The third way: the renewal of social democracy

The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this 'middle-class shift' in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences.

The decline of the working-class vote, the reconfiguration of the welfare support coalition and consequences for the welfare state

The long careers of Picasso, Pope John XXIII, Humboldt, Duke Ellington, Prime Minister Meir, and Ben Franklin, among many others, provide the evidence that old age can be graceful and very productive. The skilled author and gerontologist, Robert Butler, demonstrates that most elderly people are healthier and more creative than either they or their families realize. Disease, decay, boredom, depression, poverty, and despair may be a necessary part of early aging for some but can be eluded by many others for several more valuable decades and especially by those who will ponder and apply the advice in this book. Housing, living expenses, and economic dignity for the elderly are problems about which the author is most angry. Some very personal notes and half the book are concerned with ordinary sustenance and money. The issues are well argued and well supported by general statistical analyses and anecdotes. The author logically develops

Why Survive? Being Old in America

In this Foreword to the special issue ‘In, Against and Beyond Precarity’ the guest editors take stock of the existing literature on precarity, highlighting the strengths and limitations of using th...

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In, Against and Beyond Precarity: Work in Insecure Times:

What explains the surprising growth of work-family policies in several West European countries? Much research on the welfare state emphasizes its institutional stickiness and immunity to major change. Yet, over the past two decades, governments in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have introduced important reforms to their welfare regimes, enacting paid leave schemes, expanded rights to part-time work, and greater investments in child care. A comparison of these countries reveals a similar sequence of political and policy change. Faced with growing electoral instability and the decline of core constituencies, party leaders sought to attract dealigning voter groups, such as women. This led them to introduce feminizing reforms of their party structures and adopt policies to support mothers’ employment. In all three cases, women working within the parties played an important role in hatching or lobbying for these reforms. After comparing three countries that moved in a path-shifting direction, this article engages in a brief traveling exercise, examining whether a similar set of dynamics are lacking in two countries—Austria and Italy—that have moved more slowly in reforming these policies. Against the prevailing scholarly literature that emphasizes path dependence and slow-moving change, this article reveals the continued power of electoral politics in shaping redistributive policies.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0043887112000251

Path Shifting of the Welfare State: Electoral Competition and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe

Wir leben in einer Zeit der weitreichenden Transformation des Sozialen: In Politik und Wirtschaft setzt sich ein Menschenbild durch, das von jedem Einzelnen erwartet, sich flexibel und vorsorgend, selbsttätig und eigenverantwortlich zu verhalten. Diese neue politische Ökonomie der Aktivgesellschaft greift dabei auch auf bislang verschonte Lebenssphären und -phasen über. So ist die politische Programmformel des »active ageing« längst auch zu einem Teil der Fremdund Selbstbeschreibung älterer Menschen geworden. Der Band untersucht den Wandel des politisch-medialen Altersbildes, konfrontiert diesen mit den Erzählungen älterer Menschen zu ihrem Leben im Ruhestand und überführt die Befunde in eine originelle Zeitdiagnose der alternden Gesellschaft.

Leben im Ruhestand: Zur Neuverhandlung des Alters in der Aktivgesellschaft

The appraisal of difference: critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm.

In recent years and throughout the European Union, “active ageing” has become a prominent conception of how to “age well”. In analyzing the governmentality of old age inherent to the “active ageing” paradigm, this paper tries to avoid the short-cut from program to praxis commonly being taken in governmentality studies. It reports on the findings of an empirical research project that asks for the specific images of “old age” and “retirement” becoming prominent in the context of last decade’s push for “activation” in German politics. The analysis combines the reconstruction of so-called “story lines” emerging in public discourse with the evaluation of qualitative interviews with “young” elderly people, conceptualizing older people’s narrations as being an integral part of the discourse itself. Moving from simple, ad-hoc illustrations of theoretical claims concerning a “neoliberal” government of old age to a systematic empirical reconstruction of what may be called the dispositif of “active ageing”, the paper claims to make an innovative contribution to an “empirical theory” of governmentality.

Silke van Dyk

Papers

Leben im Ruhestand: Zur Neuverhandlung des Alters in der Aktivgesellschaft

The appraisal of difference: critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm.

The Many Meanings of “Active Ageing”. Confronting Public Discourse with Older People’s Stories

Soziologie des Alters

The othering of old age: Insights from Postcolonial Studies