Message from the SPD convenor
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Welcome to the Major in Social Policy for Development.
A major that offers an interdisciplinary, critical approach to the analysis of the problems of social reproduction and social provisioning – or of societal responses to social need – within development and associated structural transformations.
As convenor of the Major, I would like to offer some clarification on the meaning of social policy, particularly with application to the field Development Studies and also with respect to critical social sciences.
How to define Social Policy?
Social Policy has been described by Thandika Mkandawire (2005), one of our inspirations for a developmentalist understanding of social policy, as ‘collective interventions in the economy to influence the access to and the incidence of adequate and secure livelihoods and income.’ However, this definition is fairly narrowly focused on the poverty reduction roles of social policy and thereby misses some of the main aims of social provisioning, which are to influence human development outcomes, such as the health and education of the population in particular, which may or may not have an income effect. Broader definitions therefore include the idea of ‘collective interventions’ shaping, more broadly, the distribution of and access to goods and resources in a society, one of the ‘public goods’ being social protection. Some approaches also include criminal justice, which is very relevant given the close association of criminal justice and poor relief in Victorian England, for instance, or else in contemporary child protection, or also in the conditionalities included as part of the now-popular Conditional Cash Transfers, which arguably penalize the poor through govermentality.
Substantively, I refer to social policy as, quite simply, systems of social/public goods provisioning. It is often defined as a field of public policy, although I like to think more broadly in terms of collective provisioning, given that collectivities are not necessarily contiguous with states and many collective interventions are informally or ‘communally’ organised, especially in the past and/or in many of the countries in the Global South, and also in rich countries (such as with respect to care work).
"Social policy as systems of social/public goods provisioning"
Broadly speaking, these systems include social services and social security/protection.
Social services roughly include:
- Education and related systems of ideational dissemination and/or socialization, such as public broadcasting, public libraries, community/youth organisations, certain aspects of care work, etc.
- Health and related systems pertaining to physical or psycho-social wellbeing, such as family planning and social work, other aspects of care work, etc.
"Social security/protection"
The theme of social protection has tended to dominate of late as a more narrow view of social policy, whereas it is properly understood as a subset of social policy. It has largely eclipsed earlier social democratic references to social security. For instance, UNRISD uses the term ‘social protection’ to essentially refer to social security and makes the distinction between universalistic and targeted (or residualist) social protection (see their recent flagship report, UNRISD 2010). In contrast, the World Bank uses the term ‘social protection’ (and previously ‘social safety nets’) with reference to residualist targeting of the poor, as part of a wider trend of supplanting erstwhile notions of universal social security.
Social protection is generally considered to include three aspects:
- Social insurance (i.e. contributory systems of insurance, whether state or privately provided, including health insurance, pensions, unemployment insurance, worker’s benefits, etc)
- Social assistance (i.e. non-contributory transfers or ‘welfare,’ such as cash transfers, employment guarantee schemes, basic income grants, social housing, etc)
- Standards and regulations (formal and/or informal), such as labour standards and regulations, child protection, etc.
Hence, the questions we might ask in social policy are: how is the education system in a country organized (private, state, etc)? |
The question is not about ‘the need’ for social policies – social policies have always existed, even in ‘traditional’ societies, and part of our work as a more critical and Southern-focused school is to counter this Eurocentric and modernisation bias from the field of social policy. Rather, the key question is about how to influence a social policy regime in order to direct it towards more equitable, socially-just, and developmental trajectories, with more egalitarian outcomes, in interaction with policies and processes in the (traditionally-defined) economic sphere. This is fundamentally an institutional and a political question.
"Social Policy: poverty and inequality"
Poverty and inequality have traditionally been central concerns in the field of social policy. Along these lines, the functions of social policy are often described as being:
- protective (as in protecting people from falling into poverty);
- redistributive (taxing some and giving to others as a means to correct inequality and to create greater equity, particularly through education and health care spending, which usually account for much more public spending than poverty relief), and;
- transformative (using various social policies to guide social and structural transformations towards greater productivity and improved human and social development outcomes).
- The transformative is also often referred to as developmental and includes an understanding of the productionist functions of social policy, such as when various social policies are oriented towards supporting wider strategies of industrialisation.
For instance, universalistic social policy was central in the rapid ‘late’ industrialisation of both South Korea and Bismarck Germany. Education has also been crucial to industrialisation given its role in socially producing both relatively skilled and less skilled workers. Industrialisation has, in turn, been central to long term reductions of absolute poverty given its role in increasing the wealth of a society, provided that this wealth is then equitably distributed, which again is influenced by social policy in a variety of fundamental ways.
