The World Politics of Social Investment: Volume II The Politics of Varying Social Investment Strategies

Welfare states around the globe are changing, challenged by the development of knowledge economies. In many countries, policy-makers' main response has been to modernize welfare states by focusing on future-oriented social investment policies that focus on creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skills and capabilities. Yet, there is massive variance in the development of social investment strategies.

The World Politics of Social Investment: Political Dynamics of Reform is the second of two volumes of the World Politics of Social Investment (WOPSI) project, which systematically maps and explains different welfare reform strategies in democratic countries around the world. This volume traces the development of social investment reforms across the regions of Nordic, Continental, and Southern Europe, as well as Central and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America, and North East Asia. The chapters in this volume study the impact of different structural drivers for social investment (e.g., demographic, poverty, demand for skill, or lack of an available workforce), the salience of social investment in the public debates, and the different political coalitions that led to or prevented the adoption of social investment strategies. The chapters are written by leading social policy scholars from different world regions. They all apply a joint theoretical framework (developed in the first of the two volumes) to explain the politics of social investment in a range of contexts and policy fields. Jointly with the first volume, the WOPSI project offers the first worldwide analysis of social investment reforms around the globe.

Julian L. Garritzmann is Professor of Political Science at the Goethe University Frankfurt. As a comparative political scientist, his research lies at the intersection of comparative political economy, political sociology, and comparative political institutions. He specializes in welfare state
research, education and social investment policy, global social policy, party politics, and public opinion. Julian Garritzmann holds a PhD from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Before joining Frankfurt, he was Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Max Weber Fellow at
the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, and held Visiting Fellow positions at Harvard, Duke, and Rutgers. His publications include The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance (awarded the German Political Science Association's Dissertation Prize), and A Loud, but Noisy Signal?
Public Opinion, Parties, and Interest Groups in the Politics of Education Reform in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press) as well as several articles in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, European Sociological Review, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of
European Public Policy, Journal of Legislative Studies and West European Politics. Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/juliangarritzmann/

Silja Häusermann is Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Her current research specializes in the fields of comparative welfare state research and comparative electoral research. She has been a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2018/2019 and directs the ERC-funded
grant "welfarepriorities" (www.welfarepriorities.eu), which studies the transformation of distributive conflict in relation with the transformation of European mass politics. At the University of Zurich, she is the co-director of the University Research Priority Programme "Equality of
Opportunities". She is the author of The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe: Modernization in Hard Times (CUP, 2010), and a co-author of The Age of Dualization: The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Countries (OUP, 2012), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism (CUP,
2015) and Contention in Times of Crisis: Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries (CUP, 2020). Homepage: www.siljahaeusermann.org

Bruno Palier is CNRS Research Director at Sciences Po, Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée. Trained in social science, he has a PhD in political science, and is a former student of Ecole Normale Superieure. He was director of LIEPP (Laboratory for interdisciplinary Evaluation of
Public Policies). He works on the comparative political economy of welfare state reforms. He was the scientific coordinator of a European Network of excellence RECWOWE (Reconciling Work and Welfare, involving 30 European research institutions or Universities, 190 researchers from 19 European
countries). He was Guest Professor at the University of Stockholm, Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University, at Center for European Studies from Harvard University in 2001 and Jean Monnet Fellow in the European University Institute in Florence in 1998-1999.