Exploring theoretical approaches to global social policy research: Learning from international relations and inter-organisational theory

Abstract

Global Social Policy (GSP) has established itself as a distinct field of research over the past 25 years. Without doubt one of the leading figure to this advancement was Bob Deacon. He integrated several explanations and approaches into social policy research that had so far been distinct in other disciplinary fields, including concepts of International Relations (IR). That allowed to explain more about policy autonomy, inter-action between actors at the global level and potential impacts of international organisations on national social policies. Combining IR, organisational studies and GSP, this article wants to go a step further in this vein of GSP theoretical studies. We seek to make a contribution by running through a number of recently popular inter-organisational relations approaches within an IR context, and discuss how, and to what extent, they can be used to make more profound theoretical claims about the nature of GSP. The article first summarises the state of the art in GSP research with a view on international actors, particularly international organisations. Then we describe the specific characteristics of international organisations in existing GSP research and provide a number of theoretical considerations from organisational studies as part of IR scholarship that help construct a more nuanced understanding of how global actors function and interact. We link the theoretical accounts to empirical examples from the GSP literature, and detect what, and how, approaches and frames from this field may usefully tackle challenges GSP scholarship is facing.