Book Description

"Much has been written since the publication in 1990 of Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism on the concept of welfare regime as an analytical tool to study social policy stability and change in Europe and beyond. As a concept, welfare regime emphasizes both stability over change and divergence between country clusters over convergence. Studying on concrete policy instruments rather than spending patterns and focusing on policies introduced to protect workers against the risk of unemployment and the loss of income, this chapter explores potential patterns of commonality and difference in the social policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in four distinct welfare regimes: the Bismarckian, the Nordic, the liberal, and the Southern European regimes. To add focus to our comparison, we focus on policies introduced to protect workers against the risk of unemployment or the loss of income as result of non-pharmaceutical interventions (lockdowns, school closures, etc.) to contain the spread of the virus. The emphasis of the analysis is on concrete policy instruments that have been expanded or even created to address the COVID-19 crisis with regard to employment and unemployment. Simultaneously, the analysis concentrates on national rather than subnational or supranational policies"--