In this SIWG session, William Sørensen (EUI researcher) will discuss his recent work on institutional discourse of violence against women, while Paulus Wagner (Max Weber Fellow) will present the introduction to a special issue on socio-political returns to social investment policies.
Tracing the Institutionalization of Violence Against Women in Denmark and Italy: A Comparative Genealogy
Speaker: William Sørensen (EUI)
Institutional efforts to combat violence against women (VAW) have transformed significantly in Europe, from second-wave feminist activism in the 1970s to VAW’s current status as a core priority in the EU’s gender equality agenda. However, assumptions of uniformity and linear progress leave blind spots in the literature, particularly as earlier seminal work has aged and now calls for renewal. In this presentation, I share findings from one of the main empirical chapters of my PhD thesis, which takes shape as a genealogical analysis of how VAW has been articulated in institutional discourse from the 1970s to the present in Denmark and Italy. The presentation highlights how these trajectories evolve over time, shedding light on the shifting conceptual boundaries of VAW and the historical institutional logics that have shaped its governance in each context.
Socio-Political Feedback Effects of the Capacitating Welfare State (with Heta Pöyliö and Anton Hemerijck)
Speaker: Paulus Wagner (EUI)
This article forwards a theoretical argument that social investment (SI) policies can foster socio-political returns. Firstly, we argue that social investment policies, through their focus on active capacitation, create positive subjective wellbeing returns in a way that differs categorically from ‘passive’ compensatory and punitive ‘workfare’ policies. These non-economic wellbeing returns include experiences of agency, social recognition, and resilience. Secondly, we argue that through these non-economic – immaterial – wellbeing returns, social investment policies can potentially harbour important positive feedback on political outcomes. As such, SI can strengthen political trust, participation, and social cohesion—countering trends of populism, polarisation, and democratic disaffection. By contributing simultaneously to the research on subjective wellbeing and on political behaviour, we point out novel links between these two concepts and literature. Further, we adopt a life-course perspective on the welfare state, encompassing social investment and its feedback among different age groups, from childcare to active ageing. Ultimately, we argue for a renewed focus on social investment as a means to not only support economic adaptation but also to fortify democratic resilience in an era of societal transformation. This paper serves as the Introduction to a Special Issue in the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy on 'Wellbeing Returns and Political Feedback: Tracing the Non-Economic Effects of Welfare State Reform'.
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