The diploma thesis deals with the crisis of the welfare state, which is causing problems in the public finance and deteriorating economic situation in many countries. Compares two groups of similar economic level OECD countries which spend the highest and the lowest social expenditure in percentage of GDP. Observes differences in their economic and demographic situation. The thesis also deals with the causes of the crisis and provides an example of successful economic reform, which significantly reduced growth of the welfare state and started a very successful economic period. The results of the analysis and the example of the reform provide some proposals for the welfare state cisis solution throught liberal way.

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.

In my thesis I focus on the concept of the Swedish welfare state, which many economists consider as a conclusive evidence that an extensive welfare state is fully compatible with a growing and competitive economy. The main hypothesis is that institutions of the welfare state leads in time to a continual pressure on change of overall condition of all social structures, expansion of the public sector, its overuse and increasing inefficiency. I examine a period from about 1850, when Sweden began to rapidly develop until the turn of the 20th and 21st century, when the Swedish welfare state fell into crisis. The hypothesis is verified by using the methodological approach of induction and with theoretical framework of new institutional economics. Findings of my work shows that the success of Swedish welfare state is rather a result of specific institutional factors that were favorable to business environment for most of the modern Swedish history. On contrary, excessive social spending, high taxes and market regulation from the second half of the 20th century made the system unsustainable and pointed to the need of reformation.

The diploma thesis is focused on comparison of emergence of welfare states in Great Britain during the government of Labor party in the years 1945-1951 and in Czechoslovakia during the first five-year plan during the government of the Communist party in the years 1948-1953. By degrees there are different elements of the areas of social security, health services, education and housing policy examined. In all these areas the two compared countries faced up to similar problems solved by government interventions; however also significant differences can be found in particular selected solutions. This analysis is focused primarily on the impact on individuals, but also illustrates the difficulty of application of the reforms from the perspective of the government.

Happiness and the effects of happiness on individual level is an well established resarch topic. It is scientifically proven that happy individuals receives benefits regarding health and social life that unhappy individuals does not. This in combination with the average length of an individuals life has increased by 10 years since 1970 makes the relationship between happiness and age an interesting resarch topic. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the existance of a relationship between age and happiness in Sweden and in a selection of other european countries. The data is collected from the european social survey and analysed with multiple regression analysis in SPSS Statistics. The result is discussed in relation to Brüldes (2007) theory of hybrid happiness, Anderssons (2013) theory regarding the life course and Esping-Andersens (1990) theory about different welfare states. The main findings of this study is that there is no relationship between age and happiness in Sweden. There is however a relationship between age and happiness in a couple of european countries included in this study. The countries where the relationship is found belongs to the conservative welfare category. One explanation to why these countries reports a relationship is that conservative welfare gives the citizens individual conditions to care for their family and old ones.

In 1982, when the Social Democrats returned to power, they had two goals. One was to increase the growth in the economy, another to decrease the public debt. This led to a new economic policy for the Social Democrats. The new economic policy was influenced by the neoliberal ideology that started to spread throughout the world from the late 1970s. The purpose of this study is to examine if the Social Democrats favoured economic growth over welfare, fair distribution and state ownership. The results of the study was analyzed with the use of Hiroto Tsukadas Welfare State Theory. The theory claims that politicians favour investments over welfare because welfare consumption decreases economic growth. The empirical analysis is based on parliament debates, party and union congresses, policy programs and memoirs. The results show that the arguments from leading social democrats were pro-growth and for investments over welfare spending and fair distribution policy.

Nordic noir is a distinctive component of the current Nordic cultural export, which has become increasingly popular in recent years not only in Europe. One of the main characteristics of this genre is the description of tensions between the seemingly insignificant and peaceful social climate in the Nordic environment and the murders, racism, inequality and other malfunctioning mechanisms that occur beneath the surface. This creates an ideal spare for criticizing the welfare state. Denmark, as a representative of its Scandinavian model, is also one of the countries where nordic noir has spread very quickly. Therefore, this master thesis will be devoted to analyzing the criticism of the welfare state in the Danish series The Killing in order to demonstrate socio-critical tendencies in the aforementioned genre. It will further examine how they are approached and what specific aspects are subjected to criticism. The work aims to contribute to the current debate by presenting specific examples based on a detailed analysis of the selected case.

The aim of the study has been to provide a further understanding to the underlying mechanisms and principles that has shaped the Swedish governmental measures towards the pandemic of Covid-19 in Sweden. Throughout the pandemic of Covid-19, Sweden has been considered as deviating in its national and domestic approach towards the pandemic where Sweden has been pointed out as controversial in its measures that heavily has relied upon trust and common sense of the citizens. Through a qualitative document analysis, the thesis has analyzed the domestic measures taken by the Swedish government between the period of January 2020 and June 2021. The study has used the theoretical lens of constructivism and the empirical departure of the Swedish model as explanatory tools for how the self-image of Sweden derives from a conceptualization of identity provided by the Swedish model. Hence, the study has related to the Swedish model as a tool that shapes the Swedish identity which during the pandemic thus has shaped the identity politics of Sweden by domestic measures as a national response. By using the fundamental pillars of the Swedish model comprising labor market, economic policy and welfare policy, the thesis concluded that the Swedish identity that has shaped the executed identity politics during the pandemic derives from a Swedish self-image of being a welfare state originated from the values of the Swedish model permeating the governing of Sweden. Hence, the mechanisms and principles that have shaped the Swedish behavior through domestic measures during the pandemic of Covid-19 has been the Swedish model along with a Swedish identity and self-image deriving from a self interpretated definition of the Swedish governmental self.

The author studied the welfare state typology in China from a health care perspective. This study aims to figure out what type of welfare typology works in Chinese health care system through comparative welfare state typology, specifically the decommodification principle proposed by Esping-Andersen (2019) and health care decommodification index put forward by Bambra (2006). Studying the classification of Chinese welfare state typology by analysing the Chinese health care system and comparing it with other countries in the world within the scope of welfare state typology, helps China enhancing the public administration. The author found that China belongs to medium decommodification group which means it is the same decommodification level as Conservative-Corporatist regimes, but also indicates there's a huge improvement potential to high decommodification group in the future. Keywords Welfare State Typology; China; Chinese Health Care System; Health Decommodification Index Range of the Thesis: 66 pages

My thesis deals with the change of retirement policy in the Nordic welfare state. It focus on the period between years 1990 - 2014, during which the Nordic countries Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark were forced to respond to demographic challenges, such as population aging, decrease of economically active population, the increase of old - age dependency ratio and other problems. The main aim of my thesis is to find out if it is possible to observe a markedly different response and acceptance of different changes in the period 1990 - 2014 in the context of pension policy in these countries, or whether the countries responded similarly. The second objective of my work is to undertake a comparison of pension policy within the Nordic countries. As an aspect of comparison, I chose the financial sustainability of pension systems (expected future pension expenditure as % of GDP), the adequacy of pensions (according to the replacement ratio) and the possibility of drawing pensions (ordinary, early) and delay drawing pensions. In my work, I use the method of secondary analysis (especially statistics issued by the OECD and the Eurostat, legal documents and publications). Furthermore, I use comparative method for comparing the situation in different countries according to selected criteria and method of...