Centre for Policy on Ageing



The illusion of welfare 'regimes'
Author(s)	Gregory J Kasza
Journal title	Journal of Social Policy, vol 31, no 2, April 2002
Pages	pp 271-288
Keywords	Social welfare ; Social policy.
Annotation	The concept of welfare regimes has become a centrepiece of comparative welfare research. Most criticism of the concept thus far has focused on whether this or that country fits a particular regime type or deserves its own regime category. This article offers a more radical critique of this concept. It argues that most countries practice a disjointed set of welfare policies due to the following typical features of welfare policymaking: the cumulative nature of welfare policies; the diverse histories of policies in different welfare fields; the involvement of different sets of policy factors; variations in the policymaking process; and the influence of foreign models. It concludes that few national welfare systems are likely to exhibit the internal consistency necessary to validate the regime concept, and that policy-specific comparisons may be a more promising avenue for comparative research. (KJ/RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020520202 A
Classmark	TY: TM2
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