Social Policy Lessons For The Global South (Gough, 2005)

Front 1

To add context, how old are the oldest examples of modern welfare institutions?

Back 1

Bismarck’s krankenkassen or sickness funds in 1883 could be taken as thefoundation of the modern welfare state, or at least of the ‘social insurance state’, then thisinstitution is well over a century old in Europe.

Hint 1

Krankenkassen

Front 2

What did Atkinson and Hills(1991) conclude concerning policy recommendations for developing countries?

Back 2

There are few lessons to be drawn concerning policy recommendations, butplenty about the methods of social policy analysis.

Front 3

What is the basic premise of the welfare regime paradigm as per Wood and Gough?

Back 3

A basic premise of the welfare regime paradigm is that policy proposals must becontextualised.

Must take account of existingpatterns of social provision, the distribution of institutional responsibility and the interests whichthese express and perpetuate.

Front 4

What would the fundamental goals of social policy be based upon as per Gough?

Back 4

Fundamentalgoals should be based on an agreed consensus on basic needs or capabilities, as are manycontemporary human rights, but ‘need satisfiers’, including social policies, are more likely to besuccessful if adapted to local environments (Gough 2004).

Front 5

What is a major problem when considering 'Europe' as the reference point for lessons?

Back 5

Even if we confineourselves to the pre-enlargement European Union of 15 members, we confront the problem thatmost researchers recognise different ‘welfare state regimes’ (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999)

Front 6

What are some different welfare regimes existing within Europe as per E-A and Ferrera and Rhodes (2000)?

Back 6

-Liberal: UK and Ireland

- social democratic: the Nordic countries

- continental: Germany, France, the Benelux countries and Austria

- southern: Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece

Front 7

We can still distinguish at a macro level between the EU as a whole andother OECD regions, notably the US and Japan.

Back 7

So we can so an attempt by gough to draw some lessons has been made.

Front 8

Lessons from Europe

1. Strong to Weak

Back 8

From the start social insurance has been the dominant form ofsocial protection in all European countries.

Social insurance state proceeded from the strong to the weak. Social insurance offers aninbuilt transitional strategy. It is the opposite of today’s dominant ‘target the poor’approach.

Front 9

Lessons from Europe

2. Industrialisation.

Back 9

National social policies developed in societies which were rapidlyindustrialising and came to fruition in the mass ‘de-ruralisation’ of the decades followingthe Second World War (except for Britain where it occurred a century earlier).

Thegrowth path was initially one of ‘extensive’ rather than ‘intensive’ growth. The dominant‘political settlement’ was an exchange of Labour’s acceptance of a capitalist economy fortoleration of collective representation and bargaining, social services and socialprotection by Capital.

This welfare system was less suited to the subsequent stage of deindustrialisation,post-industrial capitalism and intensive growth from the 1970s onwards.

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Lessons from Europe

3. Civil society and labour movements.

Back 10

Proletarian and other struggles, trades unions andsocialist parties formed a backdrop to the emergence of the welfare state throughoutEurope.

The imprint of these movements on social policies differs according to the dominant classcoalitions, the orientations of business and the propertied classes, and national stateforms.

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Lessons from Europe

4. Democratisation.

Back 11

Democracy was not a precondition – rather theopposite.

Bismarck explicitly saw social programmes as an alternative to the vote inintegrating the rapidly expanding class of industrial workers and in undermining thethreats from unions and social democratic parties.

However, the later democratic classstruggle thesis convincingly shows the importance of democratic organisation, thoughmore so when allied to the mobilisation of class organisations in civil society.

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Lessons from Europe

5. Religion.

Back 12

The current research into the impact of faiths on policy in thedeveloping world is not misplaced.

It is striking that the differences between Catholic and mixedProtestant–Catholic countries, and the impact of Christian Democrat parties, remain sosignificant in Europe.

