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Many words have been spent on globalization, but despite its increasing impact on people’s daily lives, even in the most remote corners of the planet, until very recently its social implications were largely disregarded.. For much of the 1980’s and ’90’s attention focussed on the economic face of globalization: on the growing interdependence between the different parts of the world in trade, investment, finance and the organization of production. Yet, at the same time a similar social and political interdependence was growing that — step by step — involved every continent and every country both at organizational and individual level. Today, thanks to the development of transport and, still more, thanks to the new communication technologies, physical distance is no longer the almost insuperable barrier it was in the past: we are all in some way closer and part of a single system.

This paper analyses the reform trajectories that are specific to continental European welfare systems, going beyond the idea that this third world of welfare capitalism is frozen. Comparing the reform trajectories in the different countries and sectors, shows that one can identify four successive sequences of reforms over the last 25 years (from reforms aimed at protecting the insured male worker to reforms aimed at re-structuring benefits, financing and governance arrangements). The paper shows that the trajectory followed by these systems has been highly determined by the typical Bismarckian welfare institutions, but also reversed by a learning process. The paper concludes that the consequences of these changes are increasing the insider/outsider cleavage.

Since the late 1970s, all the developed welfare states of the European Union (Eu) have been recasting the basic policy mix on which their national systems of social protection were built after 1945. Intensified global competition, industrial restructuring, budgetary austerity, changing family relations and demographic ageing have thrown into question the once sovereign and stable welfare systems of the «Golden Ag». Moreover, domestic issues of work and welfare have more recently become ever more intertwined with processes of European political and economic integration. In this respect, it is fair to say that in the Eu we have entered an era of semi-sovereign welfare states. This paper tries to capture the comprehensive character of the ongoing effort to recast the architecture of the post-war social contract in terms of the concept of welfare recalibration for both heuristic and prescriptive purposes.

This paper is about the changing public-private welfare mix in South Europe since the early 1990s. Reform challenges, policy milestones and outcomes are briefly examined in the light of internal pressures and deepening European integration. We focus mainly on Greece and Spain, adding comparative data for Portugal and Italy to the extent possible. The analysis embraces four major social policy fields (social security, health and social care and labour market/employment policy). In the first part of the paper we highlight major policy trajectories and reforms, while in the second and third part we briefly review trends in funding and expenditure patterns, institutional design, regulation and delivery of social welfare, linked to decentralization (and regionalization) processes.

The paper intends to show that, as to the forging of the new welfare state, the past close to two decades of post-communist transformation has brought about Central Europe’s remarkable departure from the track of Western developments. Besides steady slowing down of economic growth since the late 1990s, a review of the key indicators of social development reveals the emergence of previously unknown fault-lines in the new social structures. it is argued that the actual reality of the post-1990 systemic transformation has brought about ever more remarkable retreats of bifurcation in provisions that have concluded, in turn, in an ever more visible disintegration in day-to-day social relations. Taking the case of Hungary, it is demonstrated that the new reforms in welfare have assisted integration into the market for the well-to-do, while the very same reforms have brought further marginalisation and social exclusion for the truly poor.

This paper takes a retrospective view of social policy in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so it seeks to account for two distinct phases in the nature of social policy and its linkages to wider economic and political objectives in the region. We argue that in social policy in the nationalist phase (1960-1980) played an ex-ante transformative role: in this period investment in education and healthcare is the key mechanism of social policy. The weaknesses of this phase were growing authoritarianism and failure to structurally and dynamically transform the economies. The implications of the retrenchment of the public realm under the neoliberal policy regime were not only in its disastrous social consequences of entitlement failure but extend to the crisis of citizenship and statehood in the region.

Prior to the crisis of the late 1990s, East Asia’s welfare states were premised on two sets of ideas: «welfare developmentalism» according to which social policy is viewed principally as an instrument for economic growth, and Confucian familism, which saw the family as the main site of welfare provision. The weaknesses of this approach were painfully exposed during the economic crisis of the late 1990s. In response, many East Asian countries have strengthened and expanded their welfare provisions. This paper explores the contrasting trajectories of welfare development across E. Asia, highlighting ways in which both the economic reform context and the political dynamics of reform are shaping welfare state outcomes.

