Profile

Areas of expertise

• Comparative and International Social Policy;
• Comparative and International Political Economy;
• Politics and Policies of Welfare State Development and Reform;
• Partisan and New/Historical Institutional Theory;
• Pooled Time Series Cross-Section Regression Analysis;
• Qualitative Comparative Historical Analysis.

Academic biography

My main academic interest centres on social policies and the political economy in comparative and international perspective. I am particularly interested in theories of social and labour market policy development and reform. My research has discussed issues of time-series, cross-sectional regression models in quantitatively informed welfare research. Here, I have explored the effect of partisan ideology in different institutional contexts and contributed to the discourse of the methodologically challenging multidimensionality of social policies as a dependent variable. Further, I have explored the notion of welfare productivism to synthesize recent trends in social policy making in the high income world and as conceptual backdrop to comparing social policies across high and middle income countries. Currently, I am involved in research exploring the role of social policies in global cities around the world.

My work has been published in the Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Social Policy and Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice amongst others. I am co-author of The Short Guide to Social Policy (2008, Bristol: Policy Press), which was translated into Korean. I have also - together with John Hudson - contributed chapters to Hwang, G.-J. (Ed) New Welfare States in East Asia: Global Challenges and Restructuring (forthcoming 2011, London: Edward Elgar) and Farnsworth, K. and Irving, Z. (Eds.) Social Policy in Challenging Times. Economic Crisis and Welfare Systems (forthcoming 2011, Bristol: Policy Press). Both of these books are now available.

Professional activities

Member of the UK Social Policy Association Executive Committee

Research and PhD supervision

Research interests

• Party competition and joint decision making; Global cities;
• Comparative historical analysis; East Asian welfare regimes;
• Globalisation and its impact on social policy making in middle income countries.

PhD supervision interests

Public policy analysis; comparative political economy; politics and policies of welfare state and labour market reform; theories of welfare state development and restructuring; social security issues in middle and low-income countries; the dependent variable problem of comparative welfare state research; pooled time series, cross section regression analysis; fuzzy-set ideal type analysis.

Current PhD students

• Lei Zhang
• Nan Yang

Recent publications

Articles

Hudson, J. and Kühner, S. ‘Analyzing the Productive and Protective Dimensions of Welfare: Looking Beyond the OECD’, in: Social Policy and Administration, in press 2011.

Kühner, S. (2010) ‘Do Party Governments Matter After All? Executive Ideology, Constitutional Structures and Their Combined Effect on Welfare State Change’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 12(4), 395-415.

Hudson, J. and Kühner, S. (2010) ‘Beyond the Dependent Variable Problem: The Methodological Challenges of Capturing Productive and Protective Dimensions of Social Policy’, in: Social Policy and Society, Vol. 9(2), 167-179. Available via Cambridge Journals [PDF]

Hudson, J. and Kühner, S. (2009) ‘Towards Productive Welfare? A Comparative Analysis of 23 OECD Countries’, in: Journal of European Social Policy, Vol. 19(1), 34-46.

Hudson, J., Hwang, J. and Kühner, S. (2008) ‘Between Ideas, Institutions and Interests: Analyzing Third Way Welfare Reform Programmes in Germany and the UK’, in: Journal of Social Policy, Vol 37(2), 207-230.

Kühner, S. (2008) 'The Quantitative Dimensions of Welfare State Change: Macro-Statistical Reform Trajectories Across 21 OECD Countries  (1980-2001) (in Chinese)', in: Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 1(4), 31-57.

Kühner, S. (2007) ‘Country-level Comparisons of Welfare State Change Measures: Another Facet of the Dependent Variable Problem within the Comparative Analysis of the Welfare State?’, in: Journal of European Social Policy, Vol. 17(1), 5-18. 

Monographs/Book Chapters

Kühner, S. Welfare Retrenchment under Left and Right Government Leadership: Towards a Consolidated Framework?, in: Social Policy Review 24: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, forthcoming - 2012.

Hudson, J. and Kühner, S. (2011) ‘Tiptoeing Through Crisis? Re-evaluating the German Model in Light of the Global Recession’, in Farnsworth, K. and Irving, Z. (Eds.) Social Policy in Challenging Times. Economic Crisis and Welfare Systems, Bristol: Policy Press.

Hudson, J and Kühner, S. ‘Analyzing the Productive Dimensions of Welfare: Looking Beyond East Asia’ in Hwang, G-J (Ed) New Welfare States in East Asia: Global Challenges and Restructuring. London: Edward Elgar, forthcoming - 2011.

Hudson, J., Lowe, S. and Kühner, S. (2011) The Short-Guide to Social Policy (Korean Translation), Seoul, South Korea: Press of Sharing House.

Hudson, J., Lowe, S. and Kühner, S. (2008) The Short-Guide to Social Policy, Bristol: Policy Press.