Număr de credite: 8

Cod: AME2031

Predare: curs 1h, seminar 2h

Limba de predare: engleză

Tip: curs principal, semestrul 2, Masteratul Cercetare Sociologică Avansată

1. Social inequalities, social citizenship, and the welfare state

2. Welfare state typologies and contemporary evolutions

3. Social inequalities and the Romanian welfare state in a historical perspective

4. Labour market inequalities, precarious work, and dualisation

5. The policy process from a critical perspective

6. Poverty: conceptualization and measurement. Indicators for poverty reduction assessment

7. Regional and national inequalities: multidimensional indicators of inequality

8. Pension policies and inequalities at old age

9. Gender, families, and work-life balance

10. Health care policies and inequalities in access to public health care

11. Housing policies, social housing, and homelessness

12. Eutopia joint lecture: Inequalities and welfare state transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989

13. Eutopia joint lecture: Guest lecturer from partner institutions.

14. Wrap-up session and students’ presentations of essay drafts.

Seminars

The seminars will closely follow the topics of lectures and discuss the readings recommended for each topic.

Leibfried, Stephan and Mau, Steffen (2008). Welfare states. Construction, deconstruction, reconstruction. Analytical perspectives. Cheltenham: Elgar.

Pierson, Christopher (1991). Beyond the Welfare State. The New Political Economy of Welfare. Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 99-135 and pp. 136-166.

T.H.Marshall (1950): Citizenship and social class. Selections: Section 2 - The development of citizenship, Section 4 - Social rights in the 20th Century, and Section 5- Conclusions.

Esping-Andersen (1990): The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chapter 2, pp. 35-54.

Arts, Will and Gelissen, John (2002). The three worlds of welfare capitalism or more? A state of art report. Journal of European Social Policy, 12 (2): 137–158.

Ginsburg, Norman (2013). Structured diversity: a framework for critically comparing welfare states? In P. Kenneth (ed.). A Handbook for Comparative Social Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 162-180.

Standing, Guy (2007). Labour recommodification in the global transformation. In A. Bugra and K. Agatan (eds.) Reading Karl Polanyi for the 21^st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Greer, Ian (2016). Welfare state, precarity and the re-commodification of labour. Work, employment, society. Vol.30(1): 162-173.

Iversen, Torben and Soskice, David (2015). Politics for Markets. Journal of European Social Policy, 25(1): 76-93.

Parlier, Bruno (ed.) (2010). A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Introduction (B. Parlier), pp. 19-44.

Raț, C., Popescu, L. and Ivan, V. (2019). The Romanian Welfare System: from the Shadow of Equality to the Dazzle of Dualization in K.Schubert, J.Kuhlmann and S.Blum (eds.) Handbook of European Welfare systems. Second edition, London: Routledge.

Aidukaite, I. (2009). Old welfare state theories and new welfare regimes in Eastern Europe: Challenges and implications. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 42, pp. 23-39.

Fischer, Frank, Miller, G. J. And Sidney, M. S. (2007) (eds.). The Handbook of Public Policy Analysis. Theory, Politics and Methods. Pennsylvania: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group.

Forrest, Ray (2013). The contours of the housing question. In P. Kenneth (ed.) A Handbook for Comparative Social Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 329-353.

Fraser, N. (1996): Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Stanford University, pp. 1-23, 44-67 (only part I and part III, without part III)

Reports and data on social and economic inequalities provided by:

The European Commission – Eurostat & thematic reports

Eurofound – thematic reports

The European Trade Unions Institute (ETUI.) – thematic reports

The OECD – Transmonee dataset

The International Labour Organization (ILO) – Thematic reports

The World Bank

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – Human Development Index and Human Poverty Index

European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA)

National Institutes of Statistics – for Romania, www.insse.ro

For Romania: The Ministry of Labour – www.mmuncii.ro

70 % - Written essay

30% - Ongoing evaluation of active participation based on the readings from the course bibliography

General objective of the course: To familiarize students with theoretical and methodological approaches that scrutinize the interplay between social inequalities and public policies in the context of welfare state transformations, with focus on European countries and Romania.  

Specific objective of the course: To enable students to define and analyse social inequalities;

To provide students a nuanced understanding of the main concepts and theoretical perspectives on public policies and welfare states in Europe and Romania;

To enable students to competently use indicators of economic and social inequalities, redistribution, and welfare;

To provide students conceptual and methodological tools for writing policy papers, briefs, and policy advocacy.