The Future of European Welfare: A New Social Contract? [Hardcover]

European welfare states are currently under stress and the 'social contracts' that underpin them are being challenged. First, welfare spending has arguably 'grown to limits' in a number of countries while expanding everywhere in the 1990s in line with higher unemployment. Second, demographic change and the emergence of new patterns of family and working life are transforming the nature of 'needs'. Third, the economic context and the policy autonomy of nation states has been transformed by 'globalization'. This book considers the implications of these challenges for European welfare states at the end of the twentieth century with interdisciplinary contributions from first-rate political scientists, economists and sociologists including Paul Ormerod.Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors List of Tables and Charts Introduction: Europe's Social Contract under Stress; M. Rhodes & Y. Meny PART ONE: INTERPRETATIONS Unemployment and Social Exclusion: An Economic View; P. Ormerod Poverty and Social Exclusion: A Sociological View; S. Paugam Against Exclusion: the Poor and the Social Sciences; G. Procacci PART TWO: WELFARE SYSTEMS UNDER STRESS The Four 'Social Europes': Between Universalism and Selectivity; M. Ferrera The Evolution of Financial Poverty in Western Europe; K. Van Den Bosch In Defence of Welfare: Social Protection and Social Reform in Eastern Europe; U. Gotting PART THREE: WELFARE AND THE GLOBAL ARENA Negative and Positive Integration in the Political Economy of European Welfare States; F. Scharpf Globalisation, Labour Markets and Welfare States: A Future of 'Competitive Corporatism'?; M. Rhodes Global and Regional Agencies and the Making of Post-Communist Social Policy in Eastern Europe; B. Deacon PART FOUR: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT The Social Contract and the Problem of the Firm; C. Crouch European Social Citizenship: Why a New Social Contract Will (Probably) Not Happen; B. Jordan Some Sceptical Reflections on EU Citizenship as the Basis of lĂ*