Introduction to the Special Issue on social services as critical infrastructure: Taking stock of the promises of the social investment state

Theoretical background: the policy capacity approach

The concept of policy capacity (Wu et al., 2018) plays a crucial role in assessing implementation structures and related challenges in the articles compiled for the Special Issue. This approach recognises, firstly, the critical importance of focusing on the implementation stage to assess effective policymaking, thus on everything which comes beyond formulating policy intentions and turning them to laws, rules, and policy programmes. As Pressman and Wildavsky (1984) convincingly highlighted, it is during this stage of the policy cycle that ‘great expectations’ might be ‘dashed’. Furthermore, the policy capacity approach acknowledges that implementation requires more than just the availability of resources. Implementation capacity encompasses various dimensions, including human resources, technical expertise, organisational structures, leadership, governance processes, and the ability to engage with stakeholders and utilise evidence-based practices. According to Wu et al. (2018: 3ff), these skills and resources can be categorised into three different types – analytical, operational and political skills and resources – that are relevant at three different levels: the system, the organisational and the individual level.

The six articles of this Special Issue examine how different European countries, representing welfare states with different regional backgrounds, traditions, and traditions of organising state-society relations, have responded to the challenge of transforming their social service systems into sustainable and resilient critical infrastructures. They show how the conditions of implementation – mechanisms for horizontal and vertical coordination, for information collection and processing, for stimulating organisational learning and more – shape the transformation of the welfare state. The variations observed among countries in achieving a social investment state are not solely or primarily attributable to a lack of political will, but also to inadequacies in their implementation structures.

Country studies: single case and comparative perspectives

Drawing on the capacity approach of Wu et al. (2018) in their contribution, ‘Social services as critical infrastructures: conceptualising and studying the operational core of the social investment state’, Tanja Klenk and Renate Reiter compare the German and French welfare state's investment in the capacities for social service provision in the sectors of early childhood education and care and of elderly care. They enquire how the welfare state's capacity for a quantitatively and qualitatively sustainable provision of social services in the two sectors has developed in the last two decades, and critically ask what impact this has had on social and gender equality as main legitimising principles of the social investment state. The authors choose Germany and France as two welfare states with similar welfare systems, but different state and administrative structures, different mechanisms of civil society involvement in service provision and varying traditions of integrating female labour force in these contexts. Using policy documents and secondary analyses as a methodological approach, Klenk and Reiter argue that the idea of a social and gender enhancing the social investment state has indeed shaped agenda-setting and decision-making in both countries. Yet, the implementation of these ideas is still deficient. Even though policy capacity has been expanded considerably in both countries in both sectors, the skill sets, resources, competences and capabilities are still unsatisfactory to see citizens freedom to act enhancing due to the social investment states' intervention. Even more problematic is that limited capacities create new, or reinforce existing, inequalities.

Niklas Andersen & Karen Nielsen Breidahl, in their article on ‘How administrative reforms influence the capacity for implementing the Social Investment State’, offer a novel analytical framework to study the capacity of street-level organisations (SLOs). Applying the framework to the Danish case of implementing active labour market policies (ALMPs) in local jobcentres, the authors ask how recent administrative reforms have shaped the capacity of SLOs for social investment activities. Breidahl & Andersen show that the success or failure of a social investment approach is not only determined by politics and formal policies. In Denmark, administrative reforms have furthered jobcentres’ room for discretion as well as their ability to make long-term investments and to promote integrated service provision across different service areas. The SLOs’ capacity for implementing social investment policies has thus been enhanced. The close monitoring and the continuing control of local jobcentres through a strict and external accountability performance measurement system, however, impedes the actual use of discretion in the daily practice of street-level bureaucrats. Against the background of their findings, the authors conclude that an appropriate balance between centralised control and local autonomy has yet to be found.

In her article entitled ‘Critical infrastructure of social and labour market integration: Capacitating the implementation of social service policies to the long-term unemployed in Germany and France?’, Renate Reiter examines how organisational changes in the employment administrations of both countries have impacted on the opportunity to implement the social investment idea in labour market policies. The author begins by recalling that the comprehensive reforms of labour market policies for the long-term unemployed undertaken by France and Germany at the turn of the millennium were based on the idea of social investment. Combining the capacity approach of Wu et al. (2018) with findings from implementation research, she examines changes in the organisational and procedural foundations of labour market policies for the long-term unemployed in both countries. In fact, Germany and France took different paths in this respect. While in Germany there was partial centralisation of the deployment and use of implementation capacities, in France, corresponding capacities were decentralised. Reiter uses empirical examples to show that the semi-centralisation approach is principally better suited to the practical adaptation of the social investment idea than the decentralisation approach. However, she argues that this idea can only become practically influential in the implementation of labour market integration services for the long-term unemployed if it is politically desired and supported through the continuous provision of decentralised autonomy of action.

