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ESPAnet/JESP Doctoral Researcher Prize Essay

Institutions and the politics of childcare services

University of Åarhus, Denmark, carstenj{at}ps.au.dk

Childcare services have experienced a sudden surge in the level of public provision since the late 1990s. There is a rising awareness of the benefits of childcare services, not least in terms of the human capital they generate. These recent changes — and especially the country variation therein — are vaguely covered by existing literature, which tends to focus on effects rather than the causes of policies. In this article, three competing hypotheses on the institutional conditions of change are derived and tested. The article shows that change is determined by curriculum traditions and not by the size of vested interests or ceiling effects. Countries belonging to the readiness-for-school-curriculum tradition have expanded their provision considerably more than countries belonging to the social-pedagogical-curriculum tradition; the reason is argued to be that the former conceptually matches the political preference for generation of human capital much better than the latter.

Key Words: childcare • curriculum traditions • public expenditure • welfare reforms • welfare services

Journal of European Social Policy, Vol. 19, No. 1, 7-18 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0958928708098520


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