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The ‘Swedish Model’ has been taken to represent the quintessential social democratic welfare regime. Sweden enjoys a reputation for having one of the world’s most far-sighted immigration policies and is still referred to as an international model with respect to its policies for the incorporation of immigrants and new ethnic minorities. However, these policies experienced deep-seated changes and serious setbacks from the 1990s. This chapter focuses on a truly puzzling disjuncture between a strong commitment to sustainable welfare and diversity on the one hand, and deepening structurally and institutionally grounded ethnic-class divisions on the other. General trends in migration are described, and the historical specifics of the so-called ‘Swedish model’ and its subsequent transformation are presented. This is the basis for an analysis of the changing forms of racialized marginality. The chapter concludes by setting out Swedish policies on migration and incorporation, and discusses migrants’ ambivalent position in a changing social democratic welfare state.

This chapter analyzes how the firm's marketing strategies affect consumers and society. The topics covered include the effects of: the firm's pricing policy for durables; volume-based pricing (e.g., quantity discounts); the distribution of free samples; cost dynamics; demand dynamics; informative, persuasive, and mixed advertising; the product life cycle; bundling innovative and commoditized products; mixed bundling plans; sequential new product introduction over time; and secondhand markets for durables. In particular, it shows how the combined effect of the firm's marketing and finance strategies affect consumer well-being and social welfare.

The first of three chapters on the implications of electoral politics and the design of political institutions for welfare state adjustment. Swank first provides an overview of two key domestic and international pressures on developed welfare states: domestic fiscal stress and international capital mobility. He then outlines the theoretical argument that democratic institutions fundamentally determine government responses to domestic and international structural change, focusing on formal and informal institutions and drawing on and fusing insights from ‘power resources’ theory, the new institutionalism, and new cultural arguments about the determinants of social policy in advanced capitalist democracies. The next two sections utilize new data on social welfare effort, national political institutions, and internationalization to provide an econometric assessment of the social policy impacts of domestic fiscal stress and capital mobility during the period 1965 to 1995, looking first at the direct impacts of rises in public sector debt and in international capital mobility on social welfare provision, and second at the welfare state effects of fiscal stress and global capital flows across nationally and temporally divergent democratic institutional contexts; the initial focus is on total social welfare effort and then the analysis is shifted to changes in cash income maintenance and social services. The conclusion assesses the implications of the arguments and findings for the future course of social policy in developed democracies, and potentially bolsters the evidence for the central assertion that domestic institutions systematically determine the direction of welfare state restructuring.

Is economics like car building or car repair? Are we working toward a finished product, or are we attempting to answer pertinent questions that arise and change from time to time? These questions are entertained in this chapter in order to explore the nature of the methods economists employ. The subjective nature of data and the relevance of predicting from past trendsis explored. The proof that rational choice analysis predicts better than any alternative process is seen to be less than definitive by typical standards of proof. Welfare economics comes closest to philosophy when it optimizes social welfare with a social welfare function, but the ramifications of that model are rarely explored. Finally, it is suggested that key questions change and economic thinking then adapts to deal with the new challenges. The vignette for this chapter looks at John Maynard Keynes and his rethinking of mainstream macroeconomics.

An account is given of the movement towards the privatization of social welfare activity that has taken place since the mid 1980s. Various aspects of this are discussed: the different paths that have been taken; public erosion of retirement income; contracting out services from the public to the private sector; the larger trend of devolving responsibility for social welfare from central to local government units, and from local government to community‐based private agencies; the commodification of social care; and private ‘safety net’ accounts.

The first part re‐examines the three worlds’ typology of welfare capitalism: the liberal welfare regime, the social democratic welfare regime, and the conservative welfare regime. A summary overview of the three regime characteristics is provided. The second part looks at the historical and comparative robustness of regime typologies, and examines whether a three‐way typology adequately exhausts the variance of the different regimes found in different countries. Three cases are identified that call for an additional fourth ‘world’; these are the Antipodes, the Mediterranean, and Japan.

Assuming the validity of these three claims, a total of six models is reached for 19–20 nations. These three cases are examined under the headings The Antipodean Fourth World, The Mediterranean Fourth World, and The East Asian Fourth World (Japan possibly with Korea and Taiwan). This second section of the chapter also looks at families and welfare regimes.

