Der Aufsatz rekonstruiert die Dialektik von Individualisierung und moderner Sozialpolitik und führt zu diesem Zweck die Diskussionsstränge um die Entstehungsbedingungen von staatlicher Sozialpolitik und um die Weiterentwicklung von Sozialpolitik zusammen. Die Analyse befaßt sich zunächst mit Individualisierung als Voraussetzung für die Entstehung moderner Sozialpolitik, um dann, ebenfalls noch in historischer Perspektive, die Bedeutung von Sozialpolitik für die Vollendung der modernen Individuen als Staatsbürger zu betrachten. Anschließend wird die sozialpolitische Strukturierung von Lebensläufen in der Gegenwart diskutiert und dargelegt, daß Sozialpolitik nicht nur reguliert, sondern auch Handlungsspielräume eröffnet und deren individuelle Nutzung möglich macht. Zuletzt wird nach aktuellen staatlichen Reaktionen auf individuelles Handeln gefragt. Die Beobachtung der historischen Kontinuität, mit der Individuum und Sozialpolitik von den Anfängen der gesellschaftlichen Moderne bis in die Gegenwart aufeinander einwirken und in ihrer Entwicklung miteinander verwoben sind, soll dazu anregen, die Analyse moderner Sozialpolitik in eine umfassende gesellschaftstheoretische Perspektive zu stellen.

Sport has been increasingly recognized in social policy as a means of steering social change and as a method for responding to diverse social problems. The present study examines how rationales of social change are formed through ‘sport as a means of responding to social problems’. Four research questions are posed: (1) How is it that sport can be thought of and articulated as a means of responding to social problems? (2) How are sport practices assumed to operate as a means of responding to social problems? (3) How are social problems represented when sport is promoted as a means of response? (4) What conduct, subjectivity and citizen competences are shaped within this regime of practice? The study focuses on the government of subjects’ conduct, the formation of community and delineation of domains subjected to social change. The gradual shifts in the governmental rationality of the Swedish welfare state provide a framework for the study. Two kinds of empirical material are investigated. Initially, scientific knowledge is analysed; after this, a sport-based intervention, conducted in cooperation between a social entrepreneur, municipality and local sport clubs, is examined. In relation to scientific discourse, research on sport for social objectives would benefit from more theoretically driven constructionist perspectives related to welfare state transformations. In scientific discourse, rationales of social change in sport are conceived of as individual attainment of skills, competences and powers that are presumably transferable to other social spheres. Such discourse represents problems as individual problems. With respect to the sport-based intervention, individual change is promoted by representatives of the social entrepreneur in terms of providing subjects with motivational powers, which are shaped by role models and applied in “choosing the right track”. By representing problems as risks, avoidance is formed as an individual opportunity. This positions subjects as being responsible for their own welfare and inclusion. Municipal policy makers view the intervention as a way to form community and social cohesion in response to tensions in society. They present sport (and the social entrepreneur) as a way to mobilize and activate civil society – which is associated with the potency of voluntarism, authentic leadership and personal relations based on common identity. Consequently, responsibility for responding to social problems is spread and elements of de-professionalized social work are imposed. To conclude, sport is conceptualized as a means of responding to social problems because sport practices are associated with individual agency and with an active civil society and moral community. The technologies and rationality of social change point out ‘the self’, ‘the community’ and ‘the place’ as locations where social change is possible, rather than the whole of society. For instance, the technologies of social