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We study how welfare states regimes influence the effect of episodes of fiscal consolidations on the four main components of the welfare state: social investment, pensions, healthcare and labour market insurance. Welfare state regimes are associated with distinct social policy legacies that feedback into political competition by shaping the size and influence of different coalitions of constituents. Using data from 1980 to 2014 in 16 OECD countries, we find that labour market insurance is more vulnerable to consolidations in Liberal regimes, while social investments are more resistant to consolidations in Nordic regimes. In the Continental regime, which overlaps with Social Health Insurance systems, healthcare is more resistant to consolidations. Finally, pensions are more resistant to consolidations in the Southern regime. These findings contribute to the study of the comparative political economy of welfare state retrenchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with disability are at heightened risk of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation (VANE) with policy geared towards responding to and eliminating VANE harm. Yet not all harm experienced by people with disability is captured within the VANE harm. Many people also experience harm in everyday interactions that leave them feeling uncomfortable, devalued, disrespected, threatened or silenced. Our multi‐method study begins with the term 'everyday harm' to describe these subtle, difficult‐to‐define and easily overlooked experiences, with the proviso that a more appropriate vocabulary may emerge from subsequent fieldwork. This article presents the results of a policy review about the representation of everyday harm between people with disability and paid support workers in disability policies. Results show that everyday harm is acknowledged in some disability policies. However, this acknowledgement is neither consistent nor comprehensive and policies do not consider the cumulative impact of everyday harm nor the subjective experience of harm. This review suggests a gap in conceptualising this type of harm and having a vocabulary that people with disability, support workers and organisations can use to acknowledge, name and, ultimately, prevent this form of harm. Empirical research about their experience of everyday harm is needed to address this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social policy literature indicates a notable shift towards activation in minimum income schemes (MIS) since the 1990s, which has led to the emergence of new policy varieties. However, previous research has failed to reveal institutional changes over time and across/within varieties. This article measures and interprets varieties of minimum income across six welfare states from 2008 to 2022. It examines the evolution of varieties of MIS over time, and the extent to which changes have been driven by path dependence dynamics or by convergence towards a workfare model. Theoretically, the article builds on the regulation approach in political economy. Methodologically, it applies a Principal Component Analysis to a new dataset that consists of three OECD‐standard indicators alongside two novel indicators formulated for this study. The findings illustrate that varieties of MIS have undergone both quantitative and qualitative changes, moving within and between typologies. These changes are attributed to a lack of investment in income protection, limited enabling opportunities, and the introduction of specific, incremental workfare reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a range of actors respond to poverty in the cost of living crisis, this paper addresses a long‐standing blind spot in social policy analysis by examining the role that corporations are playing in voluntary responses in the UK. To do this the paper introduces theories of corporate power to extend approaches to researching mixed economies of welfare, which have traditionally looked at the role of commercial entities principally in terms of their role alongside other actors in the welfare state. Building on existing food charity research, which has explored the dynamics and implications of corporate‐food charity relationships, this paper applies theories of corporate power to an analysis of the food charity related activities of the top 20 leading food retailers and casual dining brands in the UK. The analysis reveals how UK corporations exercised instrumental, structural and discursive forms of power to influence policy, set agendas and norms within food and charity systems and frame issues of food charity and hunger. The paper illustrates how a corporate power framework can add important layers to social policy analyses of mixed economies of welfare, by introducing a focus not just on operational aspects of corporate involvement, but also on the impact these corporations might be having on policy, how they are shaping the structure of welfare and the drivers of poverty through agenda setting in their markets, and the ways in which corporations influence public perceptions of social policy issues and how best to respond to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is associated with psychological variables such as increased anxiety, increased depression, steeper time discounting and greater risk aversion. However, less is known about whether short‐term changes in financial circumstances are coupled to immediate psychological responses. We present data from the Changing Cost of Living study, in which panels of adults in France (n = 232) and the UK (n = 240) completed financial and psychological surveys every month for a year (September 2022–August 2023). We found the expected overall socioeconomic gradients in anxiety, depression and time discounting. In addition, monthly fluctuations in financial situation were associated with fluctuations in depression, anxiety and risk preference. Increases in essential costs, considered separately from fluctuations in income, had an immediate impact on depression. Social support, the instrumental and emotional assistance derivable