Partant des années du tigre celtique, la croissance économique remarquable de l’Irlande et les inégalités existantes dans son sillage, cette thèse tente de réévaluer la question des inégalités contemporaines dans les sociétés modernes en s’intéressant au cas irlandais entre 1922 et 2002. Dans quelle mesure les inégalités existaient-elles avant l’avènement du tigre celtique ? Quelles étaient les attitudes irlandaises vis-à-vis des inégalités et comment celles-ci ont-elles évolué ? Les Irlandais se préoccupent-ils de l’égalité ? À partir d’une analyse économique, sociale, historique et politique fondée sur des recherches comparatives portant sur le développement des systèmes d’État providence et le degré plus ou moins redistributif de leurs politiques, ainsi que des réflexions portant sur les inégalités et la justice dans nos sociétés, cette thèse a pour objectif de montrer que les inégalités actuelles en Irlande peuvent être mieux appréhendées lorsqu’elles sont considérées sous l’angle d’une incapacité à créer une société plus juste à partir de 1922. Selon l’auteur, trois séries particulières de facteurs, les facteurs démographiques et économiques, les facteurs politiques et les mentalités irlandaises, ont, en profonde interaction les uns avec les autres, établi un cadre puissant qui a empêché l’avènement d’une société plus juste entre 1922 et 2002. / Beginning with the Celtic Tiger years, Ireland’s remarkable economic growth and the inequalities existing in its wake, this PhD tries to re-assess the issue of contemporary inequalities in modern societies emphasising the Irish case from 1922 to 2002. To what extent did inequalities exist in Ireland prior to the advent of the Celtic Tiger? What were Irish attitudes to inequalities and how have they evolved? Do Irish people care about equality? Based on an economic, social, historical and political analysis resting on recent comparative studies of the development of welfare state systems and the varying extents of their redistributive agendas as well as on reflections on inequalities and fairness in our societies, this thesis aims to show that current inequalities in Ireland can best be understood in the light of an inability to create a more just society from 1922 onwards. The author argues that three particular sets of factors, demographic and economic factors, political factors, and Irish mentalités have, in close interaction with one another, provided a strong framework which has prevented the advent of a more just society between 1922 and 2002.

Alors que la littérature académique sur les politiques de l’emploi se concentre sur les variables nationales du changement, cette recherche s’intéresse à la perméabilité des frontières nationales de l’action publique dans un contexte européanisé. En adoptant une approche interactionniste de l’européanisation, elle explique d’abord comment les institutions européennes ont défini un modèle, celui de la flexicurité, qui articule deux dimensions que les experts et les acteurs politiques ont longtemps considérées comme incompatibles : la flexibilité des marchés du travail et la sécurité des travailleurs. La recherche se penche ensuite sur la comparaison de deux cas nationaux, dont les systèmes de protection sociale étaient traditionnellement éloignés des cadres de la flexicurité, mais qui ont pourtant mis en œuvre des réformes qui vont dans le sens prescrit par les institutions européennes : la France et le Portugal. In fine, la thèse montre que les frontières nationales sont remises en cause mais n’ont pas disparu. Même s’il devient difficile d’agir de manière indépendante, les acteurs politiques nationaux mettent en œuvre des stratégies destinées à préserver leur autonomie. / The literature on employment policies has mainly focused on national variables in order to explain change. This research studies the degree of openness of national boundaries in a European context. By adopting an interactionist approach of Europeanization, it first explains how European institutions have defined a model of flexicurity that combines flexibility on the labor markets and security for the workers, whereas these two characteristics have long been considered incompatible. Then the research compares the recent evolution of two social protection systems that did not fit with the flexicurity framework and have nevertheless implemented employment policy reforms in line with European requirements. To explain the link between European demands and national reforms, this research underlines two mechanisms. First, it shows that national spheres are embedded in a broader context that strengthens the competition between welfare models but has a different impact on national spheres (the “national delay issue” in Portugal and the “specificities of the French model” in France). Then, in both cases, the political and administrative actors have tried to depoliticize policy reforms by mobilizing academic expertise. The different modalities of expert interventions crucially influence trade unions’ capacities to participate in the framing of national reforms. All in all, the thesis shows that national boundaries are challenged but have not disappeared. Even though it becomes difficult for them to act independently, national political leaders tend to develop strategies to preserve their autonomy.

