The devolution of welfare services in the United States has increased the importance of the nonprofit sector. Geiger and Wolch argue that decentralization has left nonprofit organizations (NPOs) under the purview of the state. They refer to this as the “shadow state.” Trudeau argues for a more nuanced view of the shadow state in which governmental agencies and NPOs are highly interdependent. This research expands on the findings of Trudeau by extending the shadow state construct to the individual. I examine the role of refugees in the shadow state construct and their ability to affect government policy through participation in NPOs and find that refugees do indeed play a role in the shadow state. Through feedback, experience and, most importantly, by becoming part of the organization, refugees can have an impact on refugee services through participation in NPOs.

The article points to the following causes of German social policy reform, as it has taken shape by the so-called ‘Hartz’-Acts: the self-inflicted financial crisis of the welfare state, the return of party leaders as agenda setters, and the weakening of employers associations and trade unions in this policy field. Through a large, informal coalition, the political parties have responded to various internal conflict constellations.

Our aim is to gain knowledge of some areas of public services available to unemployed youngpeople in Sweden and to study how these services are implemented in practical social work. It was toview that what services are conducted for unemployed young people, why these services conductedand the outcome. The mainly causes of unemployment, effects on unemployment and needs ofunemployed young people were also examined in this research. A qualitative research method waschosen in this study. Through four semi-structured interviews with social workers and intervieweesfrom Social Services and Swedish Public Employment Office, their experience and own optionsupon the subject were shared. The results of the study are presented in three themes and analysedfrom the perspective of empowerment theory and welfare theory. The main result of our study is thatservices conducted for unemployed young people as the implementation of public policy comprisesmulti-dimensions and social work professions played an important role to help with improvement oftheir situation by meeting their needs and solving the problems they have in various ways during theprocess of intervention. Outcome of the services showed both positive influence and negativelimitations need to be improved in future work.

In the contemporary critique of the welfare state a common target is taxation. The consequences of the high levels of taxes collected by the modern state, the critics argue, are slowdown in economic growth, high unemployment, and declining public legitimacy for taxes and state provided welfare. This thesis explores the political support for taxation in Sweden, the epitome of high-tax-society. The thesis consists of one introductory chapter and five journal articles. The first objective of the thesis is to examine whether a trend of increasing tax discontent has occurred in Sweden since the early 1980s up to present. The second objective is to study public attitudes to the 'Tax Reform of the Century' implemented in 1991. The third objective is to analyse whether public tax preferences and patterns of social conflict observed in Sweden tend to be unique in a cross-national context. Of particular interest is to analyse how relationships between structural locations and tax preferences are affected by the institutional context within which they are embedded. This is the fourth objective of the thesis. The following conclusions are drawn. First, no long-term trend of increasing discontent with taxes can be distinguished in Sweden, but there are some indications that discontent may have increased during the most recent years. Second, attitudes towards taxation are multidimensional and patterns of conflict vary across dimensions. Preferences regarding redistributive properties of taxation are primarily structured by social class. Generalised discontent with taxes tends to be associated with trust in political institutions. Third, the social bases of political support for progressive taxation appears to be different in Sweden compared to other countries examined. While class is the single most important determinant in Sweden, the lack of class divisions is evident in the United States and Britain. It is argued that patterns of tax policy conflict are strongly influenced by institutional configurations of organised social protection and government social spending priorities. / digitalisering@umu

The paper will describe one of David Miller’s arguments for limiting immigration by concluding that immigration is a threat to a successful democratic welfare state. There is a threat to a democratic welfare state when there is lack of trust in a heterogeneous society. Immigration contributes to heterogeneity. The paper will present flaws in Miller’s argument, which include the unacknowledged concepts of ignorance and fear that can lead to mistrust in cultural heterogeneous communities. I will then consider Miller’s response to the critiques. Lastly, I will mention some proposals for increasing trust and addressing the real issues in a multicultural society.

