This paper considers activation policies in relation to older workers in a number of OECD countries. It explores four interpretations of ‘activation’ in respect of pension planning and retirement policies. However, activation policies need to be carefully evaluated. Labour market demands and a political language that stresses the ‘pension crisis’ and the ‘dependency ratio’ have to be considered in relation to established rights. Thus whilst governments may seek to promote a model of welfare based on the ‘consumer citizen’, in which retirement choices are made by reflexive individuals, the constraints on choice need to be highlighted. These constraints are likely to be unevenly distributed with some social groups experiencing longer working lives, less choice, with more compulsion and with conditions attached to any pension rights they may claim.

This article discusses localised forms of social innovation in social services in relation to social policy and welfare issues. It draws upon research findings from the EU project ‘Welfare Innovations at the local Level in favour of Cohesion’ (WILCO), which takes in social innovations in twenty European cities. First, we argue why there is currently a significant gap between the debate on social innovation and the debate on social welfare reforms. Second, we present attempts that have been made to identify and interpret recurring approaches and instruments in the social innovations studied in relation to various dimensions of the debate on social welfare and services, such as the search for new ways of addressing users and citizens; the emphasis on new risks and related approaches to the issues of rights and responsibilities; and finally the concern with issues of governance. We argue that the features of the local innovations we identified may be significant for welfare systems at large, going beyond the introduction of special new items in special fields. However, the degree to which this will come about in reality will depend on building more bridges of shared understanding between concerns with social innovation on the one hand and welfare reforms on the other hand.

In many countries, people face cuts in jobs, wages and social security as economic austerity policies have been implemented to reduce public expenditure following the near collapse of the banking system in 2008. At the same time, rising food and fuel prices have combined to generate increasing and sometimes extreme hardship, not only in poorer countries of the global South where the impact has been severe, but also on economically vulnerable countries and populations in the global North. The re-emergence of ‘hunger’ as a widespread social reality and political concern in richer countries is a notable feature of the last few years, generating community responses and academic research even if, as yet, minimal policy response. For example, a recent special issue of the British Food Journal (Caraher and Cavicchi, 2014) on food banks included nine articles discussing the explosion in usage and acceptability of charitable food aid provision in rich countries. Riches and Silvasti's recent volume (2014), updating First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics (Riches, 1997) nearly two decades after its account of food and poverty in five rich economies, now provides evidence from twelve such countries, and there could have been more. What is perhaps even more remarkable is how slow public policy has been to react. Partly this is because the issues are cross-sectoral in the location of causal drivers and potential levers, and it is thus difficult to ascribe responsibility; partly it is because ‘hunger’ is not only difficult to define and document, it is also an intrinsically private issue: its experience and effects are personal, embodied and usually silent – except in extremes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted manifold social policy responses all around the world. This article presents the findings of a meta-analysis of thirty-six in-depth country reports on early Covid-19 social policy responses in the Global South. The analysis shows that social policy responses during the early phase of the pandemic have been predominantly focused on expanding temporary and targeted benefits. In terms of policy areas, next to labour market and social assistance measures, the focus has also been on unconventional social policy instruments. The social policy responses of developing economies were often rudimentary, focusing on cash transfers and food relief, and heavily relied on external funding. In contrast, many emerging economies introduced a much broader array of social policies and were less reliant on external support.

As from the beginning of the 1990s, almost all European countries have introduced wide-reaching social changes, among others in eligibility, entitlement, benefits structures and in the sources of financing. In this article, we propose that a consequence of those reforms may have been a repositioning of some countries in the welfare clusters. To test this hypothesis, we apply the two bi-dimensional classifications of Bonoli (1997) and Kautto (2002) to ten countries as representative of different welfare regimes. Our results reveal an interesting repositioning of some countries, especially Portugal, the UK and Sweden that represents evidence of welfare state reforms.

This article examines the extent to which Gough and Woodʼs (2004) classification of most sub-Saharan African nations as insecurity regimes is still relevant by analysing public responses and attitudes towards general and specific (healthcare) welfare policies in Ghana, using a mixed-method design. Ghana presents a fascinating case study not only due to the changing socio-economic landscape but also because of the prevailing socio-political stability. The research findings demonstrate that most participants wanted more welfare spending (including on healthcare) but remained reluctant to rely on government provisions due to distrust and perceived inefficiencies in the public sector. The findings also depict the continuing reliance on family and social networks as safety nets and sometimes in preference to state arrangements. The article argues that Ghanaʼs welfare regime may be gradually shifting from the classic insecurity regime (albeit still relevant) to one resembling the less effective informal security regime – at least from the publicʼs experiences – and demands a careful integration of individual, familial, and community networks in current and future formal welfare arrangements.