from one's social network, buffered the effects of short‐term financial fluctuations on depression and time discounting, but did not mitigate the overall gradients. We conclude that declines in income or increases in the cost of living have immediate and measurable psychological impacts, which must be borne in mind in the formulation and evaluation of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2022 and 2024, there was no devolved government functioning in Northern Ireland. This protracted absence of government occurred in the aftermath of the Covid‐19 pandemic and during what is arguably the worst economic crisis of recent years. Women are more vulnerable to hardship during economic crisis and thus it is unsurprising that the Cost‐of‐Living Crisis is hitting women hardest. This paper examines increasing food insecurity for women in Northern Ireland and the implications for the realisation of their human right to an adequate standard of living. The UK Government has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which provides a legal duty to ensure that everyone has adequate access to food. However, increasing numbers of food banks and ill health related to insufficient food intake indicates that there is a fundamental problem. This article draws on 20 focus groups with 250 women on a low‐income to explore their experiences of the Cost‐of‐Living Crisis in Northern Ireland. The research found that women routinely skipped meals; described feelings of shame and guilt associated with struggling to feed their children; and discussed difficulties associated with purchasing food. Much of the pain associated with the hunger experienced by these women and children is hidden within the private sphere of the home. This article intends to shine a light on women's experiences and will reflect on the necessary policy change required to ensure compliance with international human rights obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do national political parties vary in their views on Social Europe? I focus on an aspect that has received less attention despite its growing prevalence—EU regulations with ambitions to diminish social inequality to encourage social convergence among Member States. Since the Juncker Commission, the European Commission has become increasingly active in pursuing this aspect of Social Europe. Thus, understanding parties' positions on this aspect of Social Europe has become more important. However, current literature lacks measures of national party stances towards Social Europe, and explanations for these stances. Here, I use data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (2006, 2009, 2014 and 2019) to develop an indirect measure of party positions on Social Europe. Leveraging studies in party politics and EU politics, I propose that party families and national economic conditions may affect parties' positions on Social Europe. The analyses suggest substantial variation in parties' positions on Social Europe both within and across party families. The analyses also demonstrate that socialist and green parties support Social Europe most, whereas radical right parties support it least. Lastly, I do not find systematic evidence that national economic conditions influence parties' support for this aspect of Social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Pillar of Social Rights sits at the fulcrum of EU social policymaking. This article aims to explore its legal and political character, how it was shaped in the adoption process and its place within Social Europe. The key argument is that the Social Pillar builds on but also critically modifies previous initiatives present within the broader EU governance framework, notably in the European Semester. Key political actors like Commission President Jean‐Claude Juncker and parliamentary rapporteur Maria João Rodrigues contributed to the adoption process not only through their long‐held political views but also by bringing to bear their own critical reflections on previous EU initiatives. Methodologically, the article relies on 15 interviews with policy experts and uses an interdisciplinary approach based on legal analysis, process tracing and actor‐centred constructivist theory. The contribution of the article is threefold: (1) it helps to better understand the EU's social flagship initiative and the modifications of its governance approach compared with previous initiatives, (2) it sheds new light on the tensions and opportunities of social policymaking within the EU and (3) it shows the added value of actor‐centred constructivist approaches on a theoretical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Europe, or the social dimension of the European Union (EU), has been receiving increasing attention in academic debates. This special issue introduction discusses Social Europe through the analytical framework of multi‐level governance while asking, perhaps controversially, whether Social Europe has the potential to become a fully‐fledged welfare state. This introduction also summarises the articles included in this special issue which focus on different governance levels, including EU institutions, member states, national parties, economic sectors, workers and the general public. On this basis, the introduction identifies sources of challenges and opportunities for Social Europe from various levels of governance. We conclude that the needs and demands become more diverse when we move from European institutions to the citizens. Notably, obstacles from one governance level often carry over to another governance level. Consequently, it becomes much more difficult to design welfare policies on the EU level that work for everyone. While a more evolved EU‐level welfare state may be possible in the future, substantial obstacles make it difficult to achieve in the short run. Hence, future research should examine the multi‐level structure of Social Europe in more detail to better grasp what Social Europe can and cannot deliver and why. Such research is not only relevant in the European Union but also in other multi‐level governance systems across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the