Social regulation
Afghan children working in a brick kiln, 2012
Credit: International Labour Organization / Berger H. / CC BY NC ND
Summary
In the twentieth century, social protection, whose objective is to reduce and prevent lifelong poverty and vulnerability, became an issue of economic, social—and now environmental—development, as well as a (national and international) peacemaking tool and a basic human right in the name of human dignity. However, it still only concerns a minority of individuals in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and the Near East; those who are without it are exposed to poverty, inequality, and social exclusion.
The aim of social protection (or social security) is to reduce and prevent poverty and vulnerability through all stages of life. It encompasses instruments of various kinds: benefits for children and families, maternity, unemployment, work-related injuries and illnesses, sickness, old age, disability,
survivors’ benefits. In the 20th century, became an economic, social and environmental development issue, a tool for promoting peace (nationally and internationally) and a fundamental human right in accordance with the principle of human dignity.
Change in social coverage, 1900-2010
Comment: Social protection and the right to social security have been part of the ILO mandate since it was created in 1919. The organization supplies very complete databases (World Social Protection Database) and reports. In 1900, few countries had social protection systems, and the slope of all the curves shows significant progress in this area. Social coverage varies according to the proportion of the population covered, the number of risks covered and the degree to which needs are satisfied. It also varies from one region and one country to another. For example, help for older people is the most developed overall (almost 68% of the global population), but is only 30% in Africa, whereas it exceeds 95% in Europe and Central Asia. Coverage is least developed in the case of unemployment, ranging between 6% of the population in Africa and 43% in Europe.
Yet only a minority of individuals in Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East enjoy social protection today. In 2018, 55% of the global population lacked access to even a single social security benefit and only one person in five had adequate social security coverage.
Emergence of the social state
The welfare state is the modern state’s latest manifestation, with its origins in the late 19th century when people began to question the model of a liberal Western state that was economically triumphant (industrial revolution) but criticized by social and union movements for the harsh conditions of its workers’ lives. Founded on the recognition of collective freedoms (mechanisms of representation and collective bargaining) and on the principle of solidarity (including intergenerational solidarity) in developing social legislation, social protection takes various forms and is financed in different ways: provision and social insurance via statutory contributions (Germany), individual capitalization plus universal social protection floor (UK), social security as public service (France), redistribution via universalist provision (Scandinavian countries).
Social legislation was initially devised and implemented at national level. Unions (creation of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864), and then multilateralinstitutions (creation of the International Labor Organization [ ILO ] in 1919 and the International Social Security Association [ ISSA ] in 1927) were the vehicles of its internationalization, resulting in numerous international agreements. International progress has been more limited since the Second World War – exceptions being the Declaration of Philadelphia (1944) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – as priorities have shifted (to economic development for international institutions, and to an open, free-flowing labor market for the European project).
The spread of national social security programs ended with decolonization. Yet calls to roll out the welfare state on a global scale met resistance from industrialized nations and multinational corporations (MNCs) – bringing about the failure of the New International Economic Order [NIEO] in the late 1970s – anticipating subsequent challenges to some of the mainstays of the social state with the neoliberal turn of the 1980s.
The social protection established in the 20th century contributed to the prosperity and social and economic development of industrialized societies. In these societies, today it is being undermined by globalization, social and fiscal competition and systemic financial risks. The anonymous nature of provision, long a guarantee of effective protection at a time of declining solidarity, has in turn given rise to an individualism critical of the redistributive process – a trend that the work of charities, community organizations and religious organizations can only partially offset.
Social coverage, 1950-2014
Comment: Social protection and the right to social security have been part of the ILO mandate since it was created in 1919. The organization supplies very full databases (World Social Protection Database) and reports on this matter. A comparison of the two maps with a 60-year gap between them (1950-2014) shows – all branches combined – substantial progress (the “no cover” category having almost disappeared) and an increase in the number of countries with complete coverage. This does not mean that all inhabitants have full access and that the coverage meets their real needs. Furthermore, great inequalities continue to subsist (“partial cover” or “very limited” in most African states, the particular situation of the United States where it is private, and so on).
Toward universal social justice?
