‘Active, young, and resourceful’: sorting the ‘good’ tenant through mechanisms of conditionality

Governments’ attempts to link the provision of welfare services to (more) responsible self-conduct of citizens (i.e. responsibilization) is seen as a distinctive feature of the post-welfare state. Responsibilization often requires welfare receivers to comply with specific duties or behavioural patterns (i.e. conditionality). Except for UK-based...

Comparing cities and regions rather than countries?: A research agenda for international comparative housing research 2.0.

International comparative housing research usually takes countries as a unit of analysis. Studies in the field typically connect housing outcomes at the national level to national welfare state and housing regimes. However, as a result of both supranational developments (globalization, financialization, neoliberalization, European Union...

The elusive bigness of Bakema

Architecture and democracy: Contestations in and of the open society

In many ways the work and ideas of Jaap Bakema epitomize the best of the architecture of the post-war Dutch welfare state: it is utterly unapologetic about its modernity as well as its drive to be universal and egalitarian. Bakema firmly<br/>positioned his office and its production at the heart of the Dutch welfare state system. Not only did he,...

Social housing organisations in England and The Netherlands: Between the state, market and community