Social Research articles from December 1997

Social Research archives from December 1997

The Perils of the Welfare State's Withdrawal(*).(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... The Changing Welfare State and the Discourse on It The mixed neoliberal-conservative ideology that has called into question Western ideas of welfare has made important headway in the past few years. Even the most established welfare...

Power and Poverty.(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Although it is not my intention to adopt an alarmist approach by stressing the obvious long-term dangers of the matter, I simply wish to state as a fact that the issue of poverty was removed from the list of political questions to be...

Social Policy and the Transition(*).(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Social policy is playing an increasingly prominent role in the decision-making of every postcommunist government. Analyzing why that is so is the burden of this article. I argue that the pressure to focus on social policy is coming from...

The New Social Democrats?(*).(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Introductory Remarks At present in the advanced Western democracies both the traditional left and the neoliberal right are in a crisis. The first part of this crisis began in the mid-1970s, when the policies of the social democratic...

The Folly of Social Safety Nets: Why Basic Income Is Needed in Eastern Europe.(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Introduction The overused word crisis implies that there is a moment in which there is a threat of worse to come and also an opportunity to resolve the threat favorably. Countries dubbed euphemistically as "transitional" have lurched...

Incomplete Demise: Reflections on the Welfare State in Poland after Communism(*).(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Introduction The postcommunist societies face, with respect to welfare provision, three challenges. The first is that of the social costs of transformation. "Under the twin impact of declining incomes and rising inequality,...

Splitting the Welfare State: The Czech and Slovak Cases(*).(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... 1. The Fundamental Question--and How We Have Tried to Respond to It During their modern history, Slovaks and Czechs lived in a common state twice: in the Austro-Hungarian empire and, after World War I, in Czechoslovakia (with the...

Overview of the Social Income Reform Approaches of the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
December 22, 1997... The income support systems in the Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs) were developed to meet the needs and interests of a command economy. There was no genuine social assistance to support the poor, as according to ideology...

Russian Labor Market in Transition: Trends, Specific Features, and State Policy.(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... Over the past decade the concept of labor relations in Russia has undergone radical changes--from the paradigm of universal full employment, which was an official tenet of the socialist period; through the idea of rational employment in the...

Social Policy and the Implementation of the Maastricht Fiscal Convergence Criteria: The Italian and French Attempts at Welfare and Pension Reforms.(The Future of the Welfare State: East and West)
December 22, 1997... I. Introduction With many advanced industrial democracies exhibiting deficits and debts that are considered to be excessive and weakening the international competitiveness of their domestic economies, questions concerning whether...