Global social policy as a political practice

Western thinking influenced the development of welfare in Taiwan and Korea (Goodman and Peng, 1996).

At the same time, GSP’s changeable and differentiated structure is also seen in how it plays out across different countries and regions of the world. The experiences of, for example, African countries differ from those in East Asia, which differ again from those in North America, which contrast with those in South America. Many African countries, for example, have experienced the effects of global actors in very particular ways, variously (and often simultaneously) ignored by global corporations, exploited by them, and being subject to intense scrutiny and coercive policy prescriptions by international financial institutions (IFIs). Attentiveness to the uneven global political and economic geographies of GSP helps capture the spatially uneven outcomes of globalising processes, including the ways in which the relationship between people, state and territory in different parts of the world are being remade by global social policies. Keeping variation at the foreground of GSP analysis helps us, in turn, to understand how some countries are more embracing of neoliberalism than others, and how some countries have been able to forge social policy strategies that reject those prescribed by the Bretton Woods institutions, and how others still have even been a site of innovative social policy approaches that have been taken up and promoted by IGOs.

GSP is a maturing field of academic study and research that has already developed a rich body of research literature showing the power of global forces, institutions and actors in shaping welfare institutions worldwide. An ever-greater range of students and scholars worldwide from many disciplines is contributing to the development of GSP theories and concepts, and showing the diverse levels and spheres, territories and populations, and historical time periods across which GSP as a political practice of social actors is continually remade in different (and sometimes contradictory) ways. However, there remains much scope for further enriching knowledge and understanding of its changeable, differentiated and co-determined nature, and it is to the ‘next generation’ of GSP scholars that this book is addressed.

Global social policy as a political practice

GSP is not just a field of academic study and research; it is a ‘living’ political practice of social actors. It comprises established institutions, commanding in some cases very substantial resources; diverse policy actors, ranging from governments to large international bureaucracies, to INGOs, to advocacy and campaign coalitions and global social movements seeking to represent diverse interests (business, labour, environment, health, and so on) in social policy initiatives; and tangible programmes of social provision and social action. The configuration of institutions, actors, ideas, policies and programmes that make

up any GSP field varies. Whether by influencing domestic policy or policies emanating from spheres of cross-border governance, the ‘real-life’ worlds of ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics of policy all contribute to shaping how individual and collective welfare is governed, the broad direction and the specific content of social policy, the terms of social development and the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of human development.

Since the second edition of this book in 2014, several developments internationally and in global policy have shaped the GSP agenda. These include:

• A new global policy agenda for development. ‘Agenda 2030’ and the

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016–30) set out a comprehensive and universal global policy agenda that promises to leave no one behind, anywhere, reflects the vital role of social policy for sustainable development, and the interconnectedness of the social, economic, political and environmental dimensions of such development (UN, 2015). • The ongoing ‘greening’ of social and political consciousness, including greater awareness of the ecological and environmental causes of global inequality and conflict, as well as of the human, non-human and planetary welfare and development impacts of climate change. These have propelled ongoing efforts to ‘green’ global policy at the UN and elsewhere, and have stimulated the concept of ‘eco-social policy’ (UNRISD, 2016, 2021). • The ongoing impacts of the 2007–09 GFC and the austerity and welfare programmes that followed around the world. Global policy actors have been important in shaping policy responses to these (Dolphin and Chappell, 2010;

Farnsworth and Irving, 2015; McBride et al, 2021). • Major shifts in the geopolitical landscape that challenge multilateralism and global institutions as key forums for international social policy cooperation.

These shifts include: the electoral rise of rightist populism and cognate forms of extremism internationally (Sandel, 2018); the electoral decline of leftist governments (especially in South America) (Manwaring and Kennedy, 2017;

Gonzalez, 2019); and the worldwide impacts of African and Asian ‘rising powers’ (China’s ascendancy as a policy actor in global governance is especially notable) (Kahler, 2013; Tan et al, 2013; Heldt and Mahrenbach, 2019). • A reinvigorated international trade agenda in the form of new bilateral and transcontinental trade agreements, met by forms of engagement seeking to oppose them outright or to moderate them in the interests of public health and social welfare (von Bülow, 2009; Palmtag et al, 2020; Rone, 2020). Overlapping with, and potentially superseding this, have been increasingly conflictual trade relationships, and a shift in some key countries towards a more protectionist trade agenda (Baldwin and Evenett, 2009; Chaisse, 2017). • The intensification of economic and political regionalisation processes (Fioramonti, 2013; Barbieri, 2019), with trade, health, migration and