In order to meet the new global challenges – political, economic, demographic and environmental in nature – as well as resolving the difficulties some population categories have in accessing social protection, international institutions are now advocating the provision of universal social protection designed to ensure that everyone receives the income or benefits they need through all stages of life.
Social protection expenditure, 2010-2015
Comment: Social protection and the right to social security have been part of the ILO mandate since it was created in 1919. The organization supplies very full databases (World Social Protection Database) and reports on this matter. The map showing global expenditure on social protection (sickness, unemployment, old age, work accidents, family and maternity allowances, disabled allowances, and survivors’ pensions) calculated as a proportion of GDP marks out Western Europe and Japan as having the highest figures (more than 20% of GDP). At the other extreme, in parts of Africa and Western, Southern, and Southeast Asia, expenditure on social protection is low, with less than 6% of GDP.
The aim is to help prevent infant mortality, reduce poverty and child labor, combat the impacts of unemployment, under-employment (especially among the young), the casualization of labor and informal employment, growing poverty among those in work, and inadequate protection for migrantworkers, and to adapt labor markets to the digital revolution. While support for the elderly is the most widespread form of social protection, it faces the challenge of an ageing population – and still cannot guarantee effective access to essential healthcare provision everywhere (long-term care and rural areas being particular challenges).
Facing the same challenges, many countries of the South, emerging countries in particular, are opting to strengthen their social protection mechanisms, as with the Bolsa Familia program in Brazil, China’s medical insurance program, the deprivatization of pension systems in Argentina and Poland, and universal coverage in Lesotho and Namibia.
- social protection > Social Protection
- Payments enabling individuals to cope with life’s risks without compromising their living standards. These include maternity, the costs of raising a family, sickness and disability, unemployment, old age, etc. The three current systems have different origins and aims and influence each other. Social assistance is a minimum income intended to establish solidarity between individuals in the fight against poverty. It is means-tested rather than being based on previous contributions (for example, the welfare system advocated by Beveridge in the UK). Social insurance seeks to counteract the risk of loss of income by providing benefits funded by contributions taken from wages (for example, the system introduced by Bismarck in Germany). Universal benefits are intended to cover certain types of expenditure for all individuals and identical amounts are paid to all, regardless of income or contributions (for example, universal health care coverage in France).
- poverty > Poverty
- Initially referring to a lack of economic resources, the notion of poverty has broadened in recent decades to include its different components, such as appalling sanitary conditions, a low level of education, social and gender inequalities, human rights violations, environmental damage, and increased vulnerability to so-called “natural” disasters. The Human Development Index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Program in the mid-1990s (and its gendered variant, Gender Development Index or GDI) and the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) devised by researchers at the University of Oxford in 2010, use Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities to identify the deprivation suffered by the poor in terms of health, education, and living standards.
- development > Development
- Definitions of development and its opposite – underdevelopment – have varied considerably according to the political objectives and ideological positions of those using these words. In the 1970s, Walt Whitman Rostow conceived of it as an almost mechanical process involving successive stages of economic growth and social improvement, whereas Samir Amin analyzed the relationships between center and peripheries, seeing the development of the former as founded on the exploitation of the latter. In Latin America, the dependency theory condemned the ethnocentrism of the universal view that the “periphery” of underdeveloped states could simply catch up through modernization. Talking of poor or developing “countries” masks the inequalities that also exist within societies (in both Northern and Southern hemispheres) and individuals’ connections to globalization processes.
- human right > Human rights
- These are the fundamentally inalienable and universal rights and duties of human beings, which are indefeasible and universal. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these were limited to “natural rights” (basic freedoms considered to be allied to human nature) but human rights have now been expanded to include civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights on the basis of human freedom and dignity. Human rights have been enshrined in the constitutions of most democratic regimes. They are also subject to many protective provisions at both regional and international levels.
- welfare state > Welfare state
- The welfare state and its practices emerged in Europe in the late 19th century, breaking with the traditional concept of the liberal state. The crisis of the 1930s, followed by the Second World War, made its expansion a matter of necessity. The state became highly redistributive (modifying primary income distribution by redistributing funds levied via tax and social insurance contributions in the form of social benefits), especially during the “Trente Glorieuses” period, i.e. 1945 to 1975. Its role was radically challenged by the processes of globalization and the proponents of neoliberalism, just when economic crisis has made the existence of a social safety net increasingly necessary.
