Pushing the boundaries of regional social policies, or towards a world of universalism in social protection?

Abstract

Dear GSP readers, Looking at the contributions to this issue of Global Social Policy and a number of recent book releases, we find ever more evidence for social policy scholarship broadening and globalising. Furthermore, the application of concepts, or the directions of potential policy learning, are no longer one-directional but consider mutual processes between parts of the world associated with more or less developed systems of social protection. This is accompanied by increasing global (academic as well as political) discussion on claims, forms and degrees of universal social protection. Let's start with taking a look at so-far understudied groups of countries or regions, and their social policy developments. Inviting a dialogue between Asian and European countries is Stein Kuhnle et al.'s (2019), edited collection 'Globalizing Welfare. An Evolving Asian-European Dialogue'. By compiling a great number of case study chapters from the European and Asian region, they intend to facilitate a better understanding of development in both Asian and European social policy arrangements, potentially leading to mutual policy learning. The changing research focus and evolving concepts are also reflected in Katharina Zimmerman's book on 'Local Policies and the European Social Fund (ESF). Employment Policies across Europe'. She provides us with an account of the consequences of conditional external finance, but this time not from the side of international financial institutions where such analyses are usually applied. Instead, the book introduces us into the world of European Union (EU) structural funding, and illustrates how EU cohesion funding is tied to specific reporting and benchmarking procedures. This forces receiving units to take on board particular programmatic objectives and procedural requirements. Studying the ESF, and its implications for local labour markets, Zimmermann identifies three types of conditional patterns: refuseniks, cream skimmers and transformers.