Application Deadline: 31.08.2026

Job description

The University as an Employer:

With approximately 20,000 students and around 3,500 employees, the University of Bremen is a medium-sized university. It is among Germany’s top research universities in terms of third-party funding and research strength.

About SFB 1342:

The Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2018. The third phase marks the capstone of this 12-year research program:

• Phase I mapped the worldwide introduction of social protection programs and initiated the development of the Global Welfare State Information System (WeSIS).
• Phase II captured differences in the inclusiveness and scope of social policy benefits, feeding this data into WeSIS.
• Phase III builds on this foundation to examine the socioeconomic efficacy of social policy regarding the improvement of social conditions and the promotion of political integration.

 

The SFB is structured into two main project areas:

• Area A (6 projects): Focuses on the socioeconomic and political impacts of social policy in a global comparative perspective.
• Area B (6 projects): Primarily addresses the political and socioeconomic consequences of social policy in selected countries or regions.
• Information Infrastructure Project (INF): Provides a shared data and methodology platform.

 

About Subproject A05:

Subproject A05 deals with global cultural typologies derived from dimensions such as "self-expression vs. secularization" or "independent vs. interdependent selves". Against this background, standardized text analysis methods are used to examine normative educational ideals, educational policy preferences, and recommendations of international organizations, with a special focus on the Global South.

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaboration on joint theory development regarding universalist and multiculturalist discourses
• Participation in developing a text classifier, as well as the organization, supervision, and execution of data annotation and text analysis
• Co-authoring joint project publications
• Assisting in the preparation of project reports
• Supporting project-related research, organization, and administration

 

Requirements

• An outstanding university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in Sociology, Political Science, Economics, or Psychology
• An outstanding completed PhD with a focus on social or behavioral sciences
  Applicants in the final stage of their PhD will also be considered. Please note that presenting the doctoral degree certificate is a prerequisite for formal employment
• Very good knowledge of quantitative empirical social research
• Very good knowledge of standardized text analysis, text pre-processing (e.g., quanteda in R), and text analysis techniques (e.g., topic modeling and text classification)
• Interest in analyzing global cultural typologies
• Knowledge in the area of normative discourses surrounding liberalism, universalism, and multiculturalism

 

General Information

What we offer:

• Salary: Depending on personal qualifications, an annual gross salary according to TV-L ranging between €57,112.44 (Pay Step 1) and €81,176.28 (Pay Step 6) for a full-time position. The individual pay step assignment will be determined by the university upon hiring, based on relevant professional experience. Additional benefits, such as the annual special payment ("Christmas bonus") and potential progression within the salary group, depend on this assignment and are governed by the TV-L regulations (specifically § 16 TV-L). For civil servants (Beamt:innen), remuneration is governed by the Bremen Remuneration Act (Bremisches Besoldungsgesetz)
• Supplementary occupational pension scheme (VBL) for public sector employees.
• 30 days of annual leave (based on a 5-day working week)
• A diverse, forward-looking, and open workplace culture
• Support from a collegial, motivated team with a positive working environment
• Individual onboarding
• Opportunities for professional development and further training
• Work-life balance through flexible working hours (flextime) and the option for mobile work/telecommuting (subject to operational frameworks)
• Free social and family counseling services
• Active occupational health management, including discounted rates for local sports clubs, fitness centers, and swimming pools (EGYM Wellpass)
• Option to obtain a subsidized public transport ticket (Job-Ticket)
• Numerous sports and cultural activities
• Varied dining options in the university cafeterias (Mensen)

 

Contact & Questions:

For general questions regarding the selection process as well as content-related inquiries about the position, please contact: 

Prof. Dr. Michael Windzio – mwindzio@uni-bremen.de

How to Apply:

Please send your application with complete and comprehensive documents (cover letter, CV, qualification certificates, transcripts) quoting reference number A149-26 by 31.08.2026 as one single PDF file via unencrypted email to:

mwindzio@uni-bremen.de and stieglit@uni-bremen.de

Or by post to: 

University of Bremen
SFB 1342 / AG Windzio
Postfach 330 440
28334 Bremen, Germany

• Please note: Do not include photos in your application documents.
• Please submit copies only (no folders), as we are unable to return application materials.
• Data Protection Notice (GDPR): In accordance with Art. 6 GDPR in conjunction with § 12 BremDSGVOAG, §§ 85 et seq. BremBG, and § 15 AGG, your application documents will be stored until the expiration of the statutory period and destroyed thereafter.
• Application costs cannot be reimbursed.

