This symposium makes a first step in bridging the emerging eco-social debate and the established political science theories and concepts, indicating the mutually beneficial analytical perspectives and common research pathways that may arise. In addition to identifying several aspects in the policy, politics and polity dimensions that appear to be particularly relevant in view of the emerging eco-social policies, this collection of articles points out two cross-cutting themes, namely the transformation of the welfare state set-ups, and new cleavages and power relations, which pose new questions and open a promising research agenda for political scientists.

In The Political Economy of Human Happiness: How Voters’ Choices Determine the Quality of Life, Benjamin Radcliff considers a wide variety of data from North America and Europe and argues that, on balance, welfare state policies make people happier. In short, there is a positive correlation and a causal relationship between happiness and welfare state provisions. This is an important conclusion for anyone interested in public policy and debates about the size of government. In their reviews, Larry M. Bartels and William A. Galston take issue with Radcliff’s thesis. They challenge the relationships that Radcliff suggests exist between specific policies and happiness. Bartels challenges the way Radcliff uses his statistics to support his thesis about the relationship between happiness and specific policies as well as our ability to make generalisations from the data. Galson’s objections to Radcliff’s analysis and argument is more conceptual, and, among other things, he challenges the connection Radcliff seeks to establish between happiness and the satisfaction of human needs.

This paper analyses welfare regime changes in Serbia and their impact on social enterprise development in the last two decades. We cover the period of significant transition-related reforms within the welfare state, with important implications on the position of these enterprises. Using data gathered from the qualitative field research, our study shows that there are two broad groups of factors that are important for development of the new generation of social enterprises, those that emerged in the last decade with an idea to foster entrepreneurial spirit and expanded into new domains other than those providing assistance to the marginalized groups. First, their decision to enter the social economy sector still depends on the environment created by the state. Secondly, their sustainability is affected by the factors typically found in any other enterprise of comparable scale like business skills, capacity to form networks and partner with relevant stakeholders.

In this article, we argue that, since the publication of the European Green Deal, an EU framework for a just transition is gradually emerging, consisting of legislation, funding and guidelines to ensure that the opportunities deriving from the green transition are exploited, while the related social challenges are addressed. Relying on qualitative research methods, we first identify the features of key EU policy instruments for a just transition and, in particular, the role therein attributed to welfare policies. Second, we provide insights on the political dynamics behind the emergence and design of these policies. Hence, we build a bridge between the eco-social debate and political science, focusing on both EU level policies and politics. We conclude that, while a number of initiatives for a just transition have been elaborated by the EU in recent years, such an EU framework should be further developed, including by focusing more on providing citizens with financial 'buffers' and ensuring consensus on the green transition through social and civic dialogue. Considering the politics behind these EU eco-social policies, we find that their emergence has been characterised by both incremental and transformative elements, while their features have been affected by traditional conflict lines characterising EU politics.

This brief article introduces the Special Issue “Unlikely Partners? Evolving Government-Nonprofit Relationships, East and West”, which calls attention to a growing pattern of “nonprofitization” of the welfare state in countries stretching from Western Europe, through Central Europe and Russia, and into Central Asia and the Far East to determine what lessons they might hold for the Russian experience and for the evolution of the modern welfare state more generally.

In the article, we analyse the impact of changing policy environments on the development of the third sector in Europe. Based on the results of systematic comparative research in eight European countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK), we identify commonalities and differences. In a three-step analysis, we examine policy changes, effects on the third sector and responses by third sector organizations (TSOs) in the social domain. Overall, the third sector in Europe has proven resilient. However, not only have public and private funding decreased, the process for acquiring such funding has become more demanding for TSOs, as have requirements to be accountable. There are signs of a proliferation of more market-based, hybrid organizations. Despite this general trend towards marketization, the impact of policy changes varies across Europe with TSOs being better equipped to adapt and survive in countries where collaborative ties between the state and the third sector have traditionally been strong.

This paper investigates the relationship between the emergence of social enterprises (SEs) and the historical development of the Italian welfare state. Our research offers a comprehensive overview of the internal and external influences that shaped the constitutive relations between the welfare state and SEs. A qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups has been adopted. This study suggests that two interconnected dynamics—the emergence of new social needs being answered by private organisations and the increased prominence of third sector actors during the privatisation of the welfare state—shaped the co-evolution of the welfare state and SEs in Italy. The study also suggests that the emergence and evolution of Social Enterprises in the years leading up to 2001 was mainly a bottom-up phenomena stemming from the actions of citizens setting up private organisations (often cooperatives) to answer to social problems created by new social needs and the structural reform of the welfare state. After 2001 especially with the new law on SEs in 2016, the evolution of SEs seems to have been increasingly influenced by the surrounding ecosystem of actors and supranational policy discourses rather than SEs themselves.