change are based on activation and responsibilization of ‘the self’ and of ‘the community’. These rationales of social change are based on a critique of welfarist governmentality and of the idea of governing from ‘the social’ point of view. Arguably, such discourse obscures more profound social reform. The study provides some empirical explorations illustrating how a range of tendencies and mutations in the governmental rationality of the welfare state and of social work are  manifested in ‘sport as a means of responding to social problems’. / De senaste åren har idrott alltmer kommit att betraktas som ett socialpolitiskt verktyg med förväntningar om att åstadkomma social förändring och bidra till att lösa sociala problem. I den här avhandlingen undersöks hur den sociala förändringens rationalitet formas i relation till idén om ’idrott som en lösning på sociala problem’. Detta görs genom fyra frågeställningar: (1) Hur har idrott blivit möjligt att betrakta som en lösning på sociala problem? (2) Hur förmodas idrott i praktiken fungera som en lösning på sociala problem? (3) Hur representeras sociala problem när idrott lyfts fram som en lösning? (4) Vilken typ av uppförande, subjektivitet och medborgerliga färdigheter fostras genom att använda idrott som en lösning på social problem? Särskilt fokuseras på styrning av individers uppförande, skapande av gemenskap och sammanhållning samt gränsskapande kring vilka domäner som kan utsättas för förändring. Undersökningarna relateras till mer övergripande förändringar i den svenska välfärdsstatens styrningsrationalitet. Två empiriska material har undersökts: dels den vetenskapliga diskursen, dels olika företrädares beskrivningar av en idrottsbaserad välfärdsintervention för unga i risk för problem och exkludering, en verksamhet som sker i samverkan mellan en social entreprenör, kommun och föreningsliv. Avhandlingen pekar på vikten av teoretiskt driven forskning med konstruktionistiska perspektiv relaterade till välfärdsstatens och socialpolitikens förändring. I den vetenskapliga diskursen lyfts social förändring fram med avseende på individuell förändring genom tillägnande av färdigheter som antas kunna användas även i andra sociala sammanhang. Denna förståelse iscensätter de adresserade problemen som individuella problem. I idrottsledarnas beskrivningar av den sociala interventionen kan ungdomar motiveras individuellt, bygga självförtroende och självkänsla, genom att identifiera sig med positiva förebilder och ledare. Detta blir viktigt för att kunna ”välja rätt väg i livet”. Genom att framställa problem som risker blir de möjliga för individen att undvika. Detta positionerar ungdomarna som själva ansvariga för sin välfärd och inkludering. I politikernas beskrivningar lyfts idrotten fram som ett sätt att skapa gemenskap och sammanhållning som ett svar på spänningar och oro. Genom idrotten (och den sociala entreprenören) kan man mobilisera civilsamhällets föreningsliv vilket associeras med frivillighet, autentiskt ledarskap samt personliga och moraliska band baserade på gemensam identitet. Därmed kan ansvaret för att hantera sociala problem spridas mellan olika aktörer, något som även kan bidra till informalisering och de-professionalisering av det sociala  arbetet. Sammanfattningsvis kan idrott konceptualiseras som en lösning på sociala problem därför att dess praktiker associeras med individuell aktivering samt med ett aktivt civilsamhälle som bygger på moralisk fostran och gemenskap. Den sociala förändringens teknologier och rationalitet pekar ut ‘självet’, ‘gemenskapen’ och ‘platsen’ som de domäner där förändring bedöms vara möjlig. Den sociala förändringens rationalitet bygger på aktivering och ansvarsgörande av ‘självet’ och ‘gemenskapen’. Styrningsrationaliteten bygger på en långtgående kritik av välfärdsstatens sätt att styra där samhället i sin helhet betraktas som målpunkt. Genom sådan diskurs skyms mer genomgående samhällsförändringar. Avhandlingen utforskar empiriskt och illustrerar hur en rad tendenser och mutationer i välfärdsstatens styrningsrationalitet och i det sociala arbetet kommer till uttryck genom ‘idrott som en lösning på sociala problem’.

