Rules of Relief

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.