty persists regarding whether crises are episodic or constant and occur on macro
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The moral, the political and social licence in digitally-driven family policy and intervention: Parents negotiating experiential knowledge and ‘other’ families Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-15 Rosalind Edwards, Val Gillies, Hélène Vannier-Ducasse, Sarah Gorin
The article provides a conceptually informed empirical critique of the pursuit of social licence as a warrant for data linkage and predictive analytics in the field of family policy intervention. It draws on research focusing on parental views of digitally-driven family governance in the United Kingdom. We identify the notion of consensus that undergirds the concept of social licence that acts to obscure
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Modern welfare in the United Kingdom is a universal (dis)credit to Beveridge. Is it time for a basic income? Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Dave Beck, Remco Peters, Gemma Bridge, Francis Poitier, Ben Pearson
Universal Credit signalled a revolution in the delivery and costs of welfare provisioning. UC aimed to reduce spending on welfare, but in doing so now threatens the stability of a functioning and cohesive society. Over recent years, and most notably during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become ever clearer that adequate social security is vital to the functioning of society, as well as to the health
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It's a wonderful NHS? A counterfactual perspective on the creation of the British National Health Service Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-07 Martin Powell, Ian Greener
While there have been some studies of counterfactual analysis in history and other academic disciplines, there are very few studies in social policy and health policy. This paper explores a major critical juncture and counterfactual in the creation of the NHS. In particular, it explores the critical juncture of the discussion in the Labour Cabinet involving Bevan's proposal for nationalising the hospitals
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Crises of the welfare state, resilience, and pessimism of the intellect Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Kevin Farnsworth, Zoë Irving
The crises faced by welfare states have now endured for significantly longer than the counter-period of stability, calm and cooperation between the 1940s and 1970s. Systemic crisis of welfare states tied to the contradictions of capitalism, and the exogenous crises for the welfare state that have afflicted its expansion have, however, been met by faith in its resilience evidenced in its economic functions
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The implosion of the Dutch surveillance welfare state Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-07 Menno Fenger, Robin Simonse
From the 1990s onwards, fraud detection has become an increasingly important focus in the design and implementation of a variety of welfare schemes, including unemployment benefits, social assistance benefits, pensions, and personal care budgets. This culminated in the 2014 Fraud Act, which introduced a system of high sanction in all cases of benefit fraud, even if they were causes by administrative
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Digital labour platforms and social dialogue at EU level: How new players redefine actors and their roles and what this means for collective bargaining Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Agnieszka Piasna
Digital labour platforms transform work and employment relations in many ways. Crucially, they renounce the role of the employer, leading to a redefinition of traditional categories of actors and their roles in social policy and dialogue. Using the example of the EU proposal for a directive on improving working conditions in platform work, this article examines how this redefinition is materialising
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Excluded workers and exempted employers: A qualitative study on domestic workers' access to social protection in the Netherlands Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 David de Kort, Sonja Bekker
In the Netherlands, many part-time domestic workers fall within the scope of a particular type of labour law, that gives them fewer social protection rights and that renders private actors (households and workers) responsible for exercising those rights. Over the years, this policy has been criticised for institutionalising the differential treatment of domestic workers, which goes against ideas propagated
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Does digital government hollow out the essence of street-level bureaucracy? A systematic literature review of how digital tools' foster curtailment, enablement and continuation of street-level decision-making Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Justine Marienfeldt
The growing use of digital tools in policy implementation has altered the work of street-level bureaucrats who are granted substantial discretionary power in decision-making. Digital tools can constrain discretionary power, like the curtailment thesis proposed, or serve as action resources, like the enablement thesis suggested. This article assesses empirical evidence of the impact of digital tools
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Classifying participatory methods in social care regulation Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2024-01-01 Hilla Dolev, Avishai Benish
This article examines the regulation–participation nexus in social care services. Participatory forms of social care regulation have been expanding over the past 20 years, but the literature on this trend remains scarce. To fill this gap, we developed an analytical framework for classifying participatory regulation methods. This framework is based on two axes, one drawn from the literature on regulation
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“You didn't ask, so you don't know”: Information and administrative burden in social benefit claims Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-12-28 Noam Tarshish, Roni Holler
