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The recent enactment of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) has significantly strengthened the social dimension of the European Union (EU), including the social investment (SI) elements of that social dimension. What is not known, however, to what extent the priorization of SI is supported by the broader public. To address this research gap, we investigate public opinion on 15 different policy areas from the EPSR using Eurobarometer data from 2020 across all EU countries, asking whether the public rather prefers these policies to be delivered at EU or national level. A principal finding is that the public indeed supports more SI than CP policies with respect to EU-level social policy, and more CP than SI policies with respect to national-level social policy. We also investigate whether socioeconomic status (SES) and welfare state effort can explain this phenomenon. We find that higher socio-economic status and more generous welfare states are associated with more support for SI policies on both EU and national levels and vice versa. The findings emphasize the importance of what policies are provided versus who provides them but also pose a puzzle for trade-offs in multilevel governance settings. Hence, the article has important implications for future research on public opinion and Social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to establish whether, and to what extent, an increase in the public provision of early childhood education and care services (ECEC) has had a positive effect on women's participation in the labour market in Italy and Spain. It does so by compiling panel data using microdata from the European Labour Force Survey (2006–2018), together with secondary sources of information on public ECEC investment made in the two countries. After controlling for unit heterogeneity and reverse causality, the estimated results indicate a positive correlation with the employment rates of women with children and the number of hours worked, in particular for those without a degree, thus indicating the need to address unequal access to publicly-provided ECEC services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the scientific literature and debate on social investment, public childcare provision plays a pivotal role. At the same time, critics have argued that social investment is often unable to reduce social inequalities and, to the contrary, tends to reproduce them (the so-called 'Matthew effect'). The article focuses on a specific facet of social investment policies: their capacity to support mothers' employment and its effect on social inequality, by investigating empirically to what extent an expansion of public childcare can help to increase women's labour market participation and how this eventual support is homogenously distributed among different mothers' profiles. To give a convincing answer to such a question requires careful attention to methodology, in order to avoid drawing the wrong conclusions. Whereas existing research has predominately focused on cross-national variation and has often been static in nature, the present study assesses the effects of public childcare expansion on women's labour market participation and employment by examining region-specific within-variation over time of public childcare coverage. The study relies on data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) that were integrated with an original collection of regional-level information on public childcare. It finds a positive association between increases in public childcare coverage and mothers' labour market participation. Furthermore, it shows that public childcare helps to fight social inequalities among households with young children. Low-educated mothers are the ones who profit most from an increase in public childcare, and positive employment effects are most pronounced at lower levels of childcare coverage. Therefore, this contribution highlights the importance of public childcare policies as an equalizer in society, especially in contexts in which an intervention is most needed, because expanding childcare fosters mothers' labour market participation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to deepen our understanding of social investment expansion proposing a political learning mechanism to link existing institutional and political explanations. When resources are limited, increased spending in social investment often comes at the expense of politically costly retrenchment of established social insurance policies. Previous studies suggest that this trade-off results in existing entitlements crowding out new policies, and that party ideology plays less of a role in determining social policy expansion. I argue that this is because parties face an electoral dilemma, as individual preferences for social investment and social insurance have been shown to differ between groups that partly overlap in their voting behaviour. Applying a policy diffusion framework to the analysis of childcare expenditure, this study proposes that policymakers learn from the political consequences of past decisions made by their foreign counterparts and update their policy choice accordingly. The econometric analysis of OECD data on childcare expenditure shows that governments tend to make spending decisions that follow those of ideologically similar cabinets abroad and that left-wing governments with a divided electorate tend to reduce childcare expenditure if a previous expansionary decision of a foreign incumbent is followed by an electoral defeat. The findings have implications for the study of the politics of social policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the analysis of the Social Return on Investment (SROI) of the Sekar Arum Centralized Wastewater Treatment System (SPALD) in Malang, Indonesia. The research attempts to answer the main question regarding the economic, social, and environmental impacts produced by this program. The research methodology involved collecting both quantitative and qualitative data and consulting with stakeholders to understand their