While there is much research aiming to assess the determinants of welfare state attitudes, there are not many studies focussing on how human values influence attitude formation. This thesis explores the relationship between values and welfare state attitudes across national contexts. In doing so, it focuses on the moderating influence of contextual factors on the values-attitudes link. In order to measure values properly, and to study their effects on welfare state attitudes, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multi-group structural equation modelling (MGSEM) is used. These methods enable testing for measurement equivalence across groups, a prerequisite for comparing the effects of human values across countries. The individual-level data used in this thesis comes from the European Social Survey (ESS) between 2002-08. The findings show that values can play an important role in welfare state attitude formation, but that the impact of values on attitudes differs considerably across national contexts. Several country-specific contextual factors such as the generosity of redistributive institutions, their framing and their distributive outcomes moderates the values-attitudes link. In more generous welfare states and where redistributive issues are more articulated in the political debate, the impact of, for instance, egalitarian values on redistributive attitudes is comparably strong. Moreover, in countries where lower social classes are more exposed to risks and lack resources to meet these risks, class differences in the values-attitudes link are greater. Finally, the results show that the particular values that underlie welfare state attitudes in Eastern Europe are fundamentally different to those in Western Europe. The results imply that the impact of values on welfare state attitudes mainly depends on (i) whether people perceive welfare state institutions to have important consequences for the extent to which their values are attained, and (ii) the presence of competing motives. Hence, it is not necessarily the case that people who support the welfare state do so, for example, due to holding egalitarian values. In contrast to previous research, which has been quite unsuccessful in confirming direct relationships between institutions and attitudes, the results in this thesis suggest that there are indeed clear and consistent macro-micro relationships, but that these are more complex. Rather, it is in the interplay between values, attitudes and institutions that this relationship can be found. / Forskningen kring välfärdsstatsattityder och dess determinanter är omfattande, men väldigt få studier intresserar sig för hur grundläggande mänskliga värderingar påverkar dessa attityder. Den här avhandlingen syftar till att fylla denna lucka genom att fokusera på relationen mellan värderingar och attityder till välfärdsstaten. Särskilt fokus har lagts på att utforska den modererande inverkan som kontextuella faktorer har på länken mellan värderingar och attityder i olika nationella kontexter. I den bemärkelsen syftar avhandlingen även att bidra till forskningen om hur institutioner och andra kontextuella faktorer är kopplade till formeringen av attityder, där man ännu inte lyckats hitta en tydligt framträdande relation mellan den nationella kontexten formeringen av attityder på individnivån. För att kunna mäta värderingar på ett adekvat sätt, och för att kunna estimera och jämföra effekterna av värderingar på välfärdsstatsattityder i olika nationella kontexter, har konfirmatorisk faktoranalys (CFA) och strukturella ekvationsmodeller (MGSEM) använts. Dessa metoder tillåter testandet av ekvivalens med avseende på de mätinstrument som används, dvs. om måtten för värderingar har samma betydelse i olika grupper, vilket är en förutsättning för att kunna jämföra effekterna av värderingar i olika länder. Data på individnivå beträffande värderingar och attityder har hämtats från European Social Survey (ESS) från åren 2002-08. Dessutom har kontextdata hämtats från en rad olika källor. Resultaten visar att värderingar kan spela en betydande roll i att forma attityder till välfärdsstaten, men samtidigt att värderingarnas inverkan varierar kraftigt mellan olika länder. Flera faktorer i den nationella kontexten, såsom graden av generositet i välfärdsstatssystemen, samt de välfärdsstatliga institutionernas diskursiva inramning och deras socioekonomiska utfall, modererar länken mellan värderingar och attityder. Exempelvis, jämlikhetsorienterade värderingar har större betydelse för attityder till välfärdsstaten i mer generösa välfärdsstater och där omfördelningspolitiska frågor i högre grad präglar den politiska debatten. Vidare finns det klasskillnader i kopplingen mellan värderingar och attityder, i bemärkelsen att de med lägre utbildning och mindre intellektuellt krävande arbeten i mindre utsträckning formar sina attityder baserat deras värderingar. Dessa klasskillnader är särskillt stora i länder där de lägre klasserna är särskilt riskutsatta samt i högre grad saknar resurser att möta dessa risker. Medan värderingar har en betydande påverkan på generella attityder till välfärdsstaten i många länder så är länken mellan värderingar och stödet för specifika omfördelningsstategier svag eller icke existerande i de flesta länder som studerats. Slutligen så visar resultaten att de värderingar som ligger till grund för välfärdsstatsattityder i Östeuropeiska länder är fundamentalt annorlunda än de i Västeuropa. Jämlikhetsorienterade värderingar spelar en betydande roll i Västeuropeiska länder medan konservativa värderingar spelar en mer framträdande roll i Östeuropa. Resultaten föreslår att relationen mellan värderingar och attityder till välfärdsstaten beror på (i) om människor upplever att välfärdsstatens institutioner har betydande konsekvenser för deras möjligheter att få sina värderingar realiserade, och (i) frånvaron eller närvaron av konkurrerande motiv. Därmed är det inte nödvändigtvis så att människor som är mer jämliksorienterade i sina värderingar även är mer positivt inställda till välfärdsstaten och omfördelning. Detta beror istället på kontextuella faktorer, såsom institutioner och deras utfall, och deras inverkan på länken mellan värderingar och attityder. I motsats till tidigare forskning, som haft svårt att hitta tydliga kopplingar mellan exempelvis institutioner och attityder, så visar resultaten i denna avhandling att finns tydliga kopplingar mellan makro- och mikronivån men att dessa inte är så okomplicerade och direkta som man tidigare trott. Istället verkar det vara i samspelet mellan värderingar, attityder och institutioner som denna relations kan hittas.