public opinion literature on Social Europe is growing, so far, it relies on quantitative survey evidence that hides some of the arguments and motivations lying behind the standardized results. This article reveals through qualitative research that 'welfare Euroscepticism' (i.e., opposition towards Social Europe) needs more attention in the literature and explains why. Specifically, this article uses qualitative focus group discussions on Social Europe collected in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain (134 participants in total). The participants filled out a quantitative survey before the discussions started and these survey results are in line with the usual public opinion literature on Social Europe, that is, relatively supportive of the social dimension of the EU. However, multi‐faceted welfare Eurosceptic attitudes appeared throughout the discussion. While participants may support the general idea of a Social Europe, they are highly critical about how it actually works in practice. The analysis reveals that the public is sceptic towards both harmonizing social policies on the EU level and redistributive social policy instruments on the EU level. Three overarching and partly overlapping rationales appear to drive welfare Euroscepticism: (1) economic self‐interest, (2) cultural ideology and (3) the democratic deficit. The results emphasize the public preferences for more conditional redistributive policies and the need to make Social Europe more visible to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital labour platforms transform work and employment relations in many ways. Crucially, they renounce the role of the employer, leading to a redefinition of traditional categories of actors and their roles in social policy and dialogue. Using the example of the EU proposal for a directive on improving working conditions in platform work, this article examines how this redefinition is materialising in practice among social partners in order to understand its implications for the future of social dialogue and legislation. While previous research focused on the status of workers, this study takes a complementary view by considering the employer side as a key counterpart in a functioning employment relationship. The actor‐approach is used to analyse the views and positions of EU social partners and how their prerogatives are affected by the blurring of the role of the employer and the redefinition of traditional categories of actors in social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase due to climate change. Natural disasters and other shocks require well‐developed social protection systems that can cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. International stakeholders advocate for 'Adaptive Social Protection' which links social policy with strategies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This article uses the tax‐benefit microsimulation model INDOMOD to analyse the adaptiveness of the Indonesian social protection system by simulating an income shock caused by a natural disaster and testing reforms to the existing social protection system. We find that the existing system generally performs well in lifting people out of poverty in normal times but does not sufficiently help them to prepare for and cope with shocks. This is especially the case for large households, households with more than two children, people in their 20s and 80s and individuals with a disability. The tested hypothetical reforms reduce the impact of the shock and better target those identified as needing more support but require a substantial increase in social spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare state crises have long fascinated researchers. This introduction distills the special issue's insights on this enduring topic. Overall, the articles indicate that future debates surrounding crisis types and responsive policies will remain important. Simple or singular crisis explanations prove elusive. Uncertainty persists regarding whether crises are episodic or constant and occur on macro or micro levels. Diverse welfare regimes further complicate crisis interpretations. Perhaps academic discourse should shift from "crisis" frameworks towards framing pressures as ongoing variations. These encompass struggles over legitimacy, demographic changes, financing dilemmas, and societal battles over resources and options. Specifically, the articles reveal the limitations of sweeping crisis narratives, emphasizing the complex, gradual pressures shaping social policies. Welfare systems balance simultaneous stresses rather than experiencing overarching crises. Even pivotal events rarely trigger seismic shifts, as continuity typically prevails over radical departures. In summary, this special issue provides nuance to welfare state debates by delving into multifaceted, incremental change rather than superficial crisis rhetoric. The articles underscore the diversity of pressures and responses across varied regimes, challenging simplistic crisis notions. This highlights the need for constant welfare state adaptation despite the absence of outright crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal Credit signalled a revolution in the delivery and costs of welfare provisioning. UC aimed to reduce spending on welfare, but in doing so now threatens the stability of a functioning and cohesive society. Over recent years, and most notably during the COVID‐19 pandemic, it has become ever clearer that adequate social security is vital to the functioning of society, as well as to the health and well‐being of the population. Yet this period has also served to highlight the fragility and insufficiency of welfare in the United Kingdom. This article explores how the current welfare crisis, is associated with UC. In this article, we also consider the uncertainty that UC has created in most recipients. We argue that there are other ways to support the most vulnerable in society, and that we are now at that critical juncture in needing to make significant change. Universal Basic Income (UBI) offers one such alternative by offering