This book offers theoretical and practical insights in the responsiveness of social policies. It includes a comparative analysis of recent developments in social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies in the Netherlands and relates this to developments in other European countries. It shows how policy-makers and politicians deal with multiple challenges, interests and perspectives on social policies. It not only makes readers aware of societal transformations that are in need of responses, but also offers lessons to analyse and respond to these transformations. These lessons are ... More

This book offers theoretical and practical insights in the responsiveness of social policies. It includes a comparative analysis of recent developments in social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies in the Netherlands and relates this to developments in other European countries. It shows how policy-makers and politicians deal with multiple challenges, interests and perspectives on social policies. It not only makes readers aware of societal transformations that are in need of responses, but also offers lessons to analyse and respond to these transformations. These lessons are placed in an international and European perspective. Modern welfare states are confronted with a wide variety of social and economic developments, including individualization, secularization, globalization and changing preferences and ideologies of citizens. This book closely analyses the consequences of these changes for social policies. It shows how policy-makers continuously are trying to incorporate social transformations into the existing welfare state institutions, while they are obstructed by the path-dependent development of welfare state institutions and their persistence. The book identifies three different ‘logics’ that might trigger change in social policies: (1) the institutional logic of the policy regime, (2) the logic of the (socio-economical and cultural) policy context and (3) the logic of public preferences. Sometimes these logics converge, but more often they diverge, placing policy-makers for the almost impossible task to adapt social policies to the conflicting demands of its context.