Social policies can transform the lives of the poor and marginalized, yet inequitable implementation often limits their access. Uneven Social Policies shifts the focus of welfare state analysis away from policy design and toward policy implementation. By examining variation in political motivations, state capacity, and policy legacies, it explains why some policies are implemented more effectively than others, why some deliver votes to incumbent governments while others do not, and why regionally elected executives block the implementation of some but not all national policies. Niedzwiecki explores this variation across provinces and municipalities by combining case studies with statistical analysis of conditional cash transfers and health policies in two decentralized countries, Argentina and Brazil. The analysis draws on original data gathered during fifteen months of field research that included more than 230 interviews with politicians and 140 with policy recipients.
Why do some people support redistributive policies such as a generous welfare state, social policy or protections for the poor, and others do not? The (often implicit) model behind much of comparative politics and political economy starts with redistribution preferences. These affect how individuals behave politically and their behavior in turn affects the strategies of political parties and the policies of governments. This book challenges some influential interpretations of the political consequences of inequality. Rueda and Stegmueller provide a novel explanation of how the demand for redistribution is the result of expected future income, the negative externalities of inequality, and the relationship between altruism and population heterogeneity. This innovative and timely volume will be of great interest to readers interested in the political causes and consequences of inequality.
During the quarter of a century after the Second World War, the United Kingdom designated thirty-two new towns across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Why, even before selling council houses or denationalising public industries, did Margaret Thatcher's government begin to privatise these new towns? By examining the most ambitious of these projects, Milton Keynes, Guy Ortolano recasts our understanding of British social democracy, arguing that the new towns comprised the spatial dimension of the welfare state. Following the Prime Minister's progress on a tour through Milton Keynes on 25 September 1979, Ortolano alights at successive stops to examine the broader histories of urban planning, modernist architecture, community development, international consulting, and municipal housing. Thatcher's journey reveals a dynamic social democracy during its decade of crisis, while also showing how public sector actors begrudgingly accommodated the alternative priorities of market l
Why do some people support redistributive policies such as a generous welfare state, social policy or protections for the poor, and others do not? The (often implicit) model behind much of comparative politics and political economy starts with redistribution preferences. These affect how individuals behave politically and their behavior in turn affects the strategies of political parties and the policies of governments. This book challenges some influential interpretations of the political consequences of inequality. Rueda and Stegmueller provide a novel explanation of how the demand for redistribution is the result of expected future income, the negative externalities of inequality, and the relationship between altruism and population heterogeneity. This innovative and timely volume will be of great interest to readers interested in the political causes and consequences of inequality.
At this time when many have lost hope amidst conflicts, terrorism, environmental destruction, economic inequality and the breakdown of democracy, this beautifully written book outlines how to rethink and reform our key institutions - markets, corporations, welfare policies, democratic processes and transnational governance - to create better societies based on core principles of human dignity, sustainability, and justice. This new vision is based on the findings of over 300 social scientists involved in the collaborative, interdisciplinary International Panel on Social Progress. Relying on state-of-the-art scholarship, these social scientists reviewed the desirability and possibility of all relevant forms of long-term social change, explored current challenges, and synthesized their knowledge on the principles, possibilities, and methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Their common finding is that a better society is indeed possible, its contours can be broadly
