Social investment as a policy paradigm

ABSTRACT

This contribution delineates the sui generis paradigmatic portent of the social investment perspective. After theoretically defining the notion of a policy paradigm in welfare state analysis, the substantive core of the social investment paradigm is presented in two consecutive steps. First, the substantive core of the social investment policy paradigm is exemplified in terms of three core policy functions, relating to: raising and maintaining human capital ‘stock’ throughout the life course; easing the ‘flow’ of contemporary labour market transitions; and upkeeping strong minimum-income universal safety nets as social protection and economic stabilization ‘buffers’. To drive home the conjecture of social investment as a policy paradigm in its own right, this will, in the final section, be compared with two preceding hegemonic ideal-typical policy paradigms: the demand-oriented Keynesian-Beveridgean welfare compromise of the post-war era; and its anti-thesis, the neoliberal supply-side critique of the welfare state of the 1980s, along a number of institutionally relevant dimensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Demographic aging
• family-life course
• institutional complementarity
• knowledge economy
• social investment
• welfare state

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank two anonomous reviewers for their constructive comments, and Frank Vandenbroucke and Jim Mosher for insisting on keeping the argument focused on the social investment paradigm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Anton Hemerijck is professor of political science and sociology at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and Centennial Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, UK).