Rules of Relief

J. C. Vrooman is Head of the Labour and Public Services research sector at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research and holds the Endowed Chair in Social Security and Participation at Utrecht University.

• 1 Introduction 2 Institutional theory 2.1 Institutions and the ‘new institutionalism’ 2.2 North’s economic-historical approach 2.3 The evolvement and impact of institutions: a figural model 2.4 Institutions as socially constructed rules 2.5 Types of institution 2.6 Institutional hierarchy 2.7 Actors, their relationships and their motivations 2.8 Rule-driven interactions 2.9 The rule generation process: creation and development of institutions 2.10 Conclusions 3 Social security and the institutional approach 3.1 Traditional definitions of social security 3.2 Social security in an institutional sense 3.3 Institutions and actors in social security 3.4 Undersocialised social security 3.5 Models of rule-driven social security interactions 3.6 The results of social security rules 3.7 Institutional change: from informal to formal systems 3.8 Conclusions 4 Regimes of social security 4.1 Theoretical traits of social security regimes 4.2 An empirical typology 4.3 The generality of regime types 4.4 Conclusions 5 Benefit dependency 5.1 Regimes and benefit dependency: theoretical expectations 5.2 Measuring benefit dependency 5.3 The development of benefit dependency 5.4 A causal model for benefit dependency growth 5.5 Country-specific models 5.6 Conclusions 6 Poverty 6.1 The theoretical poverty debate in political philosophy: some key elements 6.2 The meaning of poverty 6.3 Granting rights to the poor 6.4 Operational poverty lines 6.5 A generalised budget approach 6.6 The theoretical relationship between regime types and poverty 6.7 Empirical results 6.8 Conclusions 7 The collective significance of social security institutions 7.1 Institutions and social security 7.2 Regimes, benefit dependency and poverty 7.3 The impact of social security regimes 7.4 Some implications.

"The book shows an impressive knowledge and understanding, in a welfare perspective, of many elements and details of social security systems... It includes a central and important distinction between formal and informal social security and a discussion of the interaction between rules and behaviour, including compliance with certain sets of rules and decisions. This is perhaps one of the most neglected areas of social security studies."–Journal of Social Policy"Rules of Relief is undoubtedly state of the art research in many ways... [T]he book is a seminal contribution to the literature on institutional research and comparative welfare analysis. It contains a provocative analysis that will be useful for graduate students interested in social policy, institutional analysis and social security studies in general. Rules of Relief should also serve as a great reference library for researchers interested in understanding welfare state development in advanced industrialized countries." –European Journal of Social Security"Rules of Relief provides an interesting and a provocative demonstration that 'institutions matter' by outlining social security regulations in eleven developed countries... The book provides a theoretical analysis of the origin, emergence and development of social security institutions as well as the empirical evidence of their impact corresponding to the three models... [This book] provides meaningful insights to the collective significance of social security institutions and would be useful for researchers and students interested in social policy, understanding welfare state development in advances industrialized countries and making institutional analysis of social security issues."–Mala Kapur Shankardass, Comparative Sociology