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Open research questions in Social Policy and Reform Studies

171 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 6,543 Social Policy and Reform Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Future research should consider the post-2008 crisis and Slovenia’s current development model, as well as the precise interests held by the dominant social bloc(s).

    GRADUALIST KEYNESIANISM OR DESIRED LIBERALISATION? ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC DOCUMENTS OF THE STATE, AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NEO-CORPORATISM IN SLOVENIA (1991–2008) · 2026 · DOI

  • How do young unemployed people experience being the object of social investment (SI) technologies in the public employment services (PES) in the Danish welfare state? Based on 39 in-depth interviews with young unemployment benefit recipients, I explore how they experience and relate to SI technologies thus filling an urgent gap in the literature linking the policy level concretely to subjective experiences.

    Feeling like a bad investment: Exploring the lived experiences of being the object of social investment technologies in Danish public employment services · 2025 · DOI

  • AbstractThis article argues that immigrants' distinctive and obstacle-filled experiences of claiming social minimum benefits in Germany, despite their legal entitlements, have opened a space for a role that has been under-studied in street-level scholarship: the role of welfare brokerage by non-profit street-level organisations (SLOs).

    Insights from the Frontline of German Welfare Policy: The Under-Recognised Role of Brokerage in Street-Level Practice · 2023 · DOI

  • Second, it identifies a gap in the literature, which emanates from the relative under-examination of political, and especially contentious political, factors in scholarly analyses of determinants/causes of social assistance programs in comparison to structuralist, institutional, and ideational approaches.

    Political Determinants of Social Assistance Policies: A Critical Global Comparative Systematic Literature Review · 2022 · DOI

  • The past 10 years of Orbanomics provides an underresearched policy laboratory, in which the application of a wide-scale job guarantee program or a growth-friendly, inclusive stabilization building on the balanced budget multiplier can be studied.

    Full Employment, as the Hearth of the Cultural Economics of Orban · 2021 · DOI

  • 5% of employees (1 in 28) who receive under-reported salaries, the marginalisation thesis is supported that it is largely vulnerable population groups.

    Beyond the formal/informal employment dualism: evaluating individual- and country-level variations in the commonality of quasi-formal employment · 2021 · DOI

  • Using an in-depth case-study approach, this article analyses the health policy consequences of PRR parties in Austrian and Italian subnational governments over time, thereby expanding the units of analysis while also looking at an understudied level of government.

    Parties Matter: The Consequences of PRR Parties in Subnational Governments on Health Policy · 2021 · DOI

  • Our findings call for more detailed surveys as well as further research on the different ideologies within the Left and how these relate to variation in support for UBI, which crucially shapes the potential political coalition behind the introduction of UBI.

    The Left and universal basic income: the role of ideology in individual support · 2020 · DOI

  • However, since international comparative analyses are scarce and the role of institutions and policies is thus rarely explicated, it is still an open empirical question whether and in which context PES can fulfil such a key role.

    The relevance of public employment services for the labour market integration of low-qualified young people – a cross-European perspective · 2020 · DOI

  • The study argues that the capacity of UBI to appeal to the general public is limited by the prosperity of post-industrial societies, rather than by the cultural attachment of their populations to paid work.

    Cultural productivism and public support for the universal basic income from a cross-national perspective · 2020 · DOI

  • In the end of the article the authors pose the one of the most interesting scientific and practical questions – why the place of the electorate of the „socially excluded“ and having low income voters is moving from the left political parties to the side of the extreme right political parties? The further research is necessary in the following direction.

    Welfare Chauvinism · 2019 · DOI

  • Despite considerable debate regarding PRWORA's success and limited evidence that work requirements are effective, the neoliberal emphasis on work that informed welfare reform is increasingly being extended to other U.

    Mandating Work: A Social Psychological Analysis of Rising Neoliberalism in U.S. Public Assistance Programs · 2019 · DOI

  • The proposals that were included in the program allow us to conclude that the CDU/CSU proposed a program that develops each of the pillars of social security in part, but which is still lacking in some ways.