Encounters with welfare state bureaucracy are often burdensome and might even result in administrative exclusion and non-take up. With the growing scholarly interest in administrative burden experiences, a particular focus has been on learning costs, with evidence suggesting that difficulty obtaining reliable and useful information is one of their most fundamental aspects. We still lack a systematic
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The end of welfare states as we know them? A multidimensional perspective Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Jakub Sowula, Franziska Gehrig, Lyle A. Scruggs, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Gabriela Ramalho Tafoya
This article highlights the limitations of unidimensional analyses in the comparative welfare state literature and emphasises the need for a more holistic, multidimensional approach incorporating social spending, welfare state outputs and outcomes. To illustrate the utility of a multidimensional approach, we examine the long-term welfare state trajectories of Sweden and Germany, prototypical social-democratic
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Control pliers in principal-agent relations: An investigation of hardship commissions in the German asylum administration Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Ina Radtke, Markus Seyfried
There is a remarkable gap in research regarding principal-centred analyses of control means towards—in a formal sense—rather weak independent administrative actors as agents. Therefore, the paper develops a theoretical notion to link means of ex ante and ex post control and applies it to the (re-)actions of ministries vis à vis hardship commissions in the German Länder by asking: How does the super-ordinated
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How do right-wing populist majoritarian governments redistribute? Evidence from Poland, 2005–2019 Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Leszek Morawski, Michal Brzezinski
There is scarce evidence regarding redistribution policies implemented by right-wing populist parties forming majority governments. We contribute to this literature by measuring the effects of sweeping reforms of the tax and benefit system carried out by the populist party PiS governing Poland since 2015. The reforms included a generous, unconditional, and universal child benefit. Using micro-simulation-based
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Does the unemployment trap still exist? The case of the Italian minimum income scheme Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Gianluca Busilacchi, Alessandro Fabbri
The question of whether welfare benefits imprison recipients in unemployment traps has been at the centre of academic and political debates in recent decades. Empirical evidence at the micro level supports the existence of work disincentive effects of welfare benefits, although of a small magnitude. However, the question of whether this translates into lower aggregate employment remains unsettled.
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Regulatory noncompliance among unlicensed care homes: Evidence from Poland Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Paweł Łuczak, Maciej Ławrynowicz
The development of markets for private for-profit care homes often raises concerns about the quality of services provided by these care homes. To address the fundamental needs of their residents, governments introduce quality regulations and, through mandatory licensing, allow private care homes to enter the market. However, in some countries, evidence reveals that many private care homes operate without
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What policy functions are reflected in the distribution of financial support for parents by child age and birth order? An analysis of 28 European countries Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Kristijan Fidanovski
Motivated by the growing prominence of fertility incentivisation and long-term child development in European family policymaking, this paper examines the distribution of financial support for parents over the course of childhood and between birth orders in Europe. We use the term ‘older-oriented age bias’ to refer to support that is more generous for older children and the term ‘younger-oriented age
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Welfare state regimes and social policy resistance to fiscal consolidations Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Olivier Jacques
We study how welfare states regimes influence the effect of episodes of fiscal consolidations on the four main components of the welfare state: social investment, pensions, healthcare and labour market insurance. Welfare state regimes are associated with distinct social policy legacies that feedback into political competition by shaping the size and influence of different coalitions of constituents
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Policy representation of everyday harm experienced by people with disability Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Ciara Smyth, Karen R. Fisher, Sally Robinson, Heikki Ikäheimo, Nicole Hrenchir, Jan Idle, Jung Yoon
People with disability are at heightened risk of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation (VANE) with policy geared towards responding to and eliminating VANE harm. Yet not all harm experienced by people with disability is captured within the VANE harm. Many people also experience harm in everyday interactions that leave them feeling uncomfortable, devalued, disrespected, threatened or silenced. Our
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All in, against all odds. Path shift in family policy via cross-party agreement: the case of the Single Universal Allowance reform in Italy Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Ilaria Madama, Eugenia Mercuri