Cette thèse propose une typologie rendant compte de la diversité des politiques publiques visant à promouvoir l'indépendance des jeunes, ou leur citoyenneté socioéconomique, en Europe. Elle repose sur deux dimensions. La première concerne l’action publique lorsqu’elle vise à promouvoir l’emploi des jeunes grâce à la politique d’éducation et la politique de l’emploi : c’est l’enjeu de la citoyenneté économique des jeunes. Elle peut être inclusive, lorsqu’un pays est fortement macrocorporatiste, ou sélective, lorsque le macrocorporatisme est faible, selon que cette action délivre des compétences à tous les jeunes ou à une partie seulement. La deuxième dimension renvoie à l’action publique lorsqu’elle délivre directement une aide publique aux jeunes. C’est l’enjeu de la citoyenneté sociale des jeunes. Elle peut être familialisée dans les Etats-providence de tradition Bismarckienne, lorsque les jeunes sont considérés comme des enfants, ou individualisée dans les Etats-providence de tradition Beveridgienne, quand ils sont vus comme des adultes. En croisant ces deux dimensions, on obtient quatre régimes de citoyenneté socioéconomique, avec une citoyenneté habilitante (inclusive/individualisée), une citoyenneté encadrée (inclusive/familialisée), une citoyenneté de seconde classe (sélective/individualisée), et une citoyenneté refusée (sélective/familialisée). Dans une première partie empirique, nous classons 15 pays d’Europe de l’Ouest dans cette typologie, après avoir élaboré deux indices synthétiques de citoyenneté économique et de citoyenneté sociale. Puis, dans une deuxième partie empirique, nous procédons à quatre études de cas représentatifs de chaque régime, à savoir la Suède, l’Allemagne, le Royaume-Uni et la France. / This dissertation proposed a typology that accounts for the diversity of public policies promoting young people’s independence, i.e. what I call ‘youth welfare citizenship’, in Europe. This typology is built around two dimensions. The first dimension relates to public intervention on the school-to-work transition in order to promote the access to employment for young people, through the education policy and the employment policy: this is the issue of youth economic citizenship. It can be encompassing, when a country is strongly macrocorporatist, or selective, when it is not, according to the distribution of skills among the youth population. The second dimension has to do with public aids from the state towards young people: this is the issue of youth social citizenship. It can be familialized in Bismarckian welfare states, where young people are seen as children, or it can be individualized in Beveridgian welfare states, where young people are deemed to be adults. Combining these two dimensions, we end up with four regimes of youth welfare citizenship: an enabling citizenship (inclusive/individualized), a monitored citizenship (inclusive/familialized), a second-class citizenship (selective/individualized), and a denied citizenship (selective/familialized). In the first empirical part, I classify 15 western European countries into the typology by building two synthetic indices of youth economic citizenship and youth social citizenship. Then, in the second empirical part, I proceed to four case studies, each representing a regime of the typology: Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.

