Exploring the Relationship Between Foreign and Domestic Welfare Policies of Welfare State Regimes

• In Event: 286 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 05. Policy

Abstract

Research on welfare state regimes has focused primarily on domestic, and less on foreign, welfare policies and programs. This paper suggests ways of conceptualizing foreign welfare policies and programs and explores trends in the foreign welfare policies and their relationship to the domestic welfare policies of their respective welfare state regimes. Through the analysis of foreign aid dedicated toward welfare across a sample of eighteen countries, this paper explores two questions: what are the dominant trends in foreign aid dedicated toward welfare?; and is there evidence to suggest that there is a relationship between a country’s domestic welfare state regime type and the foreign welfare policies of welfare state regimes? The paper finds that spending on foreign welfare policies and programs has increased markedly in recent years, though the factors driving this increase remain unclear. The study also finds evidence of a relationship between welfare state type, as determined by domestic welfare state institutions, and polices and foreign welfare policies and programs, though the mechanisms through which these effects occur remain unclear. As suggested by Noël & Thérien (1995), countries with strong socialist attributes do exhibit more effort toward foreign welfare policies than others. However, countries with strong liberal attributes also display distinctive amounts of spending, and in some cases also effort, toward foreign welfare policies. Further research in this area could contribute to welfare regime theory and to a more thorough understanding of the intra- and interactions of welfare state regimes, which is increasingly important in our ‘global age’.

Author

• Amanda Marie Shriwise, University of Oxford