Translated title: Transnational Care Space Central Europe. Working and Living Conditions of Irregular Migrants in Domestic Care Provision

Translated title: Transnational Care Space Central Europe. Working and Living Conditions of Irregular Migrants in Domestic Care Provision

This dissertation begins from a desire to explain situations in which left-wing parties appear to adopt policies that are more typically associated with right-wing thinking. A standard explanation for such behaviour is that relatively weak left-wing parties are drawn to adopt those policies as a way of getting elected — commonly expressed as convergence on the median voter. The puzzle, however, is that this explanation often seems to fall foul of the empirical reality that left-wing parties adopt these policies when they are relatively strong, not weak. The explanation for this advanced here is that parties, seeking to improve outcomes for their constituencies both now and in the future, often operate in political environments which lead them to assign a high probability that today’s policy choices will not survive the predations of government by opposing parties tomorrow. Where this is the case, there is incentive to pursue policies that are less efficient, but which have inbuilt political defence mechanisms: with the main such mechanism focused upon here being the power of organised public sector labour. The effect of partisanship is, therefore, conditioned by expectations about the future political power of parties. Where left-wing parties expect to be weak, they will tend to adopt the highly statist, bureaucratised, nationalised policies that are traditionally associated with the Left as these will tend to embody large amounts of organised labour that will be a counter to future right-wing governments. Where left-wing parties expect to be strong, the costs associated with such policies come to outweigh the benefits, with the result that they do not need to pursue such ‘left-wing’ policies. These ideas are developed heoretically within an institutionalist framework, yielding a synthesis between the historical and rational choice institutionalisms. Empirically, the theoretical framework is applied to the development of welfare states and to the issue of privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

After the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, large numbers of Central and Eastern Europeans moved to work in Western Europe. The aim of this thesis is to use the case of migration after the enlargement to further our understanding of the relationship between immigrant group size and natives’ attitudes. Recent scholarly debates raise questions about how immigration affects European societies and the political durability of European welfare states. This research puts forward two questions: Does an increase in Eastern European immigration after the enlargement explain differences in civic attitudes in Western Europe? And second, does this relationship (if any) depend on national contextual factors? The relationship between immigration and three categories of public attitudes are examined: attitudes towards immigration, attitudes towards welfare and attitudes of trust. This thesis draws on ethnic competition theory, which postulates that group competition over resources provokes the natives to perceive immigration as a threat to their own or their group’s interests. To test this theory, this study uses data from the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010 to build multi-level pooled time series models. The results find only partial support for ethnic competition theory. When a greater proportion of E-8 migrants live in the country, individuals tend to have more positive views about immigration. The results also show that this positive relationship is weakened when national economic conditions are more precarious. Additionally, the results do not find that E8 migration is negatively related to Western European attitudes regarding trust or welfare. This implies that as more immigrants arrive, Europeans can potentially acknowledge immigration’s economic and cultural benefits. Moreover, these results challenge pessimistic scholarly predictions that immigration erodes trust and support for welfare in Europe. This thesis offers two academic contributions. First, it considers the case of E8 migration, which has been ignored by existing comparative attitudinal studies about immigration. Second, focusing on post-enlargement migration helps this thesis to overcome common empirical obstacles such as cross-country differences in immigrant composition and admission criteria.

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.

The thesis examines the political dynamics behind the contemporary trend towards pension privatization in Europe. Its aim is to develop a theoretical model that can explain not only why governments have increasingly replaced their public pay-as-you-go systems with private fully-funded schemes, but also why there is considerable diversity both in the extent and in the content of pension privatization. Private pension funds can indeed be governed by a variety of institutional arrangements and can have very different types of links with the financial system. They do not necessarily contribute to a financialization of the economy. The thesis takes issue with the idea that pension privatization would be primarily the result of a new pensions orthodoxy promoted by international organizations such as the World Bank or of an electoral strategy that consists in attracting the votes of the middle class. I argue that the driving force behind the more or less dramatic rise of funded pensions in Europe is a series of lobbying campaigns launched by the financial industry, and their varying influence. Financial firms have a vested interest in the development of a market in private pensions, which should profit them as an industry. However, pension reform is an issue that matters to voters and can therefore prove dangerous for party politicians. Moreover, it involves complex changes that directly affect key material interests of employers and workers. In this context, the success of financial firms’ campaign for pension privatization depends on their capacity to forge alliances with a variety of actors. This in turn contributes to limit the influence financiers can exert. The argument is tested using a comparative historical analysis of pension debates in the United Kingdom, France and Poland since the beginning of the 1980s.

