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This paper looks at contemporary social policy developments in Greece and Turkey in light of exogenous economic pressures in the period 1980s-2000s. Three sources of exogenous pressures, which allegedly lead to a reduction in social expenditure budgets, are identified: globalization, the process of European integration in its EMU phase and IMF conditionality. Our case studies show that both countries were exposed to impending pressures of economic liberalization, but these exogenous pressures have not resulted in anticipated social policy outcomes. First, social expenditure levels in both countries have not declined; instead, we report rising trends in expenditure. Secondly, and especially in the case of Greece, the 20-year period analyzed shows an expansion in social welfare programmes. Thirdly, those outcomes are mediated by salient domestic political factors, such as democratization and liberalization of the political space. Finally, the positive association between an expanding welfare state and the presence of social democratic/socialist governments, reported in the literature, seems vindicated in our research.

This article explores the politics of policy change by focusing on agenda setting through the lens of the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA), which has been travelling to ever-larger geographies. We aim to produce signposts for future case studies of policy change by bringing together insights from MSA and New Institutionalism. We ask: Which institutions should we focus on when studying agenda-setting politics in different geographies? How do these institutions shape MSA's structural elements - problem stream, policy stream, political stream, policy windows, and policy entrepreneur? In answering these questions, we hope to weave not only formal but also informal institutions into MSA's backbone more tightly. We bring together diverse case studies that are sufficiently abstract and whose findings travel easily across other institutional contexts. We revisit the structural elements of MSA and illustrate how key formal and informal rules structure the politics in these structural elements. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.