When a crisis undermines quality public service provision: Romanian early childhood education and care through the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic

What appeared to be the success of many Eastern European states in managing the toll of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic in its first round has been attributed to the early introduction of strict lockdown. However, erring on the side of caution came at a high price, with mixed economies of welfare shifting sometimes radically towards families, with the related costs unevenly distributed. Using the case of early childhood education and care (ECEC), the article explores the specifics of what has been a more general pattern in epidemic-induced social policy adaptation in the Romanian context: the overnight, radical and prolonged individualisation of service provision without the corresponding remaking of the cash nexus. It expands on the timeline of government decisions on family policy adaptations, including ECEC service provision. The article also reviews fragmented evidence about the impact of ECEC service suspension on the mixed economy of early years care. The article explains how and why the Romanian government was able to effectively suspend ECEC service delivery between March and September 2020 while keeping related financial arrangements practically unaltered, and do so without open protest. The Romanian case reveals how and why a family policy environment historically characterised by fragmented, selective and partially adequate provision, directly and indirectly maintaining the familialisation of young children’s care, acts as a catalyst for more of the same in hard times: fragmented, selective and only partially adequate intervention. In conceptual terms, the article suggests that familialist family policy is particularly sticky, more so in times of crisis than in ‘good’ times.

Unemployment insurance in the Global South since 1950: Drivers of policy adoption

Until 1945, Western countries were the only ones to have introduced unemployment insurance programs. Since their adoption was extremely controversial, almost all Western nations introduced income support for the unemployed only in the wake of national emergencies such as war and economic depression. This article examines the determinants of program adoption in the Global South, which commenced after the Second World War. With the exception of military conflict, we find that the introduction of unemployment insurance was shaped by factors deviating from the driving forces of program adoption in the Western world. More specifically, we provide evidence that international factors such as war, the activities of the ILO and policy diffusion were more important than domestic factors.

Social resilience and welfare systems under COVID-19: A European comparative perspective

COVID-19 and the corresponding economic lockdown and income loss for large segments of population was something unexpected for all European countries, and their welfare systems were not prepared to protect their citizens from such threats. Social resilience is becoming used in disaster risk analysis, and preferred to that of vulnerability, to refer the ability of the social entities to respond to such challenges, enabling them to cope and adjust to adverse events. It has been more recently used in the context of the European Union (EU) about COVID-19, regarding the creation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, intended to mitigate the economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The global nature of this pandemic makes possible and relevant a deeper understanding of social resilience at different levels of analysis: international, national, local and individual/household levels. This article aims to contribute to this by proposing a set of indicators of social resilience in face of COVID-19, supported in a theoretical framework developed herein, and comparing the performance of a selection of EU countries with distinct welfare system configurations, with different roles played by the government, the market, the social organizations and the families. Using comparable statistical data at macro level and data concerning the responses of government to the economic and social effects of the pandemic, we produce a synthetic index of social resilience, combining resilience on coping and resilience on adapting. We relate the differences found in coping and adapting with the welfare system configurations of these countries.