WOPSI - The World Politics of Social Investment

Abstract

The "World Politics of Social Investment" (WoPSI) project aims at explaining variance in social investment agendas and social investment reforms across democratic countries in different regions of the World. Virtually all capitalist economies grapple with challenges of demographic change, slow economic growth, poor employment performance and increasing poverty rates. In dealing with these problems, a social investment strategy appeals to a wide audience, both political and academic. However, social investment reforms and performances in democratic countries around the globe are highly unequal and remain fragmentary: different countries have implemented different types of policy instruments, with different functions, at different points in time, and to different degrees.

The future of the social investment state: politics, policies, and outcomes

“…Exploration of the link between ambiguity of SI and the political dynamics of reforms should receive further attention in future research. This is all the more true for non-Western democracies, where policy-makers have also begun to establish SI, but with different policy contents and politics, and at different points in time (Garritzmann et al 2017).…”

“…Although SI policies have been studied for quite a while now, knowledge about the politics of SI remains limited (for a recent review, see Garritzmann et al 2017). Several contributions in this volume seek to address this gap, studying which political actors foster (what kind of) SI policies, and whether the political dynamics of SI reforms are similar to those in the more traditional fields of welfare state policy-making.…”

The distributive implications of welfare reform packages. The Italian case during and after the great crisis

“…The new social risks/social innovation literature has underlined that, in parallel with the emergence of new social risks due to changes in the economic, social and demographic structures of the Western countries, it is now possible to distinguish between 'old' and 'new' social policies (Garritzmann et al, 2016;Gingrich & Ansell, 2015;Häusermann, 2010Häusermann, , 2012. Old social risk policies (OSRPs) deal with welfare coverage of the typical risks of income and job loss that were prevalent in the industrial society.…”

Class politics in the sandbox? An analysis of the socio‐economic determinants of preferences towards public spending and parental fees for childcare

“…Scholarly interest in early childhood education and care (childcare, hereafter) as a core element of the social investment approach has increased considerably during recent years (Garritzmann, Häusermann, Palier, & Zollinger, 2017; Hemerijck, 2013, 2017; Morel, Palier, & Palme, 2012). Researchers commonly argue that expanding formal early childhood education and care supports the early development of children and their educational achievements later in life and it facilitates the reconciliation of work and family life for parents with young children.…”