Date: 2024
Type: Thesis
Social investment reform in Europe : from policy adoption to design and implementation
Florence : European University Institute, 2024, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis
BALLANTYNE, Steven James, Social investment reform in Europe : from policy adoption to design and implementation, Florence : European University Institute, 2024, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77321
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
In this thesis I investigate processes of social investment reform in Europe. The four empirical chapters respond to several research questions. Chapters 2 and 3 contribute to the literature on the determinants of welfare state reform, focussing on social investment. Specifically, the chapters address the question of why (and how) social investment reform happens (or does not). Chapters 4 and 5 proceed to investigate the delivery of social investment programmes. Chapter 4 engages with debates about social investment and the generation of “Matthew Effects”. By exploring the potential of vocational education and training as inclusive social investment, the chapter asks: what are the main challenges to making social investment inclusive? It then identifies ways in which these challenges can be mitigated. Chapter 4 addresses the related question of policy outcomes, this time from the perspective of governance frameworks. Concretely, it analyses which actors deliver social investment and how this might impact policy outcomes. In Chapter 2 I illustrate that favourable demographics and sustained economic growth have blunted the imperative for social investment reform in Ireland. Notwithstanding, I also show that even in the unfavourable austerity climate following the 2008 Great Recession, social investment reform retained some momentum. I show that in the case of Ireland the Great Recession paradoxically provided a window of opportunity for social investment expansion, even if elsewhere – notably in southern Europe - it has been associated with bringing expansion to a grinding halt. I then show that a second crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, exposed deficiencies in the early childhood education and care system and precipitated systemic reform. I reveal through interviews that bureaucrats were influential in initiating reforms and in shaping policy in a context of limited reform politicisation by partisan elites. In Chapter 3 I focus on the territorial dimension of social investment. I find that the prima facie exceptional performance of Spain in early childhood education and care conceals widespread inequality of provision at the regional level. Investments by regional governments to expand provision thus emerges as an explanation for Spain’s performance. I subsequently explain variation at the regional level. I find that different levels of provision are explained by regional socio-economic, political and demographic conditions and their interactions. The chapter demonstrates that when it comes to social investment services, developed and delivered in subnational territories, we often find significant heterogeneity within countries. In doing so I make the case for research approaches which move beyond the prevailing methodological nationalism found in the literature. Chapters 2 and 3 also call into question the assumption that social investment is pursued only under left-wing governments. In both cases, I find evidence of reform regardless of the ideology of governing parties. The success of reform is, crucially, contingent on successful policy design and implementation. Taking this perspective, in Chapters 4 and 5 I proceed to evaluate the design and implementation of social investment programmes. In Chapter 4 I assess the design and implementation of an initial vocational education and training programme in Scotland. I find that implementation has been hindered by features typical of liberal skills formation systems, as well as operational challenges. The programme has also generated Matthew Effects which undermine the objective of social inclusion. Notwithstanding, I find that high level vocational qualifications have been widely accepted by students and parents and are contributing to increasing the supply of high-level vocational skills in areas of current and projected labour market shortages. I additionally show that lower-level vocational qualifications provide a complementary social inclusion function and compensate for the generation of Matthew Effects. The chapter suggests that there is a trade-off between making vocational education and training appealing to students and parents and achieving social inclusion in liberal skills formation systems. In the final empirical chapter (Chapter 5), co-authored with Lorenzo Mascioli, I turn to the EU’s Cohesion Policy. We operationalise the concept of subsidiarity to study the delivery of Cohesion Policy projects with a social agenda. Projects include social investment-type employment support, skills training and upskilling. We present evidence of diverse morphologies of delivery, which are composed of different territorial levels of governance and sectors of society, in Italy, Portugal and Spain. We suggest that these morphologies, which we call “Spaces of Subsidiarity”, and which partly reflect the governance of domestic social policy, have important implications for policy processes and outcomes. We conclude by proposing that research on the heterogenous impact of Cohesion Policy across member states would be advanced by considering governance arrangements as an explanatory variable. The empirical chapters illustrate, in a cumulative fashion, that social investment has become the main reform trajectory of European welfare states. That we find evidence of social investment even in cases consistent with the least likely logic of case selection provides strong evidence for this claim. I attribute this to the functional pressures exerted by structural socioeconomic changes, which encourage policymakers to turn to social investment as a policy solution. This perspective ultimately views policymaking as a response to policy problems and indicates that social investment appeals to different political parties, producer groups and governing institutions. The chapters also illustrate that policy design and implementation – and the actors responsible for these stages of the policy process – can make or break the success of social investment. I find that careful policy design and implementation – and constant policy monitoring and revision – can help to avoid, or compensate for, the generation of Matthew Effects. I conclude, however, with a note of caution. The chapters highlight that social investment reforms tend to be piecemeal and restricted to single policy sectors rather than recalibration which aligns policies which fulfil complementary welfare state functions. This raises doubts about the possibilities of realising complementarities and threatens to undermine social investment as a policy paradigm for contemporary welfare states.
Additional information:
Defence date: 04 October 2024; Examining Board: Prof. Anton Hemerijck, (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Waltraud Schelkle, (European University Institute); Prof. Giuliano Bonoli, (University of Lausanne); Dr. Rossella Ciccia, (University of Oxford)
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77321
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/4302065
Series/Number: EUI; SPS; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Social policy -- Europe; Public welfare -- Europe; Welfare state -- Europe