Graham Room

Social exclusion, solidarity and the challenge of globalization

During the 1990s, the notion of “social exclusion” has given a new impetus to the debate about poverty and disadvantage. This paper assesses the extent of conceptual reconfiguration that the concept of social exclusion involves and the implications for empirical research and policy evaluation. It proceeds to examine critically the extent to which current notions of social exclusion risk neglecting patterns of inequality in the wider society. It concludes by arguing that the globalization of our market economies is tending to erode the support which more advantaged groups are ready to offer and to force retrenchment of the formal welfare organizations on which the poor can call. In a global economy, moral solidarity with the disadvantaged atrophies, and the national communities within which the postwar welfare states were built no longer serve as the focus for good neighbourliness.

Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: Latin America : towards a liberal-informal welfare regime

Introduction Esping-Andersen (1990; 1999) has developed a typology of welfare regimes for developed countries. His analysis focuses on the production of welfare, understood as the articulation of welfare programmes and institutions – including the state, markets and households – insuring households against social risks. In his later book he notes that understanding welfare regimes, and their change over time, involves ‘(a) a diagnosis of the changing distribution and intensity of social risks, and (b) a comprehensive examination of how risks are pooled between state, market, and family’ (Esping-Andersen 1999: 33). This chapter undertakes this task for Latin America. The welfare regime approach can provide a much-needed framework enabling a comprehensive analysis of changes in welfare production in Latin America, including the study of the linkages existing between social protection and labour market institutions, and an evaluation of the outcomes of these changes. There is important research on specific programmes or institutions, but few have attempted to compare and integrate their findings. Extending this framework beyond its original focus on industrialised nations can provide a valuable new dimension, and the chapter will consider whether the fundamental change in economic and social institutions undergone by most countries in Latin America provides a rare example of a welfare regime shift. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section identifies welfare systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. The following section considers the welfare mix prior to recent social protection and labour market reform and identifies a welfare regime for Latin America.

Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: East Asia : the limits of productivist regimes

Written by a team of internationally respected experts, this book explores the conditions under which social policy, defined as the public pursuit of secure welfare, operates in the poorer regions of the world. Social policy in advanced capitalist countries operates through state intervention to compensate for the inadequate welfare outcomes of the labour market. Such welfare regimes cannot easily be reproduced in poorer regions of the world where states suffer problems of governance and labour markets are imperfect and partial. Other welfare regimes therefore prevail involving non-state actors such as landlords, moneylenders and patrons. This book seeks to develop a conceptual framework for understanding different types of welfare regime in a range of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and makes an important contribution to the literature by breaking away from the traditional focus on Europe and North America.

Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe

There are estimated to be almost 60 million people living in poverty throughout the European Union. This bleak statistic underlines the value of this important book which explores the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in six European countries, namely: Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK. The book focuses on four ‘life course’ groups who might be considered particularly at risk: young adults, lone parents, the sick and disabled, and the retired.

Poverty in Europe: competing paradigms of analysis

This article examines the relationship between some of the dominant conventional perspectives on European social policy and the European poverty research agenda: in particular, the studies of poverty which have been conducted under the auspices of the European Commission. These studies have been shaped by the political agenda of the Commission but have been relatively isolated from theoretical debates concerning European social policy. However, a substantial reconfiguration of the European poverty discussion is now under way, involving redirection of the research agenda towards wider issues of social stratification and political order.

Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy

Graham Room argues that conventional approaches to the conceptualisation and measurement of social and economic change are unsatisfactory. As a result, researchers are ill-equipped to offer policy advice. This book offers a new analytical approach, combining complexity science and institutionalism.