perceptions of the value and benefits of this initiative. The main findings suggest that investments in sanitation produce broad and multiplying benefits, including improved public health, reduced environmental pollution, and enhanced quality of life. The thesis delves into the significant implications of investing in sanitation and offers recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of the SPALD program. In conclusion, this thesis strengthens the understanding that investment in sanitation is a profitable and sustainable strategy that can help improve societal well-being and environmental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether and how the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and depression is modified by welfare state spending using the 2006, 2012, and 2014 survey rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) merged with macroeconomic data from the World Bank, Eurostat, and SOCX database (N = 87,466). Welfare state spending effort divided between social investment and social protection spending modifies the classic inverse relationship between SES and depression. Distinguishing policy areas in both social investment and social protection spending demonstrates that policy programs devoted to education, early childhood education and care, active labor market policies, old age care, and incapacity account for differences in the effect of SES across countries. Our analysis finds that social investment policies better explain cross-national differences in the effect of SES on depression, implying policies focused earlier in the life course matter more for understanding social disparities in the mental health of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact investing and social entrepreneurship have great potential for solving global problems. However, practitioners and researchers know little about the entrepreneurial process and the investors' criteria. Therefore, we identify the determinants of access to external finance for social enterprises in an emerging economy using a quantitative approach in a large sample (N = 601). We found that impact sector, business model, entrepreneurial support, development stage, and the adoption of technologies impact access to finance by social enterprises. We also show that green technologies have greater funding access than other enterprises and that social impact investors are more aware of environmental issues and less concerned with financial returns. To raise more funding, we suggest that social entrepreneurs include environmental issues in their business, quickly validate their idea, add an intermediary company between the enterprise and the consumer, seek the support of incubators or accelerators, and adopt emerging technologies in the product or service offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business activities in the current era are not only profit-oriented but highlight the value of sustainability. Due to global problems such as poverty and limited availability of resources, a sustainable company means that the company can maintain and improve the environmental life around the company. One of the company's efforts to create business sustainability is through a corporate sustainability strategy or the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and a form of business ethics and social investment. To determine the effectiveness of a program, carried out an evaluation. This study aims to analyze the CSR program of PT SMM by using the Social Return On Investment (SROI) method. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach to describe the implementation of PT SMM's CSR program and analyze the success of the program through the results of the SROI value. The results of the SROI calculation in this program show a ratio of 7.84, meaning that every investment made by PT SMM is Rp. 1,- getting a benefit of Rp. 7.8,-. This program can be categorized as successful because it can exceed the ratio of 1 in the SROI. If viewed from the economic, social, and environmental aspects, this program has good sustainability potential and deserves to be continued.

Social investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work‐life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to 'just work'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the transformative potential of the Next Generation EU (NG‐EU) initiative in social protection taking South European (SE) countries as a test case. It starts with a brief examination of the main social parameters of the EPSR and how these intertwine with the NG‐EU strategy that links recovery from the pandemic with the EU's long‐term green and digital transition objectives. This is followed by a comparative overview of the SE countries' social, green and digital outlook when embarking upon the recovery path. In light of these, the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) of the four countries are scrutinised vis‐à‐vis the NG‐EU specified priority flagship areas. The political background of the plans, the impact of the EPSR on their policy options, and their recalibration potential are comparatively analysed. In setting the course for a twin transition, all four plans share a focus on addressing long‐standing social challenges mainly by bolstering productive welfare measures. But path‐dependent differences in policy mixes and varying policy integration can weigh significantly on outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an age-group, young people are most at risk of poverty. Yet significant cross-national variation persists, which seems puzzling: the countries displaying the highest levels of youth poverty are (uncharacteristically) Nordic. How can such diversity be accounted for? Is the welfare state part of the story? First, I argue, unlike most studies, that in order to measure youth poverty it is better to use material deprivation and subjective poverty indicators, rather than income poverty. Second, I hypothesize that the welfare state has two potential routes to the alleviation of youth poverty. On the one hand, via 'individualization' of claims (allowing young people