My research brings together two areas of sociological inquiry. The first area involves the study of the welfare state and the second the determinants of health status. Drawing on Esping-Andersen's work concerning a particular aspect of the welfare state, decommodification, two questions are of interest. First, are individuals in countries with more decommodifying welfare states less likely to report poor self-perceived health than individuals in countries with less decommodifying welfare states? Second, does decommodification affect the health of various population groups in different ways? Gender and income groups are of interest here. Theoretically, I argue that the welfare state impacts the stratification order, that social inequality is tied to social cohesion, and that social cohesion is linked to health. I draw on sources of both country- and individual- level data, including the comparative welfare Entitlements dataset, the World Values Survey, and the European Values Study, to test hypotheses concerning the link between decommodification and self-perceived health. In general, I hypothesize that higher levels of decommodification will contribute to a decreased likelihood that individuals report poor self-perceived health. Given the miltilevel structure of my research questions and hypotheses, I use multilevel binary logistic regression to assess relationships of interest. My findings indicate that, for all groups, decommodification does not have a statistically significant relationship with self-perceived health. In other words, higher levels of welfare support do not decrease the likelihood that individuals report poor health. To elaborate, for all groups, those who are trusting, as compared to those who are not, are less likely to report poor health. Overall, the data do not support my hypotheses, revealing potential flaws in my theory linking the welfare state and health status. My research, then, has both theoretical and empirical implications.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the growing debate around the concept of social capital. The concept has been heralded by many as a means of uniting the social sciences, particularly economics and sociology, and of overcoming ideological divisions between left and right. However, critics argue that the concept is poorly theorised and provides little insight. More radical critics have claimed the concept may be a neo-liberal ‘Trojan horse’, a mechanism by which the atomistic thinking of neoclassical economics colonises social theory. I examine these more radical claims by exploring the origins of the concept of social capital within rational choice economics. I argue that we should differentiate between two types of potential colonisation. The first is a form of methodological colonisation, whereby overly abstract, reductionist and rationalist approaches (which I term modernist) are extended into social theory. The second is a form of ideological colonisation, whereby a normative commitment to individualism and the market is extended into social theory. I argue that the concept of social capital has been the product of a trend within rational choice economics away from the extremes of modernism. In this sense the concept represents an attempt to bring economics and social theory closer together, and a willingness on the part of rational choice theorists to take more seriously the techniques and insights of the other social sciences. However, I argue that this trend away from modernism has often been associated with a reaffirmation of rational choice theorists’ normative commitment to individualism and the market. In particular, I argue the concept of social capital has been strongly influenced by elements of the Austrian economic tradition, and forms part of a spontaneous order explanation of economic and social systems. I then apply these insights to the Australian social capital debate. I argue that initially the Australian social capital debate continued an earlier debate over economic rationalism and the merits of market-orientated economic reform. I argue that participants from both sides of the economic rationalism debate used the concept of social capital to move away from modernism, but continued to disagree over the role of individualism. Finally, I argue that confusion between moving away from modernism, and moving away from market ideology, has led some Third Way theorists to misconstrue the concept as a means to overcome ideology.

<p>In this study, attitudes towards female employment and the division of labour between men and women in Germany, Italy and Sweden are explored. Using a quantitative approach, the first objective is to examine how political ideologies and welfare political models are reflected in or accompany attitudes towards female labour market participation among different groups in the three welfare states. Welfare policies significantly influence women’s choices to enter and remain in employment and to achieve individual social rights. Based on a more qualitative approach, the second aim is to study policy dynamics in relation to changing value orientations, and to track the emergence of alternative policies and their intended target groups. For this purpose local political implementers in each country were interviewed.</p><p>The overall conclusion is that that the ways in which certain patterns of gender relations occur are closely related to the designs of national welfare policies. Still, within the groups of women and men factors such as age, educational attainment levels and family status are important or even decisive for attitudes towards female labour market participation. In addition, the extent to which attitudes correspond to actual female labour market behaviour seems largely to be a matter of public policy. While all three studies point at important national differences in welfare policies at the same time as patterns of value orientations converge, especially among women, the comparison of local policy levels reveals important withincountry variations. These variations concern the quantity as well as the quality of policy measures, that is, the political implications for gender on socio-economic situation, alternative political majority and historical and cultural heritage. Variations in local policy formulations are large in Italy and less pronounced in Germany and Sweden, and they illustrate the different political emphasis placed on the preservation, modification or transformation of what is defined as gender equality and as local or national cultural traditions. Local social and labour market policies depict quite different approaches. The degree of state control versus local autonomy is relevant for the outcome of local social policies on gender and both national and local policy formulations are important in determining whether the normative emphasis should be placed on the maintenance, reinforcement or alteration of gender relations. While such choices and decisions also include the acceptance or rejection of national, and even local differences in definitions of citizenship rights, they point at the inherent relativity of the concept and as a result, its gendering effects on social, economic and political equality. </p>