The introduction of the Single Universal Child Allowance in 2021 marked a sharp turning point in Italian family policy. Presented as a major revolution aimed at combating the country's alarmingly low birth rates as well as child poverty, the reform was also meant to rationalise the benefits system while overcoming the historical fragmentation and uneven protection granted to families. Against this
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Adaptive social protection in Indonesia: Stress-testing the effect of a natural disaster on poverty and vulnerability Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Katrin Gasior, Gemma Wright, Helen Barnes, Michael Noble
Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase due to climate change. Natural disasters and other shocks require well-developed social protection systems that can cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. International stakeholders advocate for ‘Adaptive Social Protection’ which links social policy
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The association between couples' education and gender gap in unpaid care work in India Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Saumya Tripathi, Fuhua Zhai
This cross-sectional study utilizes data from the 2019 India Time-Use Survey to examine the relationship between education and the gender gap in unpaid care work among married couples in India. Results from the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression demonstrate a paradox where more educated or equally educated wives tend to spend more time on unpaid care work compared to their husbands. Women from
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Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of EU capacity-building in the social policy domain Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-11-05 Joan Miró, Anna Kyriazi, Marcello Natili, Stefano Ronchi
The EU has traditionally influenced the social and employment policies of Member States through regulation, leaving redistribution to national welfare states. The latter have, however, been gradually weakened by global socioeconomic change and by the expansion of EU market integration. A series of crises over the last 15 years made a bad situation worse: the longue durée erosion of the capacity of
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Everyday sense making and the discursive delineation of social policy space in Zambia Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Anna Wolkenhauer
This article connects the notions of policy space and social contract in order to understand the importance of everyday discourse for the perceived legitimacy of social policy choices and emerging responsibilities in Zambia. Based on a Grounded Theory analysis of interview and document material, the article reconstructs common sense ideas about the limited resources of the state, from which modalities
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Conservative ethnic minority LGTBQ+: Facing the challenge of intersectionality in an inhospitable environment Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Amos Zehavi, Or Keshet
LGBTQ+ suffer from intolerance everywhere, but in certain conservative minority communities, intolerance is especially high. This study explores how non-minority organizations—government and nonprofit—might support minority LGBTQ+ individuals on the backdrop of tense majority-minority relations. While the extension of external support responds to LGBTQ+ plight, it is also likely to provoke community
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Social protection, community participation and state-citizen relations: Evidence from a cash transfer program in south-central Somalia Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Vanessa van den Boogaard, Fabrizio Santoro, Michael Walker
We investigate whether social protection programs can increase participation in community-driven development programs and examine how this affects state-citizen relations. Using a randomized controlled trial in south-central Somalia, we study the impacts of one-time unconditional cash transfers to vulnerable households that were specifically designed to encourage participation in community development
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On the effects of active labour market policies among individuals reporting to have severe mental health problems Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Stefan Tübbicke, Maximilian Schiele
On the one hand, unemployment is known to have detrimental effects on individuals' mental health. On the other hand, poor mental health reduces re-employment chances quite drastically, creating a vicious cycle. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) such as training programs or wage subsidies have been shown to ameliorate negative effects on mental health and improve labour market integration on average
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Introduction to special issue: States, citizens and social protection in Africa Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Jeremy Seekings, Alesha Porisky, Sophie Plagerson, Marianne S. Ulriksen
While social protection provision in Africa has primarily focused on the reduction of food insecurity and income poverty, it has the potential to transform the relationship between citizens and states. The articles in this special issue provide insights into the theoretical, normative, and empirical assessment of the transformative consequences of social protection programmes across parts of East,
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Work and alienation in the platform economy. Amazon and the power of organisation. By Sarrah Kassem, Bristol University Press. 2023. £85.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9781529226546 Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Cecilia Manzo
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The author declared no potential conflicts of interest concerning the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Democratic contestation, organised labour, and pension reform in Ghana and Malawi Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Yonatan L. Morse
