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The Schumpeterian Consensus: The New Logic of Global Social Policy to Face Digital Transformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2022

Vicente Silva Open the ORCID record for Vicente Silva [Opens in a new window]
Vicente Silva*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Old Building, Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
*
Email: v.silva@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

Digitalisation emerged as a central problem in global social governance in the past decade. ‘Digital transformation’ was expected to bring new social risks, requiring a redesign of the welfare state. This study examines the social policy responses of international actors on the digitalisation agenda in the 2010s and early 2020s. Inspired by sociological institutionalism, it shows different trajectories followed by UN agencies, the OECD and the World Bank in terms of addressing the social implications of this transformation. Despite these divergent organisational agendas, the article reveals the emergence of a new transnational policy paradigm, the ‘Schumpeterian consensus’, overcoming the antagonism between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ institutions from previous decades. In this paradigm, the ‘Schumpeterian investment state’ is seen as a mediator between the creative and destructive potential of technological change. Its social model encourages governments to invest in skills, universal social protection and flexicurity for the digital era.

Keywords

global social policydigitalisationfourth industrial revolutioninternational organisationsinstitutional changepolicy paradigms
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , First View , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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