Social investments in the knowledge economy: The politics of inclusive, stratified, and targeted reforms across the globe

Abstract

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.

What, for whom, and under what circumstances: Do activation policies increase youth employment in the EU?

“…Our findings show that national ALMP provision matters for subnational youth employment outcomes, a result in line with national research showing a positive impact of ALMPs on aggregated youth labour market outcomes (Escudero, 2018; Sahnoun and Abdennadher, 2018). However, the ambiguity underlying ALMPs’ provision effectiveness appears to be confirmed by mixed results according to type of programme, educational level and role played by contextual features (Garritzmann et al, 2022; Kazepov and Ranci, 2017).…”

“…On the one hand, regional authorities may hold various degrees of responsibility and discretion. On the other hand, policy outcomes – such as employment growth and social inclusion – are affected by contextual socio-economic conditions (Garritzmann et al, 2022; Kazepov and Ranci, 2017) that also point to specific regional traits. These claims are backed by country-based quantitative and institutional analysis, as well as small-n comparisons of subnational territories that confirm the existence of territorially differentiated effects of ALMPs, according to regional education and labour market systems in Austria (Bacher et al, 2017), local labour market conditions in Germany (Wapler et al, 2022), socio-economic regional divides in Italy (Sergi et al, 2018).…”

The EPSR and the Next Generation EU: Heralding a reconfiguration of social protection in South Europe?

“…2 Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/recovery-coronavirus/recovery-and-resilience-facility_en#documents (accessed 8 March 2022) 3 Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=23696&langId=en (accessed 15 November 2021). 4 On the various shades of SI see Deeming and Smyth (2015); also Garritzmann et al (2023). 5 Unless otherwise stated, the source for all statistics is Eurostat, at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat.…”

Methodology of Development of Social Investment Projects for the Economy: Legal Aspects

“…The scientific works of Hernego ( 2019), Ilchenko-Siuiva & Sliusarchuk (2019), Garritzmann, Häusermann & Palier (2023) emphasize the necessity to implement social investment projects as the main mechanism for ensuring sustainable social development aimed at obtaining stable income and social effect. Dawood, F. S., & Ahmed, A. F. (2023) studied the possibilities of applying the international standard (ISO 21500:2021) in the investment commission in Saladin governorate on one of its projects.…”