This dissertation presents a theoretical framework about which voters parties distribute to and with which policies. To develop this full framework of distributive policies, the dissertation proceeds in two stages. First, it analyses which voters parties have more incentives to target distributive policies. Second, it also develops the conditions under which political parties can focus exclusively on these voters or need to combine this strategy with appeals to a broader electorate. The first part of the argument analyses which voters parties have at the centre of their distributive strategies, or, in the words of Cox and McCubbins (1986) to whom parties will give an available extra dollar for distribution. The argument is that core voters provide more efficient conditions for distribution, contradicting Stokes’ (2005) claim that a dollar spent on core voters is a wasted dollar. The explanation is twofold. First, core supporters might not vote for another party, but they can get demobilised. Once we include the effects on turnout, core voters are more responsive. Their party identification makes them especially attentive and reactive to economic benefits provided by their party. Secondly, incumbents cannot individually select who receives a distributive policy, and not all voters are equally reachable with distributive policies. When a party provides a policy, it cannot control if some of those resources go to voters the party is not interested in. Core supporters are more homogenous groups with more definable traits, whereas swing voters are a residual category composed by heterogeneous voters with no shared interests. This makes it easier for incumbents to shape distributive benefits that target core voters more exclusively. These mechanisms define the general distribution hypothesis: parties will focus on core voters, by targeting their distributive strategies to them. The second part of the dissertation develops the conditions under which politicians stick to this distributive strategy or, instead, would provide more universalistic spending to a more undefined set of recipients. The conventional argument explaining this choice relies on the electoral system, arguing that proportional systems give more incentives to provide universalistic policies than majoritarian systems. This dissertation challenges this argument and provides two other contextual conditions that define when parties have a stronger interest in their core supporters or in a more general electorate. First, the geographic distribution of core supporters across districts is a crucial piece of information to know the best distributive strategy. When parties’ core supporters are geographically concentrated, they cannot simply rely on them, as the party will always fall short of districts to win the election. Therefore, parties will have greater incentives to expand their electorate by buying off other voters. This should reduce the predicted differences between electoral systems in the provision of universalistic programmes. Secondly, the policy positions of candidates are a result of strategic considerations that respond to other candidates’ positions. Thus, I argue that parties adapt their distributive strategies to the number of competing parties, independently of the electoral system. In a two-party scenario, parties need broader coalitions of electoral support. In equilibrium, any vote can change the electoral outcome. As more parties compete, the breadth of parties’ electorates is reduced and parties will find narrow distributive policies more profitable. In summary, the main contribution of this dissertation one is to provide a new framework to study distributive politics. This framework makes innovations both on the characterisation of swing and core electoral groups, and the rationale of parties’ distributive strategies, contributing to advance previous theoretical and empirical research.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine associations between parenting and child callous-unemotional (CU) behavior in a high-risk sample of children aged 2-9 years. First, a narrative review examined the construct of CU behavior, focusing specifically on definitions and measurement of the affective and interpersonal dimensions of psychopathy, and their applicability to youth. Second, a systematic review examined evidence from 30 studies that had investigated associations between dimensions of parenting and CU traits. Studies were classified as testing one of five different research questions. Third, five different empirical studies tested various research questions pertaining to associations between parenting and CU behavior. Data from mother-child dyads N = 731; 49% female) were collected from a multi-ethnic and high-risk sample, and included multi-method observed measures of parenting. Study 1 found that observed harsh and positive parenting predicted child CU behavior from ages 2-4, controlling for earlier child behavior and various demographic covariates. Study 2 employed a moderator design, and found that harsh and warm parenting were more strongly related to the conduct problems of children with high versus low levels of CU behavior. Study 3 tested cross-lagged simultaneous and reciprocal effects models, and found that parental warmth (observed and expressed by parents in speech samples) uniquely predicted child CU behavior versus conduct problems. Study 4 tested the factor structure of Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU; Frick, 2004), finding support for a three-Bifactor structure. Finally, Study 5 found that parent-child affective interactions at ages 2-3 predicted CU traits at age 9, over and above general behavior problems. Taken together, the results of this thesis suggest that CU features are more malleable than previously thought. In particular, aspects of parental affect and warm parenting behavior appear to be important key targets of investigation for future empirical and intervention studies.