 

We look forward to receiving your application!

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Michael Windzio
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 9
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58629
E-Mail: mwindzio@uni-bremen.de

A05 workshop on 25 October 2024 at the Collaborative Research Centre 1342

On October 25, project A05 "The Global Development of Coverage and Generosity in Public Education" hosted a workshop titled "25 Years of Global Education Agendas: Emerging Actors, Evolving Mechanisms, and Changing Interests" to examine pivotal shifts in global education agendas over the past twenty-five years. The workshop organized by the Team of Project A05 highlighted the emergence of new actors, evolving policy mechanisms, and shifting priorities in the global education landscape. Attendees included seven distinguished researchers from international institutions, the local project team, and invited commentators from Berlin and Hamburg.

Patricia Bromley from Stanford University presented on the discourse surrounding global education reforms. With co-authors she analyzes the ways international organizations promote and report on education reforms worldwide. Following her, Dennis Niemann from the University of Bremen provided a mixed-methods perspective on international organizations’ approaches to refugee and migrant education, offering insights into the policy frameworks addressing these populations’ educational needs. Clara Fontdevila and Antoni Verger from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) presented on the conceptualization of large-scale national assessments of student achievement, discussing how these assessments are developed and employed to measure educational outcomes at a national level. Marina López Levy, also from UAB, focused on the evolution of large-scale learning assessments in Latin America, tracing both the historical trajectory and regional adaptations of these mechanisms over time.

Jane Gingrich from the University of Oxford examined public attitudes toward higher education. Julian Garritzmann from Frankfurt University presented on the influence of party politics on mass higher education, investigating how various political ideologies shape the expansion of higher education enrollment. Both illuminate the intersection between politics and education policy, particularly within mass education frameworks. Gita Steiner-Khamsi from Teachers College, Columbia University, closed the presentations with a reflection on the day’s discussions. She emphasized the impact of global education campaigns on policy as well as the timing and sequencing of changing education agendas.

Commentators from Berlin and Hamburg provided valuable perspectives, addressing the implications of these studies and offering comparative insights on education reform trajectories across different regions. These contributions spurred vibrant discussions, enabling participants to delve into the complexities of regional and global interactions in educational policy.

The workshop facilitated dynamic exchanges on the roles and impacts of diverse actors in global education reform. Participants engaged with questions on accountability, the efficacy of large-scale assessments, and the socio-political factors shaping educational discourse. By fostering a collaborative environment, the workshop strengthened a sense of community among researchers and practitioners, promoting future collaboration and professional exchange. The event underscored the importance of interdisciplinary perspectives and highlighted the ongoing evolution of education as a global priority shaped by diverse stakeholders. Future events will continue to build on these discussions, further exploring how education systems can evolve to meet both global and local needs.

Contact:
Dr. Fabian Besche-Truthe
Dr. Helen Seitzer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57065
E-Mail: seitzer@uni-bremen.de

Supported by the grant, Seitzer will develop an automated method to extract info on bibliographies & citations from documents. This will help Seitzer analyse where IOs draw their expert knowledge from.

