Academic literature on the topic 'Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western'
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Journal articles on the topic "Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western"
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Chapman, Herrick. "Paul V. Dutton,Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 251 pp. $65.00 cloth; $27.00 paper." International Labor and Working-Class History 66 (October 2004): 194–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0147547904210249.
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Comparative studies of social policy usually portray the French welfare state as lagging behind most of its counterparts in Western Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century. The sheer complexity of the French system, moreover, with its baroque mixture of separate private, government and quasi-public funds, made it exceptional as well. Yet tardiness and complexity by no means prevented the French from expanding social insurance at an especially rapid clip in the decades following the Second World War. By 1980 France spent more on social security as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than any country in Europe except Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. Today the French are among Europe's most stalwart defenders of publicly funded pensions and health insurance. Given its unimpressive beginnings, how did the French welfare state become such a heavyweight?
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Skrobacki, Waldemar A. "The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe." Canadian Journal of Political Science 41, no. 1 (March 2008): 251–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008423908080384.
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The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe, Anthony M. Messina, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. xv, 290.One of the most contentious and politically sensitive issues in Europe is immigration. The demographic trends indicate that the Old Continent is indeed getting older. To maintain their living standards, Europeans have to either increase birth rates or open the gates to immigrants in an orderly and welcoming way. Yet despite the practicality and, sooner rather than later, the necessity for an open, comprehensive and pro-active immigration policy, European countries are far from having one. At best, they have procedures concerning how to handle foreigners. The main “culprits” for this state of affairs are the people rather than governments. The Europeans, however rational the arguments for increasing immigration may be, are unwilling to embrace it. Paradoxically, those who are most opposed (and vote accordingly) are older people, even though they depend most on a large taxpayer base without which cheques from government-run pension plans would stop flowing eventually and publicly managed health care systems would run out of money.
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Bonoli, Giuliano, and Bruno Palier. "How do welfare states change? Institutions and their impact on the politics of welfare state reform in Western Europe." European Review 8, no. 3 (July 2000): 333–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1062798700004944.
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In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.
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Hyde, Mark, John Dixon, and Glenn Drover. "Western European Pensions Privatisation: A Response to Jay Ginn." Social Policy and Society 3, no. 2 (March 29, 2004): 135–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1474746403001593.
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Our recent paper on state-mandated private pension schemes in Western Europe has been criticised by Ginn because it did not look specifically at the impact of private provision on women. This was not our intent, but she raises important issues that are largely ignored in economics-driven pension privatisation policy discourses. She has addressed this omission by demonstrating that private pension provision may result in significant levels of economic disadvantage among women retirees. We do not disagree with the broad thrust of her analysis and its conclusions. However, because she has failed to appreciate the crucial difference between voluntary and state-mandated private pension provision, her thoughtful analysis does not invalidate our proposition that the state-mandated provision of private pensions in Western Europe is consistent, to varying degrees, with the notion of collective responsibility for needs satisfaction.
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Xu, Bo. "A Comparative Study of Language Educational Policy in China and Western Europe." Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences 8 (February 7, 2023): 768–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.54097/ehss.v8i.4351.
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Nowadays, English has become a very important communicative tool for people from non-English-dominant countries. The Chinese government has been trying to push its residents to keep this pace for decades while recently most Western European countries try to avoid English teaching to protect their languages and cultures. Most Chinese students have to study English when they enter Grade 3. The College English Test Band 4 (CET4) has been the basic examination for Chinese students for decades and some universities will even require their students to pass CET6. Certificates of proving passing CET4 and CET6 will also offer help in job hunting. Recently, Chinese government even released the “Chinese culture go abroad” which aims to teach students how to spread Chinese cultures in English. For Western countries, Germany government want to protect their language and maintain the use of English at the same time while English academic writing continues to develop in Italy even these triggered severe debates. Now the Chinese government can see their reward after policies released for decades as it has become one of the strong competitors on academic area while the objectors in Western Europe are still working hard to defend their opinions. However, there are problems with policies released by the Chinese government as some teachers will argue that learning English cost a huge part of students’ time.