A significant infrastructure of multi-faith engagement grew and consolidated throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century in England, called forth, at least in part, by government policy. This arose in response to three narratives of religious faith: a policy narrative which constructs faith groups as repositories of resources; a faith narrative which is concerned with the lived experiences of faith; and a partnership narrative which reflects the growing role of faith groups in the mixed economy of welfare (see Dinham and Lowndes, 2008). It is inflected, too, by a fourth narrative located in the bundle of ‘Prevent’ policies which sought to address the risks of religious radicalisation and extremism. This article examines multi-faith policy in England, and the issues driving it, and explores its relationship to the faith-based practices which are imagined by it. It asks the question whether the multi-faith paradigm, as crystallised in the policy document ‘Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in Our Multi Faith Society’ (CLG, 2008), engages with a real and lived experience or remains a policy chimera and a parallel world.

To date the main indicator used to compare the well-being of children in industrialised countries has been the proportion of children in income poverty. This article exploits data from recent work developing indices of child well-being in EU, OECD and CEE/CIS countries to explore whether child income poverty is a good representation of a wider understanding of child well-being. Using the poverty estimates in each index, as well as more recent estimates for the European Union, we find that for OECD countries income poverty still has some explanatory power but this is not the case for EU and CEE/CIS countries.

This article examines how jobcentre advisors judge the individual deservingness of their clients and investigates what role these judgements play in translating activation policies into practice. The analysis draws on qualitative data gathered in a research project on back-to-work agreements that involved several German jobcentres. It is shown that advisors vary the intensity of ‘demand’ depending on whether benefit recipients fulfil reciprocity expectations and are deemed to have control over the unemployment situation. Whether or not they choose an enabling, supporting approach, and the extent to which they do so, depends on judgements about the client’s amenability to change and the presumed outcome of labour market policy instruments. Moreover, the analysis indicates that frontline workers use experiential cues such as appearance and self-presentation in the face-to-face encounters in order to interpret the client. The findings highlight the relevance of the normative dimension of frontline work.

Anchored on the global welfare regime literature, this article discusses three key themes: welfare regime change, the drivers of change and the implication of the regime change toward insecurity in Southeast Asia. This article focuses on welfare regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand mainly because these countries experienced high economic growth and were correspondingly affected by the 1997-Asian financial crisis. However, their response to the crisis differed due to their distinctive historical-colonial legacies. The article argues that the regimes shifted from productivist to a more inclusive regime partly as public health programmes reached citizens previously uncovered. However, the timing, pace and direction of welfare reform met social unrest, and fundamentally brought into the fore questions of ‘ontological security’. The article concludes that the three regimes cannot substantiate a shift towards ‘secure’ welfare regimes as they continue to rely heavily on family and community for welfare provision to overcome social risk.

Gender critiques of comparative welfare state research have so far predominantly focused on OECD countries but less so in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Existing comparative social policy research in these regions often cites the importance of informal networks and family for social protection but less attention is paid into gender relations and their importance for the social reproduction of these welfare regimes. The article comparatively analyses gender differences in the sphere of production (captured by the gender gap in formal and informal employment) and social reproduction (captured by time spent on unpaid domestic work). The article identifies regional patterns and explores implications for women’s ability to access welfare and the labour market. Additionally, it shows that informal activities (employment, domestic work) are extensive among many African, Asian, Latin American, but also specific OECD, welfare regimes. The article contributes first by incorporating gender in the analysis of global welfare regime and second by highlighting the importance of informal relationships for the analysis of welfare regimes.

The welfare state is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society. All developed countries have them and the less developed ones are striving to establish their own. Welfare states depend on a fair collection and redistribution of resources, which in turn rests upon the maintenance of trust between different sections of society and across generations. Misleading rhetoric concerning those who have to seek support from the welfare state, such as the contrast between ‘strivers’ and ‘shirkers’, risks undermining that trust and, with it, one of the key foundations of modern Britain. (Alcock et al., 2013)

The Australian government purports that employment will improve welfare recipients' wellbeing. However, longitudinal analysis of the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of 135 single parents who were compelled to make the transition from welfare to work revealed that as work hours increased, subjective wellbeing did not improve, and in some cases worsened. Participants who were employed at baseline increased their work hours by an average of 4.75 hours per week; however no change was detected in their SWB. Conversely, participants who moved from not working at baseline to working at follow-up increased their work hours by an average of 15.84 hours per week. For these participants, the change in work hours negatively predicted 20–34 per cent of the variance in SWB. From these data, it is concluded that those parents who were already working were those who faced fewer barriers to employment compared to those who were compelled to work. Those who were previously unemployed may not have the material, social and psychological resources to make a successful work transition.