Andrea Lippi & Andrea Terlizzi provide a critical description of ‘The Marble Cake of Social Services in Italy and Spain’. Taking the challenge of the Covid-19 crisis as their starting point and drawing on the policy capacity framework by Wu et al. (2018), they explore the impact of the national recovery and resilience plans (NRRP) on the policy capacity for social service provision. These national recovery and resilience plans, which have been adopted by EU Member States to facilitate national economic recovery after the Covid-19 crisis, are likely to impact the core functions of the social investment approach. Using the methods of document analysis and focusing on child and elderly care, the article shows that the infrastructure of the social service systems in Italy and Spain continues to be a ‘marble cake’ in terms of intertwining national and subnational responsibilities, even though the central governments have increased their influence on social investment policy capacity. The authors argue that the pandemic has offered a window of opportunity to overcome traditional weaknesses in social service provision and to innovate the social infrastructure. However, the outcome of these reforms remains to be seen.

Franca van Hooren and Clémence Ledoux explore ‘The limits of social investment and the resilience of long-term care’ from a critical feminist perspective. They have chosen the case of long-term care provision as an example, which is an often-neglected field in the public and academic debate on the social investment state. From a purely functional perspective, social investment in long-term care seems to be less rewarding than, for example, investment in early childhood care and education. Van Hooren and Ledoux show that different modes of organising and implementing social investment policies, such as relying on paid or unpaid work and choosing between using public, private or voluntary service provision, have a huge impact on the overall resilience of social service provision. In both countries, the recent Covid-19 crisis has uncovered the vulnerability of a highly fragmented, decentralised and marketised sector. Against the background of their findings, Franca van Hooren and Clémence Ledoux postulate a social investment paradigm that no longer focuses only on including people in the labour market, but on promoting their capability to take care of the world.

Caspar Lückenbach, Verena Biehl and Thomas Gerlinger, in their article entitled ‘Establishing social services for health promotion in health insurance states: Germany, Switzerland and Austria compared’, explain the evolution and the status quo in the organisation of prevention and health promotion in the three health insurance states of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. From this point of departure, the authors explore the legitimisation patterns for the new institutional forms chosen in these countries to organise the provision of the relevant services. They argue that in all three countries, utilitarian considerations originally played an important role in the institutionalisation of policies for the provision of prevention and health promotion services. In Germany, as well as in Switzerland and Austria, the focus was on the potential to achieve savings for the national health system. More recently, normative justifications for the specific organisation of prevention and health promotion policies have emerged in all three countries, reinforced by corresponding trends in health policy discourse at the international level. The overarching goal is to improve the coordination and cooperation of the actors involved at the different levels of the health system in order to shape healthier environments and/or living environments for the citizens. In contrast, the authors argue, the objective of strengthening the individual and his or her labour force as the basis for a self-determined life, which is frequently mentioned in the social investment discourse, did not play a role in any of the three countries in the justification of policies relating to prevention and health promotion services.

Main findings

On the whole, the six articles of the Special Issue show that intense reform activities are underway in all countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands) and in all fields of social service provision under consideration (health, early childcare and education, long-term care, active labour market policies for the long-term unemployed). Interestingly, the notion of ‘social investment’ plays a negligible role in terms of framing and legitimising reform activities. While social investment as a reform paradigm seems to be highly relevant for policymaking at the European level and in academic debates, it seems to be sparsely used policymaking at the national level. Reform strategies to improve social service provision are debated and adopted often without explicitly referring to the social investment paradigm. Nonetheless, the implemented reform measures significantly contribute to expanding social service provision. And, as some of the contributions in this Special Issue indicate, the Covid-19 pandemic has further intensified the willingness of European states to invest (even more) in social services, given that the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of societies without a resilient social service infrastructure. Social services are increasingly important for the modern welfare state. In fact, this is what the European Union's support for corresponding investments has stressed as well. They have developed into a critical infrastructure of the welfare state.

While we can state without doubt that there is investment in social service provision, there is still a long way to go towards the realization of a (developed) social investment state. The shortcomings of recent social investment policies become clear when adopting a capacity and implementation perspective. Such a perspective demonstrates, firstly, that the expansion of social services is uneven. This finding applies to the development of social service provision across different policy fields (e.g. early childhood education versus long-term care). Moreover, it relates to the development of different capacities: analytical capacities have been expanded more than operational capacities. Shortages of skilled personnel constitute the primary explanatory factor in this regard, and they are evidently the bottleneck of investment and growth in social service provision, highlighting the unresolved issue of ensuring decent working conditions in social service sectors. An implementation perspective also reveals the challenges of organising social investment policies. Difficulties in achieving an appropriate balance between centralisation and decentralisation, between autonomy for street-level bureaucrats and their organisations and accountability through performance measures have been the main reason why social investment policies fail at the ground floor of policymaking and often exacerbate social inequalities instead of resolving them.

In this context, the articles demonstrate that the traditional institutional settings, which have historically shaped the implementation of social service policies and the provision of social services in the countries and sectors examined in this Special Issue, continue to influence policy implementation and service delivery. These settings can either facilitate or hinder the implementation of the social investment idea, depending on the country and sector. Overall, all the articles show that the distribution of tasks between the central government and the local level, as well as striking of a balance between central implementation control and local autonomy for substantial service provision, are critical factors for the feasibility of the social investment paradigm.