to claim benefits as full adult citizens), access to income support leads to lower levels of youth poverty. On the other, youth poverty levels can also be reduced through investment in young people's human capital, in line with the 'social investment' strategy. These claims are confirmed by multilevel logistic regressions on three waves and across 23 European countries of the Eurofound's European Quality of Life Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the regulation of publicly organized early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark and Sweden, through the regulatory welfare state (RWS) framework. The analysis focuses on how alterations in funding and quality of care are shaped by governmental and nongovernmental actors at national and local levels of government. Through focused structured analysis, we examine how various actors have shaped the funding and quality of childcare in Denmark and Sweden, from the early 2000s to 2020, with special attention to the period during and after the 2008 financial crisis. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, concerns about quality in care were raised on the political agenda by various actors in both countries, leading to decisions to improve the quality of care. Yet, the regulatory dynamics differ: In Denmark, the debate led to a decision in 2019, to implement a minimum statutory requirement of regulatory quality standards. From an RWS perspective, this outcome can be qualified as "double expansion," because regulatory quality standards, and public funding for childcare increased. In Sweden, the debates about quality of ECEC led, in 2016, to political guidelines about quality standard, but with no additional national funds, and no mandatory regulatory quality requirements. Analytically, this can be qualified as "regulatory‐led expansion," that is requirements for quality standards, although the lack of additional national funds suggests that it will be difficult to improve ECEC quality substantially. The RWS perspective, which focuses on national and municipal levels of governance, also gives insights into hidden inequalities between municipalities regarding funding and quality of ECEC, which are more pronounced in Sweden than in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevention and health promotion are important areas of welfare state activity and can be considered parts of the critical infrastructure. They have been considerably expanded in Western welfare states in recent years. In the health insurance states of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, new forms of organisation have emerged. The article describes the evolution and status quo of the organisation of prevention and health promotion in the three countries and explores the legitimisation patterns for the chosen institutional forms. To this end, health reforms, debates and statements of key stakeholders are analysed. A distinction is made between 'normative' legitimisation patterns and 'functional' ones that indicate a 'social investment' strategy. In Germany, the 2015 Prevention Act created an institutional structure in which the actors involved cooperate closely. It also gives the health insurance funds a prominent role. In Switzerland, the cantons are responsible for prevention and health promotion; at federal level the main bodies are the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) and the Swiss Foundation for Health Promotion (Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz). In Austria, the Länder are largely responsible, but the federal level gained importance by establishing Gesundes Österreich GmbH and strengthening coordination. While the term 'social investment' is not encountered in the debates and documents analysed, many arguments commonly associated with it are increasingly used in the context of prevention and health promotion. In contrast, normative justifications seem to be losing importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the extent to which a social investment paradigm has guided policy reforms in long-term care for the elderly in France and the Netherlands and how this relates to the resilience of the sector during the Covid-19 pandemic. It conceptualizes the theoretical impact of social investment on long-term care policy and analyzes its use to justify reforms since the early 2000s. It concludes that social investment has not played any role in Dutch long-term care reforms and a moderate role in France. Meanwhile, in both countries a neoliberal emphasis on the efficiency of the market has contributed to a rise in for-profit service provision and fragmentation of the long-term care sector. While long-term care provision in both countries proved relatively resilient in the first phase of the pandemic, at a later stage its resilience was undermined by fragmentation and marketization, limiting the government's ability to respond adequately to new challenges and, crucially, to improve working conditions in the sector. The article concludes that a social investment approach cannot resolve these problems and that there is a need for a new paradigm that acknowledges the inherent value of care work and prioritizes the long-term sustainability of care provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades, the social investment (SI) state has been heralded as the saviour of the welfare state, while at the same time being criticised for being just another instance of neoliberal downsizing of the welfare state. Recently, efforts have been made to provide clearer conceptualisations of how to assess the existence and impact of SI. However, these attempts have hitherto mainly focused on the policy functions and instruments of the SI state. This article contributes to existing research by offering a novel analytical framework on the capacity needed by street-level organisations (SLOs) to implement the central policy functions of the SI state, and by elucidating how administrative reforms influence this capacity. The article applies the framework to the implementation in Denmark of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in local job