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12. BOB DEACON: “Create global social policy”
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202 ◆ ◆ ◆ 12 “Create global social policy” BOB DEACON in conversation with Rianne Mahon Bob Deacon is emeritus professor of international social policy at the University of Sheffield and holds the UNESCO-UNU Chair in Regional Integration, Migration and the Free Movement of People at UNUCRIS in Bruges, Belgium. He has acted as consultant or adviser to several countries, as well as organizations such as the World Bank, UNICEF, and the UN. In a frank conversation, Bob Deacon, a preeminent expert on global social policy, explains the history of the concept as theory, policy, and practice, focusing primarily on welfarist policies since the acceleration of globalization in the 1970s. He argues that some problems, like disease , migration, and trade, cannot be dealt with at the level of the state and require international cooperation between states, supranational organizations, and nongovernmental organizations, acting both locally and in the global arena. Calling on his own involvement in the development of such processes, he explains the difficulties of such initiatives and makes a number of concrete suggestions about how they might be implemented in the future. Throughout, Deacon elucidates how specific Photo courtesy of Bob Deacon. Bob Deacon ◆ ◆ ◆ 203 contexts and political pressures interact with abstract ideas in a fraught and contested policy space. He also stresses, unlike many commentators , that individual politicians and policymakers can indeed play pivotal roles in driving or derailing progressive policy. He also makes a number of challenging claims that are sure to provoke debate. Deacon advocates the concept of a global social protection floor, which would act as a sort of baseline global safety net, and is unapologetic for his universalism. Indeed he argues that it is the emergent economies that, for various reasons and perhaps paradoxically, are most likely to oppose new directions in global social policy. RM: Is there a need for a global social policy? Isn’t social policy really best left to the national level, where bonds of social solidarity are strongest? BD: When I first started to think about global social policy, I didn’t invent the idea. I might have invented the phrase, but there was already, in reality, a global social policy. Since the end of the Second World War there were already global institutions and intergovernmental organizations in effect addressing issues at a global level. You already had the International Labor Organization (ILO) going back to 1919, which was trying to articulate a set of standards for workers internationally; you already had the World Health Organization trying to address issues of health globally; and, as we’ll perhaps talk about later, we already had the World Bank, which was beginning to get into the business of social policy. So nobody needed to invent the institutions—they were already in existence for decades and addressing issues of labor standards, poverty , eradication of diseases like TB, and working for universal education at a global level. Another way to answer your question is to say that social problems do increasingly cross borders. Disease is the most obvious example, and fighting the spread of epidemics like avian flu and eradicating diseases such as polio and TB require some sort of international agreement. Moreover the more competitive trade arrangements between countries have [35.170.64.185] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:13 GMT) 204 ◆ ◆ ◆ Understand the Global Balance of Power grown, the more issues of what should be appropriate labor standards have become international. Poverty in one place has an effect elsewhere. The whole migration issue by definition requires attention at a global level and cannot be resolved entirely within the boundaries of one nation-state. So the reality is that global problems and global policies have existed for a very long time. All my work has done is to begin to think more systematically about it. But you are right, of course, in suggesting that bonds of social solidarity are strongest at a national level. This only raises the challenge to us all of how we re-create those bonds at a transnational level. RM: So why did it become important to focus on global social policy, especially in the 1990s? BD: Two things, I think. One is that, obviously, during the late 1970s, the 1980s, and into the 1990s, what we now know as globalization happened. There was a particular set of political decisions to reduce the barriers between countries in terms of the flows of money, ideas (which was a technological development, if you like), and to a lesser extent the flows...