Familistic welfare capitalism is a model of national political economy prevalent in many regions in the world (Southern Europe, Latin America, and Asia), where the family plays a double role as the key provider of welfare and a key agent in the model's socio-economic and political reproduction. The article offers a new approach to the study this model by adopting an expanded concept of social reproduction to capture its historical evolution, using Greece as a case study. Our empirical analysis of austerity measures on employment and pensions demonstrates, how, in the Greek case, a crisis of social reproduction of the traditional form of familistic welfare capitalism was already underway prior to the well-known sovereign-debt crisis. And further we show how the adoption of austerity measures and pro-market reforms is deepening this crisis by severely undermining the key pillars of familial welfare security while rapidly transforming the model into a political economy of generalised insecurity.
This paper aims to describe and discuss the significance of the social policy measures implemented in Southern European countries—Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain—in response to the first wave of COVID‐19. Our analysis covers interventions from 1 March to June 30, 2020. Despite significant differences in how the COVID‐19 pandemic spread—with Italy and Spain experiencing much higher rates of infection and lethality—Southern European economies are among the most hard‐hit—and are likely to find themselves in the eye of the storm, once more. The paper shows that despite differences in how countries have countered the spread of COVID‐19, there are important commonalities in the actions governments took to counteract the economic impact of the pandemic. Foremost efforts were directed at wage subsidy schemes to contain mass job destruction, additional temporary benefits to compensate self‐employed and other non‐standard workers for the loss of earnings; the expansion of unemployment insurance; and finally, the introduction and/or strengthening of schemes to provide support to families with care responsibilities. The scale of the social policy and employment protection response has nevertheless been constrained by the fiscal position of each individual country in the post‐Euro crisis context. We argue that, in the long run, the response capacity of these governments and the social and economic consequences of this crisis will need to be contextualised against the backdrop of the deep and prolonged impact of austerity‐driven measures on public budgets, production and welfare regimes over the last decade.
In this article, we revisit Karl Polanyi's concept of 'oikos' in order to reconceptualize the role of the family as both a welfare provider and an economic actor in the social reproduction of East and South East Asian welfare capitalisms. Our article is structured in four parts. First, we critically review existing approaches on the characteristics of welfare capitalism in East and South East Asia. We argue that existing approaches tend to isolate family as a welfare provider and neglect how the role of the family is institutionalized as a collective actor. The second part focuses on the role of the family in the social reproduction of welfare capitalism, and explores how, in East and South East Asia, the specific conditions for family's role as an economic actor were institutionalized historically. The third part revisits Polanyi's concept of 'oikos' and how 'householding' constitutes one of the most important forms of economic action allowing us to examine the family as a socio-economic actor. In the fourth section, we provide an analysis of families' available strategies and discuss evidence related to private education expenditure, household debt and labour market income share. We conclude by highlighting the need to re-articulate the importance of family as a collective socio-economic actor that, despite recent reforms and path departures, remains at the epicentre of East and South East Asian welfare capitalisms.
Gender critiques of comparative welfare state research have so far predominantly focused on OECD countries but less so in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Existing comparative social policy research in these regions often cites the importance of informal networks and family for social protection but less attention is paid into gender relations and their importance for the social reproduction of these welfare regimes. The article comparatively analyses gender differences in the sphere of production (captured by the gender gap in formal and informal employment) and social reproduction (captured by time spent on unpaid domestic work). The article identifies regional patterns and explores implications for women’s ability to access welfare and the labour market. Additionally, it shows that informal activities (employment, domestic work) are extensive among many African, Asian, Latin American, but also specific OECD, welfare regimes. The article contributes first by incorporating gender in the analysis of global welfare regime and second by highlighting the importance of informal relationships for the analysis of welfare regimes.
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