Helen Seitzer will receive seed funding from the Data Science Center (DSC) at the University of Bremen from 1 June 2022 to 31 December 2022. The seed funding will support her research project "The origins of expertise: Where does IO-knowledge originate from?", in which Seitzer investigates the origins of expertise from international organisations dealing with education. For this work, hundreds to thousands of text documents have to be analysed. To speed up this process, Seitzer is developing an automated text analysis procedure to extract information on bibliographies and citations from PDF files. Seitzer will initially apply this procedure to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but it should then be transferable to other organisations and thus enable comparisons.
Seitzer's work is concerned with examining more closely the hitherto generally accepted expert status of international organisations in the field of education and education reforms. Specifically, the aim is to determine the source of expertise of these influential organisations. Do they use results from current research or do they repeatedly refer to research results from their own ranks? Or do they use only few central documents? This research is linked to the CRC project A05 The Global Development of Coverage and Generosity in Public Education, directed by Kerstin Martens and Michael Windzio.

The DSC Seed Grant

The DSC Seed Grant is designed to strengthen the collaboration of working groups from different faculties of the University of Bremen and thus to lay the foundation for interdisciplinary research projects in the context of data science. The overall goal of the DSC Seed Grant is to promote excellent research in the field of data science. The amount of the grant is up to EUR 2,500 per applicant.

Contact:
Dr. Helen Seitzer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57065
E-Mail: seitzer@uni-bremen.de

In a joint edited volume the quantitative projects of CRC 1342 investigate if and how the global diffusion of a wide range of social policy programmes occurs through different network dimensions.

"Networks and Geographies of Global Social Policy Diffusion. Culture, Economy and Colonial Legacies", edited by Michael Windzio, Ivo Mossig, Fabian Besche-Truthe, and Helen Seitzer, is the CRC 1342’s sixth volume in the Global Dynamics of Social Policy series published with Palgrave Macmillan. On 272 pages the authors analyse the introduction of a wide range of social policy programmes – work-injury insurance, compulsory education, basis adult education, public health care, public long-term care, family policy, and antidiscrimination legislation. They use data reaching back as far as 1880 and look for the influence of global networks on the diffusion of these policies. In this perspective, networks of global trade, colonial history, similarity in culture, and spatial proximity are regarded as "pipe structures," or structural backbones, of the diffusion process.

The overall findings reveal that the importance of international linkages captured by different network types is not homogeneous across the social policies examined. "The findings suggest that spatial proximity is the most relevant network in this regard," Carina Schmitt and Herbert Obinger write in their summary of book. "Geographical proximity implies strong international linkages in many respects such as cross-border migration, cultural ties, and trade relations. Moreover, all these linkages are indicative of intensive cross-border communication, which is widely seen as a main prerequisite for policy diffusion." Interestingly, neither colonial ties nor trade relations have been identified as important explanatory factors.

All chapters of this book also looked at the most important domestic factors that have contributed to the introduction of the respective social policy programmes, since only the interplay between international interdependencies and national factors explains the adoption and spread of social policies.

Below you can find a brief summary of the findings for the individual social policy programmes

Work-Injury Programmes

Nate Breznau and Felix Lanver have identified state formation and democratization processes as key driving factors for the introduction of work injury programmes. Spatial proximity and ties in the trade network also have a positive but smaller effect.

Compulsory Education

Helen Seitzer, Fabian Besche-Truthe, and Michael Windzio found that the cultural similarity network was consistently significant in the diffusion of compulsory education. Colonial legacies and trade networks on the other hand did not show significant results. "Research on education policy diffusion should not ignore economic factors”, the authors write, "but should include cultural factors in addition to the 'usual suspects'."

Adult Basic Education

Cultural similarity has no robust influence in the case of ABE, Fabian Besche-Truthe writes. "All the results lead me to believe in a diffusion process that might not be fully erratic but is also not structured through interdependencies between countries," he interprets his data.

Healthcare Systems

Trade networks cannot explain policy diffusion in this case, Alexander Polte, Sebastian Haunss, Achim Schmid, Gabriela de Carvalho, and Heinz Rothgang conclude. Nor do the links created through cultural similarity and colonial ties offer a universal explanation of healthcare system introduction. "Based on our knowledge of healthcare systems around the world, we actually assume that it is more likely the type than the timing of the system introduction that is influenced through transnational policy diffusion networks," the author team writes. The introduction of healthcare systems mainly occurred in economically prosperous countries before WWII, the effect of GDP decreases in subsequent periods. In addition, the effect of spatial proximity decreases over time, whereas the effect of trade networks seems to increase.

