Social Policy Adaptation: Globalization and Welfare
Ultimately, states are naturally discouraged by social policies that respond to a series of dynamic social changes in relation to social services. From this perspective, several analysts have raised the disconnect between public social protection policies and new social demands. The main challenge now for the EB is to adapt to the changing environment, while it is still valid to assume that the ‘type of work and family order that reigned in the golden age of our parents and grandparents’. This model is based on a stable family with a structure similar to a male breadwinner with a permanent job and a mother as a full-time carer. The current “crisis” EB comes from the lack of adaptation to the new challenges presented by new social structures, especially the family and work.
To cope, “we must turn our attention to the institutional conditions that maximize the functioning of families and markets.” This is essential to consider human and cultural capital, the development of cognitive skills, and optimal training of citizens to access the labor market. Some authors consider that, to avoid a possible aging crisis that could pose a long-term need, it is necessary to increase the retirement age to protect the elderly and the weak and encourage fertility. Others, along with globalization, must analyze decisions relevant to citizens, particularly all those related to social policy, or that the effects of globalization can only be evaluated with careful consideration of the political effects in each country. From the CCSS, there is a need for more analysis on social transformations to which states must adapt if they are to respond with appropriate and effective social policies.
Synergies Between Globalization and Welfare
One perspective on the impact of globalization on the EB considers that the internationalization of the world economy means a loss of autonomy for nation-states and a reduction of political opportunities, as well as the weakening of labor markets. Technological change and global trade have favored the declining demand for unskilled, semi-skilled, and traditional labor for which the EB was designed. The major effect of globalization is the decline of the autonomy of nation-states. The relationship between the state and globalization is established from seven pillars since the emergence of the globalization process:
- Limits the ability of national governments to achieve full employment and economic growth
- Entails the increase in inequality of wages and working conditions
- Presses downward on social protection systems and spending
- Weakens ideologies underpinning social protection
- Undermines associationism
- Makes it difficult for national governments to access the policies of the left and center
- The logic of globalization is confronted with the ‘logic’ of national communities and democracy.
R. MISHRA argues that globalization has backed neoliberal economics and privileged it as a transnational force, controlling the Nation-States and Governments and, therefore, affecting the EB. However, several authors advocate the continuation of the autonomy of national economies and governments despite globalization. Some argue that economic changes are more gradual than the previous perspective suggests. Other authors come to establish that the EB are consistent with the globalization process and are even necessary in the context of globalized economies in the provision of social welfare and policy measures to counteract the effects of economic changes produced by the dynamics of globalization.