The State of the Social Investment State in the Field of Employment Policy
Keywords:
social investment, employment, welfare, social securityAbstract
This article takes issue with a simple history of welfare regimes that divides the post-1945 years into a golden age and an era of retrenchment. Rather, we claim that it is more appropriate to describe three moments in liberal welfare regimes. Essential to this reconceptualisation is the observation of a gradual introduction, since the middle of the 1990s, of new social policies that move beyond the realm of “cuts.” They provide new visions of welfare and delineate novel parameters of social discourse and action. We term this the moment of the Social Investment State in liberal welfare regimes. The Social Investment State is not simply guided by neo-liberal precepts, nor is it even simply a reworking of Thatcherite policies. Instead it is a new form of welfare. In order to understand how the recent period (1995- 2003) can be distinguished from the period of austerity (1980-1995), this article presents in chronological order the reform of the principal instruments of employment policy used in Canada and the United Kingdom. This new model of welfare, however, is not necessarily without negative effects; the Social Investment State leaves many groups without protection.
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