Once viewed as a distinct era characterized by intense bigotry, nostalgia for simpler times and a revulsion against active government, the 1920s have been rediscovered by historians in recent decades as a time when Herbert Hoover and his allies worked to significantly reform economic policy. Mark Hendrickson both augments and amends this view by studying the origins and development of New Era policy expertise and knowledge. Policy-oriented social scientists in government, trade union, academic and nonprofit agencies showed how methods for achieving stable economic growth through increased productivity could both defang the dreaded business cycle and defuse the pattern of hostile class relations that Gilded Age depressions had helped to set as an American system of industrial relations.

Over fifty years ago sociologist T. H. Marshall first opened the modern debate about the evolution of full citizenship in modern nation-states, arguing that it proceeded in three stages: from civil rights, to political rights, and finally to social rights. The shortcomings of this model were clear to feminist scholars. As political theorist Carol Pateman argued, the modern social contract undergirding nation-states was from the start premised on an implicit "sexual contract." According to Pateman, the birth of modern democracy necessarily resulted in the political erasure of women. Since the 1990s feminist historians have realized that Marshall's typology failed to describe adequately developments that affected women in France. An examination of the role of women and gender in welfare-state development suggested that social rights rooted in republican notions of womanhood came early and fast for women in France even while political and economic rights would continue to lag behind. While their considerable access to social citizenship privileges shaped their prospects, the absence of women's formal rights still dominates the conversation. Practiced Citizenship offers a significant rereading of that narrative. Through an analysis of how citizenship was lived, practiced, and deployed by women in France in the modern period, Practiced Citizenship demonstrates how gender normativity and the resulting constraints placed on women nevertheless created opportunities for a renegotiation of the social and sexual contract.

'This extensively revised edition of A Handbook of Comparative Social Policy provides up-to-date and valuable insights on key concepts and issues, such as globalization, crime, diversity, housing, child poverty, gender inequality, and social policy regimes. To write about these topics, editor Patricia Kennett has gathered an excellent team of researchers, who deal with both the developing and the advanced industrial world. Students of comparative social policy would benefit from engaging with this illuminating Handbook.' Daniel Béland, JohnsonShoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, Canada The current context of social policy is one in which many of the old certainties of the past have been eroded. The predominantly inward-looking, domestic preoccupation of social policy has made way for a more integrated, international and outward approach to analysis which looks beyond the boundaries of the state. It is in this context that this Handbook brings together the work of key commentators in the field of comparative analysis in order to provide comprehensive coverage of contemporary debates and issues in cross-national social policy research. Organized around five themes, this thoroughly revised and updated second edition explores the contextual, conceptual, analytical and processual aspects of undertaking comparative social research. The contributions highlight specific areas of comparative social policy including child poverty and well-being, patterns of housing provision and housing inequalities, and social protection in East Asia as well as crime and criminology in a global context. The authors of the Handbook explore continuing and emerging themes as well as issues which are of particular relevance to understanding the contemporary social world. International in scope, this authoritative Handbook presents original cutting-edge research from leading specialists and will become an indispensable source of reference for anyone interested in comparative and international social research. It will also prove a valuable study aid for undergraduate and postgraduate students from a range of disciplines including social policy, sociology, politics, urban studies and public policy.

During the 1990s, both the United States and Britain shifted from entitlement to work-based systems for supporting their poor citizens. Much research has examined the implications of welfare reform for the economic well-being of the poor, but the new legislation also affects our view of democracy—and how it ought to function. By eliminating entitlement and setting behavioral conditions on aid, welfare reform challenges our understanding of citizenship, political equality, and the role of the state. In Welfare Reform and Political Theory, editors Lawrence Mead and Christopher Beem have assembled an accomplished list of political theorists, social policy experts, and legal scholars to address how welfare reform has affected core concepts of political theory and our understanding of democracy itself. Welfare Reform and Political Theory is unified by a common set of questions. The contributors come from across the political spectrum, each bringing different perspectives to bear. Carole Pateman argues that welfare reform has compromised the very tenets of democracy by tying the idea of citizenship to participation in the marketplace. But William Galston writes that American citizenship has in some respects always been conditioned on good behavior; work requirements continue that tradition by promoting individual responsibility and self-reliance—values essential to a well-functioning democracy. Desmond King suggests that work requirements draw invidious distinctions among citizens and therefore destroy political equality. Amy Wax, on the other hand, contends that ending entitlement does not harm notions of equality, but promotes them, by ensuring that no one is rewarded for idleness. Christopher Beem argues that entitlement welfare served a social function—acknowledging the social value of care—that has been lost in the movement towards conditional benefits. Stuart White writes that work requirements can be accepted only subject to certain conditions, while Lawrence Mead argues that concerns about justice must be addressed only after recipients are working. Alan Deacon is well to the left of Joel Schartz, but both say government may actively promote virtue through social policy—a stance some other contributors reject. The move to work-centered welfare in the 1990s represented not just a change in government policy, but a philosophical change in the way people perceived government, its functions, and its relationship with citizens. Welfare Reform and Political Theory offers a long overdue theoretical reexamination of democracy and citizenship in a workfare society.

Political discourse in contemporary China is intimately linked to the patriotic reverie of restoring China as a great civilisation, a dream of reformers since the beginning of the twentieth century. The concept and use of suzhi – a term that denotes the idea of cultivating a ‘quality’ citizenship – is central to this programme of rejuvenation, and is enjoying a revival. This book therefore offers an accessible and comprehensive analysis of suzhi, investigating the underlying cultural, philosophical and psychological foundations that propel the suzhi discourse. Using a new method to analyse Chinese governance – one that is both historical and discursive in approach – the book demonstrates how suzhi has been made into a political resource by the Chinese Communist Party-State, journeying from Confucianism to socialism. Ultimately, it asks the question: if we cannot rely on Western models of governance to explain how China is governed, what method of analysis can we use? Making use of over 200 Chinese-language primary sources, the book highlights the link between suzhi and similar discourses in post-Mao China, including those centring on notions of ‘civilisation’, ‘harmonious society’ and the 'China dream'. As the first book to provide an in-depth study of suzhi and its relevance in Chinese society, Civilising Citizens in Post-Mao China will be useful for students and scholars of Chinese studies, Chinese politics and sociology.

A global history of human rights in a world of nations that grant rights to some while denying them to others Once dominated by vast empires, the world is now divided into some 200 independent countries that proclaim human rights—a transformation that suggests that nations and human rights inevitably develop together. But the reality is far more problematic, as Eric Weitz shows in this compelling global history of the fate of human rights in a world of nation-states. Through vivid histories from virtually every continent, A World Divided describes how, since the eighteenth century, nationalists have established states that grant human rights to some people while excluding others, setting the stage for many of today’s problems, from the refugee crisis to right-wing nationalism. Only the advance of international human rights will move us beyond a world divided between those who have rights and those who don't.

The New American Social Compact examines the need to redefine the social compact in twenty-first-century America. Grant explores the two components of this compact_the rights and obligations of citizenship_as well as what she sees as the four substantive areas that are critical to realizing a new social compact in America. Grant proposes a new social compact that would honor the expansion of civil, political, and social rights in America and would integrate these rights within a new civic procedural ethos, clarifying our obligations to each other, future generations, other nations, and other species.