welfare state

The politics of anger: emotional appraisal and the French pension reform protests

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by Johanna Kuhlmann and Peter Starke

Two portrait photos - one woman, one man - the authors of the article

In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Johanna Kuhlmann and Peter Starke demonstrate how a focus on emotions helps us to better understand important policy dynamics. Specifically, they examine how anger shaped public responses to the French pension reform of 2019–20. While welfare state reforms are usually explained by institutional or materialist theories, the authors turn to appraisal theory of emotion to explore how the reform process—and the interaction between government, trade unions and citizens—generated one of the largest protest movements in recent French history.

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Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations for Public Policy and Politics courses on emotions in public policy, the politics of environmental policy, and governance networks

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by Sarah Brown and Allegra H. Fullerton

As you plan reading lists for the coming academic year, this collection of recent articles offers fresh insights for units on emotions in public policy, the politics of environmental policy, and governance networks. Each article draws on cutting-edge empirical research combined with conceptual innovation, making them ideal for both undergraduate and postgraduate modules exploring the politics of policymaking.

We hope these suggestions save you time and effort in mining recent articles while ensuring your course materials reflect the latest research from the frontiers of the discipline.

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Thank you to all our authors, reviewers, board members, readers and friends of Policy & Politics for another great year in 2024 

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We are delighted to be ending the year on a high note. Submissions are at their highest level for over a decade, we’ve published more diverse scholarship from a far broader range of countries than ever before, and we’ve maintained our top quartile rankings in both Public Administration and Political Science with an impact factor of 4.3, thanks to the huge support of our loyal community. Congratulations to you all!   

To celebrate, we have made our top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 free to access until 31 January 2025. Happy holiday reading! 

Top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 – free to access until 31 January 2025 

1. Policy learning governance: a new perspective on agency across policy learning theories Bishoy Zaki 

2. Types of learning and varieties of innovation: how does policy learning enable policy innovation? Nihit Goyal and Michael Howlett 

3. Crisis management in English local government: the limits of resilience Tania Arrieta and Jonathan S. Davies 

4. Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: the COVID-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia Marleen Easton, Jennifer Yarnold, Valerie Vervaenen, Jasper De Paepe, and Brian W. Head 

5. Social identities, emotions and policy preferences Johanna Hornung  and Nils C. Bandelow 

6. The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public- common partnerships Iolanda Bianchi 

7. The politics of anger: emotional appraisal mechanisms and the French pension reform protests Johanna Kuhlmann and Peter Starke 

8. Emotions and anti-carceral advocacy in Canada: ‘All of the anger this creates in our bodies is also a tool to kill us’ Jennifer M. Kilty and Michael Orsini
 
9. The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin, and Reidar Staupe-Delgado

10. Identifying proactive and reactive policy entrepreneurs in collaborative networks in flood risk management Per Becker, Jörgen Sparf, and Evangelia Petridou 

Latest Policy Process research from Policy & Politics free to access

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As proud co-sponsors of the Conference on Policy Process Research 2024, we bring you our latest policy process research, free to access for the conference period from 15-17 May. 

Please look out for members of our team attending COPPR! 


Happy reading! 

Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies 
Authors: Samuel Workman, Scott E. Robinson, and Tracey Bark 

Identifying proactive and reactive policy entrepreneurs in collaborative networks in flood risk management 
Authors: Per Becker, Jörgen Sparf, and Evangelia Petridou 

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Virtual issue on The changing nature of welfare

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P&P editorsSarah Ayres, Steve Martin and Felicity Matthews,
Co-editors of Policy & Politics

New virtual issue from Policy & Politics: The changing nature of welfare

While Policy & Politics has always tracked debates about the changing nature of welfare globally, our need to understand the implications of such changes is proving more crucial than ever during this global pandemic.  In particular, it is clear that this pandemic will have differentiated impacts, with those who are poorer and more vulnerable more likely to be adversely affected. To help think about how these challenges can be tackled, this special collection brings together a range of insights from recent articles that consider the changing nature of welfare and what this means for welfare recipients. Continue reading →

Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations

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OscarNew research articles for course reading lists in Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy from Policy & Politics. By Oscar Berglund, Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol.

All articles mentioned in this blog post are free to access until 20th September or Open Access. 

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The modern welfare state in transition: framing new co-production roles and competences for public professionals

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Nederhand-van MeerkerkBy José Nederhand and Ingmar van Meerkerk

“The place where we organize care, how we provide care, and those who provide the care will change” – Dutch Ministry of Care (2013), Vision on Care and the Welfare Labour Market.

The Dutch Ministry of Health has announced extensive reorganization of the care system. Just like in many other Western countries with ageing populations, the welfare state is subject to major reforms. In parallel with academic debates, the idea of co-producing and self-organizing public services seems to have penetrated the discourse of politicians and governors all over the world. Politicians state that in order to keep care provision affordable, accessible and in line with societal demands, responsibilities should be shifted ‘back’ to society. Through volunteering, citizens are expected to shoulder tasks formerly performed by the state, either by partnering and co-production with the state or by self-organization. Our systematic content analysis shows that citizens are now generally framed as active service producers which are, and should be, part of the general system of care service delivery. This activation of citizens has considerable implications for the roles, competences and responsibilities of care professionals. In fact, government is calling for a new public service ethos of professionals, see our recent article in Policy and Politics. Continue reading →

Why do we need a Fiscal Centred Perspective on Welfare State Development?

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michal koreh_daniel beland

By Michal Koreh (Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University of Haifa) and Daniel Béland (Professor and Canada Research Chair in Public Policy, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy)

This post was originally published in Discover Society on 5th July 2017.

