Conclusion: social policy in an era of competition

This concluding chapter highlights key arguments from across the book in order to set out an integrated agenda for future research. Theoretically rooted analyses must be at the core of such an agenda. The inter-pollination/cross-fertilisation of ideas from many disciplines is important in developing an understanding of the complex and multi-faceted ways in which competition is influencing welfare states. However, while theory is central to this agenda, it must also be rooted in detailed empirical analysis. In looking to transcend the competition state/welfare state dichotomy, this interplay between theory and evidence is key, and where theoretically rooted social policy analysts can add particular value to current debates.

Delivering fuel poverty objectives within the context of globalised energy markets

This chapter explores claims made by policy makers in the UK that, despite having no control over global energy markets, existing policy protects households vulnerable to fuel poverty through the regulation of commercial energy suppliers and specific policies that provide cash transfers and energy-efficiency measures. Keeping energy prices low is an essential part of the UK government's approach to fuel poverty alleviation, but this task is a complex one in which the steering capacity of the nation-state often seems weak and its capacity hollowed out. This is exacerbated by a neoliberal policy direction that funds environmental and social policy measures through charges on energy bills rather than through tax-funded programmes. The chapter then argues that existing policy has been somewhat contradictory in its view of the government's power to steer energy markets. While the Department for Energy and Climate Change suggested that the UK has no control over the global energy market, this does not match political rhetoric, which has emphasised the importance of increasing domestic energy security in order to spread risk and reduce dependence on politically unstable fossil fuel-producing states, and has also seen political pressure placed on the six main energy companies to lower energy charges to consumers.

From social regulation of competition to competition as social regulation: transformations in the socioeconomic governance of the European Union

This chapter studies the character of contemporary socioeconomic governance in the EU. It draws on empirical evidence capturing the type and extent of regulatory changes in the fields of industrial relations, corporate governance, and the coordination of macro-economic policy in the EU. The effects of these changes are long term, cumulative, and mutually reinforcing and should be seen as integral elements of a relatively coherent project to establish a form of transnational polity in Europe that privileges competition as its regulatory rationale. Indeed, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been institutionally prioritising market freedoms and competition over labour rights, and especially the right to collective action in an emerging transnational regulatory field in the EU. Meanwhile, the new procedures of European macro-economic coordination construe national wage setting, collective bargaining institutions, and, more generally, social policy as adjustment variables serving primarily the purpose of promoting or restoring member states' economic competitiveness.

Changing labour markets, changing welfare across the OECD: the move towards a social investment model of welfare as a response to competition

This chapter examines in more depth one of the attempts to develop a ‘progressive’ modernisation of welfare: the social investment model. The notion of a ‘social investment welfare state’ has gained increasing ground over recent years, playing an important role in the discourse of international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and EU. It forms a part of a number of concepts — others include ‘active social welfare’, the ‘new welfare state’ and ‘new risk welfare’ — that might be grouped under the label ‘new welfare’. All are based around a shared view that developed welfare states have begun to place less emphasis on income protection and more emphasis on investing in human capital. Put differently, they stress the growing importance of the ‘productive’ elements of social policy, chiefly on the basis that this may square the circle of maintaining social expenditures while responding to increased economic competition. The chapter then reviews how far reform agendas match the reality of the social investment model theory and, moreover, evaluates the effectiveness of the approach in reconciling social and economic pressures.

The competition state thesis in a comparative perspective: the evolution of a thesis

This chapter discusses the competition state thesis. Globalisation, the decline of the Fordist model of production, and the rise of the global knowledge economy have all played their role in producing a more competitive environment in which welfare states operate. What exactly is the competition state? Where the welfare state seeks to use the tools of the economy to further the public interest and promote social justice, the competition state seeks only economic success, with welfare provisions not only secondary, but offered only when they support the primary goal of economic success. The chapter then summarises and subsequently extends previous empirical work undertaken using the competition state framework in order to assess the extent to which the core thesis is still relevant today.

