In this article we examine the processes driving the outsourcing of masculinized forms of domestic work, involving household and garden maintenance and repair, and its displacement to migrant men; a trend which we conceive as part of the broader transnationalization of care that has been highlighted in feminist scholarship. The article draws on two studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Germany, and focuses on the demand on the part of households buying in “male” domestic services. We find that households use handymen in order to alleviate a father time-bind, which is rooted in three processes. Firstly, a “Europeanization” in norms around childhood, parenting and fathering; secondly, a liberalization and flexibilization of working time regimes in both countries; and thirdly, path dependency in welfare regimes based historically on a male breadwinner model. On the basis of our findings in the United Kingdom and Germany, we conclude the paper by reflecting on whether and why we might expect the commoditization of male domestic services to be manifest in other European countries.

Comparative analyses of welfare systems have largely proceeded on the basis that coherent nation-states exist. This assumption was always problematic – as many theorists have acknowledged – but globalisation processes have added a further dimension to this debate, not least because of the increasing power of global cities that act as coordinating hubs for the global economy. Although residing in nation-states, these cities have a special status flowing from their central role in the global economy with often rather different economic, demographic and social contexts. While there is growing literature on global cities, what the rise of these cities means for social policy and for welfare states remains an underexplored issue. Here we outline some key issues the rise of global cities presents for welfare states before proceeding to illustrate both theoretical and practical issues we highlight through a case study of Mexico City.

Using data from The International Social Survey Programme this paper compares the social networks of those aged 50 and above in 18 countries. Two different types of networks are conceptualised: family contact and community participation. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), international sets are established for four groups of countries. Set one includes countries that only satisfy a minimal number of social network thresholds (France, Norway, Great Britain, Denmark and the USA). Set two includes a homogeneous group of countries with above-threshold rates of marriage and community participation (Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria and Canada). Other separate sets with stronger social network features comprise Eastern European countries (set three) and Southern Europe countries (set four) in these sets, family contacts are above the international country average but community participation is less strong. Country sets with low comparative threshold scores in the QCA are argued to be likely to be in greater need of government care policy interventions.

There has been an international trend towards activating lone parents, with the United Kingdom being the most recent example. It has been argued that the most common criterion for deciding which lone parents should have to be available for work is the age of the youngest child. However, by examining the activation policies in the OECD countries more closely, a number of criteria used in conjunction with age of the child have been identified, such as the availability of childcare and the employability of lone parents. It is therefore argued that a typology can be developed consisting of three main approaches: general activation, age of child and no activation, with three sub-categories for the age of child approach. The different (sub-)categories will be illustrated using country case studies as examples.

This paper considers the challenge to global social policy posed by global climate change. It sets side by side global social policies and global climate change policies, and surveys the governance of each. The first part summarises global social policy in recent years, distinguishing (1) the policies and practices pursued in the global arena, and (2) the structures of global governance and the role of significant global actors. The second part repeats this at a greater length for global climate change. The third part then considers the relationship between these two sets of policies/practices and governance structures, in particular the potential conflicts between the pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability. It identifies two possible responses – compensation and co-benefits – and maps these onto current global actors, before concluding with a radical vision of eco-social policy.

This article argues that homelessness in Calgary, Canada is entrenched, in part, due to a systemic cycle of exclusion and defensive tactics carried out by those who are homeless and employed. A major proportion of this systemic exclusion occurs via a number of societal institutions: the provincial welfare structure in place to assist those in need; the provincial registry system for identification and licensing; the banking system, employment service providers; and the civil society organizations that provide shelter. Through one-to-one interviews with employed people experiencing homelessness in Calgary (n = 61) we found four identifiers that contribute to maintaining the adverse situation facing those who find themselves homeless: security of, and access to, replacement identification; access to banking; access to a mailing address; and accessibility to stable, permanent employment. Without access to these elements re-establishing social inclusion and navigating the transition to stable housing and non-vulnerable employment is far more difficult.

Over recent decades there has been an international shift towards multi-level governance. Against this backdrop, many comparative welfare studies take government policy outputs as the starting point for their analysis. However, the associated pluralization of electoral systems in unitary states means that welfare choices are no longer exclusively informed by single state-wide ballots. Accordingly, this study makes an original contribution by exploring the formative role of electoral discourse in shaping social policy divergence in (quasi-)federal states. It does this through an examination of party politicization and the issue-salience of homelessness in manifestos for UK state-wide and regional elections. The findings reveal how electoral discourse is a key driver of policy divergence. These territorially-specific structural narratives are used to propose a model of welfare divergence in multi-level systems, one that is cognizant of the formative role of electoral discourse in shaping the development of welfare regimes.

Familistic welfare capitalism is a model of national political economy prevalent in many regions in the world (Southern Europe, Latin America, and Asia), where the family plays a double role as the key provider of welfare and a key agent in the model's socio-economic and political reproduction. The article offers a new approach to the study this model by adopting an expanded concept of social reproduction to capture its historical evolution, using Greece as a case study. Our empirical analysis of austerity measures on employment and pensions demonstrates, how, in the Greek case, a crisis of social reproduction of the traditional form of familistic welfare capitalism was already underway prior to the well-known sovereign-debt crisis. And further we show how the adoption of austerity measures and pro-market reforms is deepening this crisis by severely undermining the key pillars of familial welfare security while rapidly transforming the model into a political economy of generalised insecurity.

