Social investments in the knowledge economy: The politics of inclusive, stratified, and targeted reforms across the globe

Julian Garritzmann, Silja Häusermann and Bruno Palier ()
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Julian Garritzmann: Goethe University Frankfurt
Silja Häusermann: UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich
Bruno Palier: CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: As countries transition from industrial to post‐industrial knowledge economies, education and skills are crucial. Consequently, policy‐makers around the globe have increasingly focused on social investment, that is, policies aiming to create, mobilize, or preserve skills. Yet, countries around the globe have developed social investments to different degrees and in highly different forms. Our goal is twofold: First, we introduce a new typology of social investment policies, distinguishing nine types along two dimensions: three distributive profiles (inclusive, stratified, targeted) and three functions (skill creation, preservation, mobilization). This differentiation allows fine‐grained analyses of the causes and consequences of different kinds of social investments, thus offering a perspective to study the relationship between efficiency and inclusiveness in a way that goes beyond the mere discussion how social investment policies grosso modo affect inequalities (‘equalizing' versus ‘Matthew Effects'). Second, we theorize on the politics of social investment. We argue that the interaction of policy legacies and socioeconomic factors is the main explanation for which functions of social investment policies are introduced, whereas their distributive profiles are crucially shaped by political coalitions. We illustrate with empirical material from democracies around the globe.

Keywords: welfare state; social investment; reforms; politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04383939
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Published in Social Policy and Administration, 2022, 57 (1), pp.87-101. ⟨10.1111/spol.12874⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04383939

DOI: 10.1111/spol.12874

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