The Collaborative Research Centre "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" is represented on Bluesky as well as on Mastodon and X. On these channels you will always find the latest news about the CRC 1342.

Furthermore, we also recommend the blog Social Policy Worldwide of the SOCIUM Research Center Inequality and Social Policy at the University of Bremen.

In a new article in "The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era", Fritz Kusch of project B11 "Protectionism and Social Policy in the Americas" explores how American industrialists of the late nineteenth century attempted to sway industrial workers to their side in favor of tariff protectionism.

Link (Open-Access): Capital and Labor United: Workers, Wages, and the Tariff in Late Nineteenth-Century Protectionist Agitation

With the example of the American Protective Tariff League (APTL), an important protectionist pressure group, the article reconstructs the arguments protectionist industrialists used in their agitation targeted at industrial workers in the late nineteenth century. The APTL made the supposed wage benefit to laborers in protected industries the center of their argument and intertwined this wage argument with nativist and Anglophobic stereotypes. Further, the APTL proposed a unity of interests between capital and labor in tariff matters that hinged on a nationalist interpretation of economic matters, in which the American national economy was conceptualized as being endangered by import competition from other national economies but simultaneously as a harmonious cooperation of capital and labor on the inside. Analyzing the organized labor movement’s response to such claims, the article argues that this sort of agitation probably had little influence on workers and their stance on the tariff issue.

In collaboration with the Taiwanese Society for Care Research, the CRC Project A07 on the Global Dynamics of Long-Term Care Policies conducted a conference and a research workshop in Taipei, Taiwan on March 26-28, 2025. The event focused on comparing long-term care policies across three East Asian and three European countries.

In the past decades, many European and East Asian societies are intensively discussing about long-term care provision and related policies. In both regions, the proportion of older persons relative to the total population is above global average and public long-term care systems have been introduced in a comparatively large number of countries. The conference and workshop therefore focused on a cross-regional comparison and networking of researchers from three European and three East Asian welfare states with social insurance traditions: Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands and, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

The one-day conference held on March 26 brought together scholars from the six countries plus activists, politicians and persons with care needs from Taiwan. Presentations covered the long-term care systems, their challenges and future reform directions of the six countries as well as the topic of migrant care work. Common issues identified across countries were for instance marketization in the care sector, missing support for family care giving and working conditions and staff shortages in long-term care. International participants were particularly impressed to learn about the strong involvement of civil society organisations and activists in long-term care policies in Taiwan.

Under the heading of Bridging Care Research Across East Asia and Europe, on March 27-28, researchers resumed in a smaller round to discuss future directions in care research and comparative research ideas on long-term care. During the workshop, several working groups were formed to discuss collaborative research projects, focusing on care migration, care politics, technology and care, family care and care ethics. A final highlight of the event were the on-side NGO visits to the Taiwan International Workers Association, Taiwan Association of Family Caregivers, and Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association. The workshop concluded with many plans for future collaborative research and all project A07 members hope to continue joint research activities in the future.

In an interview with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Dr. Roy Karadag, project director of B09 "Social Policy in Rural Areas of Africa" discusses why criticism of Turkish President Erdoğan from within the European Union remains so cautious. The episode, titled "Kaum Kritik – welche Rolle spielt die Türkei in der EU?", explores Turkey’s role in European politics.

Link: 

https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/kaum-kritik-welche-rolle-spielt-die-tuerkei-in-der-eu-100.html

This year's meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Collaborative Research Centre 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" took place as an online meeting on 25 March 2025. The main item on the agenda was the current status of the application to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the continuation of the CRC in a third phase from 2026 to 2029.

Following the presentation of the central aspects and projects by the designated spokesperson for the third phase, Prof. Dr. Markus Tepe, the researchers provided further advice and comments from their respective disciplines. In addition to the fundamental orientation, the further development of the "Global Welfare State Information System (WeSIS)" was also discussed.

The Scientific Advisory Board is composed of eight leading international researchers who advise the CRC 1342. These include Prof. Dr. Jimi Adesina, Prof. Dr. Aaron Benavot, Prof. Dr. Qin Gao, Prof. Dr. Evelyne Huber, Prof. Dr. Lutz Leisering, Prof. Dr. Ben Ross Schneider, Prof. Dr. Kathleen Thelen and Prof. Dr. Nicola Yeates. Further information on the members of the Scientific Advisory Board can be found [here].

As part of her work in project A03 "Worlds of Labour: Coverage and Generosity of Employment Law", Andrea Schäfer participated in the international conference "Work, Migration and Society" at the University of Madras in India from 20 to 21 February, 2025.

