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Abstract:
Tracing the Fragments of Global Social Policy. Whereas some authors argue that global social policy – defined as global redistributive policies, global social regulatory policies and elements of global provision and empowerment – does exist, other observers challenge this claim. These contradictory positions are the starting point of our article. In the first part, we investigate to what extent elements of global social policy can be found; we demonstrate that only fragments of global social policy exist, namely some norms of social justice and some weak global regulatory mechanisms. In the second part of our article, we identify reasons for the limited articulation of global social policy. We sketch social policy theories which have been developed for the national level and discuss their relevance for global social policy. In doing so, we highlight limited industrialization at the global level, the weakness of global trade unions and churches, the dominance of liberal international organizations, the veto power of powerful national governments and the weakness of (Scandinavian) welfare states in global politics as possible reasons for the rather fragmentary existence of global social policy.
