Overview

European welfare states are comprehensive, fostering solidarity across generations, promoting income redistribution, balancing gendered labour market and life course transitions, whilst providing safeguards against economic shocks. In an era of rapid socioeconomic restructuring, policymakers face constant pressures to reform their welfare systems in response to evolving fiscal, political, social and demographic realities. The welfare state debate has shifted from the question of 'how much?' welfare can be afforded to the question of 'what kind?' of welfare mix should be supported, away from big spending programmes towards more service-oriented support structures. Governing the Welfare Commons offers a comprehensive analysis of the policy transformation across Europe's diverse welfare states since 2000. It examines the manner, timing, and extent to which ongoing welfare transformations are heading into the direction of social investment and explores key developments in social policy, including family policies, labour market reforms, and pensions. To explain the shift, the book employs the welfare commons logic as a conceptual framework to capture the dynamic evolution of Europe's welfare systems. It also considers the facilitating role of the European Union in domestic reform processes, Social Europe, and welfare performance over time. With case studies covering 10 European countries, Governing the Welfare Commons captures the dynamic evolution of Europe's diverse welfare systems and advances an explanation of the political drivers of reform to reflect where Europe's welfare states require further action to match fiscal sustainability with inclusive growth. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

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9780198971450

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UKAC0044947

Author Information

Anton Hemerijck is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the European University Institute in Florence. He has previously held positions at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Max-Planck-Institute, and was Director of the Scientific Council for Government Policy, the principle think tank in the Netherlands. Over the past two decades he has advised the European Commission and several EU Presidencies on European social policy developments. He is the author of Who's Afraid of the Welfare State Now? with Manos Matsaganis (OUP, 2024). David Bokhorst is a Research Associate at the European University Institute (EUI), specializing in European welfare state reforms from a multilevel governance perspective. His work spans a broad spectrum, from examining the EU's role in driving welfare reforms to exploring how cities foster social innovation. Before joining the EUI, Bokhorst served as an advisor on European financial affairs in the Dutch national parliament. In addition to his academic work, Bokhorst also works as a policy advisor at the Dutch Socio-Economic Council.

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