The Welfare Paradox
Lødemel, Ivar:With its focus on social assistance, a neglected field of comparative research until recently, this study of income security in Britain and Norway breaks new ground. In his insightful analysis of how social security has developed in the two countries Lødemel shows how the nature of the universal programme itself, i.e. social insurance, has conditioned the characteristics of the selective programme, i.e. social assistance. Hence the apparent paradox that Britain with a residual approach to social insurance ends up with a system of social assistance which is quasi-universal, while Norway with a thoroughly universalistic and institutional approach to social insurance develops a form of social assistance far more punitive and stigmatising than Britain?s.
This comparative analysis thus casts new light on the limitation of the classical models of social policy - from Titmuss to Esping-Andersen - in their exclusive focus on social insurance and other entitlement programmes as the basis for the ideal type. When attention shifts to other, hitherto neglected, areas of policy such as social assistance a surprisingly unexpected pattern comes to light. Lødemel?s work thus reveals some of the hidden dimensions of the dialectic between universality and selectivity, an important theoretical contribution of his study.
This is indeed a well written and exciting work - rich in ideas and insights, theoretically sensitive and nuanced, and fine-grained in its analysis of concepts and models as well as data. It is also timely in so far as welfare states are increasingly looking towards selectivity and targeting to understand this aspects of income security better.
About the author:
Ivar Lødemel is Research Director at Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science. In 1989 he received a doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely in the areas of living conditions, social attitudes and social assistance. He is currently coordinating a six-country research project on the effects of "workfare" programs in Europe.
Publisher: Scandinavian University Press 1997
ISBN: 82-00-21242-4
273 pages, hardback
Published in English