For instance, universalistic social policy was central in the rapid ‘late’ industrialisation of both South Korea and Bismarck Germany. Education has also been crucial to industrialisation given its role in socially producing both relatively skilled and less skilled workers. Industrialisation has, in turn, been central to long term reductions of absolute poverty given its role in increasing the wealth of a society, provided that this wealth is then equitably distributed, which again is influenced by social policy in a variety of fundamental ways.
“Many social policies are also economic policies”
Moreover, if we accept the premise that capitalism has a tendency towards concentrations of wealth and power (mainstream neoclassical economic theory would not accept this, at least not without alterations to their models, such as market imperfections), then social policy is arguably one of the most important policy realms to potentially counter such tendencies, although only if it is founded on a solidly progressive footing (social policy can equally be regressive and reinforce the inequities of capitalism). This being said, it is important not to view social concerns as being outside of the realm of ‘economic policies’ – many social policies are also economic policies (such as their role in fiscal policy and public spending), or else have deep interrelations with economic processes (such as the stratification of labour markets and production) and arguably should be included within the realm of economic analysis.
“Social policy is particularly rife with political contention”
Moreover, the fact that social policy is open and pliable to public deliberation (democratic or otherwise), that it serves as the basis for defining and instituting citizenship rights, distributing public goods, redistributing wealth, and articulating some of the main mechanisms of integration and segregation within societies, makes it particularly rife with political contention. Indeed, health and education systems (arguably the core of social policy) touch a central nerve of social politics because they structure when and how various social groups and classes might come into contact with each other in very intimate and vulnerable ways.
A broader social policy perspective
I like to make a comparison of social policy with the ‘social determinants’ literature. The focus of the social determinants literature is on how poverty and inequality affect health outcomes, for instance. The broader social policy answer would be that this depends first on the modes of by which health services are provided to a population. In other words, a broader social policy perspective would look at the question from the other way around: how do modes of provisioning (of education, health, social security) affect poverty and inequality (and other social dimensions and interactions). The ‘social determinants’ question might then make for a very interesting and useful sub-inquiry within this broader perspective, although for such an inquiry to be meaningful, it first needs to be placed within its broader institutional framework. For instance, even if health improves, the way that health care is provided to produce these improvements can have profound influences on patterns of social integration (or segregation) and stratification, with respect to class, gender, generation, ethnicity and race, disability, etc.
Thinking about it in this way is quite close to ideas of governmentality from sociology and anthropology. The social policy field has a large influence from economics (particularly because education is usually the largest category of government expenditure in most countries with relatively functional public education systems), although it is nonetheless more institutionalist and sociological in orientation, out of necessity because it is focused on how social systems function. For instance, anthropology provides much material for social policy analysis – whether intentionally or not – such as through studies of various informal or community aspects of social provisioning (such as with community-based insurance systems), or ethnographies of schooling or health practices (such as in medical anthropology), or governmentality within various social policies and practices (from family planning to conditional cash transfers), or various (informal) practices and subaltern responses to formal standards and regulations. Indeed, one of the objectives of our ISS school of critical social policy is to integrate these types of study into our broader understanding of social policy as much as possible.
Social Policy has the potential for thorough interdisciplinarity
On this note, the field of social policy has the potential for thorough interdisciplinarity, particularly when applied to the field of development studies, also an interdisciplinary field. Hence, there is ample room for very diverse perspectives from all the disciplines and methodologies in the social sciences. It is our hope that, in bringing all of these together, we will help to provide students with a vision of the vast realm of the possible within contemporary development to improve human welfare and wellbeing. Indeed, often the only lacking ingredient to bring about major progressive improvements to the way we organise and provide for ourselves as societies is political will, particularly among elites and vested interests, and this recognition itself provides a cornerstone to our critical approach to social policy, which we will be exploring with students throughout the MA degree.
Andrew M. Fischer
20 April 2012
Further reading suggestion:
Fischer, Andrew M. 2010. ‘Towards Genuine Universalism within Contemporary Development Policy’, IDS Bulletin (Special Issue on MDGs and Beyond), 41(1), January 2010: 36-44. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/18492/Fischer%20IDS%202010%20Towards%20Gen%20Universalism.pdf
Abbreviated version published in Poverty in Focus, no.19, January 2010, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, UNDP, pp.8-9.
Fischer, Andrew M. 2012. ‘Inequality and the Universalistic Principle in the Post-2015 Development Agenda.’ Official Background Paper prepared for the the global thematic consultation on Addressing Inequalities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, organised by UNICEF and UN Women, November 2012. http://www.worldwewant2015.org/node/285766
