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The chapter discusses the role of the Third Way discourse in legitimizing labour market policy reform in Britain, France, and Germany. It argues that only in Britain can a convincing causal link be drawn between the Third Way discourse and the successful implementation of supply-side reforms. In France, societal interests institutionalized in the governance of social protection continue to act as a ‘pre-political’ bulwark against state intervention in existing arrangements. In Germany, somewhat similarly, institutional factors severely limit the potential for the centre-left to either develop a single structuring discourse or to fuse historically separate policy domains, as much of the current activation agenda supposes. To the extent that efforts have advanced in this latter respect, ad hoc exploitation of contingencies and crises has proved more effective than a Third Way discourse.

Despite being considered to have rather similar political economies, patterns of unemployment benefit adjustment were different in Belgium and France in the 1980s and 1990s. In France the unemployment insurance system retained generous earnings-related benefits but became increasingly exclusive, with many unemployed people thus being forced to rely on institutionally distinct second-tier benefit schemes. In Belgium, by contrast, unemployment protection remained integrated and inclusive, but gradually mutated into a flat-rate benefit system providing only basic protection. This chapter explores the political dynamics behind the contrasting institutional and distributive choices in the unemployment benefit reforms of these two otherwise similar countries, in the process shedding light on the politics of welfare state dualization more generally. It suggests that the inherited institutional features of welfare systems structure the preferences of key social and political actors in ways that are likely to generate diverse social policy responses to common economic and social challenges.

This chapter considers the prospects for improved social governance to tackle the global challenges of the 21st century, as humanity moves towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, and hopefully a more socially responsible, equitable, inclusive and just world. It particularly examines the emerging social policies being articulated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in an effort to reform global capitalism. This international organization is made up of rich nation states and is in the process of repositioning itself as the international institution responsible for promoting ‘global social justice’, a highly challenging endeavour. The chapter finds that the OECD is now shaping important aspects of international governance and global social policy, attempting to establish a new global social governance architecture in an effort to tackle growing social inequality. The chapter looks at how the ‘growth paradigm’ is being maintained, while the opportunities for greater redistribution of resources within and among countries gets crowded out by the dominant discourse sustaining global capitalism.

This chapter outlines a theory of a central function of social governance and an important function of democracy—assessing consequences of social policy—that underlies the need to create social knowledge. It argues that democracies work more effectively when basic social knowledge is more widely shared, because at election time citizens must rely on information to assess whether the proposed policies of their leaders are broadly sound. Modern information technology can facilitate acquiring social knowledge by reducing information costs. Reducing information costs has four large advantages for social decision making. Among these is that reducing information costs can create more knowledge about public policy and reduce the cost of accessing knowledge. Another advantage is that reducing information costs better enables citizens to organize around encompassing interests that many of them have in common, such as good education and economic growth.

This chapter is set within the analytical framework developed in Deacon 2007, which argues that global social policy and governance is characterised by a struggle between agencies for the right to shape social policy and the content of that policy. In this context, it reviews the responses made by international organisations (UN system, World Bank, IMF etc) to the global economic crisis in terms of what they imply for global and national social policy. The chapter focuses on three related issues central to the responses made by International Organisations to the global economic and social crisis: the renewed focus engendered by the crisis on a Global Social Floor or Social Protection Floor; the global funding of social expenditure; and the renewed call for the establishment of an Economic Security Council to ensure better that the UN, as distinct from the IFIs, is at the heart of global economic and social governance. It thus reviews the renewed debate on global governance reform triggered by the crisis.

Corporate governance entails the design of a bundle of practices and processes to distribute the allocation of decision-making power among the different actors in the firm to promote value creation in the long term. It is at the heart of strategic thinking and implementation, because governance practices are designed to incentivize certain behavioral strategies, such as promoting sustainability, and to monitor that other courses of action are not taken, such as ethical lapses. This chapter first discusses what corporate governance is and why it is important for strategic management. Then the chapter reviews key areas that have received the most attention in the strategy literature, such as shareholder engagement and international corporate governance. The last and largest section of this chapter discusses three emerging corporate governance themes relevant to firm strategy in these changing global, digital, and pandemic times.

Recent years have been characterized by growing frustration with globalization. At the heart of the disappointment with current globalization is the deficit in governance. Indeed, the weakening of nation-states during the recent wave of globalization has not been substituted by new forms of governance of a regional or global character. Furthermore, the nation-state continues to be primarily responsible for the development of societies, but the effectiveness of its actions has been eroded by global processes. This erosion encompasses again a broad set of areas, from the capacity to strengthen social protection, to macroeconomic and financial stability, to environmental sustainability. This chapter outlines a way to rethink global economic and social governance. The first part proposes a new typology of the objectives of international cooperation for development. The second analyzes the asymmetries of the global order and its implications for global cooperation for development. The third takes a look at principles and at challenges in designing new global governance structures. The last part briefly draws some conclusions.

This chapter fills in the details of how the account handles blame and desert. The first part of the chapter focuses on exculpation, and the question of how the norms of responsibility (roughly, norms characterizable in terms of quality of will) interact with the dynamic nature of moral considerations-responsive agency. A key idea that emerges is that moral ecology—or the way in which circumstances affect our dispositions to morally good and bad behavior—is important. The second part of the chapter concerns desert, and the basis on which it makes sense to regard people as deserving moralized praise and blame. The chapter argues that Pereboom’s notion of basic desert is to be rejected, but that a plausible account of desert is given by something called the social self-governance model of desert. This is a picture of desert on which responsible agents deserve reactions to their blameworthy actions because such reactions help aid agents in their self-governance in light of moral considerations.

