How globalization reshapes the welfare state in developing democracies remains contested, and evidence on whether trade liberalization expands or contracts social spending is mixed. Using a quasi-natural experiment in Brazil, I first find support for the “compensation hypothesis:” trade integration generates welfare compensation. I then argue that trade’s differential impact across subnational regions helps explain the mixed evidence. Subnational political and economic geographies mediate trade’s effect on social policy. In particular, I argue that the geographic concentration of political identities facilitates collective action. I find that geographically concentrated constituencies exhibit higher voter turnout and more participatory councils advocating for labor rights and welfare. Trade’s positive welfare effect is magnified where political or economic identities are geographically concentrated. The findings spotlight how subnational geography shapes globalization’s redistributive consequences.

American political polarization has mapped onto educational pedigree, with credentialed elites increasingly supporting Democrats. We examine the implications of this trend in the most powerful office in American politics: the White House. From 1995 to 2024, we show Democratic presidents employed staffs with higher educational attainment, and that Republicans were more likely to attend public institutions, those without R1 status, and those ranked below the top 50%. We then show that universities whose alumni disproportionately went on to work for Democratic presidents were more likely to face investigations, enforcement actions, and funding cuts after President Trump took office in 2025. Our findings suggest educational pedigree among staff who operate key political institutions warrant further investigation.

Social innovation promises to deliver social goods more effectively and find new solutions to endemic problems. However, the concept is ambiguous and becoming fuzzier; it is not clear what actors are doing—or how or why—when they engage in social innovation. As a starting point for overcoming the fragmentation and definitional contestation in social innovation research, this article examines the practice of social innovation by one of the most important actors in the domain: philanthropic foundations. Analyzing the social innovation activities of Canadian foundations reveals that foundations find the term “social innovation” vague and struggle to identify specific actions that it prescribes. Yet, fundamentally, all foundations view social innovation as “the purposeful actualization of novelty in a social setting.” This article then introduces social innovation tools (tools) and social innovation strategies as devices for understanding the practice of social innovation.

Increasing emphasis is being placed on work–family balance (WFB) within post-industrial social policy frameworks, yet its practice in newly urbanised contexts, where familialist and managerial–masculine legacies persist, remains understudied. This study examines how WFB is translated into social policy in Jakarta, Indonesia, drawing on interviews with ten working mothers and nine policymakers (N = 19). The findings reveal that WFB measures are not designed to reconcile the intersecting roles of working mothers across production and social reproduction spheres, but rather to optimise their contributions to the labour market. Exacerbated by limited public daycare and costly market services, this situation compels mothers to rely on informal care from female relatives or unregulated providers, often involving economically vulnerable women. The permeability of gendered and informal relations within WFB practices suggests that Indonesia’s social policy has not fully shifted from conventional productivist approach but evolved into what we call compromised productivism.

This article analyses the implementation of emergency cash transfer policies during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in four decentralized political systems: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain, focusing on how different institutional capacities shaped policy effectiveness. The study examines key dimensions such as digital infrastructure, intergovernmental coordination, pre-existing social protection systems, and fiscal effort to assess the factors that determined the scope and impact of these policies. The findings suggest that state capacity was crucial in shaping outcomes: while digital infrastructure emerged as a necessary condition for effective implementation, it was not sufficient on its own. Likewise, intergovernmental coordination played a decisive role in federal systems, with cooperative governance models yielding better implementation outcomes. Using a qualitative comparative analysis, the study identifies different pathways to successful policy implementation, highlighting the importance of administrative flexibility and institutional adaptation in crisis contexts. The results contribute to the literature on state capacity and crisis governance, offering insights for designing resilient social protection systems. The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic functioned as a natural experiment that tested the limits of social policy implementation and catalysed institutional innovations, some of which could have long-term implications for welfare states in Latin America and Southern Europe.

This article examines the evolution of COVID-19 vaccination efforts during 2021 and 2022 in six Central American countries, each with distinct social policy legacies and political regimes. Drawing on official data sources, the article differentiates two phases: the initial rollout of vaccines and the subsequent expansion of second-dose coverage to secure immunity. We advance three main arguments. First, differences in performance can be partly explained by the state capacities needed to implement vaccination campaigns. Second, regime type does not explain success; Nicaragua matched the performance of the most effective democratic countries. Third, presidential will accounts for the divergent trajectories of autocratic regimes. These findings underscore that in times of crisis, effective social intervention is possible without democratic pressures and accountability and highlight the need to further examine variation within nondemocratic regimes.

