Two or three waves of welfare state transformation?

Social services, welfare states and places: an overview

“…Third, public social services represent a 'social investment'. The view that social services should be considered 'productive' was first put forward by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal in the 1930s and was re-launched at the end of the 1990s with the EU 'social investment strategy' (Hemerijck, 2012 which contributes to lower future costs by making people better skilled and more productive. This double role of social services -contributing to social justice and to accumulation -makes it all the more important to understand change trends, their drivers and their impacts.…”

“…These periods are also referred to as 'eras', 'phases' or 'waves' (Hemerijck, 2012). I prefer to call them regimes, 3 since they are characterised by distinct and interrelated sets of ideologies, discourses and principles about the role of the state, different policy objectives, strategies and tools, as well as different actors (see also Jenson, 2012 The Keynesian regime was characterised by the dominance of the nation state on all internal and external affairs, a state which heavily intervened in both the economy -featuring the so-called 'developmental' state (Dickens, 1998), with robust policies in support of accumulation (commercial, industrial, regional policies), as well as direct ownership of productive activities and infrastructure -and in society -featuring the modern 'welfare' state, with more or less extended social protection measures and publicly provided social services.…”

“…With the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the 1980s, neoclassical economics resurfaced and supply-side policies gained consensus, finding a concrete political outlet in what has come to be called the 'neo-liberal' paradigm (Hemerijck, 2012). In this new phase, the market was viewed as the best allocation mechanism and the state as an encumbrance to the free working of the market.…”

“…a new set of principles made explicit in the Lisbon Council of 2000 -has been identified by a number of scholars (Morel et al, 2012;Hemerijck, 2012), although it would only apply to the welfare domain, rather than to state intervention in general. The new approach, which found political legitimacy in a series of European documents and directives (see Goméz-Barroso et al, in this volume), allegedly marks a setback of the neo-liberal paradigm and the return of social policy (Hemerijck, 2012). It reverses the neoliberal idea that social policy is unproductive, arguing that it represents an investment, and hence a productive factor.…”

Losing Sight of the Child? Human Capital Theory and its Role for Early Childhood Education and Care Policies in Finland and England since the Mid-1990s

“…The new social risks facing welfare states have seen a need to modernise welfare provision. As such we see a stronger commitment to employment policy, as well as policies seeking to achieve redistribution over the life cycle through human capital investments (Hemerijck, 2012). Amidst these policy measures stand early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies, which are firmly rooted in human capital theory, as well as child-oriented or social investment strategies (cf.…”