policy study
In a third meaning, this book draws upon the world of social policy scholarship in the sense of exploring the parameters of the discipline (or field of study, as some scholars prefer). This is not to claim that the book is comprehensive in its range of analysis, or that it offers a definitive approach to social policy as an academic subject. The aim here is not to provide an encyclopaedia of international social policy (see Fitzpatrick et al., 2010 for such a publication) or a reference work (see Castles et al., 2010 and Greve, 2013). Instead the chapter contents aim to present an international analysis of the essential concerns of social policy, an examination of the policy domains generated to address these concerns and discussion of the contemporary challenges to policy makers in the twenty-first century brought by social and economic change.
The book is thus a contribution to the expansion of study in social policy and its understanding as an international and global endeavour. As noted earlier, the shape of social policies beyond established welfare states is often subject to influences that are neither ‘national’ nor ‘state’. This is highlighted in many of the chapter discussions, but in focusing on particular themes and challenges in areas of policy it is not possible to also do justice to the depth of insight drawn from analyses in global social policy that provide a more forensic examination of the politics and practices of international actors and organizations. This can be found both in more generalized accounts of social policy at the global level (for example Deacon, 1997; Deacon and Stubbs, 2013; Kaasch and Martens, 2015) and in work which is focused on specific policy areas in a global context (for example Kaasch, 2015; Verger et al., 2018). Similarly, while the policy domain chapters, in particular, aim to consider the subject matter beyond the concerns of advanced economies, space restricts detailed integration of the full breadth of perspectives from development studies on these concerns. Such integration of traditional social policy approaches with those from social development studies is emerging, both in academic research and in the work of organizations such as the UN (for example Mkandawire, 2016). The work of James Midgley has been particularly influential in establishing these disciplinary connections (Midgley, 1995; Hall and Midgley, 2004), which are further elaborated by others (Surender and Walker, 2013; Copestake, 2015), and they extend to more recent work on world regionalism and its emergent forms of social policy making (Deacon et al., 2010).
All these literatures help to inform the overarching analytical approach of this book, which recognizes the ways in which history, politics and economics matter, not just in terms of how institutions develop, but also in how national and global historical processes affect the way that people treat each other in bounded locations and across boundaries, the variety of ways in which policy operates vertically and horizontally and the kinds of material concerns that shape collective responses. The analysis also recognizes questions about whether and how all these dimensions are comparable, and which theoretical frameworks enable us to understand them better. Thus, although the comparative dimensions are important in all of the chapter analyses presented, an open understanding of social policy underpins the book, which recognizes that comparative frameworks developed in the context of advanced welfare states in the global North can do no more than assist in constructing better ways to explore social policy elsewhere in the world.
In view of this, social policy here concerns purposeful collective actions that influence the distribution of resources. Its analysis is very often, as in this book, driven by concerns about disadvantages and the structures of inequality, and therefore aims to improve welfare conditions and to contribute to social progress. This implies a particular focus on policies with self-evident welfare goals (such as those with respect to income support, health and social care) but also has regard (as for example in the discussions of employment, education and environment issues in this book) to the wide range of policies which have an impact on human welfare.
Social policy and social change
Examining the relationship between social policy and social change assists in delineating some key concepts used to analyze social policy in a way that detaches them from the specific concerns of mature welfare states. The purpose of this approach is to demonstrate the human commonalities that drive social policy development, and to emphasize that the answers to questions of when, how and why people seek to meet their needs collectively take us beyond the concern of ‘policy’ in any formal sense. The discussion will show that welfare is thus dependent upon a mixed economy and a combination of personal and collective efforts, describable in terms of the activities of households and families, localities and communities, and the economy and the state. Concerns about the extension of welfare, its desirability and the means by which it is achieved are matters of philosophical and ideological debate and political action. Social progress occurs as human needs are increasingly met, and human welfare is expanded. Social policy is not entirely responsible for delivering these kinds of improvements to the quality of people’s lives, their health and well-being, but without social policy improvements they are unlikely to occur, and where they do occur they are unlikely to be patterned in a way that promotes social justice.
It is tempting to look back through decades or centuries and make claims that, compared to the world of the early twentieth century for example, contemporary conditions of life such as those in work, habitat, prosperity and security are far removed from the privation experienced before the 1940s and the arrival of the ‘golden age’ of welfare capitalism (although see Wincott, 2013). The 1940s are generally regarded as the decade that propelled the instruments of rapid progress: welfare states, decolonization, international cooperation and economic growth on a continuous upward trajectory which has raised standards of all human life. This is argued to apply, even despite the intervening economic crises, civil and international conflicts and political upheavals. There is evidence to support this claim. In 2010 the UN Human Development Report (UNDP, 2010) included an assessment of changes in the indicators of the Human Development Index (HDI) (using measures of life expectancy, years of schooling and per capita income) from 1970, to show that taken together, all countries showed ‘impressive’ improvements and that the gap between developed and developing countries had narrowed by approximately 25 per cent in forty years.
Despite these claims of human progress, and the real benefits that this has brought to millions of people, the world remains a highly unequal place, and particularly since the global financial crisis in 2008, this inequality has increased along many dimensions. The UNDP report (2010) also presents many examples of failures and reversals in progress which ‘remind us that progress is not linear’ (2010, p. 30). Not only is this the case, but the world regional differentials have not changed either, with sub-Saharan Africa disproportionately represented in countries with reversals in progress, and in the lowest-ranking countries using the HDI measure. As economists (including two previously leading officials of the World Bank) have shown, inequalities of wealth and income began to rise in the decade before 2008 (Piketty, 2014; Atkinson, 2015; Milanovic, 2016; Stiglitz, 2016), but in the post-crisis world many of the equalizing welfare gains made in previous years have been reversed (Ortiz et al., 2015). The evaluation of social progress therefore clearly becomes less certain when further questions are asked regarding who has progressed and what the nature of that progress might be. It is also important to recognize that historical comparisons seeking to remind us how far we have come, especially those based on generalized quantitative measures, also require more context-heavy comparative, qualitative reflection as a counter-balance to the drawing of simple conclusions that progress necessarily accompanies the passing of time.
Where the analysis of social policy is concerned, there is much to consider in terms of social change that can be considered ‘progress’. The example of life expectancy (which is often used as a measure of social development) illustrates well the competing conceptions of ‘progress’, ‘welfare’ and ‘need’ that characterize the analysis and evaluation of social policy. Broadly speaking, it is clear that outside the effects of generalized military conflict in the early and middle periods of the twentieth century, people’s expectations of years of life have increased considerably. However, as research continues to highlight, the level
