Abstract Workers, citizens, residents. Inclusion of people in social security programmes – keystones of the welfare state – is generally realized through legal texts which define groups that are eligible for social benefits. Through such group definitions, legislation does not just label groups, but it shapes or even constructs them. These legal group constructions can be unidimensional or multidimensional. Unidimensional groups are constructed by referring to one category, for example employment status. Multidimensional groups, in contrast, are constructed by combining different categories. Research has rarely explored the latter, i.e. how social rights are ascribed to groups in a way that brings together different criteria. Against this backdrop, we explore group constructions focusing on multidimensional groups. Relying on a novel analytical framework with ten categories, we analyse old-age protection legislation from 15 countries from the Global North and the Global South passed between 1880 and 2020. We find that multidimensional group constructions are highly relevant for social security inclusion. Across three types of old-age protection schemes – employment-based, need-based and behaviour-based schemes – citizenship and place of residence are highly salient categories in multidimensional group constructions. In contrast, multidimensional group constructions with gender and race are unexpectedly rare. Surprisingly, exclusions based on citizenship, residence and behaviour have weakened over time.

In this article, we study the political project promoted by the European Commission (EC) for tackling simultaneously socioeconomic and environmental issues. Based on a detailed analysis of the most relevant EC policy documents (adopted between 2000 and 2020) that explicitly articulate ecological and socioeconomic questions, we offer two contributions to the literature on eco-social policy. First, we identify the nature of what we call the ‘European Eco-Social Model’. This political project subordinates social-ecological goals to the economic rationality of growth, competitiveness and profits and de-politicizes the efforts to promote more sustainable societies and economies. Second, we show how the Commission is repositioning itself as a global leader in the transformation to sustainability, attempting to extend its particular eco-social model to the whole world. Overall, we argue that this ‘model’ is based on self-contradictory assumptions and cannot demonstrate how it should be able to solve problems of social inequality and climate change on a global level.

AbstractThis chapter evaluates existing approaches and highlights the directions research on social policy development will be most likely to take in the near future once inter- and transnational interdependencies of national social policies receive more attention in general. These have been traced here through a series of individual stories that aspire to add to a more complex and comprehensive picture of how the national and the global come together in the field of social policy in an attempt to better understand how the different levels interact to shape social policy. The aim is more interrelated and more systematic research for which a plurality of approaches is recommendable.

AbstractThe chapter analyses and compares the development of two types of contribution-based pension systems in four countries, thereby contrasting Bismarckian pension systems (South Korea, Vietnam) with pension systems that rely on national provident funds (Sri Lanka, Malaysia). Although all countries are facing considerable problems in expanding effective coverage and providing a decent pension after retirement, they have undertaken considerable political efforts to maintain or even expand those systems. We explain this outcome through a modular and mechanism-based approach, highlight six complex causal mechanisms—the outcompeting mechanism, the gaining acceptance spiral mechanism, the evasion mechanism, the double benefit mechanism, the crisis management by going further mechanism, and the alarmed middle classes mechanism—and show when and how these mechanisms unfolded in the four countries.

AbstractThis introductory chapter outlines a mechanism-based approach as a new way of explaining social policy. The chapter first introduces causal mechanisms as a concept and explores four strands of mechanism-based research in the social sciences: the methodology of qualitative research, generative mechanisms in critical realism, analytical sociology, and historical sociology and historical institutionalism. The chapter develops a process-oriented, actor-centred and modular conception of causal mechanisms, thereby distinguishing elementary causal mechanisms and complex causal mechanisms. It then showcases the benefits of a mechanism-based approach for social policy research. The key argument is that causal mechanisms enable explanations that can complement, expand, deepen, and possibly even correct analyses that rely on established social policy approaches. The chapter concludes with an overview of all chapters of the volume.

AbstractThe advantage of building a pension system is not limited to the social security of older people, but can also serve other political, societal, or economic functions. This chapter examines such an interdependence of policy areas by illuminating the relationship between expansive social policy and the export strategy of developmental states, focusing on South Korea and Malaysia. In both countries, contribution-based pension systems—a social insurance scheme in South Korea, and a provident fund in Malaysia—have become a cornerstone of economic development. By accumulating large amounts of money within their pension systems, the governments of both countries have been able to use this money for economic investments within their generally export-oriented economies, thus demonstrating that social policy and international economic interdependence are mutually supportive.