Companies as socio-political actors and service providers in social policy

Abstract

This special issue of the Zeitschrift für Sozialreform is dedicated to the dynamic and important, but not very well-theorized relationship between companies and social policy. During the past decades, modern societies have been powerfully shaped by forces of economization and liberalization (Baccaro/Howell 2017; Höpner et al. 2011; Schimank/Volkmann 2008). Companies, market rules and competition, economic criteria and imaginations of governance have steadily increased their importance and influence in capitalist societies all over the world (Backhaus-Maul et al. 2018; Muller 2018; Kinderman 2017; Iversen/Soskice 2015; Hüther et al. 2015; Thelen 2014; Streeck 2013; Golbeck 2012; Crouch 2011; Höpner et al. 2011; Maurer 2008, Maurer/Schimank 2008; Heinze et al. 1997). This trend can be observed – with some cross-national variations (Martin/Swank 2012) – in most areas of politics, public administration and social policy (Busemeyer 2014). One of its manifestations is an increasing gap between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in social security and social services (Hassel 2014; Schwander/Häusermann 2013; Emmenegger et al. 2012) and another is the prospect and sometimes the reality of trans-national convergence of social policy in western capitalist democracies (Seeleib-Kaiser 2016). Economization and liberalization within the area of social policy involves the introduction and implementation of business and management ideas and instruments as well as the logics of economic efficiency and effectiveness. The rising number of profit orientated providers of social services is a strong indica-