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Advocated (and attacked) by commentators across the political spectrum, paying every citizen a basic income regardless of their circumstances sounds utopian. However, as our economies are transformed and welfare states feel the strain, it has become a hotly debated issue. In this compelling book, Louise Haagh, one of the world’s leading experts on basic income, argues that Universal Basic Income is essential to freedom, human development and democracy in the twenty-first century. She shows that, far from being a silver bullet that will transform or replace capitalism, or a sticking plaster that will extend it, it is a crucial element in a much broader task of constructing a democratic soci...
Drawing on international case studies from emerging economies and developing countries including South Africa, India, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Indonesia, China and Russia, this book examines the rise, nature and effectiveness of recent developments in social policy in the Global South. By analysing these new emerging trends, the book aims to understand how they can contribute to meaningful change and whether they could offer alternative solutions to the social, economic and environmental policy challenges facing low-income countries within a contemporary global context. It pays particular attention to reforms and innovations relating to the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the move away from a welfare state, towards a ‘welfare multitude’, in which new actors, such as civil society organisations, play an increasingly important role in social policy.
“This Handbook offers a timely ‘snapshot’ of the fast-moving global debates on Basic Income. Embracing a range of ideological, ethical, historical and cross-national perspectives, it looks at the case for Basic Income through both a focused and a wide-angled lens. Rather than asserting hard and fast conclusions, it ends with the valuable message that context is all.” —Ruth Lister, Loughborough University, UK “A must-read Handbook that provides solid foundations for the growing number of researchers, policymakers and campaigners involved in the ongoing debate on Basic Income." —Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Argentina “A compre...
Is a Universal Basic Income the answer to an increasingly precarious job landscape? Could it bring greater financial freedom for women, tackle the issue of unpaid but essential work, cut poverty and promote greater choice? Or is it a dead-end utopian ideal that distracts from more practical and cost-effective solutions? Contributors from musician Brian Eno, think tank Demos Helsinki, innovators such as California’s Y Combinator Research and prominent academics such as Peter Beresford OBE offer a variety of perspectives from across the globe on the politics and feasibility of basic income. Sharing research and insights from a variety of nations – including India, Finland, Uganda, Brazil and Canada - the collection provides a comprehensive guide to the impact this innovative idea could have on work, welfare and inequality in the 21st century.
Egypt is one of the few great empires of antiquity that exists today as a nation state. Despite its extraordinary record of national endurance, the pressures to which Egypt currently is subjected and which are bound to intensify are already straining the ties that hold its political community together, while rendering ever more difficult the task of governing it. In this timely book, leading expert on Egyptian affairs Robert Springborg explains how a country with such a long and impressive history has now arrived at this parlous condition. As Egyptians become steadily more divided by class, religion, region, ethnicity, gender and contrasting views of how, by whom and for what purposes they should be governed, so their rulers become ever more fearful, repressive and unrepresentative. Caught in a downward spiral in which poor governance is both cause and consequence, Egypt is facing a future so uncertain that it could end up resembling neighboring countries that have collapsed under similar loads. The Egyptian "hot spot", Springborg argues, is destined to become steadily hotter, with ominous implications for its peoples, the Middle East and North Africa, and the wider world.
The Welfare State is a key policy issue of the 1990s. The essays in this book depart from much of the recent economic debate in emphasising the positive contributions of the Welfare State, and in assessing its efficiency in relation to the objectives which it is intended to achieve. These objectives are not just the alleviation of poverty but more broadly the provision of security and the redistribution of income. Part A of the book sets the current debate in the context of the current evidence about income inequality and poverty in Europe. Part B analyses the existing role of the Welfare State, with particular reference to retirement pensions and unemployment benefit. Part C investigates proposals for reform and security. What is the case for greater targeting? How can we design a social safety net? What is the future of European social protection policy?
The period of past four decades has been characterized as one of neo-liberalism, financialization, globalization, privatization and de-regulation. Inequality has risen in industrialised countries, labour’s share in national income has been in decline and economic growth slowed. The evidence of the damage to the environment from human economic activity, and the dramatic consequences of failure to address climate change have become more apparent and urgent. The global financial crises shocked the complacency of the neo-liberal era, though a decade later it may be doubted how much has changed. The central purpose of this volume is to investigate a range of economic and social policies, which move in the direction of constructing a post-neoliberal world. These range over alternative forms of ownership (public, co-operative), policies to address and reverse economic and social inequalities, responses to the forces of globalization, re-constituting the financial system and its roles, and the nature of employment.
This volume of 23 essays on diverse aspects of the complex and challenging concept of "decent work" has its inception in the "Impulses of Salzburg 2009". Questions of decent work and decent unemployment have become especially salient in times of an economic and financial crisis. The establishment of decent working conditions and decent unemployment provisions - a complex matter of securing the right ethical mix of security and incentives - are perceived as major challenges not only for developing and undeveloped countries, which still don't have stable economies and where the rate of poverty and corruption is still high, but also for "developed" societies themselves.
This new edited collection brings together historians and social scientists to engage with the global history of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and offer historically-rich perspectives on contemporary debates about the future of work. In particular, the book goes beyond a genealogy of a seemingly utopian idea to explore how the meaning and reception of basic income proposals has changed over time. The study of UBI provides a prism through which we can understand how different intellectual traditions, political agents, and policy problems have opened up space for new thinking about work and welfare at critical moments. Contributions range broadly across time and space, from Milton Friedman and ...
This book presents a re-examination of classical issues in the relationship between different forms of democratization, civil, political and social, and examines Chile's transition to democracy during the 1990s as a typical case of the modern sequence. It highlights the lasting institutional limits to social democratization in countries that are democratizing in the context of radical market reforms and provides an account of the politics of limiting social deepening in the crucial early years of Chile's transition, including a detailed examination of the influence of local union history and labour relations.