Oportunidades is a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) that uses a proxy means-test targeting model to select eligible households for the programme. According to the Income and Expenditure Household Survey of 2008, approximately two in every three eligible rural households participate in Oportunidades, whereas only one in every three eligible urban households receives the Oportunidades cash transfer. This research explores the factors behind this lack of take-up, the costs of participation and the implications of targeting inefficiency on the programme’s impact on income poverty. It argues that a sample selection model is a pertinent tool of analysis as it informs on the distribution of cash transfers conditional on household eligibility. This conditional distribution is also used to understand the costs of participation as a latent variable. Eligible households are less likely to invest in human capital and neither the cash transfer nor the income forgone by children and teenagers are sufficient to overcome these costs of participation. By identifying a method to quantify behavioural change of households, I associate the costs of participation to the difficulties of inducing health-related behavioural change among recipients and eligible non-recipients. At an aggregate state level, targeting inefficiency is not fully explained by only looking at the budget constraints of the programme. In fact, targeting efficiency is positively associated to aggregate behavioural change and negatively associated to aggregate costs for participation at state level. Yet, targeting efficiency does not guarantee impact on income poverty and Oportunidades’ highest impact on income poverty also associated with the inclusion of non-eligible households in the programme. This research reconsiders the importance of the context in which CCTs are implemented and informs on the conflicting aims of CCTs: providing income poverty relief via cash transfers and incentivizing behavioural change by conditioning the cash transfer in health and education investment.

Care transition, the process of moving from community care to residential care, is one of the biggest changes that older people can experience in their later life. Evidence from the literature suggests that older people's experiences of care transition tend to be negative and traumatic, with most of them being little involved in the process of care transition. How older people exercise choice during the period of care transition is important for understanding their experiences of care transition for the following two reasons: first, choice has been referred to in the literature as the key to less stressful care transition experiences, which can subsequently lead to a better quality of life in residential homes; second, the introduction of choice in public services has been the key plank of British social policy in recent decades and there has been a movement towards extending choice in residential care. This research aims to study older people's care transition experiences and their exercise of choice during the process of care transition, to explore the meaning and the perceived effects of choice and to identify the role of choice in promoting a positive care transition. This thesis presents findings from 48 in-depth interviews with older people who became new residents in one of the ten participating residential homes in London and had their care paid for by the local authority. This research identified four groups of older people who showed marked differences in terms of their needs, their exercise of choice during the care transition process and their adaptation to residential care: Active Planners, Conformists, the Unsettled and Shelter-Seekers. The findings from this research suggest that the older people's care transition experiences varied and that they stretch beyond the prevailing evidence emphasising the stressfulness of the care transition. The cases of Active Planners and Shelter-Seekers show the potential for positive roles for care homes in the case of users with genuine needs for residential care. An overwhelming majority of the older people who were interviewed were great proponents of choice and many of them actively exercised choice in the course of their care transition. This challenges the claim of the passivity of older people which has been argued in the literature. However, the cases of some Conformists who did not want to exercise choice also highlight that having no choice can be a choice for some older people. On the whole, older people’s exercise of choice played an important role in facilitating a positive transition, despite it not being a precondition for such a transition. However, there were administrative issues limiting the level and the extent of choice that were available to the older people and the Unsettled experienced an undesired move into a care home, having their choices denied or rejected. This thesis also questions the working of choice and competition in residential care, as the older people did not seem to enjoy the expected benefits of choice relating to service improvements which have been argued for in the literature.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the knowledge base about social policy in the United States, using long-term care (LTC) financing policy reform as an illustrative example. Specifically, this thesis explores LTC financing reform efforts during three U.S. Presidential administrations: Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-2010). Within this historical framework, the LTC provisions of the Health Security Act of 1993, the development of the Community Living Assistant Services and Supports or 'CLASS' Act during the Bush Administration, and the legislative success of the CLASS Act as a part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 provide comparable cases to compare the drivers of social policy. Drawing on the explanatory frameworks of the welfare state such as ideology, historical institutionalism, and an actor-centered approach to policy analysis, this thesis argues that successful path-departing legislation is difficult to achieve due, in part, to the presumed high costs of social programs and the complex institutional framework of the American political system. Policy outcomes result from the interaction between the complex processes and dynamics of the political system through which policy change (or the failure to change) actually occurs. The fact that the CLASS Act was politically successful, yet administratively inoperable as designed, reinforces the argument that social policy outcomes in the United States are reflective of a complex, enduring struggle of competing ideologies. This continual struggle, coupled with a heightened concern over cost control and fiscal austerity, helps to ensure that policies which are legislatively successful within the institutional architecture of the American political system are unlikely to produce major expansions of the welfare state. Social change is therefore highly difficult to achieve, even in the face of significant unmet social needs. Comprehensive reform of U.S. LTC financing arrangements will remain an elusive goal for the foreseeable future. Instead, incremental, highly pro-market solutions are likely to be the types of policies promoted in the years of ahead.