stable, individual, non‐means tested, and unconditional money transfers, to all citizens. Over the last decade, there have been multiple experiments around the world trialling basic income, each of which has a specific focus, or target population, as different elements of a UBI were scrutinised. In this article, we reflect upon what we consider to be the potential shortcomings of the current welfare system in the United Kingdom as a move away from its origin, arguing that the United Kingdom is now primed for UBI to be considered a fair and legitimate way to provide social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse how different governments have dealt with situations, labelled as 'crises' in the international and national discourses. More specifically, we analyse how the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments framed and dealt with their social policies during the 2008 'financial crisis', the 2015 'refugee crisis', and the 2020 'Covid crisis'. We argue that sometimes governments and the mass media frame the situation as a crisis, when objectively it would be hard to argue empirically that there really was a crisis. At other times, according to objective criteria, there is ample evidence that there is indeed a crisis, but the government tries to deny it for political reasons. Despite differences in objective conditions and differences in political constellations, none of the policymakers in the three countries took advantage of the windows of opportunity that the alleged crises presented to carry out path‐changing social policy? changes. Instead, the changes we rather small and usually only temporary; thus, showing the importance of path dependency even during crisis situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has traditionally influenced the social and employment policies of Member States through regulation, leaving redistribution to national welfare states. The latter have, however, been gradually weakened by global socioeconomic change and by the expansion of EU market integration. A series of crises over the last 15 years made a bad situation worse: the longue durée erosion of the capacity of European welfare states has morphed into acute social aftershocks, especially in peripheral countries. After the austerity reflex in the early 2010s, the EU introduced new policy instruments with market‐correcting rationales that go beyond the regulatory approach. This article revisits the creation and functioning of four of these instruments that represent EU‐level capacity‐building in the social policy domain: the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, the Youth Guarantee, the Just Transition Fund and SURE (the temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency). We argue that the EU increasingly provides 'buffer mechanisms' to support stressed national welfare states in tasks they would otherwise be unable to accomplish, and we identify the political factors that drive the expansion of this 'buffering' logic in EU social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portugal has been confronted with a succession of crises in recent years. This article explores the differences in the way that, in Portugal, the welfare regime tackled the Great Recession context (financial, euro, sovereign debt, structural adjustment crises) and COVID‐19 crisis through very different policy responses. The fact that the governments in office acted differently when faced with realities that were close in time but very distinct, generates a paired comparative scenario, without forgetting the interim period. Supported by a plural methodological approach that gathers information from various sources, the outcomes reveal important aspects about the policy direction of changes and in terms of socio‐economic indicators. First, policy responses have followed three dynamics in tension: Retrenchment, Mitigation, and Expansion. Second, the policies make a difference, producing distinct outcomes in terms of socioeconomic indicators (unemployment, inequality, poverty). Third, the responses to crises induced more “radical” measures (towards Retrenchment or Expansion), which are not consistent with interim situations. Finally, while the austeritarian response was part of the government in office's program, this was not the case during the pandemic, when the response was involuntary and unprogrammed. This means that, in being a provisional and dated response, there is a high risk that in the near future there will be a resumption of Mitigation or even Retrenchment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the large number of unpaid carers in England, there is an extensive body of research which examines the determinants of carers' employment. Despite this, little is known about the relationship between the specific tasks that carers perform and their labour supply. Using data from the Survey of Adult Carers in England, we examine the relationship between carer tasks and carer employment outcomes. We find that carers who perform tasks that are time‐bound have a lower probability of working compared to carers who do not perform these tasks. Similarly, carers who perform shiftable tasks have a higher probability of working compared to carers who do not perform these tasks. If future social policy is to be designed to allow carers to also maintain their employment, then targeting services at the carer tasks which have the largest impact on employment needs to be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the developments of the welfare state's reaction to the pandemic in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia during 2020–2022, asking whether the changes in social policy represent only temporary responses to the challenges of the pandemic, or if the changes will likely lead to long‐run transformative changes in social policies. All three countries applied emergency adaptive changes to some extent except for job protection, as the short‐time work schemes represent a permanent change in Czechia and Slovakia. Furthermore, the absorption capacity of the welfare state was relatively good, which enabled the countries to avoid the