The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of those who are inadequately covered by social protection in more and less developed countries alike, and has exacerbated the fragility of a social contract that was already under strain in many countries. A weak social contract in the context of an exceptional crisis poses a very real risk to social cohesion. Nevertheless, many States have reasserted themselves as the guarantor of rights by protecting public health and incomes. By sustaining these measures, economic recovery will be supported which will help minimize risks that may weaken social cohesion. However, this is a fast-moving, inherently unstable and protracted crisis. Social protection stands at a critical juncture. Decisive policy action will be required to strengthen social protection systems, including floors, as one of the cornerstones of a reinvigorated social contract.

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The achievement of universal social protection has become an important goal for the global community, both intrinsically -realising the human right to social security -and extrinsically, with its potential to further the development of economies and societies beyond protecting individuals against poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion. 1 Countries have followed various strategies in their pursuit of extending social protection, depending on their political, economic, cultural and social circumstances, preferences and legacies. As such, each national social protection system is composed of an idiosyncratic combination of different schemes and programmes. They vary regarding their specific objectives, mandates and financing, the level of administration at which they are implemented, delivery mechanisms or their planning cycle. Nonetheless, all these schemes and programmes need to be well coordinated to ensure complementarity so that, in their combination, they contribute to achieving universal social protection. Universal protection has three dimensions, meaning that (1) every member of society is protected; (2) there is comprehensiveness of protection for the full range of contingencies; 2 and (3) there is an adequacy of benefits levels to support a dignified life (ILO 2019c).Just as each social protection system is unique, so are the solutions designed for their coordination, understood in this chapter as the 'attempt to optimize the coherence and consistency of political decisions as well as policy implementation' (Wollmann 2003, 594). Coordination is needed not just between the schemes and programmes that constitute the system, but also across other public policies, such as employment, health or education; and among the actors involved in their implementation, such as social security authorities or relevant ministries that are involved at different administrative levels. Some countries have developed policy and legal frameworks as well as institutional structures to ensure coordination. Yet, many social protection systems face persistent problems of fragmentation, duplication, distorted incentive structures and unclear lines of responsibility. This results in a lack of accountability, lost synergetic opportunities, inefficient use of public resources and hence dwindling public support -which ultimately impedes the realisation of the right to social security (ILO 2019b; Samson and Taylor 2015; Sepúlveda 2014) and of other, closely related human rights, for instance the 1 This chapter draws extensively on ILO (2019aILO ( , 2019b. Practitioners can also consult United Nations (2016) or Transform (2018) for more practical information. We would like to acknowledge the extensive comments and valuable inputs received from Ian Orton and Maya Stern-Plaza for the production of this chapter. 2In line with International Labour Organization Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102), these contingencies include nine main areas: child and family benefits, maternity protection, unemployment suppo...

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Stereotypes and stigma associated with living on welfare or a low income can be a psychological threat that hampers performance and undermines aspirations. Our paper explores the potential of a novel self-affirmation intervention to mitigate such adverse impacts. The intervention comprises a verbal self-affirmation exercise for applicants during their first meeting with a caseworker. We conduct a cluster-randomised trial among a sample of 174 applicants for social assistance benefits in a Social Services office in Maastricht, the Netherlands. We measure outcomes on feelings of self-worth, stress, societal belonging, job search behaviour self-efficacy and cognitive performance immediately after the meeting. In our full sample, the intervention has a negative impact on feelings of societal belonging, but no effect on other outcomes. Effects, however, vary by subgroups. Our treatment increases negative feelings of self-worth and negatively affects societal belonging, but also improves cognitive performance among the group that had paid work in the previous two years. By contrast, self-affirmation positively impacts job search behaviour self-efficacy and cognitive performance for individuals who face increased challenges to (re)integrate into the labour market, proxied by lower levels of education or social assistance receipt in the previous two years. Since our intervention gives rise to testing more than one null hypothesis, we control the false discovery rate using the Benjamini-Hochberg approach. Our findings are sobering. Effects only remain significant for negative feelings of self-worth and improved cognitive performance for one particular subgroup: individuals with paid work in the past two years. This suggests self-affirmation may have reminded them of the time they still had a job, hence creating a backlash effect on feelings of self-worth. At the same time, they may have felt a need to distinguish themselves from others on social assistance benefits resulting in better cognitive performance. These interpretations are consistent with theory and empirical evidence on social identity and self-categorisation. We discuss the implications of our results and outline avenues for future work.