Global Social Policy

Themes, Issues and Actors

Kepa Artaraz, Liz Cunningham, Michael Hill

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781350313378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Social policy is a subject that helps develop our understanding of the meaning of human wellbeing, and of the systems by which wellbeing must be promoted. As a discipline, social policy has traditionally been blunted by a focus on the nation state; however, in this age of globalisation the most pressing challenges – such as climate change, ageing populations and flagging economies – serve as proof that, even at national level, social policy is now more heavily influenced by global factors than ever before. In this important and authoritative text, Kepa Artaraz and Michael Hill provide a richly detailed contribution to our understanding of the global forces shaping social problems today. Part One discusses the different approaches to social policy and explores the process of globalisation, looking particularly at its winners and losers and the implications it has for human well-being; Part Two examines more closely the key actors in global social policy – such as the market, the state and international organisations; and Part Three provides an opportunity to explore some specific key issues of global importance, such as employment and migration, demographic change and global poverty. Adding considerable momentum to the movement away from a reductionist, nationally focused study of the discipline, Global Social Policy opens up new and stimulating discussions and provides a fresh framework for the study of human well-being. Using policy examples from areas around the world to provide a truly international scope, it is an essential read for students studying at all levels.

PART I: PRELIMINARIES

1

APPROACHES TO SOCIAL POLICY: FROM SOCIAL POLICY, TO COMPARATIVE SOCIAL POLICY TO GLOBAL SOCIAL POLICY

Introduction

In this chapter the study of global social policy is related to issues about the identification of the study of social policy as an academic discipline. It is seen as growing out of dissatisfaction with a narrow view of the discipline, and particularly out of the development of comparative work.

In the literature on global social policy there is a tension between two approaches. One of these focuses on global institutions that may make or shape social policy across the world, and the other suggests that regardless of the behaviour of those organisations the factors that shape social policy are global in character. Such tension may be noted in the book by Bob Deacon and his associates that, perhaps more than any other, has shaped the study of global social policy in the UK. That book’s title, Global Social Policy, is followed by a subtitle, International organisations and the future of welfare. However, in its introductory chapter the book argues ‘that the focus of the discipline of social policy should shift from comparative to supranational or global social policy’, in that sense stressing the shaping of the discipline rather than the focus on international organisations (Deacon, 1997, p. 13). Later, the textbook Understanding Global Social Policy edited by Nicola Yeates (2008, second edition 2014) recognises the importance of the perspective on the discipline, of course never absent in Bob Deacon’s work but sometimes somewhat masked by his particular interest in and expertise about the international organisations (see in particular his 2013 book Global Social Policy in the Making). In the summary of her first chapter, Nicola’s first point is to emphasise what she calls ‘the global turn in social science’ with at its heart ‘a methodological transnationalism that recognises the processes, ties and links between people, places and institutions that routinely cut across nation states’ (Yeates, 2008, p. 22). She goes on to stress the importance of ‘attention to transnational entities and processes’ in the study of global social policy and to argue that ‘the traditional emphasis on institutions is now complemented by attention to “bottom up” social policy formation’ (ibid.).

The approach of this book very firmly follows Nicola Yeates’s lead in picking up Bob Deacon’s observation about a need for a shift in focus following the ‘global turn’ in respect of the study of social policy. Going back to the tension in Bob Deacon’s work, it is very clear that his longstanding interest has been in what is required to make global social policy, driven by an internationalist perspective. The fact that this has helped to change the way social policy is studied arises from the identification of the need to recognise global influences upon social policy goals. To put it perhaps more strongly than either Yeates or Deacon are prepared to do, our contention is that social policy – even within any one nation – is influenced by global factors regardless of the efforts of international organisations to make or influence policy. Whilst global social policy in the institutional sense may or may not be a reality, global influences on social policy are ubiquitous and must therefore be embraced by the study of global social policy.

This chapter sets out to establish the importance of that perspective for our book by examining not just the emergence of ‘global’ analysis from comparative analysis but also the emergence of the latter from more simplistic – one-nation oriented – social policy analysis. It will first suggest that this progression involved another development: a movement from the analysis of a very specific range of public policies to a broader concern with the determinants of human welfare. A shift towards a globalist perspective was, it will be suggested, in the long run implicit in such a change of perspective.

What do we mean by social policy?