The paper serves as an introduction to a special issue discussing social enterprises historical development and functions against welfare regimes across six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Scotland, Serbia). While discussing convergences and diversities among them, the introduction proposes a comparative analytical framework for understanding social enterprises and welfare state as contingent phenomena developed at different point in time, within a broader political-institutional framework regulating states-peoples’ relationships.

European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights rulings create a form of transnational social citizenship. European judicial activism appears reminiscent of US politics, but is rooted in distinctively European commitments to solidarity. Yet because rights rely on domestic programmes, social citizenship remains vulnerable to retrenchment. This article argues that reforms threaten to transform European social citizenship into a civil citizenship that moves Europe closer to the minimalist US model of social protection.

This essay embraces a notion of critical scholarship concerned with proposing normative and actionable alternatives that can create more inclusive societies and focuses on the role of institutionalizing experimental places for inclusive social innovation as a bottom-up strategic response to welfare state reforms. By mobilizing the notions of utopias and heterotopias in Foucault, the paper sheds light on the opportunity to move from policy utopias to democratic heterotopias, discussing the politics embedded in this cognitive shift and the democratic nature of social innovation changing social and governance relations by interacting with politico-administrative systems. Some obstacles to institutionalizing social innovation are highlighted, as well as some key governance mechanisms that can be activated either by public and/or social purpose organizations to try to overcome those obstacles. Finally, we discuss the importance of linking inclusive social innovation with democratic, rather than market logics.

The variation among countries when it comes to the admittance of forced migrants – refugees and asylum seekers – is substantial. This article explains part of this variation by developing and testing an institutional explanation to the admission of forced migrants; more precisely, it investigates the impact of domestic welfare state institutions on admission. Building on comparative welfare state research, it is hypothesised that comprehensive welfare state institutions will have a positive effect on the admission of forced migrants to a country. There are three features of comprehensive welfare state institutions that could steer policies towards forced migrants in a more open direction. First, these institutions have been shown to impact on the boundaries of social solidarity. Second, they enhance generalised trust. And third, they can impact on the citizens’ view of what the state should and can do in terms of protecting individuals. The argument is tested using a broad comparative dataset of patterns of forced migration, covering 17 OECD countries between 1980 and 2003. This analysis shows that comprehensive welfare state institutions have a significant positive effect on the admission of forced migrants, under control for a number of factors often highlighted in migration research.

The article argues that in Denmark during the past 150 years, moral elites have been central in settling paradoxes within social policy by developing ‘classifications’ of citizens and sectors: who are deserving of help and what sector (public or third) should provide care. Contrary to widely held beliefs, historically, there is no logical or practical connection between ‘more deserving’ and ‘state support’. Theoretically, the article integrates elite scholarship and cultural sociology in developing a concept of moral elites’ power from—their sources of moral authority—and power to, the way that they have used their power to classify citizens and sectors. Empirically, the Danish moral elite and its involvement in social policy are analyzed based on secondary as well as primary historical sources. Findings: The development of the Danish moral elite has roots in the administrators of the nineteenth-century absolutist state: the clergy, medical doctors, and lawyers. Educational resources and state affiliation continue to be central to moral elite status. Economists have ascended to the top of the moral elite, while clergymen have dropped out. Three major classifications were developed during the period. ‘Help to self-help’ (late nineteenth century): deserving poor should receive help from private charity, while the public system should deter and discipline. ‘Rights’ (mid-twentieth century): the state should care for all, philanthropy mostly considered stigmatizing. ‘Workfare’ (late twentieth century to present): citizens are considered deserving as long as they are ‘active’, and sectors are considered equal in providing for citizens as long as they reach the economistic goal of activation.

This article investigates how globalization and organized labour condition partisan effects on different welfare state programs. The main argument is that the conditional effect of globalization on government partisanship depends on how relevant a program is to the needs of vulnerable groups and that organized labour additionally affects this relationship. Analyzing 21 OECD countries between 1980 and 2011/2014, empirical evidence largely corroborates this argument: Firstly, the expectation that partisan differences decrease with globalization in general and especially in weak labour countries in the case of programs that are less relevant for compensation holds true for old‐age provision and partly for sick pay insurance. Secondly, and in accordance with theoretical expectations concerning programs that are primarily relevant for compensation, partisan differences increase with globalization, in general regarding education and only in strong labour countries regarding unemployment benefits. Therefore, while globalization constrains national politics’ room for manoeuvre in some areas, parties are still able to follow their ideologically preferred policies and respond to compensation demands in others.