<p>This thesis studies youth from different perspectives. These are the life phaseand the generational perspectives, which have been studied via questions of establishment and individualisation. The main question is whether young people are different because they have not made socially important transitions into adulthood or if they are different because they have grown up under different circumstances than earlier generations. The consequences of the outcome are important because they can indicate what kind of society young people will reproduce. The following conclusions are drawn: First, there are clear effects of social structurations (class of origin and gender) in the lives of young people. They affect the distribution of attitudes towards welfare state expenditures as well as the economic effects in a long-term perspective. Second, there is rather weak importance of role transitions in relation to what young people believe is important for adulthood, role transitions’ importance for the distribution of attitudes towards the welfare state as well as role transitions’ importance in a long-term perspective. Third, increasing age and subtle socialisation processes may be an explanation to the rather weak meaning of role transitions, cause adjustments to surrounding contexts and people’s expectations. It is concluded that the life phase perspective is a more accurate way of viewing young people, mainly because of the impact of social structurations, which are believed to contribute to continuous reproduction rather than complete change of society.</p>

This dissertation studies the spread of sports for all in Sweden during the years 1945 to 1981. The purposes of the dissertation are twofold: in part to survey the forms of physical activities which were launched as sports for all after 1945, in part to answer the question: Why have almost all voluntarily organized sports in Sweden been part of one organization since the 1970s? In order to handle the diversities of activities that can fall within the concept of sport, two principal abstractions of the concept are used: one rigorous and one flexible. Which definition one uses influences how physical activities are organized in a society. Earlier research into the history of the Swedish sports movement has concluded that it has had a relatively high degree of autonomy in relation to the state. This finding is questioned in this dissertation. Sveriges Riksidrottsförbund (RF) was the largest Swedish sports organization throughout the 20th century and at same time the organization the government relied on to develop sports policies and distribute the financial contribution from the state to the sports movement. This means that RF has played two roles, as an umbrella organization within the Swedish sports movement and as leader of the organizations within the Swedish sports movement, popular movement and semi-public authority. The dissertation shows that the two roles, that RF played, have caused conflicts of interest within the organization. That is made plain when one studies the spread of sports for all. Most members of the organization just wanted to practise different sports and were not interested in the leading organization’s desire to promote a great many different kinds of physical acitivites according to a flexible concept of sport. These members were not interested in strengthening the organization’s leading position within sports. There are not many conceptions that are so universally and uncritically accepted as the conception of the connection between physical activity and health. Sports for all came to age in a society where more and more people were told to use part of their leisure time to take part in physical activities. A societal consensus prevailed that the population’s health was on the decline due to the increased standard of living, which was creating an inactive and unhealthy population. This has meant that sports for all have been an asset of power for the sports organizations and that they have fought for authority and control over sports for all; a struggle fought over the language and thoughts as much as over sport activities. Since 1945 large campaigns to get the population to become more physically active irrespective of physical ability have been common.

A national pension system, like most large government policies, does many things, some of which involve governing the population and steering citizens in certain directions. This study, on the transformation of Sweden’s national pension system, sheds light on who the actors involved at different sites and levels in the policy process are, what they do, and how they do it. By mapping out the policy process - and the actors, practices and technologies involved - the workings of new forms of governance come into focus. Of particular interest is the way policy-making works as a governing tool in the contemporary Swedish welfare state. On a broader level, this study is concerned with how new forms of governance may alter the roles of, as well as affect the relationship between, state and citizen. At the core of the study are the new forms of governance that are being brought forward in contemporary welfare state restructuring in which the logic, language and practices of the market are given increased salience also within the realm of government. Sweden’s new national pension system is seen as a ‘political technology’ with the power to transform society through its subjects; the citizens. The study shows how a set of interconnected technologies within the construction of the new national pension scheme brings about processes of both depoliticization and responsibilization. Anthropological fieldwork was carried out among politicians, experts, technocrats, bureaucrats, government information personnel as well as among ‘ordinary’ citizens in an attempt to study ‘all the way through’ a policy process with significance to the ongoing transformation of the Swedish welfare state.