The theoretical argument of this study is that economic globalization, by default, exerts a downward pressure on the social policies of states largely through the operations of transnational corporations. However, since globalization’s effect on social policy is conditional on endogenous political forces such as regime type, democratization, electoral competition and political participation, its proclivity to retrench the welfare state is averted by the preferences of political actors and institutions to expand social spending. This argument found consistent empirical support via a series of cross-section regressions that estimated the interactive effects of economic globalization and various measures of domestic political institutions and affiliations for a sample of 120 countries from 1970 to 2002. Case studies of South Korea, Chile and Spain provided additional qualitative evidence for the study’s theoretical argument.

While it is known that social policies influence the organization of employment and family life, this knowledge is rarely used to understand women's health. The current study uses feminist welfare state theory to examine socioeconomic inequalities in women's health dynamics in countries differing by the extent to which their social policies encourage male breadwinning and female caring/homemaking. The pathways underlying these inequalities are also investigated. Socioeconomic inequalities in health are hypothesized to be largest in strong male-breadwinner states (Britain/Germany), smallest in weak male-breadwinner welfare states (Denmark), and intermediate in modified male-breadwinner states (France). Further, family and income will explain more of health inequalities in strong and modified versus weak male-breadwinner regimes. The analysis uses longitudinal data from the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001) for working-aged women from Britain (n=2,193), Germany (n=2,421), France (n=2,400) and Denmark (n=1,412). The effects of socioeconomic position (measured by education) on self-rated health trajectories are examined using Latent Growth Curve Models; model estimates iii are compared cross-nationally using z-scores. Pathways linking education to health are identified by determining how much employment status, family roles and household income attenuate health inequalities in each country. The analyses are repeated for a sub-sample of mothers of young children—a group for whom policies surrounding the integration of employment and family are critical. Low education predicts worse initial health in all countries, but not faster health decline. Against expectations, education-based inequalities in health are largest in weak male-breadwinner states, but income explains virtually none of that inequality. By contrast, income has a larger explanatory role in regimes where women's unpaid caregiving is encouraged. Employment status is a relatively important mediator of the education-health relationship in all policy contexts, while family roles are not. Restricting the analysis to mothers reveals a much smaller education gradient in health in Denmark, providing evidence that weak male-breadwinner states are most effective at reducing health inequalities among mothers, relative to all women. Feminist welfare state theory better predicts cross-national differences in pathways underlying socioeconomic inequalities in health than the magnitude of inequalities, and may be most useful for understanding the health of mothers with young children.

The paper will describe one of David Miller’s arguments for limiting immigration by concluding that immigration is a threat to a successful democratic welfare state. There is a threat to a democratic welfare state when there is lack of trust in a heterogeneous society. Immigration contributes to heterogeneity. The paper will present flaws in Miller’s argument, which include the unacknowledged concepts of ignorance and fear that can lead to mistrust in cultural heterogeneous communities. I will then consider Miller’s response to the critiques. Lastly, I will mention some proposals for increasing trust and addressing the real issues in a multicultural society.

This thesis deals with the welfare state and the realization of this idea in the EU. The EU enlargement to the Central and Eastern Europe has impact on the concept of welfare state. However, the EU support for the new member states will help them to achieve the average of the EU countries living standards in a shorter time and it will contribute to the general welfare of the EU countries.