Governing Social Protection in the Long Term Social Policy and Employment Relations in Australia and New Zealand

GLOBAL DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL POLICY Governing Social Protection in the Long Term Social Policy and Employment Relations in Australia and New Zealand Gaby Ramia Global Dynamics of Social Policy Series Editors Lorraine Frisina Doetter University of Bremen Bremen, Germany Delia González de Reufels University of Bremen Bremen, Germany Kerstin Martens University of Bremen Bremen, Germany Marianne Sandvad Ulriksen University of Southern Denmark Odense, Denmark About the Series The intervention of states in fields such as health, social security and work, dates back to the nineteenth century, and became more dynamic over time. Imperial Prussia, a social policy pioneer, first showcased its progress at the Paris World Fair in 1900: the Prussian exhibit drew large crowds eager to find out more about state pensions. Clearly, social policy had become a matter of great interest to states and citizens alike. Other nations soon embarked on implementing discrete social policies, thus turning the twentieth century into a time of remarkable welfare state expansion. The end of World War II marked a new departure, as an increasing number of countries outside the Western hemi- sphere began to introduce social policy measures. States not only copied established forms of welfare, but often developed measures sui-generis to meet their specific needs. While episodes of policy retrenchment and ruptures can be observed over time, recent developments point to an expansion of social policies in low-to-upper-middle-income countries of the Global South. Social policy has thus become a global phenomenon. It is generally accepted that the state is responsible for welfare and that domestic politics and ideas have been a primary driver of its expansion. However, in an increasingly intercon- nected world, social policy is implemented at the national-level but influenced by international developments and relations. It is shaped by trade, migration, war, and colonialism. Just as people travel, policy ideas follow. These factors merit scholarly attention and demand interdisciplinary collaboration to generate new insights into the global dimension of social policy. This is what the Global Dynamics of Social Policy book series sets out to accomplish. In doing so, it also contributes to the mission of the Collaborative Research Center 1342 (CRC) “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” at the University of Bremen, Germany. Funded by the German Research Foundation, the CRC leaves behind the traditionally OECD-focused analysis of social policy to stress the transnational interconnectedness of developments. The book series showcases scholarship by colleagues worldwide who are interested in the global dynamics of social policy. Studies can range from in-depth case studies, comparative work and large quantitative research. Moreover, the promotion of scholarship by young researchers is of great importance to the series. The series is published in memory of Stephan Leibfried to whom our research on state and social policy at the CRC is indebted in countless ways. Series Editors: Lorraine Frisina Doetter, Delia González de Reufels, Kerstin Martens, Marianne S. Ulriksen More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16294 Open access of this publication was made possible through funding by the Collaborative Research Center 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy at the University of Bremen, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Projektnummer 374666841 – SFB 1342 and Specialised Information Service Political Science – POLLUX. Gaby Ramia Governing Social Protection in the Long Term Social Policy and Employment Relations in Australia and New Zealand Gaby Ramia Department of Government & IR University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia ISSN 2661-8672 ISSN 2661-8680 (electronic) Global Dynamics of Social Policy ISBN 978-3-030-42053-6 ISBN 978-3-030-42054-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42054-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To the Ramias; the newest, the youngest and those more long-standing Preface As I write this preface on the grounds of The University of Sydney, much of the greater city of Sydney is clouded in smoke and the surfaces of the built and natural environments are covered in dust. We live in unprecedented times, and researchers, governments and policymakers need to think outside disciplinary boxes if we are to solve the problems we face. In Composing a Life, a comparative biography of five women, Mary Catherine Bateson (1989: 73) observed that ‘the most creative thinking occurs at the meeting places of disciplines’. In extending the point she clarifies that ‘[a]t the edges, where lines are blurred, it is easier to imagine that the world might be different’. A university education is most often synonymous with training in and around a single discipline, or two, or maybe more than that after one undertakes postgraduate coursework and research. Yet, despite an enor- mous push for scholars to combine the traditions and domains covered in their training, seamless interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research is still relatively rare in the social sciences. In this book I cannot and do not claim to have achieved seamlessness, though I have combined two disciplinary traditions, and I humbly invite readers to see the results of doing so. To be sure, it is all but impossible to not have a wrinkle between long-distinct traditions, and we all work in environments that provide great incentives to ‘stick to our knitting’. We are human. We know—yes, from research—that many of our actions and vii viii Preface decisions are responses to the incentives provided to us from external as well as internal forces. What I have tried to do in this book is to come as close as I can to an analysis of social protection over time, through two policy domains, in the case of two countries. Doing so required me to consider two disciplines with equal weight. Readers will see that I am not concerning myself with whether social policy and employment relations actually count as ‘disciplines’ as such. It would hardly be productive to do so. It should be clear, however, that as we move forward in a world which presents us with unprecedented problems, working across countries and across traditional domains is a must. I argue here that we only understand social protection, within and across national policy regimes, when we allow employment relations to be dynamic in the same way that we have always allowed social policy to be dynamic in these kinds of studies. This means allowing the two institutional spheres to be equal partners, which raises interesting questions about what kind of scholar one ‘is’. Is one a political scientist, a sociolo- gist or something else? Does policy analysis come more naturally from either of the two domains? Do the distinctions between them matter? My answer would be that they do, in the sense that they may influence the methods and the scholarly materials utilised. What matters more, however, is to seek to address the meaning, and the minor and major trans- formations over time, of social protection institutions. As well as treating disciplines as equals, it is important to provide equal emphasis on each of the two countries of interest. The results are hopefully clearly manifest within the covers of this book. The perception of similarities and differences between Australia and New Zealand are affected. I hope readers will find the narrative interesting, and the implications for other countries novel. Comparative research of book length ought to promise no less than that. Sydney, NSW, Australia Gaby Ramia References Bateson, M. C. (1989). Composing a Life. New York: Grove Press. Acknowledgements Academic writing is made easier with significant periods of research- focused time. I prepared this book mainly in 2019 while on a Visiting Professorial Fellowship in the Social Sciences Division of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (Institutul de Cercetare al Universității din București, or ICUB) in Romania. I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary generosity of my host and ICUB Social Sciences Director, Professor Marian Zulean.

Load more