Coming together or drifting apart? Income maintenance in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom

Pierson, Christopher and Humpage, Louise (2016) Coming together or drifting apart? Income maintenance in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Politics and Policy, 44 (2). pp. 261-293. ISSN 1747-1346

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Abstract

There has been long-standing debate in the comparative welfare state literature as to whether social policy regimes come to look more alike over time (“converge”) or else retain their distinctiveness. In this article, we explore this question through a detailed interrogation of the social policy record since 1996 of three states widely classified as “liberal”: Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Overall, we find that the social/economic pressures faced by all three countries are more similar now than they were two decades ago and that each has sought to legitimize its politic response to the global financial crisis (GFC) in similar ways. In terms of the three policy areas we explore, we find convergence is much more substantial in “welfare-to-work” than in either child-contingent support, or pensions. But we also find that any straightforward convergence story is unsustainable, despite the GFC and accelerating globalization, and partisan effects remain important.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/784903
Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Coming together or drifting apart? Income maintenance in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom / Chris Pierson, Louise Humpage (2016) Politics & Policy, vol. 44, no. 2, p. 261-293 , which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12150/pdf. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12150
Depositing User: Pierson, Prof Chris
Date Deposited: 29 Feb 2016 09:38
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 17:46
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/31999

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