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Does Performance Matter? The Influence of Attitudes Towards Welfare State Performance on Voting for Rightwing and Leftwing Populist Parties
- Steven Saxonberg, Tomáš Sirovátka, Martin Guzi
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- Journal:
- Social Policy and Society , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 March 2024, pp. 1-15
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In recent decades, populist parties and leaders have obtained great political success. Since populism plays on voter dissatisfaction with the political elite, we might expect that dissatisfaction with the welfare state should also play a role. In this study, we suggest measures to assess welfare state performance (WSP), and we examine how assessment of WSP helps to explain support for the populist political parties – both rightwing and leftwing. Our findings are based on the sixth round of European Social Survey data that has a special module on democracy, which includes questions that enables us to measure WSP. This article shows that WSP is a significant predictor in explaining support for populist parties, but the dynamics differ between how WSP influences support for leftwing populist (LWP) and rightwing populist (RWP) parties.
eleven - Czechia: political experimentation or incremental reforms?
- Edited by Sotiria Theodoropoulou
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- Book:
- Labour Market Policies in the Era of Pervasive Austerity
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 12 April 2022
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- 28 February 2018, pp 253-276
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Summary
Introduction
In this chapter, we shall assess the dynamics of labour market policies and regulations during 2008–14 in Czechia. A primary focus will be developments in the unemployment benefit scheme (income replacement for insiders), active labour market policies (ALMPs) (including labour market training) and employment protection legislation. Second, we shall analyse needs-based income support (minimum income protection) and activation policies related to the minimum income scheme (MIS). Three issues will be paramount. The first concerns substantive and governance-related policy changes: whether these changes have brought expansion or retrenchment in expenditure and coverage (of benefit recipients or participants of the programmes). The second concerns whether there has been a shift in the character of the policy instruments that promote activation: whether these instruments have been rather enabling/restitutive or punitive/repressive in nature. The third concerns whether and how divisions are emerging concerning the policies between groups facing the risk of unemployment. Besides an assessment of labour market policy trends during the crisis and afterwards, the politics underlying the reforms will be discussed.
The key methodological approach is institutional policy analysis, combined with the secondary analysis of data from international and national sources. Historical institutionalism accentuates the role of institutional legacies in policies: policies and institutions are considered to be path-dependent on the institutional set-up. Institutional path dependency explains to a great extent the varieties of policy dynamics in different countries or the persistence of given features of welfare and labour market regimes over time, despite the common challenges that countries face. Studies also show that institutional path dependency is shaped by institutional traditions. Saxonberg et al (2013) explain, for example, how policy path dependency has been strong in Czechia in the area of childcare policies, even during the transition to a market democracy during the 1990s and 2000s, due to the cultural and institutional legacies of the past, in contrast to a new area, such as labour market policy, which has been subject to experimentation.
Path dependency, however, is not an obstacle to policy change. Incremental forms of institutional change can take place through ‘bricolage’ or ‘layering’. Accumulation of the incremental changes may, at times, lead to path-breaking change when the policy path comes to a critical juncture (Palier, 2005; Streeck and Thelen, 2005).
three - Solidarity at the margins of European society: linking the European social model to local conditions and solidarities
- Edited by Marion Ellison, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Reinventing Social Solidarity across Europe
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
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- 26 October 2011, pp 29-48
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Summary
Introduction
The European Union (EU) social model promoted primarily by the new ‘soft instruments’ of the ‘Social Open Method of Coordination’ (Social OMC) is built around the idea of social solidarity between and within nations of the EU. At the same time, since social policy is based on the principle of subsidiarity, the success of the Social OMC depends on ‘national solidarities.’ It is also confronted both at the EU and national level with other issues/agendas of the EU, such as hard instruments of economic/market integration. Focusing on how the Social OMC is forged within the national understanding and level of solidarity in the Czech Republic, and on influences upon the design and implementation of policies in social inclusion, this chapter argues that the general principles and objectives of the Social OMC have been redefined within national policies and national understandings of solidarity principles, which have been strongly influenced by prevailing neoliberal policy discourse within Europe. This discourse has emerged in the context of political practices of blaming marginalised groups and is mirrored in attitudes among the public. As a result of these mainstream discourses, policies and practices, people endangered by social exclusion are marginalised in policy making, while the policy approach based on blaming and sanctioning reinforces the barriers that result in their social inclusion. The ongoing economic recession has made the processes of social marginalisation even stronger, although some bottom-up policy initiatives of NGOs have acted as catalysts for the improvement of social capital and solidarity. The reinvention and reconstruction of the boundaries of solidarity seems to be an urgent, however uneasy, precondition for the implementation of the Social OMC.
