Readers interested in the note about good practices in social policy might
like to look at two things I have written which relate to this. The first is
an Occasional paper on Globalization and Social Policy published by UNRISD
(http://ww.unrisd.org) in connection with its Geneva 2000 activities. This
reviews both the bank social protection policy (albeit based on an earlier
draft of the Holzmann paper) and the story behind the social policy
principles. I think on the ODI (http://www.odi.org) site there is also a
lengthy piece on the social policy principles.
In terms of the Holzmann strategy it should in my view be seen as a way of
making the discredited pension privatisation strategy more acceptable. It is
dressed up as a three tier policy which still makes provision for a state
minimum pension. For a critique of the Chile scheme which inspired the bank
see another UNRISD paper in the same series.
In terms of the social policy principles the importan point is that a
progressive idea by Gordon Brown to challenge neo-liberal safety nets in
favour of rediscovering a social purpose in the global economy got mangled
when
some southern countries did not want the bank to handle it for fear of the
principles becoming a new set of social conditions. The initiative was sent
to the UN in the context of the Geneva 2000 process. There it met the same
fate with opposition in the back room negotiating paragraph 7 coming from
India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. The opposition articulated the fear of
conditionality and the cost of paying for good social policy. This
derailing of what had been seen by some in Europe as a worthwhile challenge
to US safety-net fundamentalism is an object lesson in the current
complexity of the global politics of social policy after Seattle. No
progressive stance on global social policy in the north is likely to succeed
unless a)it has allies from the south and b)it addresses through global
taxation the resource question of realisng global social rights in practice
and c)the EU puts its concern with social development in the south ahead of
its trade interests. This comment on Geneva 2000 is elaborated in a news
item on the GASPP web page at http://www.stakes.fi/gaspp
Readers are alerted to the fact that UK DFID is drafting a white paper on
globalisation. It will be an interesting test case of joined up government
or not.
Bob Deacon. GASPP.
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