negative social impacts of the crisis in terms of increased unemployment, poverty, and social exclusion. We argue the governments did not introduce permanent third‐order change because they already introduced such changes during the transition to the market economy in which they introduced a low‐expenditure welfare state trajectory. During the pandemic, this trajectory limited their fiscal space for introducing reforms that could radically expand the welfare state. Policy learning and political constellations also had some influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test whether the expansions of children's Medicaid eligibility in the 1980s–1990s resulted in long‐term health benefits in terms of severe chronic conditions. Still relatively rare in the field, we use prospective individual‐level panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) along with the higher quality income measures from the Cross‐National Equivalent File (adjusting for taxes, transfers and household size). We observe severe chronic conditions (high blood pressure/heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or lung disease) at ages 30–56 (average age 43.1) for 4670 respondents who were also prospectively observed during childhood (i.e., at ages 0–17). Our analysis exploits within‐region temporal variation in childhood Medicaid eligibility and adjusts for state‐ and individual‐level controls. We uniquely concentrate attention on adjusting for childhood income. A standard deviation greater childhood Medicaid eligibility significantly reduces the probability of severe chronic conditions in adulthood by 0.05 to 0.12 (16%–37.5% reduction from mean 0.32). Across the range of observed childhood Medicaid eligibility, the probability is approximately cut in half. Greater childhood Medicaid eligibility also substantially reduces childhood income disparities in severe chronic conditions. At higher levels of childhood Medicaid eligibility, we find no significant childhood income disparities in adult severe chronic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non‐take‐up of benefits is a common problem in welfare states. Knowledge gaps are a fundamental factor in such non‐take‐up. Through a critical social structure and agency lens, the objective of the current study was to examine the contribution of different individual and social variables to the access of knowledge on rights among families living in poverty. Specifically, we focused on the intersection of nationality (Arab‐Israeli versus Jewish‐Israeli) and family structure (single‐parent versus two‐parent). The findings relied on a secondary analysis of an administrative database of a program for families living in poverty. The sample consisted of 1512 families, of whom 839 were Jewish‐Israeli and 673 were Arab‐Israeli. Our findings showed that nationality and family structure intersected and correlated with families' access to knowledge on rights. Jewish two‐parent families had the most economic privileges, but Jewish single‐parent families had the highest access to knowledge on rights. Arab single‐parent families had the worst economic, personal agency and social support conditions and the lowest access to knowledge on rights. The conclusion of this study is that looking at the non‐take‐up of benefits through an intersectional lens can help us understand more clearly the social structure barriers preventing take‐up. Social policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article connects the notions of policy space and social contract in order to understand the importance of everyday discourse for the perceived legitimacy of social policy choices and emerging responsibilities in Zambia. Based on a Grounded Theory analysis of interview and document material, the article reconstructs common sense ideas about the limited resources of the state, from which modalities in the Social Cash Transfer programme, especially the requirements for targeting and graduation, are derived. It moreover explores how from these limited means also follows the sharing of responsibilities between the state and the recipients themselves, giving way to a self‐responsibility discourse. Thereby, the attempt by implementing officers and the wider community to rationalise distributional choices in light of wide‐spread poverty, shape the social contract between the state and citizens in Zambia and ultimately also delineate the space of what becomes possible to imagine within social policy. The article concludes with an argument for broadening social policy visions away from the individual level towards tackling the underlying structural causes of poverty by connecting social with economic interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variation in African states' commitment to pensions? This article argues that differences in the structure of contestation and legacies of state‐labour relations matter. When competition is confined to fewer and more stable parties, social welfare appeals gain currency to mobilise swing voters and makes it more likely that pensions will become a subject of political competition. However, legacies of labour accommodation can strengthen certain elements of pension reform, but also reinforce certain policy mindsets such as contributory insurance. These ideas are developed with case studies of Ghana and Malawi. The cases utilise process‐tracing evidence to demonstrate how specific structures of contestation and labour legacies led to divergent pathways of pension reform. The article highlights the significant challenges involved in strengthening pensions in Africa, and therefore the limited potential for a reconstitution of state‐citizen relations based on pension access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite clear gendered differences in rights and responsibilities, these variations within citizen‐state relations are often overlooked. Drawing on Ranjita Mohanty's concept of women–state relations and Nancy Fraser's trivalent theory of social justice, this paper asks how access to social assistance is shaped by gender. Analysing the processes of policy design and implementation of Zambia's