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Lessons from Europe

6. Ethnic and other forms of diversity and horizontal integration.

Back 13

Several studies show the importance of a solidaristicvalues in maintaining the willingness to pay taxes and support collective nation-wideprogrammes (Taylot-Gooby 1996).

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Lessons from Europe

7. The legacy of World War 2

Back 14

It marked a decisive turning point inthe emergence of ‘big government’ and mature welfare states in Europe.

The impacts of different kinds of war and majorcivil strife in the developing world are likely to be very different but not negligible.

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Lessons from Europe

8. Constitutional structures.

Back 15

Research has mainly concentrated on the effects on blocking attempts to reformmature social welfare systems, in the face of institutional ‘lock-in’ and opposition fromprofessionals and clienteles, as in Paul Pierson’s work

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Lessons from Europe

9. The productive welfare state.

Back 16

This term originated in Sweden in the 1930s, recognisingthe contribution to modernisation and prosperity of good quality and equitable education,health care, population and family policies.

School meals in Britain have always been perceived as performinga productive ‘public goods’ role.

Front 17

Lessons from Europe

10. Open economies and social protection.

Back 17

Social protection is the only alternative totrade protection, if social disintegration is to be avoided. (Leibfried and Rieger)

Europe's more openeconomies (compared with the virtually self-sufficient continent of the USA) ‘require’greater social protection. The statistical relationship between openness to trade and levelsof social protection spending in the West amounts almost to a law.

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Lessons from Europe

11. Crowding out vs. crowding in

Back 18

Undoubtedly the escalation of the role of the statecrowded out some prior forms of social provision and protection, such as friendly societies and private hospitals.

But ‘crowding in’ has also occurred. This is evident in therole the state plays as financer of the so-called Third Sector in every modern Europeancountry.

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Lessons from Europe (12+13=welfare mix)

12. Family and the household economy

Back 19

The family and household continue to play acritical role in managing the articulation of labour markets and welfare states, as well asin providing care work and managing security.

The extended family and cohabitationacross generations is declining much more slowly in Japan and southern Europe than inthe rest of Europe.

Even in such countries its capacity to provide a generalisablesolution to the problems of insecurity or human investment is limited unless:

· the distribution of income is equitable, permitting an adequate ‘Rawlsian’ level of savingsby the worst off, and/or

· substantial labour/ social mobility ensures that most families have at least one member inthe protected formal sector (the garantismo) who can then share their benefits with otherhousehold/ family members.

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Lessons from Europe

13. Labour markets and welfare states.

Back 20

From: the ‘Golden Age’ of post-war welfare states with extensive employment opportunities and a complementarity between labourmarkets and welfare systems.

To: Increased capital mobility and structural power of capital enforces greater labour marketflexibility and insecurity, while high taxes and labour market regulation impedeemployment.

Most evident in the conservative regimes of continental Europe.

Some identify signs that the liberal regime countries (UK, Ireland) and theNordic countries are innovating different paths to a new scenario of ‘flexicurity’ (Ferreraand Rhodes 2000). Both paths seem to require a shift from a transfer state to a servicesstate

Front 21

What are some conclusions from Gough 2005? 1 of 3

Back 21

1) Different welfare state regimes have emergedreflecting varying constellations of background factors, national institutions, collectivemovements and policy discourses, which in turn have a high degree of path dependency

Front 22

What are some conclusions from Gough 2005? 2 of 3

Back 22

In all welfare states, even the US, a recognisable national system of risk mitigation and compensation hasbeen developed despite internal differences.

Front 23

What are some conclusions from Gough 2005? 3 of 3

Back 23

Perhaps the major difference facing the developing world today is the greaterinfluence of the global environment and supra-national institutions and discourses.

However:

The scholarship on Northern welfare statesdemonstrates the over-riding importance of internal factors.

Gough and Wood's work on global welfareregimes argues strongly that different institutionalised patterns across the South will also shapethe nature and success of different social policy reforms (Gough and Wood 2004).