What are governments for?

.

Chapter 1 in Western Welfare Capitalisms in Good Times and Bad, 2023, pp 2-13 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Western governments spend 30-55% of their GDP on the welfare state. This led Esping-Andersen (1990) to label them as ‘welfare-capitalist’ regimes. The regimes have differing policy priorities. Social democratic regimes prioritise equality, liberal regimes prioritise economic growth and rising living standards, while corporatist and Southern European proto-corporatist regimes prioritise financial security and social stability. Some social scientists believe that in recent decades these regimes have been converging towards pursuing liberal priorities. One of the main aims of the book is to assess this claim. We assess regime priorities and performance both in ‘good times’ and times of crisis; during the Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035312306.00006 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22334_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com
sales@e-elgar.co.uk

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla (darrel@e-elgar.co.uk).