social cash transfer scheme, the paper examines perceptions of roles and responsibilities in the private domain and claims to state assistance in the public sphere. Based on 77 key informant interviews with institutional stakeholders, and 16 focus group discussions with cash transfer (non‐)beneficiaries, the research finds a predominant belief that 'able‐bodied' men and women should be working but dramatically different expectations of women and men in the household. The paper argues that social policies can be rights‐determining rather than rights‐based, demonstrated by the changes to Zambia's targeting model based on perceived responsibilities, with material consequences for citizens and particularly women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two interrelated questions: Do social protection policies generate feedback effects on state‐citizen relations? If so, how do such policies change the perception and interaction of both citizens and the state? The paper is based on an in‐depth mixed methods study on Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty cash transfer programme (LEAP) conducted in two implementation districts. I find emergent positive resource and interpretive/policy learning effects on state‐citizen perceptions and interactions. This is evidenced in increased state presence in service provision and changing citizen recognition of the state as a legitimate provider of their welfare, with these impacts being higher among beneficiaries with previously limited access to or negative perception about the state. Notwithstanding, these effects may be limited, unsustainable or undermined partly due to the way in which LEAP is promoted and delivered as a clientelist resource. The paper highlights the ideational and relational impact of social protection by arguing that when implemented well, social policies can generate political feedback effects beyond their poverty reduction and human development impacts by fostering policy learning opportunities for reconfiguring the perceptions of and interactions between the state and citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of three cash transfer programs, one for orphans and vulnerable children (CT‐OVC), one for older persons (OPCT) and a universal social pension (Inua Jamii Senior Citizens' Scheme), for citizen‐state relations in areas of Kenya that experienced high levels of electoral violence in 2007. Drawing on 40 interviews with civil servants and community leaders and 16 focus group discussions with both beneficiaries and non‐beneficiaries of the cash transfer programs conducted across two sub‐counties in Nakuru, this paper argues that the central state, in the wake of post‐electoral violence, effectively mobilised state power to make and enforce geographic targeting decisions down to the village level in an effort to mitigate ethnic tensions and strengthen citizen‐state relations. The paper further argues that the success of such localised distribution in strengthening citizen‐state relations has been limited due to incomplete program coverage, limited information about targeting procedures, and citizens' prior experiences with the state which collectively undermine citizens' perceptions of inclusion and exclusion at the local level. These findings are brought into conversation with other research on cash transfers and citizenship across Kenya to parse out the ways in which the impacts of cash transfer programs for citizen‐state relations are mediated by state infrastructural power, citizens' prior experiences with the state, and key aspects of program design. The paper also examines the implications of these findings for other countries across Africa that have experienced generalised electoral violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and humanitarian cash transfers in sub‐Saharan Africa are increasingly used to support a wide range of vulnerable populations with long‐term support or immediate relief. Designing and implementing cash transfers typically involves a range of transnational actors and government stakeholders who continuously exert power which in turn affects state–citizen relations. The data informing this article come from 109 key informant interviews with (inter)national‐level stakeholders involved in three social cash transfers and two humanitarian cash transfers in Lesotho and Malawi. This article argues that donor‐designed targeting approaches in Lesotho and Malawi create space for new state–citizen relations, but that these are relatively shallow and reconfigured once technical capacity allows for targeting approaches that rely less on communities. It contributes to the literature on the role of transnational actors in social protection by showing that their role is significant when it comes to creating new redistributive relations, even if transnational actors are unable to convince host governments to take full fiscal responsibility for their initiatives due to differing views on who deserves what kind of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out a coherent framework for debates and discussions on social policy changes during crisis periods. Using Indonesia as a case, this article compares its social policy responses to the 1997–1998 economic crisis and the current COVID‐19 pandemic crisis. Both two crises and their responses, once analysed, lead to an argument that path dependence does not always dominate policy processes, as most literature claims, but rather it operates alongside other path‐creation‐related processes, such as path‐clearing policy accelerators and path‐creation policy accelerators. This article also presents that 'old player' penetration in policy processes does not necessarily preclude alternatives and, in some examined cases, it, instead, strengthens impulses toward substantial reforms. Therefore, revised policies must be viewed as political vehicles for seeking popular support and power reconsolidation as democracy allows. Furthermore, this current analysis contributes to enhancing our understanding of crises, often seen as issues in public policy literature, yet less explored in terms of their importance as unique