centres. This case is considered an SI 'flagship' in terms of formal policies, while also having undergone multiple administrative reforms, which makes it highly illustrative for the central argument of the article – that the success or failure of an SI approach is not only determined by politics and formal policies. The empirical analysis reveals how the capacity to implement SI policies has been enhanced by administrative reforms; this has been done by giving job centres more room for discretion and enhancing their ability to make long-term investments and to promote integrated service provision across different service areas. However, at the same time the local job centres remain closely monitored and controlled through an external accountability performance measurement system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the potential implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the infrastructure of social services in Italy and Spain. Drawing from the policy capacity framework and focusing on childcare and elderly care, we investigate how the National Recovery and Resilience Plans are likely to impact the core functions of the social investment approach. Through document analysis, the article shows that, whereas the infrastructure of the social service system remains characterised by a 'marble cake' type of institutional arrangement combining national and subnational responsibilities, attempts have been made by the central governments to steer the social investment policy capacity at the organisational and systemic levels. We argue that the pandemic represents a window of opportunity to rethink the overall system of intergovernmental relations in the field of social services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls on social policy scholars to approach health differently in their research. Our goal is to bring core insights from social epidemiology into conversation with welfare state and social policy research. We argue that the social investment framework has the most potential for this integration. The objective of social investment policies is to keep modern welfare states sustainable through high employment and strong human capital. This requires not only a large and well-educated workforce, but also a healthy one. Specifically, we encourage social policy scholars to engage with the social determinants of health literature by studying health not as outcome of the healthcare sector but of the welfare state as a whole. We argue that the social investment framework facilitates these endeavours and we offer suggestions for future research. Health should not just be seen as an outcome of specific policies, but rather as input for a sustainable welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which poverty is passed from parents to children in Hong Kong based on the social investment thesis. Through tracking the educational and career trajectories of the second generation (aged 23–25) of 77 families, this study suggests that adolescents with poor parents have a 202 percent higher chance of being poor in young adulthood. This poverty-continuation probability increases dramatically to 681 percent if parental poverty is defined in terms of homeownership rather than income. Another important factor that also affects intergenerational poverty is the mother's educational level. Implications for social workers and policy makers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews a recent report advocating transformational change in the funding and recruitment of staff for Aotearoa New Zealand's primary care services, including taking a social investment approach to the funding of primary care. The article develops these arguments and discusses new accountability frameworks for primary care delivery, including financial incentives for improving treatment of chronic conditions and collaborative approaches to community-led initiatives to promote preventive healthcare, drawing on a wide range of literature, including mätauranga Mäori. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The traditional welfare state, which emerged as a response to industrialization, is not well equipped to address the challenges of today's post‐industrial knowledge economies. Experts and policymakers have therefore called for welfare state readjustment towards a 'social investment' model (focusing on human skills and capabilities). Under what conditions are citizens willing to accept such future‐oriented reforms? We point at the crucial but hitherto neglected role of citizens' trust in and satisfaction with government. Trust and satisfaction matter because future‐oriented reforms generate uncertainties, risks and costs, which trust and government satisfaction can attenuate. We offer micro‐level causal evidence using experiments in a representative survey covering eight European countries and confirm these findings with European Social Survey data for 22 countries. We find that trust and government satisfaction increase reform support and moderate the effects of self‐interest and ideological standpoints. These findings have crucial implications not least because they help explain why some countries manage – but others fail – to enact important reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markets are the outcomes of political and institutional struggles where policy support plays a major role, but research to date falls short in explaining how the breadth of available interventions can have contradictory effects on the process of market formation. This article explores the consequences of policy support in the context of the nascent social investment market in the United Kingdom, between 2000 and 2015, when the government was a key actor in building the market infrastructure. I track the effects of a portfolio of policy interventions, including new regulation, direct investment and convening efforts. I show that, while policy support stimulated the market by driving supply and intermediation, it also led to an increase in contestation from the social sector. I link those intended and unintended consequences to the top-down features of the