Introduction: towards a political economy of social policy -- The historical origins of welfare systems, 1945-80 -- Social policy in Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, 1945-1980: an overview -- The expansion of welfare commitments in Latin America, 1945-80 -- The evolution of social...

About a dozen countries in Latin America have enacted reforms that include elements being contemplated elsewhere, including the partial privatization of social security. It is not easy to draw universal lessons for social security reform from the experience of countries such as Argentina, Chile,...

About a dozen countries in Latin America have enacted reforms that include elements being contemplated elsewhere, including the partial privatization of social security. It is not easy to draw universal lessons for social security reform from the experience of countries such as Argentina, Chile,...

This paper addresses empirically determinants of individual support for the Welfare State. We examine the interrelation of informal institutions with the perceived quality of a country's institutional framework. As a proxy for informal institutions, we concentrate on three core beliefs (trust in...

In a comparative framework, the paper uses a recently observed shift away from cash transfers and towards the provision of rehabilitation services to identify barriers to welfare policy reform. The analysis relies on the assumption that some European welfare regimes have a similar initial...

The general idea is to follow the Varieties-of-Capitalism literature on generating indicators on the economic systems actually implemented. However, this literature mostly concentrates on the enterprise (or micro) level in traditional OECD countries, categorizing countries between the extremes:...