This article explores the role of cultural assumptions in the formation of the only Iranian social programme designed exclusively for women, “Empowering Women without Guardians”. It examines these assumptions at different stages of the policy process: problem definition, policy formulation, and policy adoption. As shown, assumptions behind the adopted policy are not consistent with the ones underlying the original problem definition; women are considered mothers at the problem definition stage, but at the policy adoption stage they are understood as workers. The relative power of these assumptions helps explain both continuity and change in Iranian social policy towards women.

Europe's pensions landscape has changed dramatically since the 1990s. This paper tries to assess better the impact of these changes using a broad social sustainability framework. Pension wealth estimates for a variety of hypothetical cases are used to assess the ability of systems to alleviate poverty and maintain living standards, while setting out how reforms could change future costs and relative entitlements for different generations. By focusing on all prospective transfers rather than those at retirement and by looking into the interaction between entitlements and labour participation, this approach provides additional insights into the impact of reforms. Our estimates suggest that generosity has fallen significantly, but remains strong in many countries. However, moves to link benefits to contributions have raised adequacy concerns for certain groups and strengthened the need for longer careers. Although reforms have helped address fiscal challenges, in many countries pressures remain strong and further reforms are likely.

This paper analyses possible links between the early Cold War and the Western welfare state. These have so far attracted far too little interest among both welfare state and Cold War scholars. The paper argues that the nature of the relationship between the Cold War and the welfare state is too complex to be formulated into a general theory and proposes a research strategy focussing on different mechanisms of interactions. It identifies and discusses four such mechanisms: The possible trade-offs between military and social expenses, the use of the Cold War in political and ideological debates on social reforms, social reforms as an anti-communist strategy, and finally how the Cold War influenced transnational social policy learning.

This article undertakes a detailed analysis of the formative role of the World Bank in the framing of youth unemployment. It charts the World Bank's emergence as a powerful political actor in this policy field and identifies the ideational content of its policy discourses on the causes of youth unemployment and responses to it. Four principal themes are identified: skills deficits; wage regulation; the “demographication” of explanations for burgeoning youth unemployment; and connections between youth unemployment, criminal activity and social disorder. The discussion highlights significant evidence of neo-liberal continuity and reinvention in World Bank discourses as its normative and ideational frameworks are extended to new terrains of analysis in ways that infer links between youth unemployment and individual deficits of the unemployed.

After a long period of promoting early retirement, European societies have recently started to implement various reforms aimed at fostering a longer working life. Yet cross-national variations in older workers' employment remain, as institutional path dependency, socio-economic climate and persistent retirement culture have not allowed all countries to implement reforms to the same degree. In our paper, we provide an up-to-date international overview of country-specific contexts that support or hinder the employment of older workers in European countries. To this end, we use information on labour market, pension, and welfare policies that affect older workers' employment opportunities and retirement decisions. Adding to previous research, we contrast these “structural” indicators with selected “cultural” evidence from the European Survey data (Eurobarometer, European Social Survey) reflecting recent trends in retirement-related attitudes, perceptions and preferences. The available data allow for an unusually broad geographical scope, encompassing both Western European and Eastern European societies. Using these data, we perform a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify the specific types of “retirement regimes”. Finally, we relate these “new worlds of retirement” to the differentiation of “early” versus “late” exit regimes suggested by earlier literature to identify the forerunners and laggards in the gradual transition towards later retirement in Europe.

This paper examines international influences of the Western welfare state on social policy ideas, institutions and reforms in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It identifies three types of Eastern reactions to or interactions with the West: “condemnation” of various “bourgeois” conceptions of social welfare; “competition” or increased attention to redistribution and social needs of the population stemming from the demonstrable successes of Western welfare states; and “creative learning” or implicit acknowledgment that every industrial society, including the Soviet style centrally planned economies, had to adopt at least some elements of modernized social welfare models or policy originally developed in the West. Paradoxically, first the explicit and later more implicit rejection of the Western welfare state, including the social-democratic and various “third way” models, eventually led to the rise of neoliberal and anti-welfare attitudes among many Eastern social policy reformers during the last decade of communist rule and beyond, after 1989.

Recognition of the significance of public wage employment programmes in tackling unpredictable community “covariate” shocks and ensuring livelihood security of the rural poor has led to the enactment of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, with state guarantee of work. Implementation of the Act, our empirical findings tell us, has become the site of tangible exchanges between state and society, with factors such as the level of material support for it, the balance of power between the local state and the poor on the ground, and the larger socio-economic structure determining programme outcomes.

This paper offers a theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of the changing European social models in wake of the economic crisis and the promotion of social investments by the European Commission. Theoretically, the article provides a conceptual framework for comparative macro-analysis of social investments that takes into account how social investment policies and returns vary over the life-course and are interdependent. Empirically, the article uses this conceptual framework to examine whether EU policy strategies and national welfare reforms follow a social investment approach. Analysing developments of social investment strategies and policies in three life-stages, the article finds that many EU strategies embody elements of a social investment strategy whereas the impact of the crisis on the national level differs across countries, life-stages, and policies. In most countries, the overall policy impact of the crisis seems to be small on childcare coverage, large on youth polarization, and to increase retirement ages. The crisis will be felt in years to come with reduced life-income for younger cohorts, lower fertility laying the ground for intergenerational conflicts, and migration of skilled youth implying returns of social investments made in southern parts of Europe benefitting northern parts. That said, the overall evidence points towards social investments taking a larger role in Europe after the crisis. However, the result is unlikely to become a uniform European social investment model as the countries most in need of social investments are also the countries least likely to develop high-quality social investments.