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OLIVERA, JAVIER, and VALENTINA PONOMARENKO. "Pension Insecurity and Wellbeing in Europe." Journal of Social Policy 46, no. 3 (November 17, 2016): 517–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047279416000787.
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AbstractThis paper studies pension insecurity in a sample of non-retired individuals aged 50 years or older from 18 European countries. We capture pension insecurity with the subjective expectations on the probability that the government will reduce the pensions of the individual before retirement or will increase the statutory retirement age. We argue that changes in economic conditions and policy affect the formation of such probabilities, and through this, subjective wellbeing. In particular, we study the effects of pension insecurity on subjective wellbeing with pooled linear models, regressions per quintiles and instrumental variables. We find a statistically significant, stable and negative association between pension insecurity and subjective wellbeing. Our findings reveal that the individuals who are more affected by pension insecurity are those who are further away from their retirement, have lower income, assess their life survival as low, have higher cognitive abilities and do not expect private pension payments.
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Cox, Kevin R. "Development policy, Western Europe and the question of specificity." European Urban and Regional Studies 27, no. 1 (October 2, 2018): 4–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0969776418798689.
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In the Anglophone literature on local and regional development policy there are tendencies to overextension of claims from one side of the Atlantic to the other, or there is no comparative framing at all. As a result the specificity of the West European case tends to be lost. In contrast with the USA, the West European instance is very different indeed. Although there have been changes since the postwar golden years of urban and regional planning, central government remains crucial in the structuring of local and regional development and has given expression to counter-posed class forces: regional policy was historically an aspect of the welfare state as promoted by the labor movement, while urbanization policy has been much more about the forces of the political right. In the USA, by contrast, local governments and to a lesser degree, the states, have been and continue to be supreme; in contrast to Western Europe, location tends to be much more market-determined, with local and governments acting as market agents. Class forces have seemingly been much weaker, territorial coalitions occupying the center ground. As a first cut, these differences have to do with state structure: the Western European state is far more centralized, facilitating the implementation of policies that are relatively indifferent to local specificity, while in the USA the converse applies. State structures, however, are parts of broader social formations and reflect the different socio-historical conditions in which West European societies, on the one hand, and their American counterpoint, on the other, have emerged.
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Scharpf, Fritz W. "A Game-Theoretical Interpretation of Inflation and Unemployment in Western Europe." Journal of Public Policy 7, no. 3 (July 1987): 227–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0143814x00004438.
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ABSTRACTThe paper aims at a more complete, yet still parsimonious, explanation of macro-economic policy failure and success during the ‘stagflation’ period of the 1970s. Focusing on four countries, Austria, Great Britain, Sweden and West Germany, it is shown that both runaway inflation and rising unemployment could be avoided whenever it was possible to achieve a Keynesian concertation between fiscal and monetary expansion on the one hand and union wage restraint on the other. The actual policy experiences of the four countries are then explained in terms of the linkage between a ‘coordination game’ played between the government and the unions in which macro-economic outcomes are determined, and a politics game in which the government tries to anticipate the electoral responses of different voter strata to these outcomes.
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VELLADICS, KATALIN, KÈNE HENKENS, and HENDRIK P. VAN DALEN. "Do different welfare states engender different policy preferences? Opinions on pension reforms in Eastern and Western Europe." Ageing and Society 26, no. 3 (April 24, 2006): 475–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0144686x05004551.
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This article examines whether the different welfare states of the European Union member states engender different policy preferences and attitudes among the population. More specifically, it investigates variations in attitudes towards population ageing and pension reforms, and variations in people's retirement age preferences and expectations. It is shown that despite the different cultures and welfare traditions in the old and new member states, there are commonalities in people's value orientations and views about population ageing, not least that the vast majority are pessimistic about the consequences. In both Eastern and Western Europe, the most popular options for pensions reform are to raise taxes and to extend working life, and few favour reducing pension benefits. Despite these similarities, there are also marked attitudinal differences. Eastern Europeans rely more on their children for old-age care and are much more in favour of a pension structure in which benefits depend on the number of children. On personal expectations and preferences for retirement, it is shown that both Eastern and Western Europeans expect to retire from the labour market at an older age than the current actual retirement age.
