The main aim of this thesis is to analyse the Czech family policy, compare it with the Swedish family policy and ascertain whether the Czech legislation advanced to the so-called Scandinavian welfare state model in years 1995-2012. The main research questions focus on the development of the Czech legislation on parental leave and parental allowances in years during the monitored period in terms of gender-sensitive welfare state typologies and comparison of the Czech and Swedish legislation.

In the long term the issue of the welfare state is one of the most debated political topics and it concerns almost all members of society. In the last few decades the advanced welfare state has been more frequently perceived as an obstacle for competitiveness in the globalized economy and issues of its economic sustainability and societal impact are widely debated. Sweden is generally considered to be a country with the most advanced model of welfare state, but it is also a country which suffered from a deep economic crisis in the early 1990s. Development of the Swedish model of welfare state in the context of the crisis presents a critical case for assessment of welfare state vitality. In this thesis, welfare state is defined as a multidimensional phenomenon that includes both social expenditures and institutions of social policy and power structures and legitimacy. For analyzing of transformations of the Swedish welfare state in all four dimensions is applied a theoretical perspective based on the power resources theory, the institutional approach, the transnational perspective, the dependency and the world-systems theory which whose complementarity is theoretically substantiated. The thesis with this approach should contribute to better understanding of the development of the welfare state in...

This thesis explores the representation of female vulnerability in three working-class novels bythe lesser-known Swedish author Inga Lena Larsson (1907–1987), against the historicalbackground of the emergent Swedish welfare state. Larsson’s career as an author started in the30’s when she got a short story published in a magazine. She wrote her first novel during thelast years of the Second World War. It was published in 1945 and was followed by six morenovels of which the last was released in 1959. This study is focused on the following threenovels from the early 50’s: Vattenpass (1950), Vide ung (1951) and Födelsenatt (1952). Thenovels depict working class women in their everyday struggle to make ends meet and femaleexperiences such as sex, rape, pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth are laid bare. The theoreticalbasis of the thesis is Sara Ahmed’s theory of emotions as actions, Toril Moi’s interpretation ofSimone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological understanding of what it means to be a woman, andBeverly Skeggs’ study of working-class women. Vulnerability is understood as relational andas corporal experiences that shape the depicted women’s understanding of themselves. Theanalyses are thematically structured and address vulnerability through experiences of poverty,sexuality, illness, and mothering. The thesis argues that the novels illustrate vulnerability as amotion that moves between the private and public sector. Vulnerability is depicted as limitedpossibilities and options but also as a source of agency. The women in the novels act, even inexposed situations such as illegal abortion. The novels demonstrate vulnerability as a state ofhelplessness and of productivity.

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Presented dissertation analysis to what extent is motivation to occupation affected by minimum wage and by State system of social help. It focuses on very controversial topic of today's society and that is if current rate of minimum wage is sufficient for people to pay off or if it is discouraging them to search for a new job so people then prefer to draw the social benefits rather than working. The dissertation illustrates definition of minimum wage and its development in the Czech Republic, furthermore it deals with the function of minimum wage and especially with its influence on motivation to work and its consequences on an employment. It also contains how and in what amount the minimum wage set down in European Union is. In the contrast the dissertation handles the theory of welfare state and social system in the Czech Republic, it contains scope of social benefits which are in the Czech Republic provided during unemployment or to people with low income. In the next section the dissertation is focused on the analysis of existing issues originating from minimum wage and social benefits. It also introduces us research that have been done in this area. Finally, the dissertation includes its own research investigation whose goal was to prove whether people are motivated or not to accept job with...

Thesis "Women between Family and Work and the Welfare State" examines the challenges of balancing work and family roles of men and women, specifically in relation to institutional conditions of the Welfare State in the Czech Republic. The author analyzes and identifies external factors influencing family life and work balance. Furthermore, the author compares situation in the Czech Republic with selected countries of the European Union. The most important theoretical backgrounds of the thesis are the Welfare State theory, the family theory and the gender inequality theory. The main methods applied in the thesis are secondary data analysis and comparative analysis. The MA is divided in eight chapters. Key part of the thesis is analytical part, which consists of four chapters. First of them analyzes the external and internal factors that influence the behavior of men and women, namely the cultural value framework, structural labor market conditions and preferences of men, women and employers. The second one examines the institutional limitations and opportunities created by the Czech Welfare State. The comparative analysis of the situation among the Czech Republic, France and Sweden is carried out in the third chapter. The last chapter analyzes the motives and strategies of men's and women's family...

The diploma thesis Integration Courses: Last Stage of Swedish Efforts to Incorporate Immigrants analyzes integration arrangements in the context of the evolution of Swedish integration policies. Through theoretical models of incorporation the author argues that use of these courses is a consequence of various factors with a lack of immigrants' incorporation and increasing welfare state activation as the most significant. The process of welfare state activation does not focus exclusively on the immigrants, nevertheless, in the policy area of immigrant integration some of the activation features are most visible. The modern state delegates much more duties on individuals who can not rely on its protecting hands as they were used to earlier. As the state requires more from all its citizens, immigrants are expected to strive for their integration more pro-actively. The participation in the integration courses belongs to one of the duties the immigrants must accept. The Swedish approach is, however, a bit specific, since the courses' participation is not mandatory for all immigrants but a targeted group of newcomers. Moreover, the courses differ considerably from the general tendency in Western Europe with their stressed focus on labour-market related integration measures. Together with a language...

