Numar de credite: 8

Cod: AME3047

Predare: curs 2h, seminar 1 h

Limba de predare: Engleză

Tip: obligatoriu, semestru 2, Master Muncă și transformări sociale

Lectures

1.     Inequality, social citizenship, and the welfare state

2.     The welfare state from a historical perspective

3.     Welfare state typologies, reforms, and contemporary evolutions in the European Union

4.     Labour market inequalities, precarious work, and the turn to active labour market policies

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

6.     Severe poverty and social exclusion. Spatial, social, and political dimensions of marginalization

7.     Minimum income guarantee schemes and social assistance for low-income groups. Tackling child poverty

8.     Pension policies and inequalities at old age

9.     Gender and work-life balance

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

11. Housing policies, social housing, and homelessness

12. Regional and national inequalities: multidimensional indicators of inequality

13. Wrap-up session: the policy process and indicators for policy evaluation

14. Students’ presentations of final essay drafts and their policy advocacy one-pagers

Seminars

The seminars will closely follow the topics of lectures and discuss the readings recommended for each topic. In addition, they will offer practical applications for accessing and using various data sources, building and interpreting social policy indicators (spending, coverage, adequacy, targeting, effectiveness, poverty reduction etc.), writing policy proposals and policy advocacy one-pagers.

Bibliography 

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.

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.

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

Emmenegger, P., Hausermann, S., Palier, B. and Seeleib-Kaiser, M. (2012), “How We Grow Unequal”, In Emmenegger, P., Hausermann, S., Palier, B. and Seeleib-Kaiser, M. (Eds.), The Age of Dualization. The Changing Face of Inequality in a Dezindustrializing Society, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3–27.

Fina, Stefan, B. Heider, C. Raț (2021). Unequal Romania. Bucharest: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

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)

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.

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

Hacker, Bjorn (2021). Unequal Europe. Tackling regional inequalities within the EU. Stockholm: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Nordic Countries.

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

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

Macdonald, Robert, Schildrick, T. and Furlong, A. (2013). In search of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’: Hunting the Yeti and shooting zombies. Critical Social Policy, Vol 34(2): 199-220.

Morel, Nathalie, Bruno Palier, Joakim Palme. What Future for Social Investment?. [Research Report] Institute for Futures Studies. 2009, pp.193. hal-02188244

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

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

Raț, Cristina, 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.

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.

Vincze, Enikő, Ban, C., Gog, S., and Friberg, J.H. (eds.) (2025). The Political Economy of Extreme Poverty in Eastern Europe. A Comparative Historical Perspective of Romanian Roma. London: Routledge.

Recommended journals:

Critical Social Policy – https://journals.sagepub.com/home/CSP

Journal of European Social Policy – https://journals.sagepub.com/home/esp

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

European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) – https://eige.europa.eu/  

The OECD – Transmonee dataset & OECD indicators 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

Resources for writing policy proposal papers & policy advocacy one-pagers:

Luciana Herman, Stanford University (2013). Tips for Writing Policy Papers. https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/White-Papers-Guidelines.pdf

The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – Writing policy briefs: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/policy-briefs/ (accessed: 01.09.2024).   

International Society for Technology in Education (2013). How to create a one-pager for policymakers. Tips and templates. https://cdn.iste.org/www-root/Libraries/Documents%20%26%20Files/PDFs/ISTE%20Advocacy%20Toolkit%20-%20How%20to%20Create%20a%20One-Pager.pdf

Lectures

70% Written essay that follows a pre-defined structure of a social policy analysis & recommendations paper, its corresponding policy advocacy one-pager, and their oral presentation followed by Q&A (scores from min 0p to max 10p)

Seminars

30% Ongoing evaluation of active participation at the seminars – 0.3p/ active participation

General objective of the course

To familiarize students with theoretical and methodological approaches that scrutinize the interplay between inequality and social 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 inequality in contemporary societies;  

To provide a nuanced understanding of main concepts and theories on welfare states and social policies from a comparative and critical perspective;

To enable students to competently use indicators of economic and social inequalities, redistribution, social policy inputs, outputs, and outcomes;

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