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Collins, Susan M. "Policy Watch: U.S. Economic Policy Toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe." Journal of Economic Perspectives 5, no. 4 (November 1, 1991): 219–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.4.219.
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As the Soviet Union and the countries in Eastern Europe take steps towards market economies and democratic political systems, the U.S. and other western countries have been confronted by a range of difficult and important questions about the appropriate economic policy response. What role should government policies play? How much assistance should be given? In what form? What actual policies have been undertaken? Are they a lot or a little? At one extreme, some argue that the United States and other developed countries should finance the rebuilding of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—even though it may cost tens of billions of dollars per year, for at least a decade. At the other end of the spectrum are those who argue that Eastern Europe does not warrant official U.S. assistance, other than for humanitarian purposes, because the situation is just too precarious, because there are worthier uses of scarce government resources, or because any restructuring should be undertaken by the private sector. This paper suggests a framework for answering these questions that considers both the nations of Eastern Europe and recent proposals for direct assistance to the Soviet Union. It draws upon the valuable lessons to be learned from assistance to the developing countries and from historical experience.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western"
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FERNANDES, Daniel. "Governments, public opinion, and social policy : change in Western Europe." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/75046.
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Defence date: 21 November 2022Examining Board: Prof. Ellen Immergut (EUI, Supervisor); Prof. Anton Hemerijck (EUI); Prof. Christoffer Green-Pedersen (Aarhus University); Prof. Evelyne Hübscher (Central European University)
This dissertation investigates how public opinion and government partisanship affect social policy. It brings an innovative perspective that links the idea of democratic representation to debates about the welfare state. The general claim made here is that social policy is a function of public and government preferences. This claim hinges on two critical premises. The first relates to the general mechanisms that underlie government representation. Politicians have electoral incentives to align their actions with what citizens want. They may respond to public opinion indirectly by updating their party agendas, which can serve as the basis for social policy decisions in case they get elected. They may also respond directly by introducing welfare reforms that react to shifts in public opinion during their mandates. The second premise concerns how citizens and politicians structure their preferences over welfare. These preferences fall alongside two dimensions. First, general attitudes about how much should the state intervene in the economy to reduce inequality and promote economic well-being (how much policy). Second, the specific preferences about which social programmes should get better funding (what kind of policy). The empirical analysis is split into three empirical chapters. Each explores different aspects of government representation in Western European welfare states. The first empirical chapter (Chapter 4) asks how governments shape social policy when facing severe pressures to decrease spending. It argues that governments strategically reduce spending on programmes that offer less visible and indirect benefits, as they are less likely to trigger an electoral backlash. The experience of the Great Recession is consistent with this claim. Countries that faced the most challenging financial constraints cut down social investment and services. Except for Greece, they all preserved consumption schemes. The second empirical chapter (Chapter 5) explores how public opinion affects government spending priorities in different welfare programmes. It expects government responsiveness to depend on public mood for more or less government activity and the most salient social issues at the time. Empirical evidence from old-age, healthcare and education issue-policy areas supports these claims. Higher policy mood and issue saliency is positively associated with increasing spending efforts. Public opinion does not appear to affect unemployment policies. vii The third empirical chapter (Chapter 6) examines how party preferences affect spending priorities in unemployment programmes. It claims that preferences on economic intervention in the economy and welfare recalibration affect different components of unemployment policy. Evidence from the past 20 years bodes well with these expectations. The generosity of compensatory schemes depends on economic preferences. The left invests more than the right. The funding of active labour-market policies depends on both preference dimensions. Among conventional parties, their funding follows the same patterns as compensatory schemes. Among recalibration parties, parties across the economic spectrum present comparable spending patterns.
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RADL, Jonas. "Retirement timing and social stratification : a comparative study of labor market exit and age norms in Western Europe." Doctoral thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/14714.
