Documents Annual Review of Sociology 4 results

"This review examines the comparative, empirical literature that concerns the impact of social democracy on welfare state development and on economic performance. The theoretical basis of this research lies in reformist social democratic ideology which, in turn, is given substantial empirical confirmation in the sense that the balance of political power influences outcomes. The case against traditional modernization theory and other critiques is found to be strong, especially when the social democratic effect combines strong left parties with trade unions. The credibility of the social democratic model is particularly strong if we consider its consistent validation in cross-sectional as well as time-series analyses. It is, however, doubtful whether the "social democratic" thesis is applicable outside the framework of the advanced industrial democracies."

"In the post-World War II era the apparent success of Keynesian economic principles in evening out the instabilities of the business cycle stimulated rapid growth in public welfare expenditures in Western capitalist democracies. For social science, welfare state expansion was not a puzzle but a given. When the economic crisis of the 1970s undermined faith in permanent and sustained growth in welfare programs, the new agenda for social theory concentrated upon the conditions that hindered or favored development. Ironically, both neo-Marxists and conservative economists reached the same conclusion: Welfare programs undermined profitability. The first half of this paper traces these theoretical developments, both in relation to internal debates among social scientists and in regard to external social and economic conditions that shaped the context of theorizing about the welfare state. Underlying the broader debates about the factors influencing welfare state development has been a more specific concern with the exceptionalism of the American welfare state. Here the central agenda has been to explain why the United States was late in developing national welfare programs and why the programst hat did arise containeda bifurcateds tructuret hat separatedb enefits for the poor from those available to all citizens as a right. Three explanations have emerged: the failure of organized labor, the legacy of American politics and the dualism of the American economy. This paper critically assesses the theoretical relevance of these arguments and their implications for recent attacks on benefit programs "

"The rapid growth of the platform economy has provoked scholarly discussion of its consequences for the nature of work and employment. We identify four major themes in the literature on platform work and the underlying metaphors associated with each. Platforms are seen as entrepreneurial incubators, digital cages, accelerants of precarity, and chameleons adapting to their environments. Each of these devices has limitations, which leads us to introduce an alternative image of platforms: as permissive potentates that externalize responsibility and control over economic transactions while still exercising concentrated power. As a consequence, platforms represent a distinct type of governance mechanism, different from markets, hierarchies, or networks, and therefore pose a unique set of problems for regulators, workers, and their competitors in the conventional economy. Reflecting the instability of the platform structure, struggles over regalutory regimes are dynamic and difficult to predict, but they are sure to gain in prominence as the platform economy grows."