The Truncated German Social Investment Turn

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Regime ◽  
Policy Transformations ◽  
Veto Points

Traditionally Germany has been categorized as the archetypical conservative welfare state, a categorization not systematically questioned in much of the comparative welfare state regime literature. For many scholars Germany was largely stuck and unable to reform its coordinated market economy and welfare state arrangements at the turn of the twenty-first century, due to a large number of veto points and players and the dominance of two ‘welfare state parties’. More recent research has highlighted a widening and deepening of the historically institutionalized social protection dualism, whilst at the same time significant family policy transformations, which can be considered as partially in line with the social investment paradigm, have been emphasized. This chapter sets out to sketch the main policy developments and aims to identify political determinants of social policy change in Germany.

scholarly journals Social Investment in an Age of Austerity: A Comparison of Family Policy Reforms in Four European Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-267
Author(s):  
Sonja Blum ◽  
Tatjana Rakar ◽  
Karin Wall
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War

The focus of this article is on family policy reforms in four European countries – Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Slovenia – between 2008 and 2015. These years were marked by the ‘Great Recession’, and by the rise of the social-investment perspective. Social investment is an umbrella concept, though, and it is also somewhat ambiguous. This article distinguishes between different social-investment variants, which emerge from a focus on its interaction with alternative social-policy perspectives, namely social protection and austerity. We identify different variants along the degree of social-investment: from comprehensive, over crowding out, towards lean forms. While the empirical analysis highlights variation, it also shows how there is a specific crisis context, which may lead to ‘crowding out’ of other policy approaches and ‘leaner’ forms of social investment. This has led to strong cutbacks in family cash benefits, while public childcare and parental leaves have proved more resilient in the investigated countries. Those findings are revelatory in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where countries are entering a next, possibly larger economic crisis. Key words: family policy; crisis; social investment; austerity; case studies denoted as the end of the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state, putting a halt to its expansion in post-war prosperity. Faced with low growth rates and rising unemployment, the recipe chosen by many countries was to ‘relieve’ labour markets. Alongside such measures as early retirement schemes, family policy was a key part of the reform programme and recourse to parental leave

The Politics of Social Investment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silja Häusermann ◽  
Bruno Palier
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Second Step ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specific Substance

Recent research on the development of social investment has demonstrated reform progress not only in different regions of Europe, but also in Latin America and South-East Asia. However, the specific substance of the social investment agendas varies strongly between these regions. Why have social investment ideas and policies been more developed in some regions and countries than in others? Building on the theoretical framework of this volume, our chapter suggests that the content of regional social investment agendas depends on policy legacies in terms of investment vs consumption-oriented policies and their interaction with structural pressures. In a second step, we argue that the chances of social investment agendas to be implemented depend on the availability of political support coalitions between organizational representatives of the educated middle classes and either business or working-class actors. We illustrate our claims with reference to family policy developments in France, Germany, and Switzerland.

A Social Investment Turn in East Asia?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Fleckenstein ◽  
Soohyun Christine Lee
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Employment Participation

The welfare states of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were built by conservative elites to serve the project of late industrialization, and for this reason the East Asian developmental welfare state focused its resources on those who were deemed most important for economic development (especially male industrial workers). Starting in the 1990s and increasingly since the 2000s, the developmental welfare state has experienced a far-reaching transformation, including the expansion of family policy to address the post-industrial challenges of female employment participation and low fertility. This chapter assesses social investment policies in East Asia, with a focus on family policy and on the South Korean case, where the most comprehensive rise of social investment policies were observed.