The expression ‘social policy’ is used loosely to comprise those public services that tend, either directly or indirectly, to alter the impact of market forces upon individuals and families. It is thus widely used in conjunction with the idea that across the last 100–150 years societies have seen state developments that are often described as amounting to the establishment of ‘welfare states’. Social policy is thus seen to embrace social security, social care, healthcare and employment services. To these, education and housing are often added, inasmuch as these involve forms of redistribution. This approach to the definition of social policy has, however, been seen as unsat-isfactory inasmuch as it begs questions about the impact these services have upon social welfare. The challenge to this approach particularly comes where there are systematic studies of social policy, as has particularly been the case of the UK and some of the societies particularly influenced by British academic work.

The study of social policy in the UK emerged from a pragmatic recognition that those expecting to practise in the social policy ‘services’ should have some awareness of how their occupations and the institutions with which they might interact actually worked. Early textbooks were thus largely descriptive and centred upon the policy areas highlighted above. One of the present authors must acknowledge that he produced such a textbook; however, in his defence – apart from using the argument that a good scholar’s ideas should evolve across a lifetime – it can be argued that even in the first edition of the textbook (Hill, 1980) an opening chapter identified some of the problems about defining social policy.

As the study of social policy was established in the UK it became recognised that the definition of what was in effect an ‘applied’ academic discipline required something more than simply the identification of a number of services in which it was interested. As an applied subject, much that it had to say was likely to rest upon sociology (with its concerns to explain social institutions), economics (in which ‘welfare economics’ concerned itself with market failure) and political science (with its concerns about power). Not surprisingly, key figures who contribute to social policy analysis come from outside the UK and have quite explicit roots in the feeder disciplines (for example Esping-Andersen, a political scientist whose work is discussed more below).

Significantly, however, the person who can more or less be described as the ‘father’ of the systematic study of social policy in the UK, Richard Titmuss, made two contributions that were to be important for the discipline’s development. One of them involved raising questions about the relationship of social policy to the economic system (contributing to the development of a comparative perspective, on which more below). The other challenged the notion that redistributive policies only came from the state social policies. His essay on the ‘social divisions of welfare’ identified redistributive policies that also flowed from government decisions about how to structure taxation and from the efforts of private companies to supply fringe benefits to their (often better-off) employees (Titmuss, 1958; see also Sinfield, 1978). This opened up two challenges to the simple approach to definition of the subject. One was the recognition that public policies not normally identified as social policies can be redistributive in character. The other was the identification of non-state contributions to social welfare.

We see in this work the emergence of an approach to defining social policy involving a concern with contributions to welfare (in a wide sense) rather than simply a listing of kinds of public institutions. The accepted usage, in the academic discourse about social policy in the UK at least, since that time, sees social policy as ‘support for the well-being of citizens provided through social action’ and of course the ‘academic study of such actions’ (quotations from Pete Alcock’s introduction of the study of social policy in the Student’s Companion to Social Policy, Alcock et al., 2012, p. 5). Such an approach, however, still leaves open questions about how wide the scope of the latter should be.

As first suggested in the divisions of welfare approach, a focus on ‘well-being’ raises issues both about state activities that are not typically defined as social policies and about ‘social action’ from other sources than the state. We can identify issues under both headings, though it is important to recognise that there are interactions between the two (social action influences the state through the political process, whilst the state seeks to influence social action).

Titmuss’ and Sinfield’s work on social divisions bring us up quite explicitly to the inadequacies of a view of social policy as something distinct from economic policy. They show that it is not meaningful to see social policy simply as state intervention to deal with problems that arise from the working of the market. In this respect it is particularly important not to take for granted a notion of the market as somehow a ‘natural’ phenomenon as opposed to a social creation. Accordingly one cannot analyse public policy as if on the one hand there are economic policies designed to influence the market and then social policies that may be adopted separately, even though this seems sometimes to be the model in the heads of governments that see the ‘social’ ministries as less important or even subordinate to the economic ones. Two related topics to which leading UK social policy scholars have given considerable attention illustrate that point: poverty and unemployment. In respect of poverty, income deficiencies and differentials may be measured both before and after the impact of taxes and benefits. Remedies for poverty may then consist of efforts to influence original ‘market’ incomes (minimum wages, for example) and variations in the impact of taxes (on incomes and expenditure), as well as social benefits. Similarly, except in some abstract economic model, unemployment is not just a product of a ‘natural’ labour market but is affected by the ways in which states and societies structure economic relationships. Hence it would be a very narrow view of the role of social policy to see it as solely concerned with mitigating the impact of unemployment.

