Abstract
The contributions to this issue of Global Social Policy (GSP) provide a lot of material to let us reflect on the basics of scholarship in the field. The role of international actors and transnational influences on national social policies is discussed in three of this issue’s articles.
First, Steffi Hamann discusses social policy development and implementation in Cameroon as an example of a post-colonial sub-Saharan African state. The article combines a historical policy review with findings from a recent study on livelihood conditions of rural households, and illustrates how different and complex forms of interdependencies (horizontal and vertical) matter at different phases of Cameroon’s history. Hamann argues that Cameroon is just one example of how in sub-Saharan Africa social protection systems tend to benefit the privileged rather than the deserving parts of the population, and that social policies have been used to safeguard dominant power structures, fostering clientelist relationships and legitimising global economic ties. In that sense, Hamann’s article speaks to previous GSP articles on sub-Saharan African countries. For example, Simpson (2018), on studying conditional cash transfers, argued that how programmes are implemented hugely depends on the respective donor agencies and their relationships with government elites. Going further, he claimed that specific social protection programmes do not really fit domestic political concerns in that group of countries, and that African heterogeneity needs to be acknowledged and factored in. At a more abstract, global level, Seekings (2019) had made the point that the Social Protection Floor initiative, one of the key ideational concepts in global social policies, is barely ‘global’ in terms of authorship, ownership and impact. According to his view, the SPF initiative looks suspiciously Northern [. . .], based on a normative concept of universal coverage with which many African policymakers did not agree, and hitched to an understanding of individual social and economic rights that they viewed as alien. (Seekings, 2019: 154)
Second, Tolga Duygun’s article, in some contrast, shows an example of a middle-income country that is more of an agent in ‘letting ideas in’ instead of having policies imposed. The article reports a study on how the policy scripts of international organisations have been translated into national policies using the example of disability policies in Turkey. Influence is captured as policy scripts move from international organisations to a member state through complex dynamics between domestic and international actors. Duygun shows how these dynamics produce certain policy outcomes, and provides evidence of different forms of direct and indirect coercive influence. He illustrates how, for example, UN standard rules interact with social, political, economic and cultural localities of the country, and how ‘hybrid’ domestic policies emerge. Furthermore, transnational policy is described as a ‘trial and error’ process. Similar arguments concerning other systems of social protection in Turkey had been made by Güleç (2014) showing that external pressures were mediated by domestic factors, and also Saritas (2020) who had reported on the strong role played by the Turkish government’s priorities in pension reform. On the introduction of unemployment insurance in Turkey, Ozkan (2013) had illustrated how not only the goals of different external agencies may differ but also how the ‘mediation’ process is driven by different sorts of interaction between external and domestic actors.
Third, exploring another middle-income country is Olga Ulybina’s case study on the inter-relationships of national and transnational actors and forces in Georgia. We learn how childcare deinstitutionalisation (DI) in that country has happened in the context of simultaneously emerging global and European Union (EU) policies on the issue. The article explores the nature of EU and other transnational actors’ involvement and the extent of their influential impact. It also touches upon the issue of coherence in external policy ideas. Ulybina shows that different external agencies have been differently involved in reforming DI policies in Georgia. We can see that different phases can be distinguished but characterised quite differently: in the mid-1990s, it was individual (particularly individual international actors) and grassroots initiatives as the external efforts to improve the conditions in childcare institutions. UN agencies also played a role around the turn of the millennium. From the mid-2000 onwards, donors and humanitarian partners became stronger. Furthermore, the EU was an external agent in the field but ‘only in terms of being a cluster of DI advocates, first disjointed and later turning into an advocacy coalition’. Ulybina concludes that there was a parallel emergence and development of ideas in national and transnational contexts. The transnational ideas did not ‘cause’ the policy change; and, transnational transformative agency is identified as multiform and inter-related, at times even incoherent, continuous and evolving. Similarly, other recent articles have also engaged with translation concepts – for example, Maron (2020) with a focus on Israel and social investment ideas, and Kuhlmann et al. (2020) with a more general approach to diffusion. Our next issue, a special issue, will also focus on international knowledge transfer and learning in the post-Soviet region (some of the articles are already available as ‘online first’ publications at https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/toc/gspa/0/0).
Our fourth article makes a contribution to global social governance, particularly the ‘global social governance by numbers’ literature. Sara Rose Taylor engages with quantitative and gender-based approaches for understanding global development goals and their associated measures as a form of global knowledge production. It is also a normative argument in that it offers an example for how to turn sites of contestation into a desired ideational or policy direction; more concretely on ‘the value of pro-quantitative feminist strategies and the importance of engaging with the language of indicators in quantitatively driven spaces of contestation in order to work strategically within policy network’. The article argues that a quantitatively based feminist approach is indeed useful in achieving this aim. In an attempt to do something similar with the International Labour Organization (ILO), Drubel (2019) had shown how the ILO had used quantification and visualisation schemes to illustrate forced labour. Further contributions on feminist perspectives in global social policies can be found in GSP Issue 14 (2).
