The transformative role of the social investment welfare state towards sustainability. Criticisms and potentialities in fragile areas.

2016 ◽  
pp. 29-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Villa
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The Social

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, Employment and Policy and Institutional Complementarities: A Comparative Analysis across 26 OECD Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
VINCENT BAKKER ◽  
OLAF VAN VLIET
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Employment Outcomes ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Employment Rates ◽  
Marginal Returns ◽  
Welfare State Regimes

Abstract Raising employment has been at the heart of EU strategies for over twenty years. Social investment, by now a widely debated topic in the comparative welfare state literature, has been suggested as a way to pursue this. However, there are only a couple of systematic comparative analyses that focus on the employment outcomes associated with social investment. Analyses of the interdependence of these policies with regard to their outcomes are even more scarce. We empirically analyse the extent to which variation in employment rates within 26 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010 can be explained by effort on five social investment policies. We additionally explore the role of policy and institutional complementarities. Using time-series cross-section analyses we find robust evidence for a positive association between effort on ALMPs and employment rates. For other policies we obtain mixed results. ALMPs are the only policies for which we observe signs of policy interdependence, which point at diminishing marginal returns. Additionally, our analysis demonstrates that the interdependence of social investment policies varies across welfare state regimes. Together, this indicates that the employment outcomes of social investment policies are also contingent on the broader framework of welfare state policies and institutions.

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.

Inscribing Maternalism in the Social Investment Perspective

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Jenson
Keyword(s):  
Social Investment ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Male Breadwinner ◽  
The Social ◽  
European Social Policy ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Policy Communities ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Act One

Beginning in the 1960s, second-wave feminists framed their claims against the discourses and policy practices in the male breadwinner model that was widespread at the time. They found it too maternalist, accepting the traditional role of women as mothers responsible for care. It is, therefore, ironic that the male breadwinner model is no longer promoted by public policy communities, and yet, maternalism has returned to policy practices. The social investment perspective, now dominant in European social policy, addresses women primarily as mothers and secondarily as workers. This article documents this return to maternalism and attributes the shift to two ideational mechanisms present in the universe of political discourse within which proponents of the social investment perspective act. One is a mechanism of “being aware of gender,” including differences generating inequalities, and the other is a mechanism of “writing out gender equality.” Both drive the process of inscribing maternalism into policy and programmes.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v9i2.231

The Role of ICT-Enabled Social Enterprise for Promoting Social Investment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiorenza Lipparini ◽  
Joshua Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Stakeholder Partnerships ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

Europe is facing unprecedented challenges, from globalisation to migratory flows, changing family structures, ageing populations, inequality and social exclusion, unemployment, and so on. To meet these challenges, we need to modernise EU social protection systems by expanding the social investment dimension of social spending, while taking advantage of technological advancements and multi-stakeholder partnerships to drive change in the welfare system. Within this context, this chapter focuses on the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) enabled social enterprises for promoting social investment. First, we outline the social enterprise landscape in Europe, going beyond fuzzy concepts to highlight the key characteristics of social enterprises that make them important for social change. Second, we outline key ways in which social enterprises are using ICT in their activities to achieve varied socio-economic goals: from using social media to scale up, to improving organisational management, and expanding service offerings in healthcare, education, the labour market, and other social fields. Our analysis is based on findings from our study on the role of social enterprises in delivering ICT enabled social innovation initiatives promoting social investment approaches, carried out by the authors in the framework of the European Commission’s ICT-Enabled Social Innovation (IESI) project. (See https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/iesi.) We find that ICT-enabled social enterprises are particularly important for social investment, given their ability to combine technological and social innovation, and their focus on meeting community-specific needs that can be scaled up. We encourage research and policy commitments to further test and validate how social enterprises can catalyse public-private partnerships for the delivery of public goods to safeguard our Social Europe.

Social Investment

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-205
Author(s):  
Julian L. Garritzmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Skills

This chapter reviews the paradigm and spread of social investment policies, which come in many variants, and discusses them as key elements of the ‘knowledge economy welfare state’. Social investments are policies that aim to create, preserve, and mobilize human skills and capabilities. The chapter discusses the emergence of social investment as a new social policy paradigm, presents different variants of the social investment approach, provides a mapping of social investment policies around the globe, discusses effects of social investment policies, and weighs in on important debates regarding the politics of social investment. The chapter then closes with an outlook on avenues for future research.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document