We are happy to publish a roundtable debate based on the discussions carried out at the webinar organized by our journal to discuss Ayşe Buğra’s latest book, Social Policy in Capitalist History: Perspectives on Poverty, Work and Society . Buğra’s important contribution to the field of social policy is critically evaluated by Guy Standing, Andrew Fischer, and Tuba Ağartan. Social policy is an important field for New Perspectives on Turkey , one in which we try to publish research articles, book reviews, and commentaries. We are hoping that this roundtable debate, by revisiting the theoretical and historical foundations of social policy via Standing’s, Fischer’s, and Ağartan’s takes on Buğra’s arguments, will contribute to the enhancement of the ongoing critical discussions at a time during which the capitalist economy is going through a major transformation at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. We are grateful to Başak Akkan for organizing and moderating the webinar and seeing through the publication process and our associate editor Z. Umut Türem for making it possible.

Chapter 4 is on the formation of a global social policy environment in the context of neoliberal capitalism. This chapter examines the emergence of a new social policy outlook where people throughout the world were called upon to act as rational market agents and adapt to the insecurity-laden environment of the flexible production system. As the 'unmaking' of the organized working classes with social security protection and the rising inequality within and between nations proceeded, the optimistic post-cold war observations about the transitions to democracy in East Central Europe as well as in developing countries were challenged by the developments in global politics marked by widespread authoritarian populist trends. In this context, we also see the emergence of a rich body of social policy literature with important insights to the problems of work, poverty and membership in society. These insights have become all the more relevant after the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the problems of the existing capitalist order and led to questions of the possibility of a different world order.

The introduction presents the book as a historical overview of the ideas and politics of social policy situated in capitalist history. The book approaches social policy as a response to socioeconomic tensions and conflicts brought about by the dynamics of capitalist development and investigates the nature of this response in the way it reflects and to a certain extent shapes the characteristics of the world of work and socioeconomic life in each historical phase of capitalism without overlooking the inter-country differences in social policy environments. The theoretical frame of analysis is formed around the ideas of 'creative destruction' and 'accumulation by dispossession' as defining features of capitalism highlighted in Marx's writings and Karl Polanyi's contribution to the limits of narrow class analysis. Contemporary relevance of remembering different imaginations of society and conceptualizations of social justice found in the history of social policy debate is discussed in light of the questions raised about the future of the global capitalist order during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This invigorating book approaches social policy as a response to socioeconomic tensions and conflicts brought about by capitalist development, exploring how such policy reflects and shapes the world of work and socioeconomic life. Ayşe Buğra presents a historical overview of the ideas and politics of social policy in a discussion framed around the interrelated questions of poverty, work and inequality.

Chapter 1 traces the origin of modern social policy debate back to the early capitalist development in sixteenth-century Europe. The chapter presents a discussion of the socioeconomic transformations which have changed both the character and the perceptions of work and poverty and led to the emergence of publicly funded social assistance measures implemented by lay political authorities. Continuity and change in the approaches to poverty and the working poor is discussed through the age of mercantilism and the progress of industrial development until the nineteenth-century market-dominated capitalist order. Rival perspectives on economic development and the requirements of social justice are presented by revisiting the ideas of humanist writers of the sixteenth century or the different eighteenth-century approaches to social policy-related problems of writers such as Defoe, Mandeville, Smith and Burke.

This article explores the relationship between women's labor market participation and early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Turkey within a broader Mediterranean context. Since the 1990s, there have been significant changes in the familialist models in the Mediterranean region driven by women's increased labor market participation and the expansion of ECEC services. The transformations in the region have unveiled a significant link between the expansion of preschool education and an increase in women's labor market participation. Turkey missed this critical juncture in the 1990s, as indicated by the low employment rates of women and below-the-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-average preschool enrolment. Through a comparative perspective that examines the slow progress in both areas in Turkey as well as the gendered feature of its familialist model, the article emphasizes the need for closer analysis of the link between ECEC and the low labor force participation of women. Given that the expansion of ECEC in the 2000s has taken place through market-driven services, the article concludes that the link between ECEC and women's labor market participation exhibits a class dimension. Thereby, women from lower socio-economic groups are increasingly experiencing the impact of the gendered characteristics inherent in the familialist regime in Turkey.