But these issues about taking a wide rather than narrow view go beyond the challenge to the economic policy/social policy dichotomy. Scholars have identified well-being effects in respect of a wide variety of policies not typically seen as social policies. Michael Cahill’s The New Social Policy (1994) was path-breaking in this respect, with a particular focus on the factors that influence participation in a consumerist society. Some of its chapter headings – communicating, viewing, travelling, shopping, playing – indicate the questions he raised about inequalities that can be seen as potential subjects of policy interventions. In some of his later work the issues about the differential impact of transport policies have been given particular attention (Cahill, 2010).

Michael Cahill is amongst those who have also contributed to the recognition of the way that issues about environment policy have many of the same characteristics as the original social policy fields. People differ in the extent to which they are exposed to poisons in the air and in the water, or to the risks of flooding. Policies to deal with environmental problems do not necessarily have uniform effects, of equal benefit to all citizens. There are important policy questions to be addressed about their costs and benefits.

But if critiques of the narrow view of what constitutes social policy lead us to embrace within that definition interventions in the labour market, taxation, forms of regulation to protect the public, or transport policies, it may reasonably be asked why not also include the two most fundamental government activities: the overall management of the economy and its decisions in respect of war and peace. This does not imply a sort of imperialist claim by social policy scholars that all public policy is social policy, but it is a claim that attention should be given to the social effects of all policies.

However, the argument so far still rests largely upon a concern about the role of the state. As noted above, the concept of ‘social action’ goes beyond the concept of state action. The literature on divisions of welfare identifies the roles of both state and market. To these, two other influences on welfare need to be added: family and community. Of course there are issues about the relationship between the state and the three other influences on individual welfare. Cases may be made for public policies that intrude deep into market, family and community. But arguments are also advanced against these intrusions. The empirical reality is complex interactions upon which individual welfare depends.

The implications of the issues about defining social policy for global social policy

It is not our objective here to go deeply into the issues about either the social effects of public policies or the mixture of influences on individual welfare. Our topic is global social policy and we have addressed these defi-nitional issues about social policy because they are fundamental for understanding of that topic. We will show in various ways in the course of this book the very limited achievements of efforts to establish social policies for the whole world. There is no global state. There are, indeed, interactions between states that may have a benign impact on individual welfare but also conflicts that contribute to the erosion of welfare. There are also economic activities that are global in their impact. Indeed much of the literature on globalism concerns the estimation of the impact of these upon nation states. Global influences on welfare – positive and negative – are therefore much more likely to depend on the big items in the wide view outlined above – international regulation, economic activities, war and peace – than on specific items in the narrow view.

There are also family links that extend across the globe, and, indeed, remittances from workers in one country back to their families in another are very important for welfare. It may be said, too, in respect of that very much looser concept of ‘community’, that informal moral links, assisted by international voluntary agencies, play a role in welfare. In other words, a global perspective on social policy requires an approach to its analysis that goes a long way beyond a simple concern to look at the impact of very specific state policies.

The relevance of the development of comparative social policy

Whilst the emergence of the global perspective on social policy owes a lot to the challenges to the narrow focus on individual policies, it has also been affected by a challenge to the parochialism of the original approaches to the subject. Comparative questions began to be asked quite early in the history of the study of social policy. They tended to start with questions about whether there were other ways of delivering policies (than in ‘our’ nation, wherever that might be). They went on to issues about policy transfer between nations (the influence of the social insurance scheme developed in Bismarck’s Germany, for example). But, with intellectual inputs from sociology and political science, wider questions were raised about shared trends and the factors that explained them.

The earliest systematic comparative studies of welfare states followed a largely determinist line, seeing social policy development as a largely unidi-mensional growth in which rising gross domestic product (GDP) would inevitably bring with it growing state expenditure. Later this approach was challenged by scholars who felt dissatisfied with the high level of generality in these studies, emphasising broad trends and paying little attention to variation in policy content. A particular concern in these later studies was to look at how ‘politics matters’ – looking at political inputs including ideologies. Since orientation to welfare seemed to distinguish parties of the Left from those of the Right, it was obviously relevant to ask whether this had any real effect. This development embraced the identification that there are vast differences in social policy expenditure between nations, not simply explainable in terms of differences in wealth but also in terms of the extent to which that expenditure contributes to the reduction of inequality.

The seminal work for the growing comparative studies ‘industry’ was Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). This influential work distinguishes social policy systems in terms of their contributions to social solidarity using three regime types:

The ‘“liberal” welfare state, in which means-tested assistance, modest universal transfers or modest social-insurance plans predominate’ (Australia, Unit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
• Note on the Contributor
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I: Preliminaries
• Part II: Spheres of Action in Global Social Policy
• Part III: Issues in Global Social Policy
• References
• Index