    Social Security of Citizens in the Manifesto of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union for the 2017 Parliamentary Election in Germany · 2018 · DOI

  • To shed light on the changing politics of OPs, this article focuses on the role of organized interests—namely employers' associations, trade unions, and financial groups—that are key players in Western Europe, but whose role has been understudied in CEE.

    When finance captures labor's capital: Dominant personal pensions, resurgent occupational provision in Central and Eastern Europe · 2018 · DOI

  • In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking.

    Does Variation in the Extent of Generalized Trust, Individual Education and Extensiveness of Social Security Policies Matter for Maximization of Subjective Well-Being? · 2016 · DOI

  • Addressingthis gap in research, this article puts forward the glocalisation grid of world-politytheory as a means for conceptualising and investigating how EastEuropean communist regimes helped shape the evolution of West Europeanwelfare states during the Cold War.

    Cold war isomorphism: communist regimes and the West European model of worker participation · 2016 · DOI

  • Despite governmental initiatives aimed to enhance the professional preparation and continuing development of early years practitioners being high on the political agenda of many EU member states, very few studies are analysing professionalisation policy developments and their implications within the national contexts of ECEC.

    Professionalisation policies in the ECEC field: trends and tensions in the Italian context · 2015 · DOI

  • However, the institution-specific analyses reviewed here are also not without challenges: high-quality macro- and microlevel data are scarce; institutions interact in complex ways with their environment and exert distinct effects on different groups of workers; moreover, the demographic composition of the workforce and the role of cultural characteristics make it difficult for researchers to correctly specify such macro-to-micro links in their empirical work.

    Institutions and the prevalence of nonstandard employment · 2015 · DOI

  • However, few studies have sought to examine the extent to which they have been able to do this and see the provision of support in a static way, whereas there is good reason to believe it is a highly changeable process, with the quality and quantity of support varying over time and place, according to a range of factors.

    The Rights and Responsibilities of Working-Age Sick and Disabled Benefit Claimants in Austerity Europe · 2014 · DOI

  • Abstract To achieve national goals defined by the 1988 B razilian Federal C onstitution, cash benefits alone are insufficient in the absence of more robust social services to reduce inequalities and improve social cohesion.

    The <scp>B</scp>razilian pension model: The pending agenda · 2014 · DOI

  • Whether a solidaristic social ethos can develop without a conflagration, such as the second world war, which not only united populations in the war effort, but also wiped out substantial middle-class wealth in Europe - thus engendering the post-war movement towards social - insurance is an open question.

    Thoughts on Arrangements of Property Rights in Productive Assets · 2013 · DOI

  • Reporting the results of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey of this practice undertaken in five South East European countries, the finding is that the commonality of this illicit wage practice markedly varies cross-nationally, with 23 percent of formal employees in Romania but just 3 percent in Cyprus receiving an under-reported salary.

    Cross-National Variations in the Under-Reporting of Wages in South-East Europe: A Result of Over-Regulation or Under-Regulation? · 2012 · DOI

  • Concerns have been expressed about this growing 'marketization' (Bruce, 2011) of the sector but relatively little is known about the experiences of third sector organisations in public service delivery, particularly in largescale programmes that use a 'prime contract' model.

    'Do-gooders, pink or fluffy, social workers' need not apply? An exploration of the experiences of the third sector organisations in the European Social Fund and Work Programme · 2011 · DOI

  • The health impact of neoliberal "shock treatment" has been explored in relation to the former USSR, but much remains to be done to ascertain its impact elsewhere.

    The Impact of Neoliberal “Political Attack” on Health: The Case of the “Scottish Effect” · 2011 · DOI

  • Given limited evidence on what really “works”, when it comes to designing policies that both provide adequate income security and still encourage labour‐force participation, governments look abroad or to bodies like the OECD for possible models and ideas to underlie a reform.

    Sickness and disability benefit programmes: What is driving policy convergence? · 2009 · DOI

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171 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 6,543 Social Policy and Reform Studies papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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