- modern > Modern
- Modernity, characterized by the increasing importance of the economy, of technical innovation, of Western-type democratic regimes, and of rational-legal bureaucracy, is defined from an evolutionist perspective according to the model prevalent in the most industrialized countries, and is a trend toward which all the so-called less advanced societies are seen as converging. This viewpoint, widely denounced for its naïve evolutionism, remains nonetheless implicitly present in much political discourse and within a good deal of research. “Postmodern” is used of artistic and philosophical currents of the second half of the 20th century that critique and deconstruct the concept of modernity.
- liberal > Liberalism
- Arising from Enlightenment philosophy, Liberalism refers to a corpus of political philosophy that places the preservation of individual rights at the center of its conception of society and the political order. Devolving from this, on the one hand, are mechanisms to safeguard the individual against the arbitrary use of state power, which mostly translate into a preference for a democratic political order; and, on the other, an emphasis on respecting private property, which leads in turn to a preference for minimal state involvement in the economy – restricting the state’s role to matters of sovereignty. Behind this consensus are many debates around the level of state involvement in the economy, or around protection of individuals vs. that of a political order and given social norms, which translate into different variants of liberalism (such as German-style ordoliberalism, libertarianism, or liberal conservatism).
- recognition > Recognition
- The validation by an individual, group or institution of a practice, situation or identity that has been claimed. Intrinsically relational and a factor in socialization, recognition can be formal or informal, reciprocal or unilateral. Theories of recognition have an important place in philosophy (Hegel in particular) and have been more recently developed in the social sciences around the “struggle for recognition” (Axel Honneth) and the denial of recognition. International recognition is a discretionary act through which a subject in international law (usually a state or international organization) grants legal status to a situation or an act (a government’s accession to power by non-constitutional means, unilateral declaration of independence, military intervention, etc.).
- bargaining > Negotiation
- Practice which aims to secure agreement between public or private actors, satisfying the participants’ material and symbolic interests by means of mutual concessions. International negotiations are one of the methods of peacefully resolving disputes and can be bilateral (between two actors) or multilateral (three or more actors). They often result in an official document (joint declaration, peace agreement, trade treaty, international convention). Collective negotiation (or collective bargaining) refers to negotiations within a company between the employer and workforce representatives (generally belonging to trade unions) regarding the application of labor law.
- individual > Individual
- The individual, as a basic social actor, is playing an increasingly important role in the processes of globalization for multiple reasons, including the ever-faster circulation of ideas, values and information; the ability to build networks for sharing and solidarity without physical proximity; the networking of international expertise; and human rights movements and demands for democracy.
- public service > Public Service
- An activity in the general interest carried out by a public or private body and overseen by the government. Public services serve a wide range of purposes, from the traditional sovereign functions (police, defense, justice, public finance, diplomacy) to the non-market state sector (education, health, social protection, culture and sport, etc.) and the industrial and commercial sectors (transport, energy, water, telecommunications, etc.). Public services are grounded in fundamental principles: equality of access and treatment for users, continuity, accessibility, neutrality and transparency of services, and their adaptability to evolutions of the general interest. The notions of services in the general interest and universal services, used in European and some international institutions, have – not without controversy – redefined the perimeters of state action in reaction to the liberalization of some of these sectors.
- multilateral > Multilateralism
- To see multilateralism as international cooperation involving at least three states reduces it to a mere technique. In fact, it also has a qualitative, normative aspect which has been evident since the time of the League of Nations. According to Franck Petiteville, this makes multilateralism a form of international collective action which aims to produce “norms and rules seeking to establish a cooperative international order governing international interdependencies.” The adjective “multilateral” first appeared in the late 1940s which is when awareness of the concept began to emerge.
- institutions > Institutions
- The term institution refers to social structures (rules, standards, practices, actions, roles) that are long-lasting, organized in a stable and depersonalized way, and play a part in regulating social relationships. An institution can be formalized within organizations (international or otherwise). In political science, institutionalism tackles the objects of political analysis by studying their structural basis and their organizational model rather than thinking about how they relate to society.