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Awarded the 2011 'Research Prize of the German Pension Insurance Agency' (Berlin, 8 December 2011).Defence date: 11 September 2010
Examining Board: Martin Kohli (EUI) (Supervisor), Fabrizio Bernardi (EUI) (Co-Supervisor), Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Otto Friedrich University, Bamberg), Bernhard Ebbinghaus (University of Mannheim)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The goal of this dissertation is to enhance our understanding of the micro and macro level determinants of retirement timing in contemporary Western Europe. This objective is pursued by means of a statistical analysis of large-scale comparable survey data. In short, three points of emphasis characterize this study in comparison with previous research on the topic: 1) the focus on social stratification in terms of gender and class differentials; 2) the central attention paid to social norms of aging; and 3) the joint consideration of individual and country level mechanisms in explaining retirement timing. The review of the previous literature in the second chapter demonstrates that the currently available theoretical approaches by themselves are inappropriate for explaining social variability in retirement timing. Building on the life course paradigm and social class theory, I consequently outline a novel analytical framework for the study of differential retirement behavior. It can be characterized as a choice-within-constraints approach (chapter 3), which essentially focuses on differences between older workers in age norms and late-career opportunity structures, paying special attention on class and gender disparities. In the fourth chapter, I gather empirical evidence on international and individual differences in retirement age norms in Western Europe on the basis of data from the European Social Survey (ESS). Subsequently, I turn to examining actual retirement behavior in the fifth chapter. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) a series of event-history models is used to scrutinize the determining factors of retirement timing at the country and individual level variation. In chapters 6 and 7, two case studies on Germany and Spain examine the impact of pension legislation on social stratification in retirement in a detailed manner. The two country studies are based on ad-hoc module on the transition from work into retirement, which has been implemented in the respective national labor force surveys (Encuesta de la Población Activa (EPA) and Mikrozensus) of 2006.
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OBADIĆ, Ivan. "In pursuit of stability : Yugoslavia and Western European economic integration, 1948–1970." Doctoral thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/47304.
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Defence date: 14 July 2017Examining Board: Prof Federico Romero, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof Pavel Kolář, European University Institute; Prof Josip Glaurdić, University of Luxembourg; Prof Tvrtko Jakovina, University of Zagreb
This thesis examines the origins and evolution of Yugoslav policy towards Western European integration from the early 1950s until the signing of the first Yugoslav–EEC Trade Agreement in 1970. It examines the emerging role of Western Europe in the Yugoslav foreign and internal politics within the larger context of the Cold War and development of European integration. Increased trade relations with the EEC and the domestic introduction of the 1965 Economic Reform proved vital in persuading Belgrade to become the first socialist country to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Community in 1968. The thesis argues that these relations became of increasing relevance to the economic and, ultimately, political stability of Yugoslavia. Besides the basic foreign (trade) policy concepts towards the EEC, this study focuses on the perceptions of the Western European integration process among the political elite by addressing the following research questions: How did Yugoslav policymakers react to the Western European integration process? What impact did the success of the EEC have on Yugoslav foreign policy and internal differences among the political elite? In what way did the League of Communists of Yugoslavia rationalize their cooperation with the EEC? What did it mean for the internal coherence of the LCY and for Yugoslavia’s pronounced cooperation with the developing countries? The overarching question is how and why already in the 1960s the EEC became such an important external factor, crucial for the economic development and stability of Yugoslavia. By analysing the complex interaction between the external factors and internal dynamics of Yugoslavia and their impact on Belgrade´s policy towards the EEC, this study provides an explanation of the underlying long-term structural problems of the economy that determined the Yugoslav diplomatic and economic responses to the creation and evolution of the EEC until the breakup of the country.
Chapter ‘Conclusion' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'A troubled relationship : Yugoslavia and the European economic community in détente' (2014) in the journal ‘European review of history’
Books on the topic "Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western"
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1953-, Gray Pat, and Hart Paul ʼt, eds. Public policy disasters in Western Europe. London: Routledge, 1998.
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Yuan, Robert T. Biotechnology in Western Europe. Washington, D.C: International Trade Administration, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1987.
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Frances, Gardiner, ed. Sex equality policy in Western Europe. London: Routledge, 1997.
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Old Europe?: Demographic change and pension reform. London: Centre for European Reform, 2003.
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Johnson, A. Ross. The impact of eastern Europe on Soviet policy toward western Europe. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1986.