Long-Term Care Systems

Johanna Fischer, Alexander Polte, and Meika Sternkopf have identified several factors which advance the introduction of LTC systems – noting that we are still witnessing the early phase of diffusion in this social policy field. Aside from geographic proximity, there seems to be no horizontal diffusion via networks. Rather, the introduction of long-term care systems depends on problem pressure (population 75+), political empowerment of women, GDP per capita, and levels of democratization.

Family Policy

Paid maternity leave is confirmed as a showcase for the agenda-setting power of the ILO. Colonial and other imperial relations, Tobias Böger, Keonhi Son, and Simone Tonelli have found, play an important role in the origin of other family policies outside of Western Europe, e.g. the introduction of workplace childcare facilities. Family allowances are spurred by low fertility rates. 

Antidiscrimination Legislation in Employment and Occupation

With the exception of the geographical proximity network, the networks examined by Jenny Hahs do not play a significant role as a pipeline for diffusion. "The influence of ILO membership slows down the effect of ratification more than it supports it," Hahs concludes. "Surprisingly, the influence of the national de jure status of antidiscrimination rights is completely irrelevant. This supports a decoupling of transnational and national regulation in the field of antidiscrimination rights."

Workplace Antidiscrimination Regulations for the LGBTQ+ Community

Domestic factors, mainly the democratization index and the gender equality index have a very strong positive impact on the introduction of antidiscrimination regulations, Helen Seitzer writes in her contribution. "The most interesting result of the analysis is the negative effect of the cultural spheres network. Countries sharing cultural characteristics do not cause contagion, in contrast, it slows the diffusion down. However, this might be the case for only some countries."

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Windzio, Michael; Mossig, Ivo; Besche-Truthe, Fabian; Seitzer, Helen (Hg.), 2022: Networks and Geographies of Global Social Policy Diffusion. Culture, Economy and Colonial Legacies, Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, doi:10.1007%2F978-3-030-83403-6

Contact:
Dr. Fabian Besche-Truthe
Prof. Dr. Ivo Mossig
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49-421-218 67410
E-Mail: mossig@uni-bremen.de

Dr. Helen Seitzer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57065
E-Mail: seitzer@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Michael Windzio
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 9
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58629
E-Mail: mwindzio@uni-bremen.de

Recent GLOBED graduate Cherine Sabry, co-supervised by CRC member Kerstin Martens, presents her findings at AEMS 2021 symposium at Indiana University.

Cherine Sabry has recently graduated from the GLOBED (Global Education Policies for Development) Masters programme, jointly offered by the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain), Universität Bremen (Germany) and the University of Cyprus. She has written her thesis (2nd supervisor Kerstin Martens of CRC 1342 project A05) on regional education organisations in the Arab world, focusing on the case of the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO).

She presents her findings today at the 2021 Virtual Symposium on Advancing Education in Muslim Societies (AEMS). She reveals new insights regarding the role that regional organisations play in the design of education policy in the Arab and Muslim world, and how these policies are shaped by the interaction between regional and global IOs. Using a post-colonial framework for the analysis, Sabry has analysed ALESCO’s publications and publications by its partner organisations. The data was complemented by interviews with current and former ALECSO staff.

In her analysis Sabry found that the ALECSO is unmoored between two trends that pull it in different directions – on the one hand ALECSO aims to counter Western hegemony in the region and to promote and preserve the Arab culture and language; on the other hand the undeniable dominance of certain global IOs influence ALECSO’s work, so that it emulates global IOs, e.g. in using global guidelines and criteria to measure educational quality. This inconsistent strategy, combined with the lack of qualified staff, Sabry found, leads to a decline of the role ALECSO is playing in shaping education policy in the Arab world.

You can download a video of Cherine Sabry’s presentation that has been recorded previously: Regional Education Organizations in the Arab World

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Martens

Seitzer wrote her doctoral thesis in project A05 on transnational education policy, Son in project A06 on the inclusiveness of maternity leave programmes worldwide.

