Description
This book analyses the changes of welfare states, examining their sustainability enabled by innovative adaptations. On the basis of evolutionary social sciences, the authors understand the welfare states as complex adaptive systems, in which the actors’ perceptions, strategies and behaviours change in adaptive manners, which results in institutional changes. From this perspective, the dynamics of Nordic welfare states, mainly Finland as the Nordic welfare state under the greatest pressure to adapt, is analysed from the multiple perspectives of history, politics, economics and social policy. Through these analyses, the authors show that the long-term changes in welfare states can be creative evolutionary processes in which the experiences, cognitive frameworks, resources and capacities of different actors allow for diverse responses and, as a result of interaction, diverse outcomes. The book also illustrates the historical processes of welfare states’ formation that have created the human and social resources and capabilities that enable innovative responses today.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Making of the Welfare State in Finland.- Chapter 3. Agrarian Party and Kela: Evolutionary Development of Finnish Social Policy.- Chapter 4. Family and the Evolutionary Development of the Welfare States: A Comparison of the Discourse on Child and Family Policy in Finland and Japan.- Chapter 5. Industrial Transformation, Innovation, and the Enabling Roles of the Nordic Welfare State.- Chapter 6. The Potential of the Co-creation Approach to Create Innovation to Better Meet the Needs of Communities.- Chapter 7. Understanding the Change of the Finnish Digital Health and Welfare Ecosystems.- Chapter 8. Innovation and Social Capital in Nordic Welfare States: The Advantages of Nordic Societies in a Modern Economy.- Chapter 9. Creative Evolution of Finnish Regional Governance.- Chapter 10. The Evolution of Finnish Welfare State and its Structural Reforms of Welfare Provision.- Chapter 11. Adaptation of Finnish Welfare State to a Post-industrial Society: Practicing “The Consensus Model of Democracy” through Formation of Diverse Coalition Governments.- Chapter 12. The Future(s) of the Welfare State.- Chapter 13. Glossary.