Industrial Life Insurance (ILI) was introduced in Sweden in the beginning of the 1900s. Following models already used in the United Kingdom and the United States, this insurance was specifically aimed at manual labourers, promising pension savings and compensation to surviving relatives. The insurance was an immediate success, with almost three million insurance policies in force by the mid-1900s. ILI was characterised by extensive and carefully monitored marketing practices. By managing an army of agents, the companies sold policies and collected premiums on a regular basis in the homes of the insured. The purpose of the dissertation is to analyse the development of a commercial business with social policy aspirations, and how it interacted with other social security institutions. How could ILI thrive in the emerging Swedish welfare state that, according to existing research, allowed little space for market-based welfare alternatives? The dissertation also seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of the contemporary “welfare market” in Sweden today. From a perspective of welfare formation as a social process, the emergence and expansion of ILI is interpreted as a phenomenon that has shaped, and been shaped by, the social policy arena. The insurance industry’s capacity to adapt to the changing ambitions of the state in this arena is emphasised. Furthermore, its leading representatives’ ability to continuously locate the role of life insurance in the shifting landscape of social policy is underlined. By locating welfare in separate but complementary public and private spheres, the industry contributed to the shaping of the compulsory pension scheme introduced in 1913 and the overall regulation of insurance in the mid-twentieth century. The social security of Swedish citizens was now to be ensured according to the vision of complementary spheres that the insurance industry had advocated for almost fifty years. The insurance companies’ commercial activities are analysed as a form of governmentality, where the agency system is scrutinized as an interventionist practice that created a long lasting relationship between the companies and the working classes. The dissertation shows how the industrialists’ role as “insurance experts” was used to influence public policies. As public figures and experts on various committees, representatives of the industry advocated a welfare formation that left ample space for their own business interests. The scientisation of security was also essential in creating a product where social aspirations and commercial logics could be united. The success of ILI thus rested on the interaction with the state apparatus. An arena of social policy was established where commercial companies were to be the supplier of all welfare above the level of “meagre basic security”. Through intense marketing measures, commercial actors influenced the perceptions of security and welfare. The process of welfare formation led to the internalisation of commercial ideals about social security that now constitutes an essential dimension of the Swedish welfare state.

Ce mémoire analyse trois réformes majeures de politique sociale en Turquie, en deux domaines: emploi et sécurité social. En utilisant l'approche "Usage de l'Europe", ce mémoire developpe une analyse empirique et apporte une explication théorique de ces changements qui ont été introduits au cours du processus d'adhésion de la Turquie à l'Union européenne. "Les usages de l'Europe" est une approche d'européanisation qui se concentre sur le rôle des acteurs domestiques, au sein des États membres et candidats, ainsi que de leur utilisation des ressources de l'Union européenne. Les études de cas utilisées dans cette thèse démontrent l'introduction de changements au niveau de l'État-providence; ainsi, l'approche originelle est suppléée par des concepts provenant de la littérature sur la politique partisane, les institutions formelles et l'héritage des politiques. Cette recherche utilise la méthode de l'analyse de processus pour suivre la réforme des règlements du travail par la voie de reconstitution des droits individuels des travailleurs et de l'Agence d'emploi en Turquie jusqu'en 2003, ainsi que la transformation du système de sécurité sociale en 2008. Ces trois réformes représentent des changements majeurs tant sur le plan institutionnel que politique en Turquie depuis 2001. Afin de comprendre "les usages de l'Europe" dans ces réformes politiques, l'analyse empirique questionne, si, quand et comment les acteurs turcs ont utilisé les ressources, les références et les développements politiques de l'Union européenne lors de ce processus dynamique de réforme. Les réformes du système de sécurité sociale, des règlements du travail, en plus de la reconstitution de l'Agence d'emploi étaient à l'ordre du jour en Turquie depuis les années 1990. La réforme des règlements du travail ont entraîné