The Danish Welfare State analyzes a broad range of areas, such as globalization, labor marked, family life, health and social exclusion, the book demonstrates that life in a modern welfare state is changing rapidly, creating both challenges and possibilities for future management.

The Danish Welfare State analyzes a broad range of areas, such as globalization, labor marked, family life, health and social exclusion, the book demonstrates that life in a modern welfare state is changing rapidly, creating both challenges and possibilities for future management.

How did Denmark avoid a macro-economic catastrophe in the 1980s and 1990s and still manage not only to maintain but also expand its welfare state? Denmark's macro-economic troubles apparently derived from a number of vices identified by critics of the welfare state: it had an enormous, thoroughly unionized, and unresponsive public sector; large numbers of people relied on the state for their livelihood, making programmatic cuts politically difficult; many programs had the characteristic of property rights and were hard to modify. Taxes to sustain this welfare state compressed investment, eroding both fiscal and current account balances. Yet by the mid 1990s, public support for the welfare state was as high as ever, while fiscal and current accounts were essentially in balance. The analyses in this book suggest that most of the vices that traditional welfare state scholarship identifies are also virtues. This book presents a comprehensive picture of how the Danish welfare state and political economy works by looking at the governance of and interactions between the welfare state and economy at all levels, using analyses of general macro-economic policy, center-local relations, budgeting, labour market, and welfare state transfers and services in three critical areas. A critical introductory survey of the welfare state literature and a synthetic conclusion frame these studies. This fine-grained analysis shows how alleged weaknesses were actually strengths that allowed a negotiated adaptation of the Danish model to external and internal changes. This sheds light on the future of the welfare state and economic governance in a globalizing world, and the complementarities and synergies between economic and welfare state governance.

"The book uses analyses of general macro-economic policy, center-local relations, budgeting, labor market, and welfare state transfers and services in three critical areas to present a comprehensive picture of the governance of and interactions between the Danish welfare state and political economy at all levels. A critical introductory survey of the welfare state literature and a synthetic conclusion frame these studies."--BOOK JACKET.

The question of integration has become an important concern as many societies are experiencing a growing influx of people from abroad. But what does integration really mean? What does it take for a person to be integrated in a society? Through a number of ethnographic case studies, this book explores varying meanings and practices of integration in Denmark. This welfare society, characterized by a liberal life style and strong notions of social equality, is experiencing an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. The authors show that integration is not just a neutral term referring to the incorporation of newcomers into society. It is, more fundamentally, an ideologically loaded concept revolving around the redefining of notions of community and welfare in a society undergoing rapid social and economic changes in the face of globalization. The ethnographic analyses are authored by anthropologists who wish to engage, as scholars and citizens living and working in Denmark, in one of the most contentious issues of our time. The Danish perspectives on integration are discussed from a broader international perspective in three epilogues by non-Danish anthropologists.

Denmark and Switzerland are small and successful countries with exceptionally content populations. However, they have very different political institutions and economic models. They have followed the general tendency in the West toward economic convergence, but both countries have managed to stay on top. They both have a strong liberal tradition, but otherwise their economic strategies are a welfare state model for Denmark and a safe haven model for Switzerland. The Danish welfare state is tax-based, while the expenditures for social welfare are insurance-based in Switzerland. The political institutions are a multiparty unicameral system in Denmark, and a permanent coalition system with many referenda and strong local government in Switzerland. Both approaches have managed to ensure smoothly working political power-sharing and economic systems that allocate resources in a fairly efficient way. To date, they have also managed to adapt the economies to changes in the external environment with a combination of stability and flexibility.

Analysing two major surveys of 14 different migrant groups connected to Danish register data, this insightful book explores what migrants think of the welfare state. It investigates the question of whether migrants assimilate to the ideas of extensive state intervention in markets and families or if they retain the attitudes and values that are prevalent in their countries of origin.