Crisis, austerity, competitiveness and growth: new pathologies of the welfare state

This chapter discusses how economists, governments, international organisations, and various other political and financial interests have exploited the economic crisis to assert the argument that the welfare state is unsustainable and that major social policy reforms are essential if nations affected by the crisis are to become competitive in the world system. The challenges faced by governments subject to variations of the unfolding economic crises since 2007/08 have centred on two key questions: first, how to use social policies in strategies for recovery; second, how to deal with the massive economic costs imposed by the crisis. Since the impact of the crisis varied between states, so the policies employed by governments to deal with the crisis have varied. In some cases they have been driven by national economic and political factors, in others they have been driven by world-regional and international factors. The strategy of austerity plays a central role in the future growth models advocated by both national governments and international financial organisations and it is the economic and political success of this approach that shapes the prospects of the welfare state.

Rewriting the contract? Conditionality, welfare reform and the rights and responsibilities of disabled people

This chapter focuses on the rights and responsibilities of disabled people in the UK and the ways in which their rights to work and social security benefits have been subject to contestation and redefinition, particularly since the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance in 2008. In the past, both governments and citizens generally tended to support the claims of long-term sick and disabled people to social security benefits for two reasons. First, because disabled people fitted commonly held views about a legitimate need for provision of financial support and care through the public welfare system. Second, because the cause of their inactivity in the paid labour market was seen by many as being beyond their control. Disabled people have long challenged such discriminatory views and demanded the eradication of disabling attitudes and environments, so that they can realise effective rights to paid employment. Similarly, criticisms of the disabling welfare state and the role it has played in the systematic and entrenched social exclusion of disabled people in respect of their rights to work and welfare must be acknowledged.

Global ‘vulnerabilities’: new configurations of competition in the era of conditionality?

This chapter addresses the increasingly strong targeting of welfare provisions on the most ‘vulnerable’ groups. In the current era of heightened pressure on resources and often increasing social polarisation, focusing resources on more intensive support for the most vulnerable is an inviting option for policy makers. Indeed, key international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have begun to adopt the language of vulnerability to this end. The chapter then considers the rise of this vulnerability rationale, but investigates its application in practice to demonstrate that a heightened focus on the most vulnerable can contribute towards an intensified competition for resources among the least well-off, obscuring questions about the distribution of resources and opportunities across the whole of society. In such a context, debates about who is vulnerable become increasingly key, with attempts to define and classify people accordingly often serving to exclude groups not seen as vulnerable in the popular imagination.

Global competitiveness and the rescaling of welfare: rescaling downwards while competing outwards?

This chapter assesses how governance is being rescaled by globalisation, arguing that some nation-states have tried to circumvent globalisation pressures by injecting small slices of their territory more deeply into the global economy. This has been through establishing policy frameworks for specific localities that deliberately vary from those of the nation-state as a whole. The chapter then focuses on two examples — global cities and Special Economic Zones — the former being more common in high-income countries, the latter more common in lower-income countries. In both instances, the intensification of globalisation processes in these zones has significant implications for welfare, although the effects are by no means straightforward to analyse. Moreover, the two are often connected by global economic processes, SEZs and global cities often being key sites but serving different functions in the global production chains employed by multinational corporations.

Housing and mortgage markets in the everyday: how globalisation came home

This chapter focuses on the globalisation and liberalisation of mortgage markets. What has happened is that the mortgage market has become a conduit between global finance and the everyday. The home has become financialised in ways that were impossible before banking deregulation. For homeowners, the ability to unlock housing equity has been a widely used practice almost since the start of the deregulated mortgage market in the 1980s. This has created a super-commodified realm at the heart of the competition state. The democratisation of access to capital also required a new citizenship contract based around norms of risk taking and self-provisioning. More than this, however, homeowners are predisposed to support low-tax public policy because of the front-loading of housing costs.