Welfare state scholarship needs a fiscal centred perspective because focusing attention on the imperatives and interests related to the fiscal, revenue side of social programmes can shed new light on the historical and contemporary politics of social policy. This is particularly the case with programmes like social insurance that are directly involved in the extraction of revenues and that, in some countries, collect more revenues than personal income taxes.

In our recent Policy & Politics article titled ‘Reconsidering the Fiscal-Social Policy Nexus: The Case of Social Insurance’, we lay the foundations for such a fiscal-centred perspective. We bring together several bodies of theoretical literature situated beyond the conventional boundaries of welfare state research and combine their insights to suggest two interlocking claims. The first is that social insurance systems financed by payroll contributions can be used by state and non-state actors to advance their fiscal and economic goals beyond the financing of social benefits and services. The second claim is that, through mechanisms such as legitimacy production, institutional design, and coalition building, the design and management of social insurance contribution policies for such fiscal purposes can have substantial ramifications for the development of social programmes. Continue reading →

The Welfare State on the Chopping Block

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zach_morrisZach Morris, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare

Zach Morris, 2017 winner of our Bleddyn Davies Prize for the best article from an early career scholar, summarises the findings from his winning article, which is free to read until 15 June 2017.

With the Republican Party in power in the US, the welfare state is once again on the chopping block. And disability benefit programs – traditionally designed for the “deserving poor” – may not be protected from these cuts. So, what political strategies are retrenchment advocates pursuing? And will their efforts succeed?

As discussed in my P&P article, a major safeguard against disability benefit retrenchment in the US is its structural positioning as a “Social Security” program. In the UK, the disability benefit program has always been considered distinct from the old-age “State Pension” program. But in the US, the disability and old age programs have historically been grouped together under the auspices of the Social Security Administration. This connection between disability benefits and the more popular old-age program provides a form of institutionalized protection to the US disability program and is a major reason why that program has historically proven so difficult to cut. Continue reading →

India’s Emerging Social Policy Paradigm: Productive, Protective or What? 

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stefan-kuhner-and-keerty-nakray

Stephan Kühner and Keerty Nakray

The last two decades have been marked by a renewed focus on pro-poor social policies in India under the two Centre/Left Congress/United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments (2004-2009, 2009-2014). These social policies included a plethora of education programs (such as Madhyamik Shiksha Yojana (National Middle School/ Secondary School Scheme), health insurance programs (such as Rashtriya’s Swasthya Bima Yojana, (RSBY) along with several conditional cash transfer schemes such as Janani Suraksha Yojana (Protection of Motherhood Scheme, JSY); and rural poverty alleviation programs (such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) etc.

In our recent article published in the Journal of Asian Public Policy, we analyse if these programs really mark a genuine shift towards pro-poor universal social policies and if the actions of the UPA actually delivered on its well-promoted rhetoric of pushing India towards a high skills based knowledge economy.  Our analysis also re-examined the existing research on extending welfare regime theories to developing counties. For example, Wood and Gough (2006) classified India as an informal-insecure regime as large numbers of citizens largely depend on precarious employment and informal family and kinship networks for welfare. Similarly, Kühner (2015) pointed out that much of the social expenditure is disproportionately directed towards to social protection programs such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

Our analysis indicates that the majority of these social programmes do not signify a genuine move towards greater inclusivity or categorical entitlements. Benefit levels remain generally low and eligibility criteria too rigid to facilitate an extension of social protection coverage. India’s social policies essentially remain residual, even minimalist, in character. Recent social policy initiatives largely appear in fragments with few connections with each other or any clearly defined strategy linking them to the economic goals of the country.

Our research makes a contribution to welfare state modeling which in recent decades has gone beyond focusing solely on advanced capitalist countries in the rich European and OECD countries. The emergence of East Asian welfare states and more recent developments in middle income countries such as Brazil and China has led to a diversification of the literature. India has not been dealt systematically in this research.  We have attempted to extend and diversify welfare regime theory based on an interdisciplinary review of India’s emerging social policies during the two recent Centre/Left Congress/United Progressive Alliance governments (2004-2009, 2009-2014).

We hope that the announcement of many new social protection schemes by the ambitious Modi government elected in 2014 may force us to change our assessment of the emerging social policy landscape in India. For instance, the World Bank’s Global Findex indicates a considerable improvement in access to formal bank accounts (from 35 per cent in 2013 to 53 percent in 2014) as a consequence of the Jan Dhan Yojana (Prime Minister’s People Money Scheme) program, which was launched in 2014.

If equally successful, the Modi government’s ambitious ‘Skill India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives, which aim to train 500 million Indians and create 100 million new manufacturing jobs by 2022 may well force us to reconsider the Indian political economy altogether. It remains to be seen whether further extensions of the emerging Indian middle class – currently standing somewhere between 100-300 million depending on the exact measure used – together with an ever-increasing presence of civil society organizations will trigger not only more domestic demand for manufacturing products and more formal employment, but will also create a new politics of social policy that will manage to move India beyond its current dependency mode.

Dr. Stefan Kühner, is an Assistant Professor at Ling nan University, Hong Kong. Email: stefankuehner@ln.edu.hk  Twitter: @stefankuehner

Dr. Keerty Nakray, is an Associate Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for Women, Law and Social Change, at O.P. Jindal Global University, India. Email: knakray@jgu.edu.in; Twitter @socialpolicyind

If you enjoyed this blog post you may also like to read Gender budgeting and public policy: the challenges to operationalising gender justice in India by Keerty Nakray.