Through intensive research and networking while preparing her fieldwork in India, Andrea Schäfer was able to establish a cooperation with Prof. M. Thamilarasan (Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, University of Madras, Chennai and Conference Director) and was invited to the conference as a speaker of the plenary session (conference programme).

Around the themes of work, migration, education, social development problems, workers' health and safety, decent work, the many participants discussed challenges in global and national contexts. In her presentation "Worlds of Labour: The Impact of Employment Regulations on Labour Market Inequality and Segmentation", Andrea Schäfer used recent data from the A03 project based on the WeSIS platform to contribute to the current state of inclusion and exclusion of labour regulation worldwide and to present first results on the relationship between labour regulation and labour market inequality based on wage differentials on a global scale.

With WeSIS, the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" at the University of Bremen has published an interactive web-based information system. It offers comprehensive data to describe and explain social policy worldwide.

Based on more than seven years of intensive research work involving around 25 researchers, WeSIS, the "Global Welfare State Information System", closes three central gaps. Firstly, from a geographical perspective, because WeSIS contains data and information on the introduction and design of social welfare programs for all countries in the world with over 500,000 inhabitants. Secondly, from a historical perspective, as it provides a data-based representation of welfare state developments since 1880. Thirdly, WeSIS is designed as an interactive information system and is therefore more than just a database: WeSIS offers the opportunity to describe, map, analyze, and explain state social policies worldwide. Currently, the database is based on around 1,300 indicators per country and up to 1,200 indicators per year – and the trend is rising.

"Our unique research profile, which combines a historical and a global comparative perspective, requires consistent research data that covers the introduction of state social policies and their design in terms of the scope and inclusiveness of social benefits, and that reflects their development over time", explains political scientist Professor Herbert Obinger, CRC spokesperson.

Tailored to the Researchers' Needs

Accordingly, the data in WeSIS is divided into three areas: Firstly, data describing social policy programs in the various fields of social policy – from occupational health and safety and old-age security to health systems, family policy programs, and education policy. Secondly, indicators describing national conditions that social policy reacts to or that are influenced by social policies. And thirdly, data on global interdependencies, which also determine the spread and design of social policy.

"From the outset, our goal was to work with researchers in co-creative processes to develop an information system tailored to their needs. As a one-stop data shop, the data required can be accessed from a single source, eliminating the need for time-consuming data merging from different places. Early Access provides initial visualizations, analysis tools, and country profiles with relevant background information, which facilitates the work of researchers and the interested public", says Dr. Nils Düpont, research assistant and research data manager at the CRC 1342.

Funded by the DFG since 2018

Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" is a network of eight research institutes at the University of Bremen in cooperation with Constructor University Bremen, the University of Bielefeld, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. The CRC 1342 has been supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2018. The current second funding period will run until the end of 2025.

Further Information:

https://wesis.org/

https://www.socialpolicydynamics.de/en/

https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/

The 14th NordWel Summer School "State, Society & Citizen - Cross-Disciplinary and Global Perspectives on Welfare State Development" takes place at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense from 18 to 22 August 2025. [Here] you will find the Call for Papers and further information about the Summer School.

As the last event of the Jour Fixe lecture series in the winter semester 2024/25, Prof. Krisztina Kis-Katos from the University of Göttingen was our guest at the CRC 1342 on 29.01.2025. In her talk "Cash Transfers and Violent Crime in Indonesia", she presented the effects of the "Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT)" programme and discussed the interpretations of the extensive data with the participants not only from an economic but also from a social science perspective.

Abstract:

This study investigates the impact of Indonesia’s flagship conditional cash transfer (CCT) program—PKH—on violent crime. Exploiting data from a randomized controlled trial and administrative data from the staggered nationwide program roll-out in combination with different causal identification strategies, we show that communities receiving access to the CCT experienced an increase in violent crime. Examining possible mechanisms, our analysis reveals that the program resulted in an increase in idleness among non-targeted male youth within beneficiary households, which we believe contributed to the rise in violent crime. In contrast, we show that the surge in violent crime is neither related to PKH increasing the (monetary and non-monetary) rewards for committing crime nor to alternative reductions in the (material, psychic, punishment-related) costs of engaging in crimes.

Krisztina Kis-Katos is Professor for International Economic Policy at the University of Göttingen. She studied Economics in Szeged and Konstanz, attended the Swiss Doctoral Program at the Study Center Gerzensee, and received her doctoral degree in Economics in 2010 at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Her research interests lie in the fields of applied development economics and political economy. Her recent research projects focus on the effects of (de-)globalization and more generally of macro-economic processes or related public policies on a range of social and economic outcomes, including labor market and firm outcomes, land use change and deforestation, or conflict.