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Robert, Holzmann, Orenstein Mitchell A, and Rutkowski Michal, eds. Pension reform in Europe: Process and progress. Washington, D.C: World Bank, 2003.
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K, Bertsch Gary, ed. Power and policy in Western European democracies. 4th ed. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co., 1991.
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Wood, David Michael. Power and policy in Western European democracies. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 1986.
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Policy reform and the development of democracy in eastern Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
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Pensions in Europe, European pensions: The evolution of pension policy at national and supranational level. New York: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2009.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western"
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Bartlett, William, Sanja Kmezić, and Katarina Đulić. "The Political Economy of Decentralisation and Local Government Finance in the Western Balkans: An Overview." In Fiscal Decentralisation, Local Government and Policy Reversals in Southeastern Europe, 1–18. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96092-0_1.
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Klekowski von Koppenfels, Amanda. "Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for German Citizens Abroad." In IMISCOE Research Series, 207–26. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51245-3_12.
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Abstract This chapter presents an overview of German policies vis-à-vis German nationals living abroad. For the most part, the German Government does not reach out to or encourage engagement from or with German nationals living abroad. This is in contrast to a concerted cultural outreach to ethno-national German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. Rights in Germany are largely residence-based, and access to rights is thus associated with (legal) residence in Germany, rather than with holding German citizenship. There are two clear exceptions: one is a robust system that enables voting from abroad for German citizens, and the other is facilitated access from abroad to pensions for years worked in Germany. With respect to other measures of social protections, no clear policy can be said to exist. Access to other forms of social protection is on the basis of exception, with consular officials exercising discretion in such cases.
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Müller, Wolfgang C. "Austria: Phasing-Out Grand Coalition Government." In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 41–80. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0003.
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Grand coalition government of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) had been the hallmark of post-war Austria but the historic ‘grand coalition’ formula seems exhausted. The rationale for maintaining this cooperation vanished, electoral changes undermined the former duopoly of these parties, and party system changes brought new players into the game. Yet at the government level alternatives involving the Freedom Party (FPÖ) have proved unstable as in each case an FPÖ event brought down the government or prevented its renewal. The chapter shows how routine formateur-led processes of coalition formation resulting in anticipated outcomes contrast with a few instances which significantly deviate. Coalition governance is characterized by the use of an elaborated set of rules and instruments and great continuity over time and different types of coalition. Accordingly, the underlying principle of coalition politics has been the ‘coalition compromise’ model, with government policies to be largely agreed between the coalition partners. In practice, ministerial discretion tends to shift government policy output towards the model of ‘constrained ministerial government’. Most coalitions terminated early because of inter-party conflict.
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Tsakatika, Myrto. "Greece: From Coalitions as a ‘State of Exception’ to the New Normal?" In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 284–323. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0009.
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Coalition government has been exceptional in Greece since the consolidation of democracy in 1974 but in the aftermath of the global financial crisis its occurrence has become more frequent. Most Greek government coalitions are surplus connected coalitions assembled to address an economic or national crisis and do not involve formal coalition agreements. Their formation takes place after a brief bargaining phase strictly circumscribed by precise constitutional rules under the aegis of the president of the republic. Greek coalitions are governed primarily by ad hoc fora of party leaders that make key decisions and resolve inter-coalitional conflict. The prime minister and key ministers dominate policy arguments, albeit taking into account the wishes of party leaders. The termination of coalitions is by and large due to party leaders’ strategic considerations, though the importance of policy disagreement among the partners is becoming a more significant consideration. While the post-crisis overhaul of the Greek party system has not greatly affected the main characteristics of the coalition life cycle, there is evidence that greater experience with coalition government may be leading to some tentative institutionalization of power-sharing practices and greater acceptance of such practices among political elites.
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Johan, Hellström, and Jonas Lindahl. "Sweden: The Rise and Fall of Bloc Politics." In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 574–610. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0017.