[pt] O objetivo deste trabalho é contribuir para a interpretação das transformações no welfare state brasileiro durante a Nova República (1988-2016). Nesse sentido, o estudo parte de uma rápida discussão a respeito dos regimes de welfare, com base em Esping-Andersen (1990), seguindo por uma greve releitura da história das políticas sociais brasileiras para, então, dedicar-se ao estudo do período posterior à Constituição Federal de 1988. O trabalho, assim, propõe uma leitura alternativa das transformações recentes da seguridade social no país a partir de obras já consagradas sobre o tema. Essa bibliografia ora enfatiza uma suposta guinada universalista da proteção social no país, engendrada pelos preceitos contidos na CF, ora um processo de liberalização, visível, por exemplo, na relação público/privado na saúde. A hipótese a ser defendida consiste na perspectiva de que essas duas tendências são simultâneas e não excludentes, partindo tanto de inovações institucionais da gestão do PT, como o Programa Bolsa Família (PBF), como de determinações constitucionais, como o Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC), além de serem influenciadas também por iniciativas anteriores, entre elas o fortalecimento do ramo privado de saúde realizado pela ditadura militar. Por fim, a dissertação propõe que esses dois caminhos, comumente vistos como opostos, teriam, na verdade, complementaridade, como na articulação entre o PBF e o BPC no combate à extrema pobreza. / [en] This work aims to contribute to the interpretation of the transformations regarding the Brazilian welfare state during the New Republic (1988-2016). The study starts with a short discussion on Esping-Andersen s (1990) concept of regimes of welfare, following with a brief reconstruction of the history of Brazilian social policy in order to, lastly, dedicate itself to the analysis of the period launched by the Federal Constitution of 1988. This dissertation, then, proposes an alternative interpretation of the recent changes of the Brazilian social security scheme. According to this view, there is a simultaneous twofold trend regarding the national welfare state that points towards the expansion of both liberal inspired and social-democratic inspired social policy. The first trend would have its origins in public policy decisions made by democratic elected governments after 1988 and in options made by past regimes, especially the military dictatorship. The second would rely more on the spirit of the Federal Constitution, whose social precepts are strongly universalist. Finally, this work proposes that those two routes, which are usually regarded as opposed, actually have some complementarities, as one can see through the joint action of Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) and Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) against extreme poverty in recent years.

This paper studies when warfare meets welfare in the Swedish contingency planning of healthcare in war during the period 1950 to 1985 with the aim of analysing how the planning changed, what caused these changes and how this can be linked to societal changes in the post-war Sweden. The analysis is carried out with the help of a self-adapted stakeholder model where first the change in planning and management is analysed and then seeks causal explanations for the key changes based on three military and three civilian drivers. The starting point for civilian contingency planning for health care in war was the Civil Air Protection investigation (SOU 1936:57). The investigation found that the need for civilian hospitalcare in war had changed because total war had blurred the boundaries between military and civilian health care. The report therefore proposed that a joint plan for hospital care in war should be established. The base of the new organization was the emergency hospitals, which were largely existing healthcare facilities, given that name in a war situation. To recreate wartime planning for health care, a Health Care Preparedness Board (Swe:Sjukvårdsberedskapsnämnden) was established in 1948 responsible for planning of health care in wartime. There were three major turning points in the planning. In 1950 based on experience from the conventional bombing wars of World War II, in 1959 based on the increasingly powerful nuclear weapons and in 1969 due to Sweden ceasing to plan total defence for a nuclear war. The consequences of the first two redesigns involved the wartime establishment of hundreds of small emergency hospitals outside the city centres, while from 1969 the large peacetime hospitals returned as the core of wartime health care. The 1970s and 1980s were characterized by a decentralization of responsibility of planning and wartime management from the state to the county councils (Swe: landstingen). The main causes for the turning points were the development of nuclear weapons and the expansion of the welfare state. The impact of nuclear weapons is demonstrated by the fact that there is a start and an end to the nuclear phase of planning. The expansion of the welfare state meant that the role of the county councils over 30 years went from carrying out orders from the state and the armed forces to controlling both management and planning and where the military's right toissue wartime directives was abolished. This can be explained by the expansion of health care during the same period and the increased power of the county councils that came with the expansion.The study shows that the militarization of Swedish civilian society was strong up until about 1970, but then rapidly declined and it was increasingly the armed forces that had to adapt to the structure and requirements of the peacetime health care rather than the other way around. Again,the reason for this shift is the significant expansion of the welfare state and the peacetime healthcare system, which shifted both economic and political power away from the military to the civilian health care system.

This thesis investigates the developing understanding of male homosexuality as a societal issue in Sweden between 1930 and 1960, primarily detailing what political motives and scientific ideas defined the governmental discourse around the group in question. In doing so, the discussion about male homosexuality is situated within a rapidly transforming political landscape. 1930–1945 has been described as a preamble to the Swedish welfare state, while 1945–1960 is commonly seen as its defining period. The study shows that in the 1930s, the question of homosexuality was connected to population policy, while from 1941 and onwards, it was primarily connected to social policy. It is then argued that these changes can be understood using theoretical ideas of biopower, more specifically state generated ideals regarding productivity and biological reproduction. It is also argued that the surge in negative attitudes towards male homosexuality in the 1950s must be understood as an effect of this development.