policy support (supporting the dominant logic, reinforcing hierarchical relations and optimistic rhetoric), hence showing when and how policy support can become a double-edged sword. The article contributes to the literature on policy support in market formation by showing the mechanisms through which top-down policy interventions can have important unintended consequences, especially when shaping the boundaries and features of markets that emerge at the intersection of financial and social sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, there has been a huge debate on the transformations of the European Welfare State. The issue of its financial sustainability together with the emergence of new social risks has put under pressure the traditional model of social protection and created the conditions for a change in the gist of the welfare state provisions. In this context, the social investment approach has become an emerging reference paradigm to tackle new social risks and meet the need to recalibrate the European welfare state and ensure its economic sustainability. However, despite this success, social investment still seems to be a rather ambiguous concept, too vague to result in precise and univocal policy prescriptions and open to the risk of a stretch of its interpretation by neoliberal politics, to erode social rights. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework to better clarify the normative ground, the moral foundation and political justification of the social investment approach and to understand whether it can avoid the risk of the erosion of social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial argues for the importance of examining European social policy-making in relation to climate change from a global social policy perspective. It highlights that climate change significantly impacts social policy, both in cushioning its negative effects and in recognising how traditional welfare state models have contributed to ecological crises with severe inequalities between countries. The European Union, with its relatively advanced social policy integration and its historical responsibility in the transgression of planetary boundaries, plays a crucial role in responding to climate change and has the potential to position its eco-social policy model as a global exemplar, which is critically examined in this issue. The special issue covers a range of topics, from conceptual advancements to both qualitative and quantitative analyses, across national and supranational levels of European social policy-making with respect to climate change. The articles suggest that social policy primarily functions adaptively as a mechanism to lessen the adverse social effects of climate change (mitigation), including industrial transitions, rather than being applied in a transformative way that would mitigate climate change escalation in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article suggests a scientific base for using «green» and social bonds to solve environmental problems in water supply systems; numerous facts that encourage using social investment tools in the high-yield water sector are revealed. In particular, preconditions for intensifying economic activity in the construction field are appearing, as it is obvious that a constant threat of shelling faced by our country changes the requirements for all living conditions, and water supply systems as well. Emphasis is placed on the assumption that if the green bond market in Ukraine is implemented and developed, it will help to create a multiplier for attracting funds to implement various environmental projects and to increase guarantees for investors injecting funds in such projects. Both negative and positive factors of using social investment to modernize water supply systems in Ukraine are identified. It is concluded that it is necessary to intensify the development of the regulatory framework for «green» and social investment in order to offset the trend of debt accumulation among enterprises operating water supply systems in Ukrainian settlements, so that such enterprises could become monopolists in the market.

The development of social assistance and poverty reduction policies has been informed by social scientific knowledge. Social scientists, however, are not of one mind on such matters. They tend to be divided along disciplinary and ideological lines and may even foster political divisions and conflicts. This article draws on the author's experience as an academic policy adviser to the Quebec government to analyse from up close the institutional context that facilitates knowledge utilisation in the policy process. Two reform processes are considered: the first one, between 1995 and 1998, was less collaborative and led to divisions, and the second, between 1997 and 2009, involved more interactions with the civil service and proved more fruitful. In both cases, experts were divided, as were politicians and civil servants, but their capacity to reach a consensus was fostered, in the second case, by better support and collaboration from the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a systematic review in multiple databases about bibliography in professional journals on innovation in social investment projects; 60 articles were selected and after sorting them out (applying exclusion criteria) there were selected 20 (12 of international scope and 8 Colombian). It is proposed a qualitative descriptive analysis of the main characteristics of the innovation projects and it's social investment nature, applying said analysis of innovative work beginning from international data and containing social investment components and thereby reaching Colombian current narrative and it's impact both in private as in public spaces. Results of this review show that in an international scenario, developed countries' governments are increasingly making investments in innovative projects on a variety of topics that establishments such as universities are leading, therefore recruiting more human resources that multiply this tendency and creating institutions that verify and keep track of