The purpose of this article is to bring social care services into the domain of comparative social policy research. The reason why it is important for social care services to be incor porated into the debate is that they represent an expanding component of the welfare state; that they are important for women; and that there are major differences between different countries in social care services. We have defined social care services as a specific way of increasing the autonomy of both care pro viders and care receivers.

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This article is about the transnational movement of policy discourses on childcare. It considers whether the spread of neoliberal ideas with their emphasis on marketisation, on the one hand, and a social investment discourse on the other, are leading to convergence in childcare arrangements in Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden) and liberal Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia and Canada). We find points of convergence around both themes at the level of policy discourse and continued diversity in the way these ideas are translated into actual policies. In other words, convergence is mediated by institutions and political realignments.

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