What explains variation in African states' commitment to pensions? This article argues that differences in the structure of contestation and legacies of state-labour relations matter. When competition is confined to fewer and more stable parties, social welfare appeals gain currency to mobilise swing voters and makes it more likely that pensions will become a subject of political competition. However
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Behavioural knowledge for policy design: The connection between time use Behaviours and (or) desires and support for policy alternatives Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Lihi Lahat, Itai Sened
The study explored how understanding people's behaviours and desires can inform policy design and contribute to policy feedback theory. We focused on uses of time that are affected by diverse policies. Given the growing interest in promoting well-being and the connection between the use of time and well-being, we examined behaviours and desires regarding uses of time. In this exploratory study, we
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Street-level bureaucrats' discretion between individual and institutional factors: The analysis of the minimum income policy implementation in two Italian regions Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Alberta Andreotti, Diego Coletto, Anna Rio
The article provides and empirically tests an analytical model that considers the relationship between the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) and the institutional and organisational structures at meso and macro levels. The proposal maintains a bottom-up perspective in the analysis of discretionary practices; at the same time, it highlights the relevance of multilevel governance
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Public understandings of welfare and the economy: Who knows what and does it relate to political attitudes? Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-18 Jan Eichhorn, Daniel Kenealy, Hayley Bennett
Previous studies have revealed significant gaps in the UK public's knowledge about the welfare state and the economy. However, we know little about which groups of the population know more, and which less. Drawing on survey evidence, we confirm that many people overstimate both the size of unemployment provision and levels of benefit fraud, and also make mistakes when answering factual questions about
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Towards a new era in the governance of integrated activation: A systematic review of the literature on the governance of welfare benefits and employment-related services in Europe (2010–21) Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Minna van Gerven, Tuuli Malava, Peppi Saikku, Merita Mesiäislehto
This article presents the results of a systematic literature review of research articles (N = 72) to study the governance logic of integrated activation policies and the problems relating to reintegrating welfare benefits with services. The inductive study of the problems indicated in the literature demonstrates both the vertical and horizontal aspects of the governance of integrated activation at
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Women–state relations: The gendered politics of social protection provisioning in Zambia Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Kate Pruce
Despite clear gendered differences in rights and responsibilities, these variations within citizen-state relations are often overlooked. Drawing on Ranjita Mohanty's concept of women–state relations and Nancy Fraser's trivalent theory of social justice, this paper asks how access to social assistance is shaped by gender. Analysing the processes of policy design and implementation of Zambia's social
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Governance agility in reception of war refugees from Ukraine: The case of Wrocław, Poland Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Mateusz Błaszczyk, Kamilla Dolińska, Julita Makaro, Jacek Pluta
The unprecedented influx of migrants triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine posed a major challenge for neighbouring countries. For the local authorities of the cities where the migrants arrived, managing the reception of the refugees became a key issue. This article discusses a study on the reception of refugees during the first period of the war in Ukraine in Wrocław, a city that became one of
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The implementation of social protection in a conservative African welfare regime: The values and beliefs of local state officials in Botswana Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Jeremy Seekings
Social protection has grown in importance in framing the relationship between citizens and states across much of Africa. Botswana's conservative welfare regime relies heavily on local officials – many of whom are trained social workers – to exercise discretion in assessing the needs of poor people and registering them on social protection programmes. Interviews with local officials reveal that they
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Social protection and state-citizen relations: A review of the literature Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Marianne S. Ulriksen, Sophie Plagerson
It is frequently assumed that social protection can play a key role in positively transforming state-citizen relations in the global South. We examine the evidence with a focus on recipients and non-recipients, both citizens and non-citizens. Based on a systematic literature review, we identify three levels of analysis: activity, perceptions and expectations. A common thread through these levels is
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Social protection for mobile populations? A global perspective on immigrant social rights Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-09-03 Friederike Römer, Jakob Henninger, Eloisa Harris
While a growing body of work investigates the social rights of immigrants, there is a notable lack of comparative research on the topic that includes countries in the Global South. In this paper we argue that existing approaches often lack reproducibility, comparability, and adaptability beyond the cases that they focus on. To remedy this shortcoming, we propose a three-dimensional conceptualization