critical junctures and their implications for social policy changes in multiple paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do governments target social assistance? This article proposes a new typology of targeting that goes beyond the dominant focus on top‐down technical solutions to highlight the important role of informal practices and non‐state actors. Using evidence about the ways local governments in Colombia delivered relief during COVID‐19, the typology identifies and illustrates four ideal types of targeting processes resulting from the intersection between programmatic (or not) eligibility criteria and the role of non‐state actors. The article thus expands the politics of social policy research agenda to the question of targeting, a crucial aspect of policy implementation, in dialogue with scholarship on distributive politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the contentious political dynamics of the largest workfare program in the world, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of India? Combining quantitative analysis with a close reading of government documents and a survey of the existing literature, we suggest that the Indian government's counter‐insurgency strategy against the Maoist unrest is a significant dynamic shaping the distribution of MGNREGA benefits. In our empirical analysis, we examine the effect of Maoist incidents on household income due to MGNREGA by merging a nationally representative household survey (Indian Human Development Survey‐II) and a Maoist incidents dataset. Controlling for relevant household and district characteristics, we show that higher intensity of violent conflicts is associated with higher MGNREGA benefits. This result is robust to using a variety of alternative specifications and estimation methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following articles published in the previous issue are actually part of this Special Issue: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spol.12855 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The re‐emergence of universalistic social policy in Latin America in the 2000s, led to the implementation of non‐contributory and unconditional old‐pensions programmes in the region. Unlike other Latin American countries, these programmes originated at the subnational level in Mexico. In 2001, Mexico City's government implemented the first universal programme of social pensions in the country. This work seeks to explain why and how this policy innovation emerged and became a social right in Mexico City, in spite of the dominance of a neoliberal policy paradigm at the national level. This analysis shows the decisive role of the struggle of key actors over policy ideas in the creation of social pensions in Mexico, as well as its interaction with other economic, political and institutional factors, in a federal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores individual views of the purpose of education. Most existing research focuses on attitudes and policy preferences; while these types of perceptions have so far been largely overlooked due to a lack of data. Our analysis of original survey data in eight Western European countries shows that personal socioeconomic factors and ideological predispositions shape these individual opinions. Individuals with higher levels of education and income are more likely to view education as aimed at expanding knowledge as goal by itself, and less likely to view it as a tool to promote intergenerational social mobility. Left‐leaning individuals are also more likely to regard education as a goal by itself, and less likely to view it as conferring useful labour market skills for the younger generation. Finally, we investigate the relationship between these different views and individual preferences for social policies. Our results show that the perception of education as promoting intergenerational mobility is strongly associated with support for passive transfers, while the perception of education as conferring marketable skills increases support for workfare policies. Social investment policies, because they are widely supported in the population, are not linked to specific views on education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rhetorical agreement amongst all major political‐economic actors around the importance of education policy in the knowledge economy, the reform of education systems remains a complex political endeavour. The article explores the politics of education policy by focussing on its multi‐dimensionality. It argues that education systems simultaneously perform three functions: they distribute educational opportunities; they provide skills to the labour market; and they are a source of public sector employment. It is argued that policy change in one dimension is likely to trigger spill‐over effects onto the others, giving rise to complex political dynamics at the intersection of the parliamentary and corporatist arenas. It is in this context that centre‐left and centre‐right parties (try to) pursue distributional goals whilst being pressured by different interest groups. The theoretical argument is explored empirically through a detailed reconstruction of over a decade of intense reform activity in the Italian upper‐secondary education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education has become a key tool for reducing inequality in the postindustrial economy; however, educational reformers must address tensions in goals of efficiency and equality. Cross‐national differences in cultural assumptions about education provide context for countries' choices in resolving tensions between efficiency (developing skills) and equality (ensuring educational access for marginal workers). Cultural frames encourage actors to consider the role of education in solving social problems in strikingly different ways across countries. Britain and Denmark exemplify cross‐national variation in coping with efficiency and equality. I first demonstrate how cultural frames regarding education differ historically in Britain and Denmark in large corpora of literature from 1700 to 