His study with Alexander Horn from the University of Konstanz and Kees van Kersbergen from Aarhus University, was named as the best article in SASE’s publication the Socio-Economic Review (SER) over the past year.
The study entitled ‘The paternalist politics of punitive and enabling workfare: evidence from a new dataset on workfare reforms in 16 countries, 1980–2015’ questions ‘does neoliberalism lie behind the increased use of social policy to control and incentivize labour market behaviour?’ They argue that this assumed connection is theoretically weak and empirically inaccurate and point to an alternative explanation centred on government paternalism.
The SER Best Article Prize is awarded to a peer-reviewed paper that addresses substantive questions and issues that have far reaching implications, engages prior theory and research, or uses research methods to analyse data sets in ways that either bring important new phenomena to light or substantially revise existing understanding of socio-economic facts, trends, or relationships. The prize comes with an award of $1,000.
Anthony is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, whose research interests lie in the interplay between public opinion, policy-making processes, and government legislation. This is the second award winning article he has written, having won the 2019 Harrison prize from the Political Studies Association on ‘Numbers and Attitudes towards Welfare State Generosity.