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Welfare conditionality and policy contingencies of school-allowance retractions in Sweden Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Johan Sandberg, Axel Fredholm
The article analyses policy contingencies and welfare conditionality of school allowances in Swedish upper-secondary education. In contrast to most countries' use of positive incentives toward school attendance through added cash-benefits for targeted students, Sweden employs sanctions on a universal study allowance that in essence constitutes an age-extension of the universal child benefit. We analyse
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‘Show me you're trying, that's all…’: Exploring the discursive impact of punishments and incentives in the Welsh homelessness system as ‘controlled conditionalities’ Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Edith England
Discussion around sanctions within the welfare state has been largely framed within a Wacquantian understanding of punitive modes of governance, neglecting the discursive life of conditionality as a source of normative social control. I use a Critical Discourse Analysis of extended interviews with 98 actors within the Welsh homelessness system to propose that conditionality operates through sanctions
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Do carer tasks predict carer employment? Evidence from the Survey of Adult Carers in England Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-08-08 David Candon, Michael Hewitt, Yu-Ling Liu-Smith, Peter Murphy
Due to the large number of unpaid carers in England, there is an extensive body of research which examines the determinants of carers' employment. Despite this, little is known about the relationship between the specific tasks that carers perform and their labour supply. Using data from the Survey of Adult Carers in England, we examine the relationship between carer tasks and carer employment outcomes
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Moving beyond stereotype: A qualitative study of long-standing recipients of the Indonesian conditional cash transfers (CCT/PKH) Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Habibullah Habibullah, Tauchid Komara Yuda, Hari Harjanto Setiawan, Badrun Susantyo
This qualitative study explores the experiences and attitudes of welfare recipients towards Indonesia's conditional cash transfer (CCT/PKH) program. The specific objectives of our paper include examining the program's impact on impoverished families, their response to stereotyping, and the implications of stereotyping for government policy among Indonesian low-income families. We conducted twenty in-depth
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Swedish unions and obligatory complementary income insurance: Securing unemployment benefits in a changing welfare state Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-07-04 Jesper Hamark, John Lapidus
Until the 2000s, the Ghent system of state-supported, union-run funds contributed to high union density in Sweden. However, there has been a remodelling of the Ghent system and a gradual erosion of public unemployment insurance. In this new institutional and less universal context, unions have introduced the private complement known as obligatory complementary income insurance (OCII). This article
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Emergency welfare states in action: Social policy adaptations to COVID-19 in the Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-07-04 Tomáš Sirovátka, Steven Saxonberg, Eduard Csudai
This article analyses the developments of the welfare state's reaction to the pandemic in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia during 2020–2022, asking whether the changes in social policy represent only temporary responses to the challenges of the pandemic, or if the changes will likely lead to long-run transformative changes in social policies. All three countries applied emergency adaptive changes to some
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The long term relationship between childhood Medicaid expansions and severe chronic conditions in adulthood Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-06-26 David Brady, Manjing Gao, Christian Guerra, Ulrich Kohler, Bruce Link
We test whether the expansions of children's Medicaid eligibility in the 1980s–1990s resulted in long-term health benefits in terms of severe chronic conditions. Still relatively rare in the field, we use prospective individual-level panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) along with the higher quality income measures from the Cross-National Equivalent File (adjusting for taxes, transfers
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Do governments account for gender when designing their social protection systems? Findings from an analysis of national social protection strategies Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-06-26 Tara Patricia Cookson, Rita Sandoval, Silke Staab, Constanza Tabbush, Jennifer Bitterly, Maria Mathew
The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's employment, care responsibilities, and access to services have motivated an unprecedented level of advocacy around strengthening national social protection systems from a gender perspective. Yet very little empirical evidence exists about what a gender-responsive social protection system entails in practice. This paper addresses this gap through
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Whatever happened to the Child Trust Fund? The abandonment of universal savings for UK children Social Policy & Administration (IF 2.283) Pub Date : 2023-06-21 S. McKay, L. Tian, A. Lymer
Child development accounts (CDAs) provide subsidised savings accounts for children to help meet life course needs. While now largely forgotten, the Child Trust Fund was an innovative savings scheme for UK children that sought to generate a capital sum when they turned 18. The first children to receive these funds reached this point in late 2020 so it is timely to review the impact of this national