The scholarship on state-building has devoted a significant amount of attention to the role of taxation in building state institutions and capacities. It has also emphasised the crucial role of taxation in driving state-society relations. Scholars have argued that the linkage between taxation and state building also applies to the area of social policy. In this paper, we draw on a fiscal-centred perspective on welfare state development that highlights the fiscal policy role of social insurance as a revenue raising institution to study the fiscal relationship between social insurance and state-building in Israel and Canada – two ‘most dissimilar cases’ that nonetheless feature strikingly similar patterns with regard to this relationship. As our findings show, in both cases, social insurance programmes were introduced, designed, and utilized to advance fiscal and economic policy capacity and thereby promote state building. Using these programmes and the commitments they created, political actors could legitimize the generation of revenues, build institutional infrastructure for tax collection, and create capital reserves for investing in the economy.

Social class, with its potentially pivotal influence on both policy-making and electoral outcomes tied to the welfare state, is a frequent fixture in academic and political discussions about social policy. Yet these discussions presuppose that class identity is in fact tied up with distinct attitudes toward the welfare state. Using original data from ten surveys fielded in the United States and Western Europe, we investigate the relationship between class and general stances toward the welfare state as a whole, with the goal of determining whether class affects how individuals understand and relate to the welfare state. Our findings suggest that, although class markers are tied to objective and subjective positional considerations about one's place in the society, they nevertheless do not seem to shape stances toward the welfare state. What is more, this is equally true across the various welfare state types, as we find no evidence that so-called ‘middle-class welfare states’ engender more positive middle-class attitudes than other regimes. Based on our analysis, we propose that researchers would do better to focus on household income rather than class; while income may not be a perfect predictor of attitudes toward the welfare state, it is a markedly better one than class.

User participation has become one of the most important concepts in the social care sector in many European countries, but the literature has mostly paid attention to disabled people or those with mental health problems. This article compares the user participation policies directed at social care for older people in Norway and England. Using a discourse analytical approach, a selection primarily of White papers from the 1960s until today are analysed. The analysis draws on the literature's discourse discussion, including a democratic/rights based discourse (full citizenship), a consumer discourse (consumers’ rights to choose welfare services), a co-production discourse (users and state/local authorities partnerships), and nuances of these discourses. The analysis shows that, while both countries start with variations of a democratic discourse, Norway develops a temporary and weak consumer discourse in a middle phase, then moves to co-production in current times. England, on the other hand, develops a comprehensive consumer discourse but also a surprisingly strong co-production discourse – the idea of a ‘Big Society’ – in early and current times.

The translation perspective explores the travel of policy ideas, programmes and practices across international boundaries, focusing on the process through which interpretative agents introduce and adjust borrowed policy items to a new policy context. Current research emphasises the significance of local networks’ support for translation's efficacy. However, we know little about how such networks are maintained and stabilized over time or how changing configurations and capacities may affect translation's prospects. This paper explores the case of Israel's attempted institutionalisation of workfare – an enduring international policy fashion – from 1998 to the present day. We follow the stabilization and destabilization of the local translation network across different levels and sites of policy design and implementation, analysing emerging conflicts and agreements at each site. We use the metaphor ‘episodes of translation’ to explore translation's value as a concept accounting for local policy change. In order for translation-led policy change to maintain legitimacy and actualisation in contested domains, ongoing engagement of existing and emerging policy actors is essential. This case demonstrates how when networks become destabilized, translation-led policy change may come to a halt.

The standard of living of older people is a critical policy matter, given Australia's ageing population. Conventional living standard assessments continue to rely on disposable income as a defining indicator, despite it not encompassing the full range of potential consumption possibilities that affect an individual's economic living standard. This article proposes a series of three economic resource metrics that sequentially append the disposable income metric with the value of non-cash benefits and services arising from the receipt of public goods and/or services from home ownership in the form of a ‘full’ income metric, and then the inclusion of wealth in the form of two derived ‘potential consumption’ metrics. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the findings demonstrate that augmenting disposable income with income streams from non-cash services and annuitised wealth substantially improves the relative economic position of older Australians. It also highlights the heterogeneity in economic living standard outcomes for different demographic sub-groups of older people that would otherwise be drawn using a disposable income analytic lens. The article argues that an expanded economic resource perspective is necessary for informing ageing and social policy.