Helen Seitzer defended her PhD thesis on "Conceptualising the Transational Education Policymaking Process from a Relational Perspective" at the beginning of October. She has already published parts of her work in international journals.

Keonhi Son defended her thesis ("The Influence of the ILO Maternity Protection Conventions on the historical development of paid maternity leave in the world") on 25 October 2021. Son argues that informal sector workers, especially women, in the Global South are excluded from the application of international labour standards because of the way states translate and implement these standards. Son was able to test this argument using a database on paid maternity leave in 165 countries between 1883 and 2018, which she had built in collaboration with other members of the A06 project.

Further defences of doctoral theses in CRC 1342 will follow in the coming days and weeks.

Contact:
Dr. Helen Seitzer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57065
E-Mail: seitzer@uni-bremen.de

Dr. Keonhi Son
MZES
A5, 6 (Building A)
68159 Mannheim
Phone: +49 621 181-2803
E-Mail: son@uni-mannheim.de

It was the first CRC 1342 event with international guests in Bremen since the the first lockdown in the pandemic.

On Friday, October 8, 2021, the CRC project A05 hosted an international workshop on "Developments and Changes in Education Systems across Global 'Cultural Spheres'" in Bremen. The event took place in a hybrid format with about 20 participants present on the scene. For the CRC 1342 it was the first workshop since the beginning of the pandemic that was attended by international guests in Bremen.

The workshop was structured in four slots, focussing on Education policies and reforms, School autonomy, Expertise and skills, as well as Education and culture. Each of the nine presentation was followed by an in-depth feedback by a discussant and an open discussion with the audience.

Patricia Bromley (et al.) from Stanford University looked at global causes for education reforms worldwide by analyzing the changing role of the World Bank and International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) in 147 countries between 1960 and 2017. In this period, Bromley found a sharp drop in the levels of national education reforms. She also found evidence of changing power dynamics: The influence of World Bank loans in promoting education reform declined over time, while the influence of INGOs grew.

Fabian Besche-Truthe, Helen Seitzer and Michael Windzio (all CRC 1342) presented their concept of Cultural Spheres and their influence on the diffusion of compulsory education around the world.  Countries can be tied by sharing a multitude of cultural characteristics, defined by a variety of variables like dominant religion(s), dominant language, colonial history, gender relations, or civil freedom. The result is a fuzzy typology of cultural spheres. The authors’ hypothesis is that the introduction and configuration of state education correspond to world regions and cultural spheres. And in line with this expectation, makro-statistical analysis of the introduction dates of compulsory education shows that cultural spheres considerably mediate the diffusion of compulsory education.

Michael Windzio (CRC 1342) then presented the results of an explorative study on the effects of culture on the gender gap in education, i.e. the probability of women getting only little/low level education. By drawing on the World Value Survey and on its data on secular and emancipative data in particular, Windzio defines eight country classes. His statistical analysis shows that “culture matters” for the gender education gap – countries belonging to the traditional religious class show a higher tendency towards low education, and women in these countries are considerably disadvantaged.

Gerard Ferrer and Antoni Verger (both Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) looked at school autonomy and accountability. According to their findings, market-oriented accountability systems tend to have higher levels of autonomy. There is some evidence on the convergence of certain policies of school autonomy and accountability at the level of practice: there seems to be evidence of convergence of school autonomy policies (staff, school budget and curriculum) and robust evidence of convergence of autonomy policies on school admission, derived from an increase of the selection practices based on the students’ record.

Michael Dobbins (University of Konstanz) and Dennis Niemann (CRC 1342) introduced a refined approach to look at school autonomy by presenting four ideal-types of school autonomy: the civic participation model, the school competition model, the professional (teacher) self-steering model, and the hierarchical (school management) self- steering model. As an example of how to use their ideal types, Dobbins and Niemann calculated the relationship between the school autonomy constellation in European countries and each country’s PISA performance.

