全球与比较视角下的福利国家
课程教师
Chunrong Liu
教师简介
Chunrong Liu is Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. He received his PhD degree in sociology from the City University of Hong Kong in 2005 and has conducted post-doctoral research at Georgetown University. He has been serving as the Managing Director of the Fudan-European Centre for China Studies since 2013. Prof. Liu’s research interests are in the areas of political sociology and comparative politics. He has published widely on China’s state-society relations, governance innovation and social policy dynamics in the contexts of population aging, urbanization and digitalization.
课程内容
The modern welfare state was a European invention that took shape gradually during the twentieth century. As a response to the social problems of industrialisation, urbanisation, and poverty around the late nineteenth century, it seeks to regulate both civil society and the market through social policies, in order to distribute economic resources more progressively and to ensure that all citizens enjoy a basic measure of social and economic security. Roughly half of state expenditures, and up to around a third of GDP in advanced industrial democracies now concern the welfare state. This makes it a crucial subject matter for social sciences in general and global public policy in particular.
This course engages with the politics of welfare state as a special concern of global public policy in the contemporary world. It brings together discussions about key theoretical concepts, competing explanatory models and approaches to explaining welfare state dynamics, i.e. its emergence, consolidation and transformation. The focus is how different welfare states are organized, developed and reformed, what are the complex challenges and dilemmas to the welfare state policies that stem from globalization, changing labor market, demographic aging, immigration, digitization, etc. Pivotal is the context of multiple crisis unfolding in the 21st century, which have important repercussions on social policy making. Throughout the course a comparative perspective is emphasized.
The course should be of general interest to those with a specialization in comparative politics or in global public policy. It will contribute to develop the competence to frame and present policy analysis in a politically relevant and culturally sensitive approach.
Basic Reading
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Princeton University Press.
Béland, Daniel et al., ed (2021). The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, New York: Oxford University Press.
课程安排
Setting the stage Discuss syllabus, assignments and research interests |
Origins Why modern welfare states emerge? What were the political-historical origins of the welfare state?
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Variations Why the forms of welfare state differ from one another? How do different welfare regimes look like in terms of stratification and decommodification? What is the role of ideologies/ideas/political coalition in the formation of different worlds of welfare capitalism?
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Effects Do welfare states boost economic growth, social justice and social equality? Are some welfare models or varieties of capitalism better at balancing long-term ecological and contemporary social concerns?
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Expansion A conventional wisdom holds that globalization causes economic uncertainty and spurs popular demands for compensatory welfare state spending. But why are some social welfare programmes being expanded, while others undergoing retrenchment? What is relevance of European welfare experience for East Asian and the global south?
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Retrenchement Welfare state retrenchment refers to the act of cutting back the welfare state. What explains different forms and degrees of retrenchment? What are the politics behind retrenchment options? How does the politics of welfare retrenchment operates according to fundamentally different logics from the politics of welfare expansion?
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Social Investment What is the aspiration and nature of “social investment turn” in welfare state development in the context of post-industrial new risks? To what extent the social investments rather than passive social transfers could become a key strategy to modernise European welfare states?
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Welfare Chauvinism The redistribution of welfare resources to migrants continues to polarise society and give rise to political exclusion. How does immigration trigger challenges to welfare state? Why and how welfare chauvinism occurs? How identity politics, racisim and national popularism interplay to shape the practices of welfare state?
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Digital Welfare Technological change is widely considered to be a key driver of welfare state reform. Over the past decade, governments across the globe have adopted strategies to transform public services through digitalization. How digitalisation and datafication may challenge the values that underpin the welfare state?
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Pandemic and Welfare In what ways the Covid-19 Pandemic shape the policy response of welfare state? What are the future of welfare state in the post-pandemic world?
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Wrap-up discussion How to understand and theorise welfare state adaptation in a new global context across the world? How can “East Asian welfare state” take shape with its social-cultural traits in the 21st century? Perspectives on new models of welfare will also be presented and discussed.
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