The principle of universalism in the allocation of social benefits, that is the availability of social benefits to everyone as of right, is contrasted with allocation on a selective basis in which benefits are allocated on the basis of need as determined by means testing of income. The increasing drift towards income‐tested benefits is described, and the possible stigma of means testing discussed. The implications of methods of targeting social welfare benefits other than by means testing are discussed; these include age, behaviour (e.g. searching for work, training, and voluntary work), and functional impairment (disability). The lack of transparency of restrictive targeting is noted.

This chapter focuses on alternative ways of measuring social welfare. These alternative measurements follow three approaches. The first involves extending the national accounts to incorporate non-market goods and services and to eliminate detrimental components. A second approach identifies social norms and evaluates their satisfaction through social indicators. The third approach involves the use of psychological indicators and attempts to reach directly into the experience of welfare using surveys of subjected well-being and research on the dynamics of hedonic experience.

This chapter presents a multivariate time-series analysis of social welfare spending that compares Greece, Portugal, and Spain with other OECD countries, between the years 1960 and 1990. Included in this analysis are factors commonly found to affect social spending (e.g., per capita wealth and population age). These contributed to low levels of social spending in these three countries, but are insufficient to explain lagging program development. Three different measures of democratization, however, produce strong evidence that the authoritarian regimes of Spain and Portugal had seriously retarded program development, while the short duration of the “colonels' regime” in Greece had less of an impact. Indeed, the type of transition to democracy had a discernible impact on policy change: the Portuguese revolution was accompanied by immediate increases in social welfare spending; while the more gradual transition in Spain led to incremental policy change. In all three, democratization has allowed social welfare policies to converge on typical OECD levels over the following two decades.

This chapter provides a broad overview of the social welfare programs authorized by the Social Security Act, both when it was created in 1935 and as they exist in 2009. A timeline shows how the Social Security Act has developed into the form in which we know it today, with twenty-one Titles, or parts, generating more than fifty of the nation's most significant social programs. The chapter distinguishes between the Act's social policy construction and the specific programs created from the policy — a distinction applied to all the Act's specific programs, discussed in subsequent chapters.

What types of public expenditure can be computed to assess “stateness” and state action? And once these measures of expenditure are agreed upon, what meaning can be drawn from simple rank-order comparisons (or more sophisticated statistical clusters) of where the United States and the European nations stand, according to the computations employed? Conventional measures of state action often focus on two major realms of activity — defense and social welfare — and involve some metric of public expenditure, typically calculated as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). In examining what meanings can be drawn for comparative measures of similarities and differences in United States and European activity in these realms, this chapter comments on defense, but concentrates mainly on the realm of social welfare.

This chapter examines the advocacy efforts of members of Congress for policies designed to help poor people. It investigates whether the differences that exist between black, Latino, and white legislators in racial and ethnic hearings also occur in social welfare hearings. It examine legislators' interventions in committee deliberations during part of the Clinton era (1993–1997) and the first term of the George W. Bush presidency (2001–2003). It focuses on how actively legislators engaged in the deliberations in terms of questioning witnesses and interacting with fellow members of Congress. It also examines other legislative interventions, such as testifying at hearings in favor of social welfare policies that benefit the poor and requesting hearings designed to help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities.

The story of the Social Security Act documents the growth and development of America's social welfare commitments within the framework of a monumental social, economic and political document. The 75-year debate over the proper social welfare role of the Federal government enters the 21st century with a well-institutionalized policy certificate, but the incremental tinkering with the Act's social programs over the years has left a bewildering array of policies and programs, many unsuited to today's social welfare needs. Unemployment insurance offers a striking example of the need for renovation. Yet the need for overhaul remains a reluctance that, once opened for debate, some of the social welfare advances assured by the Social Security Act may be lost.

Including social services as part of the foundation of America's social welfare obligation recognized a long-standing tradition that, rather than providing money, economic need could be mitigated by helping individuals become more independent and socially stable, thus achieving financial independence. Yet in spite of years of struggle to achieve a “service strategy”, the exact nature of social services and their application remained unclear. Provision of specific products like day care (“hard services”) and counseling (“soft services”) are provided at the discretion of the states, funded by several block grants.