Information, advice and advocacy agencies are important providers of information and support to older people in the community. This study explored the role of Age Concern staff across North London in providing timely information and advice relating to advance decision-making should capacity become impaired for a variety of reasons, particularly in relation to the newly implemented Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005. Findings suggest that staff had varied knowledge of the MCA and most lacked confidence in providing detailed advice. Given the wide-reaching scope of the MCA, differentiating between information, advice and advocacy may be necessary.

This article critically examines the governance of identity in the context of children's social care. There is a widespread assumption in government policy and technical practice that information can be integrated across organisations and sectors. This article questions these assertions using a case study (‘Mary's story’). It draws on a range of insights from the philosophy of Charles Pierce, information systems practice and social theory. This provides a platform to explore the governance of identity information for VCS organisations, service providers, and user(s). The logics of the governance of identity information in current and future service co-ordination and delivery are examined.

In England and Wales, with the introduction of Section 27 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009, lap-dancing clubs can now be licensed as Sexual Entertainment Venues. This article considers such, offering a critique of Section 27, arguing that this legislation is not evidence-based, with lap-dancing policy, like other sex-work policies, often associated with crime, deviance and immorality. Furthermore, it is argued that sex-work policies are gradually being homogenised as well as increasingly criminalised. Other criticisms relate to various licensing loopholes which lead to some striptease venues remaining unlicensed and unregulated, potentially impacting on the welfare of erotic dancers. In addition, restrictions on the numbers of lap-dancing venues may exacerbate dancer unemployment, drawing these women into poverty. Finally, The Policing and Crime Act reflects how the political focus is being directed away from the exploitation of workers, on to issues relating to crime and deviance, despite limited evidence to support this focus.

There has been little comparative policy research hitherto on the substantial differences in law and order policies between Western industrialised countries. Instead, criminologists have filled this void and used concepts such as Esping-Andersen's worlds of welfare or Lijphart's patterns of democracy to interpret cross-country variation. However, the state of the art has two weaknesses: it almost exclusively relies on imprisonment data as dependent variable and it remains silent as to why welfare state regimes or types of democracy should be responsible for similarities in law and order policies. The present article tackles these shortcomings by (1) examining differences and commonalities in law and order policies in twenty Western industrialised countries and by (2) investigating whether the clustering of countries is associated with features of the welfare state or the political system. We find three distinct clusters and show that their formation is related to the characteristics of the political economy of the countries.

Two factors have boosted the debate on Basic Income (BI) in Spain in recent years: on the one hand, the combination of welfare budget cuts and growing poverty rates has spread claims for a radical reform of Spanish welfare policies; on the other hand, the emergence of Podemos as a new key actor in the Spanish political arena has generated a vivid discussion on BI and income guarantee proposals. By reviewing the political debates on these proposals, I will argue that economic feasibility concerns and implementation problems are closely related to their political feasibility. Significantly, the radical rejection of ‘means-testing’ by BI defenders fails to grasp the different types and degrees of conditions that an income guarantee system may establish. The main lesson from the Spanish experience is that BI supporters should be ready to compromise and accept generous means-tested guaranteed income programs as stepping-stones.

Readers of this journal will have seen themed sections on partnerships, governance and citizenship (volume 5, issue 2) and ‘consumerism in social policy (volume 2, issue 1) and might be asking exactly why a further one that combines these elements is now necessary. Having considered similar topics separately in these pages, why is it now necessary to look at them together?

The term vulnerability has little theoretical purchase in social policy. It is used widely as a short-hand phrase to describe deficit. As such, it provides only limited value and has little regard for the wider structures of society that might ameliorate, sustain or exacerbate vulnerability. There is, however, a critical literature that seeks to understand the social, economic and political relationships that produce vulnerability and its potential opposite, flourishing. This article draws on this theoretical literature, focusing particularly on relational accounts of autonomy, capabilities and functioning, and the role of societal institutions. Using cases drawn from empirical research investigating how grandparents care for their grandchildren in relationships characterised by rescue and repair, this article refines a relational model of the longitudinal space of vulnerability. It extends explanation of three dimensions of the model: basic needs, the capacity to be and access to service providers, and elaborates on how these dimensions inter-relate through an investigation of empowerment.