The GSP Forum edited and introduced by Tuba I Agartan, Sarah Cook and Vivian Lin picks up the current difficult and controversial discussions surrounding the World Health Organization (WHO) and its response to COVID-19. This Forum links well with the previous GSP Forum in Issue 20.2 on Universal Health Care, which pointed to the need for stronger universal systems in managing any such pandemic. In this Forum, a prominent set of global health policy experts examine the role and mandate of WHO, how it is able to exercise its powers in managing the COVID-19 pandemic and the limits on its capacities, while situating these discussions within the broader context of shifting multilateral and regional dynamics and rising nationalism. The Forum is particularly interested in exploring the politics behind the forceful symbolism of the US administration deciding to leave WHO in the midst of a global pandemic. The contributions bring in diverse perspectives from the politics of global health systems and changing multilateralism, colonial power dynamics, civil society perspectives on the WHO, how the WHO engages with state and non-state actors, and innovative ways in which regional offices of WHO are also preparing for a future beyond the pandemic. In the Introduction, Agartan, Cook and Lin illuminate WHO’s capabilities in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the response to WHO’s actions, through a global social policy lens. This perspective helps to unpack the narrative around WHO’s dual – at times apparently contradictory – mandates, its actions and relationships with different actors (state and non-state) at multiple scales (local, regional, global) and the inevitable ways in which politics and power shape both the actions of WHO and how these are interpreted and evaluated.
Kelley Lee illustrates how global health and politics are inextricably intertwined, arguing that the ideal of a ‘politics’ free WHO has never been a reality; instead, the imperative is to consider what ‘good politics’ in the case of WHO could mean. Nitsan Chorev discusses WHO as caught between the United States and China within changing multilateralism, and asks how COVID-19 will change the international power game. Reflecting on the shifts in multilateralism, David G. Legge places the criticisms of WHO in the context of continuing pressure to transform the structures of global health governance: from multilateralism and member state sovereignty to the ‘multi-stakeholder public private partnership’ model where transnational corporations and philanthropic foundations demand a seat at the table. Legge uses the example of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A or ‘the Accelerator’), which serves as the main global platform for fast tracking the development of vaccines and medicines for COVID-19, to examine how contradictions between the Global North and South manifest themselves. Aniekan Ekpenyong and Mariana Soto Pacheco similarly address power imbalances, reflecting on the role of the WHO in knowledge exchange between the Global North and Global South, in relation to colonialist structures that still characterise global social governance. Ngozi A Erondu, Iya Saidou Conde and Afifah Rahman-Shepherd reflect on what it would mean to ‘empower’ the WHO to address the structural and institutional constraints that limit WHO in carrying out its mandate for leadership in global public health. Vivian Lin takes a closer look at WHO’s institutional structure and, using the futures methodology as an example, Lin discusses how its decentralised structure allows the organisation to be more innovative and responsive to changing regional contexts and needs in a complex world. Similarly highlighting innovative approaches in the field of health promotion in response to COVID-19, Susan Pineda Mercado explains the collaboration among International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Asia Pacific Regional Office and the WHO.
Last but not least, GSP Digest editor Amanda Shriwise and her team have done a tremendous job in collecting, portraying and commenting on numerous happenings related to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. In addition, this issue introduces two new sections: migration and gender. The GSP Digest always provides a broad overview over global social policy developments across various fields and this issue signals how global social governance is currently limited to ‘global corona governance’. It argues that it is particularly critical to understand the contradictions and tensions evolving through the COVID-19 crisis-reactions by global actors: this pandemic and associated multiple crises are on the one hand promoting joint action and the digital formats of meetings can mean more open and inclusive international meetings. Yet, on the other hand, agendas are reduced to a minimum, which implies silencing out broader and alternative voices to emerging debates. The challenged role of international organisations (as addressed in the Forum) is reflected in the Digest as well. Most dramatically, the already deficient degree of global solidarity and global social redistribution is even more challenged by states turning their focus to domestic sites of health and social problems. Particularly worrisome here is what is already looming as middle- and long-term implications of COVID-19-related measures and developments, such as declining financial flows to low-income countries (potentially official development assistance (ODA), but definitely remittances). The loss of jobs and social protection is also dramatic, affecting most of the world’s countries – particularly in the light of the ILO naming employment as the most effective countermeasure to the COVID-19 crisis. Potential international measures to address such challenges are on the agenda of many international gatherings, but at the same time counteracted by strongly national(istic) strategies, as the Digest shows in many examples, including global taxes. The Digest also addresses how the COVID-19 crisis has an impact on children and women, particularly in the context of school closures and traditional gender roles.
I wish all GSP readers inspiring reading of our articles and other contributions. I also invite any GSP scholar to submit articles, ideas for special issues or GSP Forums, new books (that could be presented and discussed in upcoming editorials) and any other ideas or inputs for making the journal better and richer!
Alexandra Kaasch