Welfare Markets in Europe: The Democratic Challenge of European Integration

✍ Scribed by Amandine Crespy (auth.)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 276
• Series: Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization. The author argues that the rise of profit-making in utilities, transport, child and health care is exacerbating rather than reducing inequalities among citizens, demonstrating how the marketization of European welfare has taken place over successive rounds of policymaking for European integration.

These rounds have motivated national level public services reform, as well as contestation over these measures from civil society groups. The study traces the developments of policymaking at EU level since the late 1980s, offers in-depth studies of contentious debates which have sealed the fate of welfare services at the turn of the century, and offers insights on the problems involved with prolonged austerity in Europe. This book therefore shows how European integration is provoking a democratic challenge to what kind of Europe citizens want.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xv
Introduction: Welfare Markets, Democracy and European Integration....Pages 1-32
European Integration as Marketization....Pages 33-70
Resistance to Liberalization....Pages 71-112
The Elusive Pursuit of Social Europe....Pages 113-149
The Contentious Global Agenda for Services....Pages 151-187
Welfare Services in Times of Austerity....Pages 189-227
Conclusion: The Marketization and Politicization of Welfare Services: Old and New Dynamics....Pages 229-254
Back Matter....Pages 255-263

✦ Subjects

Sociology, general;International Economics;Social Policy;Economic Systems;Social Structure, Social Inequality;Social Care