Prior research on active labour market programmes (ALMPs) for young people has revealed either no effect or negative effects on transition rates into employment. In addition to accessing the programme content, participation in ALMPs bestows the right to a supplementary benefit. Yet, the direct effect of this benefit on the use and outcome of ALMPs remains largely unknown. We study the effects of a Norwegian policy that pays much higher benefits to recipients when they reach 19 years of age. This policy provides a natural experimental setting that allows us to utilise the age discontinuity to observe whether young people are more likely to become benefit recipients after their nineteenth birthday, and to estimate the effect of benefits on the labour supply. As age determines the increase in benefits rather than need, it creates a random and exogenous variation in the criteria for allocating cash benefits. We use Norwegian administrative register data that cover all 18 to 19 year olds during the period 2003 to 2012. We find no effect on programme take-up or employment rates. Hence, benefits do not work against the aim of ALMPs and young people's responsiveness to financial incentives cannot explain such programmes’ lack of effects.

This study investigates how support for Social Europe is related to citizens’ welfare attitudes. On the one hand, welfare attitudes can spill over from the national to the European level, given that Social Europe aims to achieve similar goals to those of national welfare states. On the other hand, support for the welfare state can be an obstacle, if citizens perceive the nation state and the European Union as competing or substituting governance levels. Using data from the 2014 Belgian National Election Study, we take a multidimensional approach to Social Europe, capturing attitudes toward social regulations, member state solidarity, European social citizenship, and a European social security system. Results demonstrate that citizens who are more positive about the welfare state are also more supportive of Social Europe. However, positive welfare attitudes do not affect all dimensions of Social Europe to the same extent. The spillover effect of support for basic welfare state principles is strongest for policy instruments of Social Europe that are less intrusive to national welfare states (EU social regulations). By contrast, welfare state critique has a stronger impact on support for more intrusive instruments (European social citizenship).

This paper sets out a general framework for analysing long-term care (LTC) systems for older people in different countries and then applies this framework to a specific national setting. The paper considers the extent to which South Africa's emerging LTC system conforms to broader patterns observed across low- and middle-income countries and how far it has been shaped by more local effects. It finds that patterns of demand for LTC vary across different racial categories. Despite having lower rates of ageing that the white population, Africans account for the majority of LTC demand. Residential services cater primarily for older whites and there is a widespread perception that LTC for Africans should be a family responsibility. Across the sector there is evidence of gaps in service availability, limited state oversight and uneven service quality. In 2016 this led to a high-profile political scandal which may prompt more effective state responses to this growing societal challenge.

The paper analyses the policy process which enabled the successful adoption of Australia's National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2013–2023 (NATSIHP), which is grounded in an understanding of the Social Determinants of Indigenous Health (SDIH). Ten interviews were conducted with key policy actors directly involved in its development. The theories we used to analyse qualitative data were the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Multiple Streams Approach, policy framing and critical constructionism. We used a complementary approach to policy analysis. The NATSIHP acknowledges the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter, Aboriginal) culture and the health effects of racism, and explicitly adopts a human-rights-based approach. This was enabled by a coalition campaigning to ‘Close the Gap’ (CTG) in health status between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The CTG campaign, and key Aboriginal health networks associated with it, operated as an effective advocacy coalition, and policy entrepreneurs emerged to lead the policy agenda. Thus, Aboriginal health networks were able to successfully contest conventional problem conceptions and policy framings offered by government policy actors and drive a paradigm shift for Aboriginal health to place SDIH at the centre of the NATSIHP policy. Implications of this research for policy theory and for other policy environments are considered along with suggestions for future research.