Learning outcomes

The course describes the main features that comparative welfare state scholars associate with the Liberal Welfare Regime, as it exists in the Anglo-Saxon countries. It presents institutional characteristics, historical lineages, current trends, and ongoing debates that set welfare production in this cluster of countries apart from other countries.

The class seeks to encourage critical reflection of not only the norms and institutions of welfare production in Liberal Welfare States, but also of the academic and popular perceptions of those norms and institutions.

Contents

There are two parts to the course

1) The "social politics" of Liberalism and residualism will first be explored on a theoretical level, by reading the classic statements about the classification by Esping-Andersen and Titmus. Then the course examines a set of country cases, in which core features of the Liberal Welfare State can be observed. Here some (albeit not exclusive) focus of attention is on the system of welfare production in the United States, as this country is widely perceived as the paradigmatic case of the Liberal welfare regime. Examining historical lineages of Liberal welfare policy serves as a backdrop for analyses of current challenges and trends in the social protection systems of the countries under review.

The class then turns to (Continental) European perceptions and evaluations of the "Liberal Model". It interrogates different European stances vis-a-vis the promises and perils of Liberal welfare production, ranging from positions of admiration for the Liberal countries' flexibility and capacity to reinvent themselves, via dispassionate diagnoses of "Liberalization" as one of the master trends of our times, to positions that strongly reject Liberal norms and institutions in the social policy field and view the experience of the Anglo Saxon countries as a cautionary tale of the social dislocations under conditions of unrestrained capitalism.

2) There are two perspectives on Liberal welfare states. One involves the perceptions and evaluations of the institutional and normative structures of Liberal Welfare States; the other is the repercussions of institutional arrangements (Liberal Welfare State in comparative perspective) for various economic and distributional outcomes. This part of the course addresses the repercussions aspects and explores the US version of the liberal welfare state in comparison to other liberal models. Through the perspective of economic and political science theory, we address the goals, design, resources, public views and outcomes of the US welfare state.

Teaching language

Evaluation

Belongs to following study modules

2012–2013

Teaching

Archived Teaching Schedule. Please refer to current Teaching Shedule.

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