Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Welfare user roles in a conservative welfare state. Are Germans citizens, consumers or co-producers?

Welfare user roles in a conservative welfare state. Are Germans citizens, consumers or co-producers? Many welfare states have embraced choice and market mechanisms since the 1990s. With respect to welfare users, it has been argued that this led to a change from citizens to consumers. This paper challenges this observation and discusses changes of welfare user roles in the German welfare state. The main argument rests on the assumption that user roles are much more complex and include claimants and co-producers in addition to citizens and consumers. Based on this heuristic model of multiple user roles, empirical evidence for user roles in pension insurance, health care and schools is presented. Indeed, we observe a shift towards consumers in many fields of welfare provision, but German users are still largely addressed as claimants and citizens. Moreover, they are acting as active co-producers, entitled claimants, subversive consumers and needy patients. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy Cambridge University Press

Welfare user roles in a conservative welfare state. Are Germans citizens, consumers or co-producers?

Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/cambridge-university-press/welfare-user-roles-in-a-conservative-welfare-state-are-germans-X8CEeNI0fI

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis
ISSN
2169-978X
eISSN
2169-9763
DOI
10.1080/21699763.2015.1118400
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Many welfare states have embraced choice and market mechanisms since the 1990s. With respect to welfare users, it has been argued that this led to a change from citizens to consumers. This paper challenges this observation and discusses changes of welfare user roles in the German welfare state. The main argument rests on the assumption that user roles are much more complex and include claimants and co-producers in addition to citizens and consumers. Based on this heuristic model of multiple user roles, empirical evidence for user roles in pension insurance, health care and schools is presented. Indeed, we observe a shift towards consumers in many fields of welfare provision, but German users are still largely addressed as claimants and citizens. Moreover, they are acting as active co-producers, entitled claimants, subversive consumers and needy patients.

Journal

Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy – Cambridge University Press

Published: Feb 1, 2016

Keywords: citizen–consumer; choice; user roles; Germany; co-production; welfare markets

There are no references for this article.