those projects. Meanwhile, in Colombia, a developing country is yet in the "waiting list" for investment in innovation, moreover, before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 there were plenty of projects being carried out in tech sciences and consequently slowed down. As far as this date, those projects are starting to break through again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia del Diritto is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much of East Central Europe today faces the double challenge of having a population that is both ageing fast and shrinking steadily. Elderly-oriented political dynamics and myopic governance are part of this predicament, and are also among the reasons why future prospects are not rosy. Having started the post-communist transition with younger populations, successive governments in this region have comprehensively squandered a decades-long window of opportunity to adapt their policies to the predicted ageing ahead (Vanhuysse and Perek-Bialas, 2021). Especially in Hungary, Poland, Czechia, the Slovak Republic, Romania and Bulgaria, this failure is reflected in low active ageing and child well-being index rankings, low levels of social investment and mediocre educational outcomes, and family policies that reinforce traditional motherhood roles or barely support parents at all. Poland, Romania, Croatia, Hungary and, especially, the Baltic states also experienced large-scale emigration ('young exit'). Slovenia and the Visegrad Four, but not the Baltics, became premature pensioners' democracies characterised by unusually high levels of pro-elderly policy bias ('lopsided loyalty'). While the salience of family policies increased around the time the demographic window closed, this shift was driven by pro-natalist, neo-familialist and gender-regressive political ideologies, rather than by a concerted effort to boost human capabilities or reward social reproduction. But by then, elderly voter power ('grey voice') in East Central Europe was among the highest in the world. Politics strongly constrains the likelihood of appropriate human capital-boosting policy responses to the region's population predicament. Alarm bells thus ring for a generational contract under pressure and for longer-term societal resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common finding in the literature is that social investment policies are broadly popular among citizens but still politically difficult to implement. This article provides a partial answer to this puzzle by exploring the fiscal trade-offs associated with such a recalibration. Based on survey data from eight Western European countries, it first explores citizens' fiscal policy preferences with regard to the preferred size of the public sector and the distribution of spending across different subsectors. These preferences are then shown to be significantly associated with attitudes towards fiscal trade-offs regarding the expansion of social investment policies. The results reveal a political dilemma for policy-makers keen on expanding social investment: People who traditionally support a large public sector and more welfare state spending tend to oppose redistributing spending towards social investment, whereas support for such a recalibration is higher among those who have a sceptical view on public spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-profit and for-profit social enterprises struggle to source funding. Current limited understanding on the funding sources of these enterprises originates from disconnected body of studies based on different subject areas. This paper systematically reviews 50 articles published between 2009 to 2022 to bridge the existing knowledge in the subject area. This is achieved by mapping the sources of funding for social enterprises at organizational, personal, and institutional levels; analyzing the results to design an extensive model; and suggesting future areas for study in the field. It is found that studies at personal levels majorly focus on the perspective of funders of the features of a social entrepreneur. Social enterprises’ dual logic is usually addressed by research at the business level; including their effect on the effective funding of these enterprises. Institutional level research is clustered into legal, social, economic, and cultural factors. The paper suggests the need for studies, which use an extensive view by looking at all the three levels of analysis together and applying both organizational and economic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of Social Sciences is the property of National Chengchi University, College of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research on the politics of social investment finds public opinion to be highly supportive of expansive reforms and expects this support to matter for the politics of expanding social investment. Expanding social investment, it is argued, should be particularly attractive to left-wing voters and parties because of the egalitarian potential of such policies. However, few studies have examined to what extent individual preferences concerning social investment really matter politically. In this paper, I address this research gap for the crucial policy field of childcare by examining how individual-level preferences for expanding childcare provision translate into voting behavior. Based on original survey data from eight European countries, I find that preferences to expand public childcare spending indeed translate into electoral support for the left. However, this link from preferences to votes turns out to be socially biased. Childcare preferences are much more decisive for voting the further up individuals are in the income distribution. This imperfect transmission from preferences to voting behavior implies that political parties could have incentives to target the benefits of childcare reforms to their more affluent voters. My findings help to explain why governments frequently fail to reduce social inequality of access to seemingly egalitarian childcare provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]