Many commentators regard the success of the EU social model as a necessary pre-requisite for the success of the European integration project itself (for example Scharpf, 2002; Jacobsson and Schmid, 2002; De la Porte and Pochet, 2002 and others). National as well as transnational solidarity in the field of social policy seems to be a precondition for the creation of a ‘cohesive society’ whose members can form a ‘community of risk’ within the uncertain world. Pooling of risks as well as levelling of living conditions and smoothing of social inequalities at the EU level could help to contribute to the strengthening of linking social capital and social cohesion.
ten - The individual approach in activation policy in the Czech Republic
- Edited by Rik van Berkel, Ben Valkenburg
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- Book:
- Making It Personal
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- Bristol University Press
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- 22 January 2022
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- 28 February 2007, pp 193-216
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Introduction
The ‘Active Welfare State’ concept (Giddens, 1998) has become the guiding principle of the welfare state's paradigmatic change, with ‘activation goals’ permeating ever deeper through all its domains. The change is explicit particularly in the European Employment Strategy (EES), although the meaning of ‘activation’ may be understood differently (see Chapter Two, this volume). The above-mentioned paradigmatic change within the welfare state is, however, not as yet reflected in the post-communist countries, where more converse tendencies can be seen. On the one hand, the social changes under way in these countries include ‘activation’ of citizens and generate the need for activation strategies within the welfare state. On the other hand, the unfavourable economic conditions and inadequate capacity of public institutions often make the implementation of the objectives and measures difficult. The strategy of market transformation implicitly contains, among other things, citizen education towards individual responsibility, even by means of economic incentives. It also implies the need to cultivate citizens’ human capital as a precondition for their future productivity. At the same time, transformation means new social risks that must be absorbed, which in turn necessitates new expenditure (see Offe, 1996).
Considering these circumstances, risk-absorption efforts have so far centred primarily on redistributive and compensatory tools. ‘Activation’ measures – particularly active labour market policies – have been lagging far behind the EU countries (see Cazes and Nešporová, 2003), primarily owing to insufficient resources and staff capacity necessary for their effective implementation. However, compensatory strategies do not seem effective in the fight against new social risks. Public expenditure has increased, employment has declined and unemployment is high in the post-communist countries of central Europe, often accompanied by increasing threats of poverty and social exclusion. Such a situation then forces political representations into taking unpopular short-term steps (such as curtailing social benefits, particularly unemployment benefits, tightening conditions of early retirement and adopting other public finance reforms); as well as longterm measures aiming at paradigmatic change according to the principles of activation – in line with the EES guidelines. At the same time, activation strategies in post-communist countries are likely to assume specific forms depending on their respective ideological discourses and notions of activation strategy, as well as their specific institutional environments and processes of implementation.
six - Welfare state solidarity and support: the Czech Republic compared with the Netherlands
- Edited by Peter Townsend, David Gordon
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- Book:
- World Poverty
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2022
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- 25 September 2002, pp 147-170
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Introduction
The problem of reconciling the demands on both the social and economic effectiveness of the social security systems in the transforming post-communist countries has often been pointed out, along with the importance attached to finding a solution (for example, Barr, 1994; Offe, 1996; Standing, 1996; Ferge, 1997; Kramer, 1997). Adequate reduction of poverty and social exclusion is essential for securing long-term public support for – and the legitimacy of – the political and economic changes, as well as for maintaining political stability. However, it is also necessary to reduce non-investment budgetary spending (including spending on social systems), and necessary to accumulate available resources to support investment and economic growth. In addition to these objective factors, political and ideological factors are of specific importance. Departure from collective arrangements commanded broad support, especially at the beginning of the transformation, and neoliberal ideology has had an exceptional influence on the reconstruction of social system strategies in the countries of Central Europe (in the Czech Republic, for example, it was reflected in the requirement of ‘teaching citizens self-responsibility’, which was also applied to the system of social security).
The tension that exists in this dilemma of conflicting expectations related to the increasing social security system. While the new political elite could take advantage of their strong political credit at the beginning of the transformation, and utilise it as a “political window of opportunity” (Kramer, 1997, p 50) to take radical steps affecting the social security area, for example, they have gradually been forced to pay increasing attention to the social and political costs of transitional measures. However, practical political considerations have often made the Czech government adhere to time serving solutions. With the vision of economic prosperity fading, it might be expected that Czech voters’ willingness to accept and tolerate new risks would also fade. However, expectations and demands regarding compensation for such risks seem in fact to be growing among the population (IVVM, 1998). In this context, analyses of the legitimacy of social policy are important.
With regard to such analyses, there are at least two key distinctions that have to be pointed out.