In this chapter, three currently dominant theoretical perspectives on poverty are discussed in light of the changing character of global poverty in the post-Second World War period. The capability, social exclusion and human rights perspectives are examined by drawing attention to the differences and similarities between the ways they address the questions which are salient in the contemporary poverty debate. The questions that are addressed pertain to the meaning and measurement of poverty in its relationship with growth, employment and inequality, the differences and similarities between the manifestation and underlying causes of poverty in the North and in the South and the possibility of approaching the problem in these two contexts by using similar terms and tools of analysis, the role of international relations in the persistence of poverty in the South, and the relative responsibilities of national governments, rich countries and international organizations in poverty alleviation.

This article deals with the educational arrangements and the multiple inequalities that they reproduce from a comparative perspective. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in six countries (Austria, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, and the UK) as part of a multinational research project concerning justice in Europe, the article explores the mechanisms through which education sustains and reproduces “categorical inequalities.” Although equal access to education is granted by constitutional laws as well as by incorporation of international treaties in the national legal frameworks, it is commonly the educational arrangements that identify the features of access to good quality education in a given context. Dealing with different country cases that have their path dependencies in the arrangements of education, the article provides insights on understanding how different features of segregation in education operate as mechanisms of exclusion for students from a disadvantaged background. Hence, the disadvantages manifest themselves concerning socio‐economic status, ethnicity, race, and minority background. By focusing on the country‐based debates around school segregation, which goes together with the segregated character of urban settings and school choice patterns, the article shows how the institutional context with or without residency‐based registration rules and different types of schools with different resources perpetuate multiple inequalities. In a context where educational arrangements operate as a mechanism of sustaining categorical inequalities, identity‐based differences, combined with economic disadvantages lead to a situation where students from vulnerable and minority groups face multiple forms of exclusion.

This article approaches social policy as an integral component of a capitalist society and, by drawing on the notion of the double movement introduced by Karl Polanyi, argues that social policy intervention both limits and contributes to market expansion. While this argument could be generally applied to recent social policy changes in the current context of economic globalization, these changes were shaped against different histories of social policy development in early and late industrializing countries. This article examines the increasing importance of social policy in late industrializing countries by focusing on the case of Turkey. It is argued that social policy transformation in Turkey has involved the expansion of social security coverage along with the privatization and marketization of health and pension systems. A new system of labour market regulation has contributed to the commodification of labour while the ‘state-supported familialism’, which forms an important aspect of current trends in the area of social care, has served to integrate women in the prevailing flexible employment relations by simultaneously sustaining their position in the gender division of roles within traditional family relations. The populist strategy of polarization pursued by the ruling government is discussed to show how opposition to these trends toward privatization, marketization and labour commodification has been isolated.

The pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus has not only created a global public health emergency, it has also had widespread and deep consequences in social relations throughout the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forces social scientists to reflect on a range of issues from gender relations and science and technology to the international political and economic order and the environment. As the editors of New Perspectives on Turkey, we decided to assemble a virtual roundtable to reflect on the challenges it poses to the international political economic system. We invited professors Ayşe Buğra, Refet Gürkaynak, Çağlar Keyder, Ravi Arvind Palat, and Şevket Pamuk to share their views on these challenges and are grateful to them for contributing to this discussion. NPT Editors (Biray Kolluoğlu, Deniz Yükseker, and Evren M. Dinçer*): Prof. Palat, we would like to start with you. In three to six months from now and after its demise, what do you think will be the most important impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the international political and economic order? Ravi Arvind Palat: The COVID-19 pandemic is not an event but an ongoing process and no balanced assessment of its impact within a short time horizon is possible. There are some certainties, however: it will cause an

This chapter presents an overview of the continuity and change in government-business relations in the Republic of Turkey. A three-stage periodization is developed to discuss the emergence and of a "state-created bourgeoisie" after the foundation of the Republic, the consolidation of the position of the private sector in the economy and society, and the shaping of a polarized business community with appearance of a new cohort of business groups associated with political Islam. The chapter stresses the fluidity of the boundaries between politics and business as a constant, as well as the different ways in which this fluidity manifested itself in different historical periods.

