Courses: Comparative and International Socio-economic Policy

Teaching Staff

Prof. Frank Vandenbroucke (Member of the Flemish Parliament, University of Leuven, Belgium)

Objectives

The course looks at current social policy as the result of interacting policies on different policy levels, whereby special attention will be given to the impact of the European level on the social policies at the national level. The comparative approach will give an insight in the different ways in which welfare states have organized their social policies. Taking into account the differences, students will be encouraged to criticize existing typologies of welfare state regimes and to improve those typologies if necessary.

Contents

  • In response to the social needs, that were associated with the industrial society, nation states have used different ideologies. Combined with different policy making structures situated on different social policy levels (i.e. the global/regional/federal/national and local level), this has lead to different social policy regimes.
  • In the European context the Atlantic, Continental, Scandinavian and Southern welfare states tend to differ especially with respect to the ways in which they conceive citizens and workers and to the way they approach the labour income nexus. It was Esping-Andersen who firstly pointed to the existence of welfare state regimes. Anyhow, the policy context has changed. All states are challenged by an interrelated set of factors of which globalization and individualization are among the most pronounced ones. On top of this, the impact of the European level has changed since the Lisbon European Summit 2000. On this occasion the open method of co ordination OMC, that was developed with respect to employment policies by the Luxembourg Summit (1997), was also to be applied to the social policy area.
  • All of these changes make it necessary to re-question the old welfare state regime typologies. Moreover, the impact has to be studied of the adoption of the OMC on European as well as the national social policy actors and institutions.