Climate change is an unequal crisis, with the greatest risks and fewest resources concentrated in the Global South. This study examines whether cross-national differences in social inclusion and welfare regimes explain variation in climate adaptation readiness and vulnerability. Using a multiply imputed panel of 173 countries (1995–2020), it applies Correlated Random Effects models to assess how inclusion and welfare regimes relate to adaptation outcomes across the Global North and South. Results show that inclusive regimes are significantly associated with higher adaptation readiness and lower vulnerability, even after controlling for income, politics, and OECD membership. Results also vary significantly between welfare regimes. The findings suggest adaptation is fundamentally institutional and sociopolitical, not only technical or economic. Institutionalized inclusion functions as an “adaptation infrastructure, “suggesting that embedding social inclusion is a precondition for climate resilience.

This article examines why policy ideas emerging during crises sometimes become institutionalised while in other cases they remain unimplemented. We argue that policy responsiveness is shaped by unequal instrumental and structural power across first-tier and second-tier citizens. In South Korea, this hierarchy reflected institutional legacies of developmental citizenship, which accorded privileged status to workers in conglomerates and manufacturing production networks. Using a comparative analysis of employment insurance reforms during the 1997 Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that policy expansion occurred when crises severely affected first-tier citizens, which include export-oriented conglomerates, their integrated subcontractors, and the workers employed therein. By contrast, proposals during COVID-19 largely remained unfulfilled, as the most impacted groups, including the self-employed and non-standard workers, occupied a marginal position. This unequal responsiveness can be interpreted through a three-gap mechanism – structural presence, representation, and political participation – underscoring that the institutionalisation of policy ideas is contingent on historically embedded power structures.

This study examines how public policy and organisational characteristics relate to employer family policies, applying a theory-testing approach at the meso (employer) level. Expanding debates in comparative research on employer behaviour, we distinguish analytically between normative and economic logics and assess their explanatory relevance across policy contexts. Comparing Germany (IAB Establishment Panel) and the United States (National Study of Employers), the findings indicate that normative logics better explain employer-provided childcare, which is more prevalent in Germany, where economic pressure should generally be lower. By contrast, economic logics better explain employer-provided flexible working in the absence of public flexible-work policy. However, when examining female leadership and organised labour at the organisational level, the expected alignment between policy context and dominant logic does not always hold. Taken together, the findings show that meso-level tests of competing logics can clarify how employee segments relate to employer family policies across contexts.

A growing body of literature has reported on the gendered impact of COVID-19. Unemployment and income loss are two consequences of the pandemic that disproportionately impacted women. Studies have shown that these consequences are associated with the rise in unpaid care work (UCW) following the implementation of public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Around the world, UCW is largely the responsibility of women, including in Latin America, where there is a strong cultural value placed on caregiving roles. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the social protection measures introduced in Colombia and Costa Rica during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on core themes of feminist political economy and Elson’s (New Labor Forum, 26(2), 52–61, 2017) Three R Framework to reflect on whether and how measures incorporated care-sensitive approaches and on the factors shaping the countries’ diverging responses. Of the two jurisdictions compared in this paper, Costa Rica’s social protection measures afforded greater visibility and support for UCW. We offer a discussion of potential factors contributing to Costa Rica’s care-sensitive approach, including a robust pre-pandemic social protection infrastructure, better integration of the informal economy into social protection measures, and greater representation of women in politics. Insights from this analysis can inform enhancements of social protection systems in Colombia, Costa Rica, and other comparable jurisdictions across Latin America, while also contributing to pandemic preparedness and more gender-responsive approaches to future global health crises.