Different processes and facts seem to indicate the emergency of new social agendas in Latin America, and more generally, new strategies of economic and social development. The trend can be identified in the growing criticism about the so-called Neoliberal paradigm, that ruled the region for the last quarter century; but also, recently, in the electoral victories of political leaders of left and centre-left, supposedly committed to different and socially more progressive alternatives of economic growth and international insertion; and, finally, in the reforms of social security and education that started in Chile in 2006. A central question is whether the model of growth that oriented the region in the recent past may be reaching its limit.

Europe has experienced the intensification of immigrant flow since the mid-1990s and related to this process a new European policy has been built up at Eu level. In spite of this general trend, the intensity of migration flows, the types of migration, the migrant’s performance in the labour market, the policies oriented towards migrants’ social integration, meaningfully vary between European countries, according to the different conditions in each case, shaped by the various welfare state models, by previous migration policies and also by the structure and dynamics of the labour markets. More debate is needed about how to match these divergent trends with a homogeneous official discourse and policy on immigration at European level. At the same time, the impact that migration has on the welfare states is also different.

This article deals with the question to what extent welfare states help or hinder inter-ethnic cohesion. Derived from socio-psychological theories, two indicators are proposed: meeting and mobility. The first points towards the possibilities of real and repeated contact, while the second refers to the absence of insider/outsider boundaries. The Dutch welfare state is presented as an illustration of how to analyse social policy when looking through this lens. In both dimensions the Dutch welfare state is acting poorly. Educational policies as well as labour market policies reduce the possibilities of meeting and mobility.

It is possible to draw important lessons from the last 15 years that saw the attempt to build a significant layer of «Social Europe», from the first initiatives in the very early 1990s. The near collapse of this dynamics was triggered by the double rejection of the project for a constitutional treaty in the Netherlands and France. But this failed attempt at adopting a constitution has much deeper cultural and political roots. In the absence of the «social» dynamics, the substance of the discourse of coordination at Eu level has quickly reversed back to good and solid mainstream «economicism» while perfunctory service was paid to the necessity of «better communication». The fundamental conditions that brought the refusal from voters in France and the Netherlands can be seen as «cultural». This opens up a research programme where the status of a «missing variable», culture, could be considered anew, with its role enhanced in comparative welfare state literature.

This article documents the ways in which a concept which had characterised the high neo-liberal period of the World Bank - social investment - and which plays on the discourse of capitalism, was reworked in the mid-1990s to become, among other things, a set of policies and programmes focused on fighting poverty and improving income security in Europe and Latin America. It documents in particular the adjustments on three dimensions of the citizenship regimes in these two regions. This comparison is based on the observation that, while often having quite different political histories, the Americas and Europe nonetheless share some important similarities in social citizenship practices. Currently, some countries in Latin America have on-going experiments with social citizenship that are not that different several European countries’ choices about how to design a citizenship regime for after neoliberalism.

Culture pervades the rights and expectations of citizenship. Recent decades have seen increasing cultural diversity in western nations, yet their multicultural condition has been little recognised in theories of citizenship and social policy. This paper looks at three theoretical accounts of the relation between multiculturalism and citizenship with a view to making the study of welfare state citizenship more responsive to the issues raised by cultural diversity.

Globalization without global and national social policies to equalize the social costs and benefits of globalization will not be acceptable and sustainable in the longer run. The idea of comprehensive - and rights-based - social policies was firmly present when the Un Declaration of Human Rights was drafted. The neo-liberal turn in the 1980s and 1990s put economic growth and the market into the centre of the agenda and effectively marginalized the government and social policy, but the Un Social Summit in Copenhagen 1995 re-introduced the idea of «society for all» to the global development policy agenda. Recently, the Ilo has been instrumental in bridging again the gulf between the «economic» and the «social» by introducing the concepts «social dimension of globalization» and «decent work agenda». The reality is, however, that the Ilo and its national partners in the Ministries of Labour and social Affairs have little money and few partners to operationalize the decent work/comprehensive social policy agenda, while most of the capacity and funding is concentrated in the World Bank’s national partners in the Ministries of Finance.