Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment

A Comparative Analysis of Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe and Beyond

Navigating the context of welfare regimes undergoing transformation, Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment examines the evidence and questions the capacity of Social Innovation initiatives to tackle social inequalities, especially when it comes to the domain of early childhood education and care.

Since the early 2000s, social innovation has become increasingly relevant in the political and research debates on welfare state transformations. Although most social innovations are citizen-led, some new institution-led initiatives have also emerged. But what are the implications of social innovation for equity and welfare? How does policy learning from social innovation take place in different welfare regime contexts? How can policy be simultaneously responsive to the diversification of needs and to equity and universalisation?

Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment examines these questions by focusing on early childhood education and care (ECEC), where the welfare state has not managed to consolidate universal coverage, where social investment is considered crucial for equal opportunities, and where intersectional influences across different dimensions of inequality, such as education and gender-related issues, are central.

Offering an original research design for studying the institutionalisation process of social innovation in ECEC across a variety of contexts in Europe and beyond, this collection provides evidence of how the interplay between social innovation and policy deeply affects equity and citizens’ welfare in advanced capitalist economies.

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