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This chapter examines coalition formation and coalition governance in Sweden. Swedish coalition politics have historically been characterized by a near-unidimensional political conflict along the left–right policy dimension, along with minority government rule (and a high share of minority cabinets).. In addition, Swedish politics has long been characterized by ‘two-bloc politics’, where the socialist and the non-socialist bloc have competed for power. However, the growing electoral successes for the populist radical right party, the Sweden Democrats, has recently and at least temporary, ended this. Although the increasing fragmentation and polarization of Swedish politics has made bargaining over government more difficult, it has not changed how coalition cabinets work and the existing practices of coalition governance since the early 1990s remains intact. Collegiality and consensus are still the dominant characteristics of Swedish coalition governance.
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Bergman, Torbjörn, Bäck Hanna, and Hellström Johan. "Coalition Governance in Western Europe." In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 1–14. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0001.
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This chapter describes the ambitions of the volume. First, we build on the lessons from earlier studies of governments in Western and Central Eastern Europe to deepen our understanding of the coalition life cycle, covering the three stages of a government’s ‘life’, beginning with the formation process, then turning to the governance stage, and lastly turning to the final phase when governments eventually terminate. Second, we seek to capture how recent changes in the Western European party systems, which are also described here, influence the various stages of the coalition life cycle. Third, we are in particular interested in how coalition partners cooperate and make policy once a government has formed, aiming to contribute to the growing literature on the topic of coalition governance. The chapter ends with a description of the content of the volume.
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Whiteside, Noel. "Occupational Pensions and the Search for Security." In Britain's Pensions Crisis. British Academy, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197263853.003.0008.
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Occupational pensions, linking previous earnings to pensioner income, have long been understood as an essential supplement to a state pension in retirement, particularly in Britain where state provision as of right is the lowest in the western world. Since World War II, policy initiatives in Britain have made sporadic efforts to increase the coverage of occupational or personal pension supplements. The Turner Commission's proposals represent the most recent in a long line of reports and recommendations designed to achieve this end. In 1942, William Beveridge noted that insecure employment or reduced earnings damages the commitment of the poorest to long-term savings and raises the cost of collecting voluntary contributions. Britain has made little progress for over half a century. This chapter makes a short evaluation of the role occupational (or earnings-related) pension provision has made to policy during this period, contrasting the British experience with those of other countries in continental Europe and Scandinavia. It also addresses the issue of pension security and whether past and present policy strategies in Britain have paid it sufficient regard.
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Sorkin, David. "Civil Rights in Western Europe." In Jewish Emancipation, 72–79. Princeton University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691164946.003.0006.
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This chapter focuses on how western European states introduced limited changes to the Jews' status in the eighteenth century. England introduced a policy of naturalization for Jews in its colonies in part to compete with Holland's successful free port (St. Eustatius). However, only the wealthy could aspire to naturalization. The merchant elite's effort to gain easier naturalization with the “Jew Bill” (1753) failed when it became embroiled in the general Whig-Tory conflict. In France, the Jews of Bordeaux reached the acme of corporate privileges by gaining residential and commercial freedom throughout the kingdom. In contrast, Alsatian Jewry continued to suffer from major restrictions. The privileges it brought from the Holy Roman Empire were at odds with a centralizing French administration. Moreover, occupational and residential restrictions that forced Alsace's Jews into moneylending and petty trade created enduring tensions with the surrounding populace. Louis XVI's patents (1784) removed one demeaning law but otherwise imposed harsher laws on most Jews while further privileging the wealthy. Since Louis XVI's Edict of Toleration for Protestants (non-Catholics) did not apply to Jews, his government attempted, but failed, to produce legislation for Jews modeled on Joseph II's.
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Čakar, Dario Nikic. "Croatia: Strong Prime Ministers and Weak Coalitions." In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 640–79. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0019.