l'introduction des accommodements flexibles au travail et une révision de la Loi du travail permettant l'établissement d'une législation de la sécurité d'emploi. La reconstitution de l'Agence d'emploi visait à remplacer la vieille institution défunte par une institution moderne afin d'introduire des politiques d'activation. La réforme de sécurité sociale comprend les pensions de retraite, le système de santé ainsi que l'administration des institutions de sécurité sociale. Les principaux résultats révèlent que la provision des ressources de l'Union européenne en Turquie a augmenté à partir de la reconnaissance de sa candidature en 1999 et ce, jusqu'au lancement des négociations pour son adhésion en 2005; ce qui fut une occasion favorable pour les acteurs domestiques impliqués dans les processus de réformes. Cependant, à l'encontre de certaines attentes originelles de l'approche de "les usages de l'Europe", les résultats de cette recherche démontrent que le temps et le sort de "les usages de l'Europe" dépendent des intérêts des acteurs domestiques, ainsi de leurs stratégies tout au long de ce processus de réforme, plutôt que des phases du processus ou la quantité des ressources fournies par l'Union européenne. / This dissertation analyses three major social policy reforms in Turkey in two policy domains: employment and social security. By adopting the Uses of Europe theoretical approach, it aims to analyze empirically and to explain theoretically the uses of Europe in two domains of social policy during the EU membership process in Turkey. Uses of Europe is an actor-centered approach to Europeanization that focuses on the role of national actors, in member and candidate states, and their use of EU resources. The case studies in this thesis involve welfare state changes. Thus the original approach is complemented by concepts from the welfare state literature on formal institutions, partisan politics and policy legacies. This research uses a process-tracing methodology to follow the reform of labor regulations via the restructuring of individual labor rights, restructuring of the Turkish employment agency up through 2003 and the transformation of the social security system by 2008. Both represent major institutional and policy changes in the post-2001 period in Turkey. In order to understand the uses Europe in these policy reforms, the empirical analysis asks whether, where, and how Turkish actors were using EU resources, references and policy developments within the dynamic processes of reform. The reforms of the social security system, labor regulation and the restructuring of the employment agency have been on the agenda in Turkey since the mid-1990’s. The reform of labor regulations involved the introduction of flexible work arrangements and job security legislation into a revised Labor Act. The restructuring of the employment agency aimed to replace the old institution that had become defunct with a modern institution oriented towards active labor market policies. The social security reform comprising pension, healthcare and administrative components aimed to ensure financial sustainability and increase the coverage of the system. The main findings were that the supply of EU resources in Turkey increased from the recognition of its candidate status in 1999 to the launch of accession negotiations in 2005. This supply offered opportunities for national actors involved in the reform processes, via legitimizing uses of Europe, obfuscation and credit claiming, among other practices. However in contrast to some of the expectations of the original Uses of Europe approach, the findings of this research demonstrate that the type and timing of uses of Europe depend on the national actors’ interests and coalition-building strategies in the reform process rather than on the stage of the reform process or amount of resources supplied by the European Union.

This paper examines the effects of social capital in the lives of low-income single mothers and how it intersects with the goals of the Personal Responsibility Act (PRA). These explicit goals are to decrease reliance on public assistance through work and marriage; the implicit goals are to enhance social capital by increasing the trust, norms, and values that are evidenced by work and marriage. However, low-income single mothers are faced with limited repositories of social capital, which leaves them in a legislated quagmire. Tested here is the hypothesis that social capital impacts marriage, stable employment, and TANF use. The findings indicate that social capital impacts stable employment and economic stability in low-income single mothers, but it does not increase the likelihood of marriage. Further research that examines how social capital intersects with race and class will shed additional light on the efficacy of policy initiatives that focus on social capital reinforcement in low income female-headed families.