New Social Risks

Aunque Noruega y España presentan diferencias significativas en sus marcos institucionales (como su relación con la UE o su régimen de bienestar), ambos países comparten un interés en mantener la cohesión social y hacer frente a los llamados Nuevos Riesgos Sociales que afectan actualmente a las sociedades post-industriales. En este libro se analizan el alcance y los desafíos que el envejecimiento de la población, el nuevo papel de las mujeres y las características de las familias actuales, el desempleo de larga duración y el desempleo juvenil, entre otros, plantean a los Estados de Bienestar de los dos países.  Además, se examinan las políticas públicas noruegas y españolas actuales relacionadas con estos sectores y se reflexiona sobre hasta qué punto consiguen dar respuesta a los retos mencionados y acerca de cómo podrían mejorarse.

Recently we have witnessed the worldwide adoption of many different types of innovative technologies, such as crowdsourcing, ridesharing, open and big data, aiming at delivering public services more efficiently and effectively. Among them, ridesharing has received substantial attention from decision-makers around the world. Because of the multitude of currently understood or potentially unknown risks associated with ridesharing (unemployment, insurance, information privacy, and environmental risk), governments in different countries apply different strategies to address such risks. Some governments prohibit the adoption of ridesharing altogether, while other governments promote it. In this article, we address the question of how risks involved in ridesharing are governed over time. We present an in-depth single case study on Singapore and examine how the Singaporean government has addressed risks in ridesharing over time. The Singaporean government has a strong ambition to become an innovation hub, and many innovative technologies have been adopted and promoted to that end. At the same time, decision-makers in Singapore are reputed for their proactive style of social governance. The example of Singapore can be regarded as a revelatory case study, helping us further to explore governance practices in other countries.

European welfare states are challenged today not only by cost-containment pressures, but also by
the rise of new social needs that are poorly covered by existing social programs and that contribute to
generate social vulnerability. The economic recession begun in 2008 and still hitting some of the
European countries, and the austerity measures that followed have made needs wider and more
impellent, and at the same time resources scanter. The need to tackle new and diversified social needs in
presence of stricter budgetary constraints calls for new policy responses and/or for new ways of
providing policy responses; in a word, it calls for social innovation in welfare.
Research has shown that new social risks are not equally distributed throughout Europe, but
characterized by relevant regional and local disparities. In parallel, it is increasingly acknowledged that
welfare provision is the result of complex multi-level governance patterns, and that although the role
and contribution of different scales varies in time and space, the importance of local authorities in
providing, regulating and programming welfare policies is crucial in most places.
Against this backdrop, the paper aim is threefold: first, to analyze the different configuration of
social vulnerability in various urban contexts throughout Europe; second, to investigate the capacity of
local welfare systems – in their relations with the other scales of government – to contrast the impact of
social vulnerability; and third, to explore the relations between the two, proposing a tentative typology
of local welfare systems. This analysis tackles therefore the social and political background in which
social innovation takes place.
The paper draws on the results of the EU-FP7th project WILCO, Welfare innovations at local
level in favour of cohesion. The research was carried out in 2011-12 on the basis of a specific common
empirical strategy in 20 European cities in 10 EU countries, covering all welfare regimes. The focus has
been on labour market structures and dynamics, family structures and demographic trends, migration
flows and housing markets. Besides, information on welfare policies and services in three policy fields
(access to employment, to childcare and to housing) has been gathered and compared. Finally, the
narratives about the experience of vulnerability have been recorded through 360 in-depth interviews
carried out with individuals from three target groups (the young, lone parents, migrants) in the 20 cities.
The paper first shows how macro socio-economic trends that are generally assumed to invest all
European contexts have in fact differentiated impacts on national and urban territories, being filtered by
specific structural and institutional factors (e.g. the diversified recovery of the birth rate, the specific
content of tertiarization and flexibilization of labour markets, the trends in home ownership, the
migration flows). The impact of the recession is also diversified. Thus, determinants and features of
social vulnerability vary among countries, but also among cities within the same country.
Second, it highlights how the relevance of the local level of government in shaping the extent, the
specific contents and possibly the appropriateness and innovativeness of welfare policies not only
differs by welfare regime and country, but also– within the same context – by policy field. Finally, it
asks if coherent patterns of configurations of social vulnerability and of welfare policies can be seen at
the local level or, in other words, if it is possible to identify a typology of local welfare systems, that
constitute the environment of and the premises for the development of welfare innovations.