How does technological change affect social policy preferences? We advance this lively debate by focusing on the role of dual vocational education and training (VET). Existing literature would lead us to expect that dual VET increases demand for compensatory social policy and magnifies the effect of automation risk on such demands. In contrast, we contend that dual VET weakens demand for compensatory social policy through three non-mutually exclusive mechanisms that we refer to as (i) material self-interest; (ii) workplace socialization; and (iii) skill certification. We further hypothesize that dual VET mitigates the association between automation risk and social policy preferences. Analyzing cross-national individual data from the European Social Survey and national-level data on education systems, we find strong evidence for our argument. The paper advances the debate on social policy preferences in the age of automation and sheds new light on the relationship between skill formation and social policy preferences.

Political manifestos are often framed as contracts between parties and voters. They also function as strategic texts that communicate party identity, define problems, set priorities, and articulate visions of a better future. This article examines the UK Labour Party’s 2024 election manifesto in this light, investigating what it reveals about its ideological direction and its social policy agenda. It places the 2024 manifesto in historical context, utilising content analysis and computer-aided large language model techniques and triangulating Manifesto Project coding with automated classification and manual adjudication to assess continuity and change in Labour’s policy positioning. It finds that, across multiple measures, including left–right indices, party coding proximities, and principal component analysis, Labour’s 2024 manifesto clusters closely with New Labour programmes and, on some measures, aligns more closely with Conservative platforms than with Labour policy traditions. These findings suggest that 2024 marks an ideological recalibration for the Labour Party that brings with it significant implications for the direction of the welfare state.

This contribution to the themed section on ‘Labour in Government’ provides annotated suggestions and some general guidance related to additional sources to support reading and research around the topic of the UK Labour Party and social policy. It gathers academic sources (books and journal articles) alongside those drawn from web accessible materials, both formal (government) and relevant grey literature.

The introduction to the themed section on ‘Labour in Government and Its Impact on Social Policy’ is setting the scene for the following articles in three steps: First, it sketches the social policy landscape at the start of the Labour Party’s current term in government, shaped by New Labour and the following years of Conservative (and Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition) rule. Secondly, to contextualise the broader political backdrop for the different policy areas that are analysed in the themed section, we highlight the tensions between the large scale of social policy challenges faced by the government on the one hand, and the relatively modest ambitions of the Labour Party, due to its self-imposed restrictions around fiscal policy and its political positioning, on the other. Thirdly, the introduction presents the rationale for a collection of analyses of the Labour government’s social policy orientations and impacts after 12 months in office, underlining its relevance and usefulness as a state-of-art resource for academics, practitioners and students. Finally, we summarise the focus and key insights from the articles in the themed section, before presenting a range of cross-cutting considerations that run across the diverse social policy areas.

The article examines the tax policies the UK Labour government pursued in its first year in office in the context of its economic and fiscal inheritance. It presents the promises of the 2024 Labour Party Manifesto and the government’s main tax policies to June 2025. The article considers several possible interpretations of the government’s tax policies including the desire both to raise revenues and to establish fiscal credibility and assesses whether tax measures have been used to address social policy goals. The article concludes that, while cautious and even conservative, Labour’s approach to tax and tax policy making did not appear to be based on a cohesive plan, was not accompanied by a coherent or compelling narrative, and failed to seize the opportunity for a bolder strategy.

Business management education is increasingly making use of artificial intelligence as an emerging technology that will lead to major societal changes in learning and knowledge endeavours. This editorial article focuses on the link between business management and artificial intelligence as an enabler of social policy changes. This means considering the history of artificial intelligence and how business management education has evolved in recent years. By doing so, it encourages more focus on creative uses of social policy in terms of discussion about educational initiatives. This is helpful in gaining more insight into the novel and entrepreneurial ways business management education can embed artificial intelligence and improve overall learning outcomes.