This chapter discusses the systems of education in six countries by examining the discourses which shape the prevailing ideas on education within the political frames in which inequalities are constructed. It investigates the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion affecting minorities and other vulnerable groups in the system of education as an area where the manifestation of the two dimensions of justice pertaining to recognition and representation could be traced. The central question in the chapter is: To which extent can education be considered as a space of inclusion where the tension between equality and difference can be resolved in a way to contribute to the children’s well-being and the development of their capabilities. The chapter argues that the life chances of students are significantly determined by the sense of belonging in an inclusionary education system. The exclusionary dynamics created by experiences of alienation/discrimination which affect school performance limit the contribution education is expected to make to capability development for children from minority groups. The inclusionary features of a system of education, which recognizes differences of social and cultural background and values the parental choice, have implications for the development of the capabilities of children. However, how do the demands and choices of parents from minority groups relate to the well-being and capabilities of their children? The chapter draws on the capability approach to explore the conditions which allow individuals to make the choices that matter to them to pursue their valued ends of life and highlights the transformative character of education in an inquiry into the ways in which the tensions between equality and difference or between different definitions of good life and the development of a sense of belonging in society emerge in the systems of education of different country cases.

In Korea, 'neoliberal socialisation' or forming of a new ideal self has been under the influence of implicit cultural policy that intends to instil in Koreans a new ethic so that they can better manage the tough socio-economic reality. The new patron state in Korea has been impressively successful in accommodating democratic agendas, increasing public cultural funding, playing entrepreneurial roles in developing systematic support for cultural industries and cultural export, making cultural policy 'actually happen', and advocating the importance of culture for national prosperity. The emergence of the new patron state reflects the complicated and contentious transformation of Korean society itself from the late 1980s. Culture became decoupled from statist ideological propaganda; however, it has still been taken as a determining factor and strategy for the survival, prosperity and success of the nation state. The centrality of …

In Turkey, as in most other societies without mature welfare states, social policy has acquired a novel significance in the context of the late twentieth century economic globalization and the social policy environment has gone through a major transformation especially under the AKP government, which has been in power since 2002. This article presents a discussion of this transformation and explores the relationship between social policy and different dimensions of inequality in contemporary Turkey. It is argued that the emerging social policy regime, although in some ways more inclusive than the former one, is laden with significant inequalities of class and gender, which are shaped by the flexible employment patterns associated with a market-oriented economic strategy and the culturally conservative outlook of the AKP government.

Developmentalism refers to a particular ideology marked by a sense of inevitability about the nature of historical change and to political interventions to implement particular strategies of development. The paradox between the ideology of development and development policy challenges the notion of market-led economic progress that proceeds without government intervention and is closely related to social conflicts engendered by economic progress. This chapter approaches capitalism as a socio-economic order where the idea of progress is central to the ideological universe. It also highlights the historically changing and societally different characteristics of capitalism that affect its ideological universe and determine the way conflicts engendered by progress are handled through political intervention. It argues that the concept of developmentalism needs to be examined with reference to the political choices that are situated in different historical varieties of capitalism and that differ in the ways in which they shape the character of economic processes and in their impact on the life and livelihood of the individual. This argument is situated in an analytical frame built by drawing on Karl Polanyi’s work and by remembering the historical trends in development economics, and is developed through a case study on Turkey that shows the variations in the relationship between the economy and politics in different historical periods.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores modernity through the lens of ethical liberalization. It demonstrates that the main trend in the world of generosity was the further entrenchment of ethical liberalization. Analyses of modernity that draw attention to multiple paths, alternative routes, and unique experiences reach their limits. In sociology, new institutionalism provides the most coherent theoretical statement regarding modernity. New institutionalism is a phenomenologically-based synthesis of the major sociological classics. New institutionalism's broad brushstrokes regarding modernity lead to a deficient understanding of human action too. More widespread in the humanities than the social sciences, scholarship that draws attention to unique and alternative practices provides rich descriptions of diverse, generalization …