1920 (Martin, 2018). I show that British and Danish authors (as producers of culture) differ significantly in their depictions of education with respect to efficiency (skills), equality (perceptions of class and society) and governance (role of the state, assessment and coordination). I then report findings from an online internet survey of 2100 British and Danish young people that demonstrate the continuing divergence in cultural constructions of education in Britain and Denmark today. The survey reveals that the same cross‐national cultural distinctions apparent in the nineteenth‐century continue to resonate in contemporary views of education reform. The paper contributes by adding a cultural perspective to the factors driving diverse country choices about efficiency and equality in education policy, and it reinforces the importance of public opinion in policy choices. Moreover, the paper expands upon our understanding of Nordic social democracy from a historical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political parties approach education with different social policy aims? We argue that while parties have adopted a common language of equality as an aim of education, they draw on different conceptions of it linked to diverging social projects. To make this argument, we first normatively distinguish education as a tool for creating equal opportunity, equal outcomes, and representational diversity. We then draw on an original dataset coding the educational content in the political manifestos of the largest center‐left and center‐right party across 19 Western democracies from 1950 to present. The analysis shows that left parties emphasise more equality of outcome than rightwing parties and pay less attention to equality of opportunity, and that they associate equality‐related aims more extensively with promises of resources. These findings suggest that there remain critical differences in parties' understanding of education as a tool of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education has long played an important role in social policy as a means for strengthening labour market integration and increasing social mobility. The shift towards a knowledge economy has placed education policy even more centrally in efforts to provide the institutional preconditions for making economic efficiency compatible with social inclusion. To provide conceptual and theoretical context to the special issue, this paper first explores the key tension in the role of education in modern economies between serving concerns for efficiency and inclusion. Second, it argues that it remains possible for education policy to balance between efficiency and inclusion, but that the capacity of advanced economies to do so is politically mediated. Finally, the paper reviews the four main arenas in which such mediation processes take place—the parliamentary arena, the corporatist arena, the state, and public opinion—and how the contributions to the special issue study these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following articles published in the previous issue are actually part of this Special Issue: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spol.12862 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spol.12868 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spol.12874 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the evolution of minimum income programmes in the Western Balkans (comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). During socialism, Yugoslavia developed a rudimentary minimum income protection programme, while Albania did not have one. As countries moved towards a market economy, socialism's legacy remained relevant, but especially since 2000, governments have taken more direct responsibility for the minimum income schemes—typically under the influence of the World Bank. The attention was paid to strict targeting accuracy rather than to adequacy or sufficient coverage of the lowest deciles. In essence, neither socialist nor neoliberal policymakers ever recognised anything but the poverty relief function of the minimum income. Both ideologies were hostile, or at best indifferent, to increasing the adequacy and generosity of minimum income programmes, perceiving them as impediments and distractions that slowed socialist and neoliberal transformations. Despite some reform initiatives supported by the World Bank and, more recently, the European Union, the generosity and adequacy of minimum income programmes remain low, and coverage keeps declining. There have been very few efforts to develop inclusion function of the minimum income, while the activation aspect has achieved very little, sometimes degrading into punitive programmes of unpaid community work. In this dismal picture, the European Pillar of Social Rights action framework could serve as a guide for a long overdue third phase in the Western Balkans' minimum income policy evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on existing European research findings, we assess factors driving Brazilian social security street‐level officials' deservingness perceptions through survey and administrative data. Ordered regression analyses gauge the effects of socioeconomic status, social work academic background and face‐to‐face contact with the public on these officials' perceptions towards social assistance beneficiaries under seven deservingness criteria. A middle‐class socioeconomic status increased the odds that beneficiaries are seen as undeserving under the criteria of social investment, control and reciprocity, while a high socioeconomic status is linked to benevolent perceptions of their need. A social work academic background is strongly linked to higher overall deservingness perceptions, whereas frequent face‐to‐face contact with the public can reduce them under the control deservingness criterion. The research takes a new step in the direction of deservingness survey studies, suggesting the formulation of new analytical frameworks and increasing policymakers' awareness of the importance of variables driving bureaucracy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]