Commodification and decommodification: a developmental critique

Esping-Andersens influential analysis of decommodification, and his depiction of three worlds of welfare capitalism, is rooted in the writings of Marx and Polanyi. However, whereas Esping-Andersen focuses on the way that commodification threatens the basic consumption needs of the labourer, Marx and Polanyi were equally concerned with its denial of the labourers scope for self-development and critical social transformation. This paper first argues that even Esping-Andersens analysis of decommodification in relation to consumption is flawed; it then proceeds to operationalise the notion of decommodification for self-development. Making use of the available cross-national data, the paper produces decommodification scores for a range of OECD countries which challenge the mapping inherited from Esping-Andersen, and which view welfare regimes in terms of their capacity to promote a creative, critical and highly skilled labour force. At the same time, it acknowledges that such composite indexes of decommodification depend on political value choices as to the overall priorities and organisation of society. The paper thus provides a new standpoint from which to analyse welfare regimes in relation to decommodification: one which gives a central place to education and vocational training, as forms of social investment.

Informal Security Regimes: the strength of relationships

Introduction This chapter argues that the poorer regions of the world do not comfortably conform to the two key assumptions upon which the OECD model of welfare state regime relies: a legitimate state; and a pervasive, formal sector labour market. This immediately sets up the two key interactive issues of governance and the socio-economic circumstances of the common man (and woman). These circumstances are understood in this chapter through the metaphor of the peasant (to capture the significance of reproduction, family and household-level inter-generational transfers) and the analysis of clientelism as pervasive adverse incorporation (comprising hierarchical rights; meso-level intermediation with the national-level polity and economy; and quasi-public goods social capital, organised through unequal relationships). These political, economic, social and family dimensions are brought together in this book, for policy analysis purposes, as the institutional responsibility matrix with global as well as domestic dimensions. These four institutional domains are presented as permeable, which can have positive or negative outcomes for different societies. The worlds poor regions are characterised by negative permeability in which the level of personal objectives penetrates the level of public aims to produce poor governance and insecurity for the majority of their populations, thus removing any prospect of the corrective principle, in which the state regulates the market for social objectives. Only partial compensation for this absence of the corrective principle is offered by global discourses, conditionality and debt remission leverage.

Policy Benchmarking in the European Union: Indicators and Ambiguities

The Lisbon process is intended to move the European Union (EU) towards a dynamic but socially inclusive knowledge-based economy. Policy benchmarking through the ‘Open Method of Coordination’ is being applied to a wide range of relevant policy areas. This article considers the benchmarking indicators that are being used in relation to the knowledge-based economy on the one hand, social inclusion on the other. It examines the indicators that have been selected, the uses to which they are being put and their appropriateness for policy coordination, policy learning and performance improvement. It explores three ambiguities or tensions that they reveal. First, the article argues that being in part the offspring of the process of monetary union, the OMC is being used to track progress towards a single future, rather than to expose the range of possible alternative futures and the trade-offs they involve. Second, whereas the goal of the Lisbon process is a dynamic knowledge-based economy, the article argues that...The Lisbon process is intended to move the European Union (EU) towards a dynamic but socially inclusive knowledge-based economy. Policy benchmarking through the ‘Open Method of Coordination’ is being applied to a wide range of relevant policy areas. This article considers the benchmarking indicators that are being used in relation to the knowledge-based economy on the one hand, social inclusion on the other. It examines the indicators that have been selected, the uses to which they are being put and their appropriateness for policy coordination, policy learning and performance improvement. It explores three ambiguities or tensions that they reveal. First, the article argues that being in part the offspring of the process of monetary union, the OMC is being used to track progress towards a single future, rather than to expose the range of possible alternative futures and the trade-offs they involve. Second, whereas the goal of the Lisbon process is a dynamic knowledge-based economy, the article argues that the benchmarking indicators are remarkably static and it sets out what dynamic indicators would be more appropriate. Finally, whereas patterns of social and economic development are increasingly shaped by global processes, the Lisbon process remains focussed on action at the national level: the article argues the case for a stronger global dimension for indicators of change. The article concludes by considering the implications of its findings for governance and accountability in the EU.

The European Challenge: Innovation, Policy Learning and Social Cohesion in the New Knowledge Economy

The EU and the new knowledge economy Policy benchmarking: tools for steering the new knowledge economy? The new macro-economy: stability, growth and dynamics Industrial innovation and organisational change Human investment Access and inclusion Indicators of the new knowledge economy Globalisation and governance Conclusion.