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Since regaining its independence in 1991, Croatia experienced major transformation of constitutional and political system in 2000, when illiberal semi-presidential rule was replaced with functional parliamentary democracy. These changes also established a new pattern of executive politics, with coalition governments as a norm. Furthermore, in the post-2000 period the prime ministerial government was established as the dominant governance model, with prime ministers taking over the leading role in coalition politics. Building on this notion, this chapter identifies several major features of coalition governance in Croatia: very general and rather brief coalition agreements without written rules on cabinet decision-making and on how to resolve internal conflicts; an informal and personalized way of handling conflicts between coalition parties; the dominant position of the prime minister and limited ministerial autonomy; and the policy and personnel conflicts between coalition parties as the main reason for cabinet termination. Thus, similarly to some other countries in Central Eastern Europe region, all three stages of coalition governance in Croatia are heavily dominated by top party leaders and particularly prime ministers, thus creating the patterns of informal and personalized coalition decision-making. The prime ministerial dominance is reflected in weak coalition arrangements, with very limited coordination established between coalition parties and the lack of broader conflict resolution mechanisms, which makes coalition cabinets especially fragile and unstable, particularly when challenged by the inclusion of new parties in government.
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Winter, Lieven De, and Patrick Dumont. "Belgium: From Highly Constrained and Complex Bargaining Settings to Paralysis?" In Coalition Governance in Western Europe, 81–123. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868484.003.0004.
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While Belgium undoubtedly had the most complex coalition bargaining system in Western Europe during the period 1946–1999, it has become much more difficult for parties to form federal governments ever since. Contrary to a number of European countries, government formation complexity did not peak due the emergence of brand-new parties, nor of any new cleavage. Rather, in Belgium the main ingredients pre-existed: party system fragmentation—which was already high since unitary parties had split along linguistic lines—skyrocketed as the mainstream parties around which post-war coalitions were formed further declined in size, confronting some (in)formateurs with up to ten coalitionable parties. Their task has been further complicated by the growing saliency and Flemish radicalization of the community cleavage which led to the rise of the independentist N-VA, whose positions remain unacceptable for any French-speaking party. As a result, Belgium has often been left without a fully empowered government, the partisan composition of coalitions broke away from previous patterns, and the coalition compromise model, which was already solidly entrenched in the consociational norms and practices since the 1960s, was further elaborated. Coalition partners keep tabs on each other through compromise mechanisms and policy-monitoring devices such as long and detailed coalition agreements, the enhanced role of the inner cabinet composed of the PM and the vice-PMs of each coalition party, and strictly enforced coalition discipline in legislative matters. But, given the increasingly unbridgeable divides between Flemish- and French-speaking parties, the deadlock observed could well lead to the demise of Belgium.
Conference papers on the topic "Pensions – Government policy – Europe, Western"
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SIMONE, Pierluigi. "THE RECASTING OF THE OTTOMAN PUBLIC DEBT AND THE ABOLITION OF THE CAPITULATIONS REGIME IN THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ACTION OF TURKEY LED BY MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK." In 9. Uluslararası Atatürk Kongresi. Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Yayınları, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.51824/978-975-17-4794-5.64.
Full textAbstract:
The recast of the international debt contracted by the former Ottoman Empire and the overcoming of the capitulations regime that had afflicted Turkey for centuries, are two of the most relevant sectors in which the political and diplomatic action promoted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk has been expressed. Extremely relevant in this regard are the different disciplines established, respectively, by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and then by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. After the Ottoman Government defaulted in 1875, an agreement (the Decree of Muharrem) was concluded in 1881 between the Ottoman Government and representatives of its foreign and domestic creditors for the resumption of payments on Ottoman bonds, and a European control of a part of the Imperial revenues was instituted through the Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire was burdened by capitulations, conferring rights and privileges in favour of their subjects resident or trading in the Ottoman lands, following the policy towards European States of the Byzantine Empire. According to these capitulations, traders entering the Ottoman Empire were exempt from local prosecution, local taxation, local conscription, and the searching of their domicile. The capitulations were initially made during the Ottoman Empire’s military dominance, to entice and encourage commercial exchanges with Western merchants. However, after dominance shifted to Europe, significant economic and political advantages were granted to the European Powers by the Ottoman Empire. Both regimes, substantially maintained by the Treaty of Sèvres, were considered unacceptable by the Nationalist Movement led by Mustafa Kemal and therefore became the subject of negotiations during the Conference of Lausanne. The definitive overcoming of both of them, therefore represents one of the most evident examples of the reacquisition of the full sovereignty of the Republic of Turkey.