Three Challenges for the Social Investment Strategy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Myles
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Current Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Wage Outcomes

Three challenges are highlighted in this chapter to the realization of the social investment strategy in our twenty-first-century world. The first such challenge—intertemporal politics—lies in the term ‘investment’, a willingness to forego some measure of current consumption in order to realize often uncertain gains in the future that would not occur otherwise, such as better schooling, employment, and wage outcomes for the next generation. Second, the conditions that enabled our post-war predecessors to invest heavily in future-oriented public goods—a sustained period of economic growth and historically exceptional tolerance for high levels of taxation—no longer obtain. Third, the millennial cohorts who will bear the costs of a new, post-industrial, investment strategy are more economically divided than earlier cohorts and face multiple demands raised by issues such as population aging and global warming, among others.

scholarly journals The social doctrine of the catholic church as a foundation for the emergence of the legal regulation in the area of social protection in Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 353-357
Author(s):  
Mykhailo Shumylo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Social Doctrine ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Catholic Church

The social doctrine of the Catholic Church is an indication of the active involvement of the Church in disseminating the ideas ofthe welfare state and it reflects its attempts to establish ideals of the welfare state through an external influence on the ideology of countriesthat belong to Christendom.Furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that encyclicals had a direct or indirect influence on the adoption of the first social protectionacts in Catholic Europe where encyclicals played an important role.As a result, the Holy See aligned itself with the labour movement.Considering the fact that papal encyclicals covered the entire Catholic World, these documents can be viewed as an example ofinternational soft law.The first social rights, principles, and values in the area of social protection were enshrined in the encyclicals.Social rights belong to second-generation human rights the legal basis for which comprises international instruments adoptedafter the Second World War (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention for the Protection of Human Rightsand Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the European SocialCharter (Revised) (1965–1996), the European Code of Social Security (1964), meaning 50 years after these rights were enshrined inpapal encyclicals.There is an indisputable fact that has still not been discussed in scientific research on social protection and according to whichthe social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be viewed as an inherent part of the process of occurrence, formation, and developmentof social protection, and it can be regarded as an ideological framework, a source of social rights and principles of social protection.Considering the above-mentioned findings, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church can be defined as the body of legislationadopted by the Holy See regarding the status and development of social and labour rights, their place in a person’s life and in publiclife. Papal encyclicals form the basis of that legislation and they are addressed to believers, bishops, and archbishops.

Great Recession, great regression? The welfare state in the twenty-first century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky ◽  
Graciele Pereira Guedes
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Stable Performance ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Has the welfare state undergone significant retrenchment in the aftermath of the 2007–08 crackdown? In the literature, two contrasting views can be found. Some commentators argue that expansions that would otherwise be observed during crises have been suffocated due to the imperative of austerity. Other more optimistic assessments see social investment policies as having been experimented with in various places, alongside widespread retrenchment. In this paper, using an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database for 35 countries, we check these assessments by examining aggregate figures, such as the evolution—over the 2007–13 period—of social spending and its composition, the participation of social spending in public expenditure, the tax burden and tax composition and welfare state effectiveness. We document expansion in the OECD area alongside stable performance. However, important challenges persist.

scholarly journals Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bea Cantillon ◽  
Wim Van Lancker
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The Social

In this article we critically assess the social investment perspective that has become the dominant paradigm in European social policymaking. We identify and discuss some of its shortcomings that may hamper social progress for all. In doing so, we focus on three pillars central to the idea of social investment: social inclusion through work, individual responsibility and human capital investment. We find that the social investment perspective has some serious flaws when it comes to the social protection of vulnerable groups. This is strongly related to the continuing relevance of social class in explaining and remedying social inequalities. We conclude that investment cannot be the only rationale for welfare state intervention and that protecting people should remain equally high on the policy agenda.

Accelerator or Brake?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ferrera
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Grass Root ◽  
Grass Root Level ◽  
Domestic Level ◽  
The Eu ◽  
The Welfare State

Reorienting the welfare state towards social investment constitutes a complex and multidimensional challenge of policy recalibration and raises daunting political problems. The chapter analyses the strategy pursued by the EU, with a view to assessing its degree of ‘conduciveness’ to social investment recalibration at the domestic level. It is argued that the EU has indeed stimulated policy change, but that its potential as a social investment facilitator has been hamstrung by a number of weaknesses and shortcomings, especially on the discursive front. A more convinced and articulated endorsement of the social investment paradigm and a more focused attention to ‘capacity’ at the subnational and grass-root level should be the fronts to prioritize.

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