General description

Advanced insight in descriptive categorizations of variation among welfare arrangements; in-depth treatment of the different families of theoretical explanations of welfare state development; EU-integration theories and praxis of European social policy-making.

Learning outcomes

This course enables students to work at an advanced level with the terminology, empirical categorizations, theoretical concepts, and explanatory approaches of comparative and European welfare state development. Students become familiar with the various responsibilities, political processes, and actors within European societies and at the supranational level, and they will gain in-depth insights into interrelationship between the two levels of policy-making.
After completing the course students will be equipped with skills necessary for advanced research of welfare systems:

• Introduction to, definition and implementation of core values of the European social model
• Comparative categorizations of variation among European welfare states
• The main types of theoretical approaches for explaining welfare state development.

Contents

1. Core values and principles of European welfare states; core concepts of comparative welfare state research for capturing variation among these different principles
2. Institutional manifestations of these different principles: Welfare state typologies; their promise, underlying theoretical ideas, and the potential hazards of this kind of theorizing
3. Explanatory approaches in comparative welfare state development:
a. Functionalism and explanations in terms of the great socio-economic trends (Modernization, Industrialization and Deindustrialization, Globalization, Demographic Change)
b. Interests and conflicts: Power Resource approaches and theories about partisan public policy
c. Institutionalism and its various strands: Institutional self-interest and top-down social policy-making, veto points and veto players, varieties of welfare capitalism, retrenchment and path dependency
d. Ideational analysis in welfare state studies: The role of ideas, culture, religion, and ideology
4. EU-integration theories, and the praxis of European social policy-making.

Teaching language

English

Evaluation and evaluation criteria

Numeric 1-5.
Grades: 70% paper & 30% active participation Paper: A range of short think-pieces (ca. 3 pages each) reflecting on the main argument, its structure, core thesis, convincing aspects, and drawbacks of articles representing the different theoretical modes of reasoning, which students will read over the course of the semester. Active participation: participation of the students in the discussions and debate during seminar and the distance learning.

Study materials

Course readings will primarily be drawn from the journal article literature. They can be provided via Moodle, if necessary.

Belongs to following study modules