This dissertation takes a step towards providing a better understanding of post-socialist welfare state development from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. The overall analytical goal of this thesis has been to critically assess the development of social policies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania using them as illustrative examples of post-socialist welfare state development in the light of the theories, approaches and typologies that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The four studies included in this dissertation aspire to a common aim in a number of specific ways. The first study tries to place the ideal-typical welfare state models of the Baltic States within the well-known welfare state typologies. At the same time, it provides a rich overview of the main social security institutions in the three countries by comparing them with each other and with the previous structures of the Soviet period. It examines the social insurance institutions of the Baltic States (old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, short-term benefits, sickness, maternity and parental insurance and family benefits) with respect to conditions of eligibility, replacement rates, financing and contributions. The findings of this study indicate that the Latvian social security system can generally be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models. The Estonian social security system can generally also be characterised as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models, even if there are some weak elements of the targeted model in it. It appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of the welfare state. Nevertheless, as the example of the three Baltic States shows, there is diversity in how these countries solve problems within the field of social policy. In studying the social security schemes in detail, some common features were found that could be attributed to all three countries. Therefore, the critical analysis of the main social security institutions of the Baltic States in this study gave strong supporting evidence in favour of identifying the post-socialist regime type that is already gaining acceptance within comparative welfare state research. Study Two compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the essay is to highlight the forces that have influenced the transformation of the social policy from its former highly universal, albeit authoritarian, form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study demonstrates that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. The results of this analysis revealed that people's attitudes towards distributive justice and the developmental level of civil society also play an important part in shaping social policies. The shift to individualism in people’s mentality and the decline of the labour movement, or, to be more precise, the decline in trade union membership and influence, does nothing to promote the development of social rights in the Baltic countries and hinders the expansion of social policies. The legacy of the past has been another important factor in shaping social programs. It can be concluded that social policy should be studied as if embedded not only in the welfare-economy nexus, but also in the societal, historical and cultural nexus of a given society. Study Three discusses the views of the state elites on family policy within a wider theoretical setting covering family policy and social policy in a broader sense and attempts to expand this analytical framework to include other post-socialist countries. The aim of this essay is to explore the various views of the state elites in the Baltics concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the motives behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance the parents’ responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Estonian policy-makers seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality is more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. It is strongly arguable that there is a link between the underlying motives and the kinds of family benefits in a given country. This study, thus, indicates how intimately the attitudes of the state bureaucrats, policy-makers, political elite and researchers shape social policy. It confirms that family policy is a product of the prevailing ideology within a country, while the potential influence of globalisation and Europeanisation is detectable too. The final essay takes into account the opinions of welfare users and examines the performances of the institutionalised family benefits by relying on the recipients’ opinions regarding these benefits. The opinions of the populations as a whole regarding government efforts to help families are compared with those of the welfare users. Various family benefits are evaluated according to the recipients' satisfaction with those benefits as well as the contemporaneous levels of subjective satisfaction with the welfare programs related to the absolute level of expenditure on each program. The findings of this paper indicate that, in Latvia, people experience a lower level of success regarding state-run family insurance institutions, as compared to those in Lithuania and Estonia. This is deemed to be because the cash benefits for families and children in Latvia are, on average, seen as marginally influencing the overall financial situation of the families concerned. In Lithuania and Estonia, the overwhelming majority think that the family benefit systems improve the financial situation of families. It appears that recipients evaluated universal family benefits as less positive than targeted benefits. Some universal benefits negatively influenced the level of general satisfaction with the family benefits system provided in the countries being researched. This study puts forward a discussion about whether universalism is always more legitimate than targeting. In transitional economies, in which resources are highly constrained, some forms of universal benefits could turn out to be very expensive in relative terms, without being seen as useful or legitimate forms of help to families. In sum, by closely examining the different aspects of social policy, this dissertation goes beyond the over-generalisation of Eastern European welfare state development and, instead, takes a more detailed look at what is really going on in these countries through the examples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In addition, another important contribution made by this study is that it revives ‘western’ theoretical knowledge through ‘eastern’ empirical evidence and provides the opportunity to expand the theoretical framework for post-socialist societies.