This chapter has several parts. Firstly it provides an assessment of the SPF Recommendation in its own terms as a piece of ILO policy. Secondly it asks to what extent the “global social floor” or SPF Initiative has become really embedded in the UN system in the context of parallel debates and processes concerned with environmental sustainability (Rio plus 20) and with the broader Post-2015 UN development agenda planned for the period after the “expiry” of the initial MDG agenda. Thirdly it discusses the further development of a global civil society campaign to realize SPFs in practice in countries and asks both how this new coalition will take forward the work of the original Coalition for a Global Social Floor and which of the two inter-agency coordination mechanisms (UNSPF-I and SPIAC-B) will take forward the campaign at an official UN level. The chapter also discusses the very recent call being made to establish a global social protection fund and asks how this might operate. Finally it returns to the broader question of complex global social governance and assesses the implications of this case study in global social policy formation for the understanding of the existing and future global social governance system.

This chapter discusses the role of NGOs as actors in global social governance. First, the chapter reviews how different disciplines have dealt with NGOs as actors, highlight the contributions of the existing literature, and identifies research gaps. Despite numerous studies on NGOs, little research has addressed them as actors in global social governance. Undertaking a quantitative assessment of NGOs working on issues of global social governance, the chapter finds that their number has increased both in absolute and in relative terms over the last decades and that they hold a significant amount of resources. Examining three mechanisms of global social governance, the chapter finds that NGOs play an important role with regard to redistribution, regulation, and social rights. Concluding, the chapter highlights its contribution to the study of NGOs and civil society in global social governance and make suggestions for future research.

This chapter offers a history of public service and educational initiatives launched by the insurance industry in the United States, from the 1910s through the 1950s. Insurers used public health, safety, and educational programs to influence consumer behavior, gather data, and encourage Americans to manage and take charge of their own risks. Public service initiatives allowed insurance leaders to depict their industry as a state-like actor committed to securing the health and safety of the population. By the 1950s, educational and service work undertaken in the name of the public had transformed the industry into an exemplary site of social governance beyond the state.

This chapter discusses the mandate, role, and form of governance of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and traces how its concern to work for social justice within capitalism has shifted from a focus on national labour and social policies to a focus on global labour and social policies. Its struggle with the World Bank over pension policy is reviewed and assessed. The chapter then turns to the struggle for global social policy synergy and improved global social governance, using the example of the social protection floor to show how the ILO has managed to secure some fragile advances in both.

Social polices of developing countries are frequently determined by forces outside their national borders, via international governance organizations and development institutions. In this context, most analysis has focused on the transfer of funds and ideas from North to South and on ‘Western’ actors. Increasingly, however, attention is turning to a set of new agents, the so-called BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—distinguished by fast-growing economies and escalating influence on global social development. This chapter addresses their South-South cooperation practices and their influence on global social policy and governance debates, processes, and structures. It argues that while it is too early to make definitive prescriptions about what it means for the conditions, processes, and politics of global social policy, it is clear that the BRICS group has begun to significantly impact the architecture and discourses of global governance as well as on the quantity and nature of aid to developing countries.

In public discussions of social media governance, corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are often first and foremost seen as providers of information and as media. However, social media companies’ business models aim to generate income by attracting a large, growing, and active user base and by collecting and monetising personal data. This has generated concerns with respect to hate speech, disinformation, and privacy. Over time, there has been a trend away from industry self-regulation towards a strengthening of national-level and European Union-level regulations, that is, from soft to hard law. Hence, moving beyond general corporate governance codes, governments are imposing more targeted regulations that recognise these firms’ profound societal importance and wide-reaching influence. The chapter reviews these developments, highlighting the tension between companies’ commercial and public rationales, critiques the current industry-specific regulatory framework, and raises potential policy alternatives.

Although the activity on the new frontiers of philanthropy offers enormous promise, it is still a “boutique” business. To move to the next level, the ideas and approaches embodied in this approach to social-purpose finance must break out of its relatively narrow circle of advocates and reach out to a broader circle of stakeholders. This monograph, and the fuller volume for which it is the introduction, offer a way to achieve this by helping others to visualize this development and begin to act on it. But other steps are needed as well to publicize, incentivize, legitimize, and “capacitize” the field. This chapter outlines each of these needed steps.

This chapter explores the role of new flex actors (flexians) in global social governance, who personalize bureaucracy, privatize information, juggle roles and representations, and test the rules of both democracy and the market, crafting and co-opting policy agendas to their own interests. Flexians are at their most powerful when acting in ‘flex nets’, small, tightly knit, networks, acting as resource pools, able to prescribe, coordinate, implement, promote, and justify particular policies in order to serve their own, not their organizations’, agendas. The chapter discusses the roles of Jeffrey Sachs, a typical flexian, and George Soros, creating spaces for new flex actors to emerge, in the light of this framework, before concluding with a discussion on how best to hold flexians to account in the future.

This chapter draws on the experience in founding and developing Alibaba in China and discusses whether and how enterprises might contribute to progress, sustainable growth, legitimate and long-term governance, and trust. The importance of information and, increasingly, data technology are underlined. The centrality of the individual in Alibaba’s economic and organizational models is also stressed. If we are to think about better models of growth then we must aim not only for industrial progress but also for individual progress. In industrial progress the rules are predefined and people have to fit in. The future is one where enterprises will be better able to integrate individuals with different talents and styles. This is a future in which growth and progress will be more coherent.