- decolonization > Decolonization
- The empires that resulted from the two great waves of colonization were called into question by colonized countries during the inter-war period. They subsequently collapsed after World War II. The United Kingdom relied on the Commonwealth to make a relatively smooth exit from colonialism, whereas France lost two wars, one in Indochina, the other in Algeria. In 1955, the Bandung conference brought together representatives from twenty-nine countries to mark their support for independence struggles. Spain and Portugal were the last European states to cling to their empires, which nevertheless collapsed in 1975. Although the colonial empires have all disappeared, they have left their mark on territories that are claiming their independence. The last half-century has witnessed the ongoing Israeli colonization of Palestine.
- multinational corporations > Multinational corporation
- Company that has undertaken foreign direct investment (FDI) giving it access to facilities that it owns fully or in part (subsidiaries). The first MNCs date from the late 19th century; corporations of this kind have become widespread in the early 21st century. The majority of FDI takes place between industrialized nations. Such companies are now transnational rather than multinational, the largest among them tending to evolve into global corporate networks.
- New International Economic Order
- Concept proposed by Third World countries during the 1960s and 1970s, calling for a rebalancing of the highly asymmetrical economic and trading relations between developed countries and the developing world. The principles proposed included the right of every state to control its resources (e.g. via nationalizations), the principle of fair and stable prices for exporters of raw materials, guaranteed outlets and preferential treatment for developing countries, supervision of the activities of multinational corporations, and compensation for damages suffered under colonial rule. The NIEO also spawned a variant focusing on information issues, with the call for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). These demands met with resistance from most developed countries and then collided with the neoliberal turn of the 1980s, before re-emerging within anti-globalization movements from the 1990s onward.
- globalization > Globalization
- The term globalization refers to a set of multidimensional processes (economic, cultural, political, financial, social, etc.) that are reconfiguring the global arena. These processes do not exclusively involve a generalized scale shift toward the global because they do not necessarily converge, do not impact all individuals, and do not impact everyone in the same way. Contemporary globalization means more than just an increase in trade and exchanges, an internationalization of economies and an upsurge in connectivity: it is radically transforming the spatial organization of economic, political, social and cultural relationships.
- individualism > Individual
- The individual, as a basic social actor, is playing an increasingly important role in the processes of globalization for multiple reasons, including the ever-faster circulation of ideas, values and information; the ability to build networks for sharing and solidarity without physical proximity; the networking of international expertise; and human rights movements and demands for democracy.
- community > Communitarian
- Notions that appeared in the late 1970s on the political science, denoting the development of identity, a sense of belonging, and allegiance on ethnic, linguistic, religious, or sociological grounds, aside from or even against the state and the social contract it is supposed to guarantee. Contemporary globalization is profoundly altering the role of states and individuals, as well as the complex relationships between the universal and the particular, thus opening up spaces for multiple forms of communitarianism to emerge.
- religious > Religious
- There is no universal understanding of the notion of religion, nor is there any clear distinction between a religion and a sect. Generally speaking, a religion is a system of beliefs that makes a distinction between the sacred and the profane, manifested in a set of ritual actions that give reality to this distinction. Individuals may be described as religious if they practice or claim to belong to a religion, or if they have made religion their profession and devoted their lives to it.
- migrant > Migration
- Movement of people leaving their country of origin permanently (emigration) to relocate to another country (immigration), which might be voluntary or forced (war, poverty, unemployment, human rights violations, climate factors, etc.), and which often involves temporary stays of varying duration in several transit countries. Migratory flows, which are an integral component of humanity’s history, give rise to a range of public policy measures linked to specific political, economic and cultural contexts and understandings of nationality. Host states seek to organize immigration, sometimes to attract it (need for labor, exploitation of specific territories, naturalizations, etc.), and most often to restrict it (border controls, quotas, residence permits, etc.). In most cases the states of origin seek to maintain relations with their nationals and diaspora communities living abroad.
- emerging countries > Emerging Country
- This term arose in the 1980s among economic and financial actors, who used the adjective “emerging” to describe markets where investment was risky but profitable. With its emphasis on growth and suggestion of rising movement, it reflects a linear, Western-centered understanding of development. As adopted and challenged by political actors, the label refers to the international, economic, political and/or diplomatic integration of some countries. It invites us to interrogate the way it is used both by actors who adopt it and those who reject it.