Introduction to the Handbook of Social Policy and Development

While the study of social policy in the developing world goes back many decades it is nevertheless the case that extensive and sustained attention to the subject has been largely a twenty-first-century phenomenon. To a large degree this renewed focus has been driven by fast-changing developments on the ground; specifically that we now see in many low income and emerging economies the formation of a new ‘world of welfare’ with unique and often very large social assistance programmes, services, budgets and huge coverage. To take just one illustration, the largest social safety assistance programmes in the world are now provided by China, India and Brazil and cover almost 500 million people (a figure equivalent to the European population), and social pensions, child benefits and other cash transfers are now customary in many if not most low and middle income countries. The importance of universal health care for instrumental and ethical reasons, or social protection for mitigating the consequences of an increasingly globalized and ‘disrupted’ world, is now embedded in the work of the international aid and donor agencies. Consequently, there is fresh interest in evaluating the outcomes and impact of these reforms and understanding the political factors driving this new welfare expansion in the developing world. Within social policy and political science there is growing debate about the extent to which the ‘old’ theories of the development of the welfare state, or contemporary theories of new social risk, can explain this case of welfare expansion. Similarly, although originally focused on economic growth and industrialization, development studies is now routinely engaged with issues of social welfare and poverty reduction. While the analytic determinants and drivers of current trends may remain disputed, recognition of the importance of social policy and welfare in the developing world has indisputably gathered momentum. It is within this context that the Handbook of Social Policy and Development is located. It utilizes the different analytic models, theories and concepts which have developed within the two interdisciplinary fields of social policy and development studies to provide an up-to-date,