In education policy, the irresistible force paradox—what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?—resonates with many characterisations of the dynamics of education reform and the role of teachers’ unions in reform processes. According to many theories of teachers’ unions in the United States, the paradox is resolved in favour of the immovable object: strong teachers’ unions are alleged to block necessary reforms, hampering school effectiveness and efficiency. This research tests these claims about teachers’ unions, and their impact on reform outcomes—particularly, performance-related pay. Despite teachers’ unions’ supposed opposition to performance-related pay (PRP), there are a number of cases—both within and beyond U.S. borders—where PRP has been implemented. By exploring some of these ‘exceptional’ cases, this research outlines the conditions under which reform is likely to occur, and a more specific explanation of reform ‘failure’. It finds that, though education reform is often portrayed as a power struggle between reform proponents and opponents, there are multiple pathways through which reform may occur. Overpowering unions might be one route, but reform can also be secured through cooperation and compromise. These insights have significant implications for theories of teachers’ unions’ strength, preferences, and policy impact. The findings demonstrate that the insufficiency of existing theoretical accounts. Neither union preferences nor power are simple, monolithic, or predictable, and teachers’ unions do not and cannot block reform at all times and in all places. Beyond theory, these findings carry weighty implications for practitioners regarding the role of unions in public policy decision-making.

This thesis examines the reception, generation, and use of economic ideas in the British Liberal Party during the period between its decline in the inter-war years and its revival under Jo Grimond. It uses archival sources, party publications, and the political press to reconstruct the Liberal Party’s internal discourse about economic policy from the 1920s to the 1960s, and sets this discourse in the context of wider economic and political developments: the ‘Keynesian revolution’ in economic theory and British public policy, recurrent political interest in economic planning, and growing concern about relative economic decline. The strength of the two-party system which developed after the First World War meant that the Liberal Party spent most of this period in opposition, and even in the coalition governments of 1931-2 and 1940-5 Liberals had limited input into economic policy-making. As historians have frequently noted, however, the party played an important role in introducing Keynesian ideas to British politics through Lloyd George’s 1929 pledge to ‘conquer unemployment’, and seemed to anticipate the post-war managed economy in important respects. At the same time, the party maintained a close relationship with the economics profession, and vocally championed free trade and competitive markets. This thesis highlights the eclecticism of the Liberal Party’s economic heritage, and its continuing ambivalence towards state intervention. Although Liberals were early and sincere supporters of Keynesian demand-management policies, and took a close interest in economic planning proposals in the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s, their interventionism was frequently constrained by their internationalism and their support for free markets. Most Liberals, then, were neither unreconstructed Gladstonians nor unequivocal supporters of Britain’s post-war settlement. Rather, successive party leaders sought to integrate new economic knowledge with traditional Liberal commitments, in order to make both a credible contribution to policy debates and a distinctive appeal to the electorate.

This thesis examines the political process of health care reform between 1989 and 1998 in the most advanced sizable political economy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – the Czech Republic. Its aim is to explain the political process bringing about post-Communist health policy change and stimulate new debates on welfare state transformation in CEE. The thesis challenges the conventional view that post-Communist health care reform in CEE was designed and implemented to improve the health status of the people, as desired by the people themselves. I suggest that this is a dangerous over-rationalisation, and argue that post-Communist health care reform in the Czech Republic was the by-product of haphazard democratic political struggle between emerging elites for power and economic resources. The thesis employs the analytical narrative method to describe and analyse the actors, institutions, ideas and history behind the health policy change. The analysis is informed by welfare state theory, elite theory, interest group politics theory, the assumptions of methodological individualism and rational choice theory, and Schumpeter’s doctrine of democracy. Its focus is on the interests of health policy actors and how they interacted within an unhinged, but fast-consolidating, institutional framework. The results demonstrate that, while historical legacies and liberal ideas featured prominently in the rhetoric accompanying health policy change, in Realpolitik, these were merely the disposable, instrumental devices of opportunistic, self-interested elites. The resultant explanation of health policy change stresses the primacy of agency over structure and formulates four important mechanisms of health policy change: opportunism, tinkering, enterprise, and elitism. In conclusion, the relevance of major welfare state theories to the given case is assessed and implications for welfare state research in CEE are drawn.

Concerns about population ageing have been central to reforms of pensions policy and social care policy in the UK over recent decades. However, policy responses to these social problems are in tension, as individuals have been expected to take greater responsibility for both pension saving and provision of care, even when care involves a reduction in earnings and savings. While the pension system protects carers’ state pensions, little attention has been paid to their non-state pensions. This thesis therefore explores the attitudes and beliefs carers hold regarding pensions, and the effect of caring on pensions planning, particularly planning a non-state pension. It focuses on the assumptions made about agency and decision-making contained within social policy. Semi-structured interviews were held with those aged 35-64 who were providing 20 hours of care or more a week in the Thames Valley and Greater London. Almost all of the carers reported disruption to their private pension savings as their employment was impacted by caring. Few felt able to make a choice regarding either caring or employment. Caring also affected the importance many attached to saving, although there was no uniform effect on decision-making. Some carers became more reflexive, attempting to take more control in response to the uncertainty in their lives; others felt powerless due to this uncertainty and limited financial resources. The study provided support for the theory of an ethic of care, which suggests individuals make decisions based on relationships rather than calculations of expected outcomes. The findings challenge the assumptions made in pensions policy. Carers were classed in four categories of approach to pensions savings: reflexive planners, non-reflexive planners, reflexive non-planners and non-reflexive non-planners. A range of financial and social resources corresponding to Bourdieu’s habitus and economic and cultural capital was required for carers to act as reflexive planners.