Recasting European Welfare States

This volume presents research on the recasting of European welfare states from the European Forum on Welfare at the European University Institute in Florence. The chapters include both comparative analyses of topical issues (such as reforms of the major social programmes: pensions, health, social security and the changing political cleavages in welfare politics), and in-depth studies of changes in the major European countries. The objectives are: to analyze the impact of retrenchment; reform and add to the ongoing debates about policy convergence; the origins of pressures for reform (domestic and internal); the shifting balance of power between modernizers and vested interests; and the nature of the trade-offs involved in social policy innovation and the outcomes in terms of cost saving, resource redeployment and equality.