East Europe’s welfare states have undergone enormous changes in the two and a half decades since Communism collapsed. After forming part of a distinctive Communist political economy for four decades, they have been restructured in market-conforming directions that re-define public and private responsibility for societal well-being. Civil society or nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and market providers have entered the welfare sphere. The present paper maps divergent trajectories of East-Central European (ECE) welfare states and those of the Former Soviet Union (FSU), focusing on persistent legacies as well as innovation, political negotiation over reforms, and the strong influence of the European Union in shaping outcomes. It shows the growing role of NPOs across contemporary ECE and FSU welfare sectors, as advocates and as service providers partnering with governments. While NPOs remain comparatively weak in post-communist states, there is remarkable convergence of democratic and authoritarian regimes around policies of government–NPO partnerships to improve welfare performance.

Party systems diverge in their levels of nationalisation. While in some countries parties obtain similar levels of electoral support in all districts, in others parties get very asymmetric electoral shares across districts. The distributive consequences of this have been seldom studied. The argument tested here is that when political parties have nationalised electorates they have stronger incentives to provide social policies that spread benefits all over the territory. This argument is tested in 22 OECD democracies for the period 1980−2006. The results show that, regardless of the electoral system in place, there is a positive relation between party system nationalisation and social spending.

Churches have a hard time defending their moral values in the political sphere of an ever more secular and liberal Western Europe. A largely neglected means of navigating this crisis is through the Church’s role as a charitable provider during the implementation of morality policies. This paper examines this type of church involvement from a cross-national and cross-sectoral perspective. We describe the activities of Protestant churches in four morality policy areas in three European countries: Germany, England, and Denmark. The variation in religious engagement observed in these areas and countries appear to be driven by the churches’ room to maneuver and their policy congruence with state goals, whereas governance capacities are secondary. Thus, the provision of social services can still serve as a means by which Protestant churches can exert moral authority, especially if these social services are related to moral issues.

Case study research from France and Germany reveals that Catholic welfare is revising its mission and its methods. Central points are a different approach to voluntary participation, new public relations, and a rearrangement of public-private partnerships. As a result, Catholic welfare has become activated in both countries. While the shrinking of the overall influence of Catholic charity seems inevitable, there is more creative agency, and less “programming” by the old stakeholders. The national paths of change, however, differ in that Caritas, defending its service approach, is confronted with a process of de-institutionalization while Secours catholique, though giving particular emphasis to voluntary action is entering into further institutionalization.

This article compares results from a study of service quality in cooperative and municipal preschools. The parent cooperative and municipal childcare represents two different schools of thought with regard to service quality. The municipal services have a strong tradition of professionalism in which user participation is not allowed to interfere with the qualified work performed by trained professionals. The parent cooperatives have another tradition in which service quality is developed in a dialogue between users and staff while they co-produce the services together. The former tradition is the dominant one in the Swedish welfare state while the latter is an exception. The conclusion of the article is that service quality is better in the parent cooperative childcare in spite of the widespread assumption in Sweden that service quality is close to synonymous with professionalism.

This article investigates fiscal policy responses to the Great Recession in historical perspective. It explores general trends in the frequency, size and composition of fiscal stimulus as well as the impact of government partisanship on fiscal policy outputs during the four international recessions of 1980–1981, 1990–1991, 2001–2002 and 2008–2009. Encompassing 17–23 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the analysis calls into question the idea of a general retreat from fiscal policy activism since the early 1980s. The propensity of governments to respond to economic downturns by engaging in fiscal stimulus has increased over time and no secular trend in the size of stimulus measures is observed. At the same time, OECD governments have relied more on tax cuts to stimulate demand in the two recessions of the 2000s than they did in the early 1980s or early 1990s. Regarding government partisanship, no significant direct partisan effects on either the size or the composition of fiscal stimulus is found for any of the four recession episodes. However, the size of the welfare state conditioned the impact of government partisanship in the two recessions of the 2000s, with left‐leaning governments distinctly more prone to engaging in discretionary fiscal stimulus and/or spending increases in large welfare states, but not in small welfare states.