Crisis and social policy in Europe

Abstract

International Monetary Fund [IMF]) conditionality in exchange for financial assistance to meet debt repayment obligations. Turning attention to one of the Troika members, the IMF, Antje Vetterlein argues that during the 1990s the IMF had undergone an organizational crisis leading it, after the Asian Financial Crisis, to participate in Poverty Reduction Strategies, thus enhancing its social policy role. But after the 2007 crisis, the IMF, having already recovered its traditional power position, found its international role enhanced by the crisis and focused on economic issues to the exclusion of the social and de-emphasized its attention to poverty issues. By contrast, in Anthony Hall’s account, the World Bank markedly increased its financial support for social protection, albeit by the established methods of cash and in-kind transfers to the chronically poor. He observes that the scale of World Bank social policy activity thus expanded rapidly, but that critics point to problems with the distribution of the assistance (middle-income countries faring better than low-income ones) and programmes remaining targeted rather than universal, features that were consistent with a Washington consensus approach to poverty mitigation. In organizational terms, the crisis led to rejuvenation of the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as it did in a different way for the IMF’s role. In addition to developing the narrative of the crisis as one of jobs at the global level, the ILO was able, as James Canonge describes it, to open new policy space and to advance and win widespread endorsement for its concept of basic income security for all, through nationallydefined floors of social protection. The balance of policy responses to the crisis emerging from the above discussion seems embedded in our final international organization, the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD). Jessica Merolli finds that the OECD response predominantly shows continuity from its pre-crisis neoliberal posture. Amidst the familiar litany, however, there are examples that may indicate a potential for new thinking that will be worth monitoring in the future. Did the crisis provoke new thinking about social policy? For the most part, it does not seem so. Yet, some indications of change were noted, and it can be said that the crisis may be far from over and that the same may be true of the development of alternative visions of social policy.