RETHINKING SOCIAL POLICY FOR NEW TIMES

Paul Stubbs pstubbs@eizg.hr 13 February 2013. Grupa 22, Zagreb TOWARDS THE COMPLEMENTARITY OF AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

(Eco-) Social Policy

Social policy refers to any policy developed at supranational, state, local or community level which is underpinned by a social vision of society and which, when operationalised, affects the rights or abilities of citizens to meet their livelihood needs Social policy needs to combine with environmentalism to forge a unified eco-social policy that can achieve ecologically beneficial and socially just impacts promoting new patterns of production, consumption and investment, changing producer and consumer behaviour while improving wellbeing, and ensuring a fairer distribution of power and resources

Global Eco-Social Policy

The Four Rs: Regulation Redistribution Rights Resource Mobilisation

New Risks
Climate change and resource depletion
Large-scale migration including forced migration Global gendered care chains Precarious work (unsustainability of insurance-based systems) Demographic changes

Deepening global economic crisis

New wars and complex political emergencies Structural oppression and discrimination

New Times New Neo-liberalisms?: from Washington to Berlin

Individual responsibility and informalization

Privatise and/or commercialise welfare arrangements

Lean states and new austerity reduce social spending Residualising welfare poverty reduction New conditionalities (deserving v underserving) From workfare to prisonfare New humanitarian/security/development architecture

Turning the Global Tide?: Global Social Protection Floors

Principles: Universalism, Legal rights, Non-discrimination, Adequacy, Dignity, and Accessible Complaints Procedure

SPFs should comprise at least the following basic social security guarantees:
(a) access to a nationally defined set of goods and services, constituting essential health care, including maternity care that meets the criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality; (b) basic income security for children, at least at a nationally defined minimum level, providing access to nutrition, education, care and any other necessary goods and services; (c) basic income security, at least at a nationally defined minimum level, for persons in active age who are unable to earn sufficient income, including in particular in cases of sickness, unemployment, maternity and disability; and (d) basic income security, at least at a nationally defined minimum level, for older persons.

Between Global and Local: New Regionalisms

More than regional trading blocs: new political institutions to foster and govern more sustainable and socially-just forms of production and consumption Voice to smaller nations and to social movements in global arenas Greater possibility for agreement on social, labour and environmental standards and targets

Avoiding global race to the bottom can generate resources for regional redistribution
Greater opportunities for risk pooling and regional insurance schemes

Regional Social Policies: The European Union

Gradual move to extend economic -> political -> eco-social dimension Europe 2020: smart, green, inclusive growth in a social market economy 20 million fewer in poverty and social exclusion by 2020 20 20 20 Energy targets (greenhouse gas; renewable energy; energy efficiency) OMC not strengthening European Social Model(s) New IMF-EU meta-critical partnerships creating new periphery

European Anti-Poverty Network Proposals

Framework Directive: Obliging every Member State to introduce by 2020 a Minimum Income Guarantee Scheme guaranteeing an adequate minimum income for all 60% of median A budget for Cohesion policy of at least 336 billion Euro, a strengthened European Social Fund (ESF) with at least 25% of the Structural Funds dedicated to the ESF and 20% of ESF earmarked for poverty reduction and social inclusion and a budget of at least 2.5 billion Euro for the Fund for European Aid for the Most Deprived.

Regional Social Policies: ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the

Peoples of the Americas)
Managed trade and integration of production
Commitment to free health and education across member states State-provided services and social redistribution Energy integration and environmental protection A radical alternative to prevailing paradigms (Yeates, forthcoming)

Croatian/SEE Social Policy

Captured and clientelistic Parallelisms: State Municipal NGO World Bank dominated unfinished reform agenda Myth of high social spending

Invisibility of poverty and social exclusion

Low, residualised and punitive social assistance Limited network of non-stigmatising community-based services Limited user involvement/empowerment (professional dominance)

A Vision
Transform and subvert growth paradigm Green jobs as crucial New localisation connecting with new regionalism Flexible citizenship rights and insurance-schemes Guaranteed minimum incomes (universal child benefits, social pensions, MIG for active age) Cash plus care services (minimum basket) Health, education, housing, transport, space as public goods

Challenging social immobility

Beyond dominant logics

The ethics of care are about interdependence, mutuality, and human frailty rather than individualism and self-sufficiency. And it is this, the understanding of care as a collective social good, which needs to be central to concepts of global justice. This requires that interdependence be seen as the basis of human interaction. In its turn this presupposes that human flourishing is the key to our sustainability and that therefore the conditions for this care and co-operation are also central. In these terms, autonomy and independence are about the capacity for self-determination rather than the expectation of individual self-sufficiency. (Williams, forthcoming)

Beyond dominant logics II

There is also a case for a radical rights-based approach to thinking about the future wherein future generations have a fundamental and inalienable right to the non-substitutable services of nature and the current generation has a duty of intergenerational stewardship. (Gough, forthcoming)