Fudan-LSE Lecture Series No.60

Title: 

The Welfare State: Challenges of Sustainability in Times of New Uncertainty

Speaker: 

Prof. Stein Kuhnle, University of Bergen

Host: 

Prof. Yijia Jing, Fudan IGPP 

Time: 

12:00-13:20, October 17th2024

Venue: 

Room 805E, 8th Floor，West Sub-building of Guanghua Towers

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The Speaker：

Stein Kuhnle is Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, since 1982. He chaired the Department of Comparative Politics for a total of 14 years during 1983-2005. During 2006-2014, he was Professor of Comparative Social Policy at the Hertie School, The University of Governance, Berlin, Germany. He has been a Visiting Scholar at universities in the USA, UK, Australia, Germany, Italy, China and Japan. He has published widely, in many languages, in the field of comparative welfare state studies. His publications include Survival of the European Welfare State (ed.; 2000); Normative Foundations of the Welfare State: The Nordic Experience (ed. with N.Kildal; Routledge, 2005); Globalizing Welfare: An Evolving Asian-European Dialogue (ed. with P. Selle, S. Hort, 2019).

Abstract: 

It is nothing new that ‘the welfare state’ faces serious challenges. But new challenges due to a variety of new security issues and new dimensions of uncertainty have appeared in recent years due to wars, pandemic, geo-political tensions on top of a demographic megatrend towards ageing populations. Why should a state be socially active? What were historical reasons for developing welfare states? What are the economic, political and moral dimensions of welfare state sustainability? Can national welfare states be sustained in a globalized world without reinforced international political cooperation, coordination and regulation?