Translating social investment ideas in Israel: Economized social policy’s competing agendas

Abstract

International organizations play a central role in disseminating social investment ideas, which serve to legitimize forms of public spending by stressing their future contribution to human capital and economic growth. However, the transition from a neoliberal to a social investment state is conditioned on national policymakers’ will to embrace a post-neoliberal macroeconomic philosophy and governance. Although such change lies in the professional purview of economist-technocrats, there is little empirical research on their role as national translators of social investment ideas. This article examines economists’ role in the translation of social investment ideas in Israel. By embedding specific social investment ideas within entrenched economic world views – including principles of ‘responsible’ macroeconomic governance – camps of Israeli economists articulate varying and sometimes competing social investment policy agendas. Lessons from Israel suggest that economists are non-negligible actors in the translation of social investment ideas. By advancing different social investment strategies, economists may assume different roles in the policymaking and politics of social investment.

From Social Investment to Investing in the Social: Insiders’ Perceptions, Experiences, and Expectations

“…Following the European Commission adoption of the SI package for growth and social cohesion in 2013, many European countries enacted SI policies (Van Vliet and Wang, 2015; Hemerijck, 2018). SI ideas have since disseminated through organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to become a leading policy perspective for many countries around the globe (Deeming and Smyth, 2015; Gilbert, 2012; Jenson, 2010; Maron, 2019).…”

“…Although the popular protests arguably represented middle-class family’s needs and may not have given enough attention to those struggling with poverty, they prompted policymakers to provide answers to the demanding masses that filled the streets (Rosenhek and Shalev, 2014). This resulted in two major SI schemes designed to promote increased labour market participation for excluded groups, initiated and signed by a right wing neoliberal oriented government (Maron, 2019; Zehavi and Breznitz, 2018). The first involves the promotion of several programs targeting minority, non-Jewish groups.…”

“…The first involves the promotion of several programs targeting minority, non-Jewish groups. Backed by an unprecedented government decision in 2015, these programs demonstrate an effort to encourage growth and reduce inequality via the economic inclusion of historically excluded minority groups (Maron, 2019). The second program subsidized childcare for working families with children as young as three years old in order to allow greater labour market participation.…”

“…According to Maron (2019), Israel’s policy translation of SI approach involves competing principles of governance and economic philosophies. Zehavi and Breznitz (2018) introduce the concept of the ‘neoliberal targeted SI state’ which refers to the fusion of neoliberal logic and SI strategies.…”

Revisiting ‘global impact’ and global social governance while worrying about WHO and other global actors struggling with COVID-19

“…The transnational ideas did not ‘cause’ the policy change; and, transnational transformative agency is identified as multiform and inter-related, at times even incoherent, continuous and evolving. Similarly, other recent articles have also engaged with translation concepts – for example, Maron (2020) with a focus on Israel and social investment ideas, and Kuhlmann et al (2020) with a more general approach to diffusion. Our next issue, a special issue, will also focus on international knowledge transfer and learning in the post-Soviet region (some of the articles are already available as ‘online first’ publications at https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/gspa/0/0).…”