Manuel Souto-Otero (Cardiff University) and Piotr Bialowoski (Harvard University) presented their research on how skills prioritisation and conceptions of education (narrow vs. broad) vary by social class. They found that (1) class differences exist and (2) that those in the middle classes prioritise different sets of skills than individuals in the working class and they also conceive education in a broader way, e.g. opportunities to learn are more often associated with non-formal and informal learning contexts.

Aaron Benavot (University at Albany-SUNY) has explored regional and variation over time in school knowledge and textbook content in primary and secondary education and discussed the cultural underpinnings of such variation. Jane Gingrich (University of Oxford) presented on the politics of differentiation reforms in secondary education, and Gita Steiner Khamsi (Columbia University/Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) on evidence and expertise in educational politics.

Each presentation was followed by an in-depth feedback by a discussant and an open discussion with the audience.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Martens
Prof. Dr. Michael Windzio
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 9
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58629
E-Mail: mwindzio@uni-bremen.de

In his cumulative work, Besche-Truthe succeeded in integrating three usually isolated approaches to study the development of education systems into one approach.

Fabian Besche-Truthe successfully defended his cumulative doctoral thesis on Monday. Besche-Truthe, who is working on his doctorate in project A05 The Global Development, Diffusion and Transformation of Education Systems, has combined three research approaches usually used in isolation to study the dynamics of education systems' development into a heuristic approach in his thesis. His work is based on his three essays:

• The Global Trajectories of Compulsory Education: Clustering Sequences of Policy Development, in: Martens, Kerstin; Windzio, Michael (2021): Global Pathways to Education - Cultural Spheres, Networks, and International Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. S. 65-96.
• The Global Diffusion of Adult Basic Education, in: Windzio, Michael; Mossig, Ivo; Besche-Truthe, Fabain; Seitzer, Helen (forthcoming): Networks and Geographies of Global Social Policy Diffusion. Culture, Economy and Colonial Legacies, Global Dynamics of Social Policy. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham.
• (with Helen Seitzer): Testing for the Money? Developing Aid Distribution Patterns and Educational Assessments. (under review)

Research on the development of education systems usually focuses on either (1) national factors, (2) inter-state relations or (3) transnational actors and discourses. Fabian Besche-Truthe combines these three approaches in his essays and thus addresses aspects that have not yet been considered in empirical research.

Contact:
Dr. Fabian Besche-Truthe

How do international organisations influence the global dynamics of social policy? The fourth volume of the our series at Palgrave Macmillan addresses this question. In this interview co-editor Dennis Niemann explains some findings.

The aim of your book is to analyse the "architecture of arguments in global social governance". Put simply, you proceed in two steps: First, you map the field (which IOs are engaged in which social policy issues?), then you examine the discourse (which strategies do IOs use to try to make their ideas and concepts heard?). Let's start with the first part: About 100 years ago, the field was small; with the ILO, there was exactly one IO that dealt with social policy and that still exists today. How has the field expanded and differentiated since then?

Dennis Niemann: That's right, the general trend that there have been more and more international organisations since the end of the Second World War also applies to social policy. Surprisingly, there are some central actors that cover almost the entire spectrum of social policy. The OECD, the ILO and the World Bank pop up again and again and shape various areas. But UNESCO, the UN's educational, scientific and cultural organisation, is also active in many social policy fields. However, we also observed that the overall population of social policy IOs became more diverse over time. Not only the large, well-known IOs are involved, but also many other IOs, some of them regional, have appeared on the scene to cover social policy issues: e.g. ASEAN, African Union or Mercosur.

Over time, many IOs have added social policy issues to their portfolio or expanded their social policy portfolio to other fields. Why is that?

Dennis Niemann: There are two main reasons for this. On the one hand, the IOs were actively mandated by their member states to deal with certain social policy issues - even though historically they did not have much expertise in this area. For example, the OECD, whose thematic focus was on economic policy, was commissioned in the 1980s by some member states to develop an instrument to measure national educational performance. The result was PISA and today the OECD is a central IO in international education policy. In general, education policy is particularly densely populated with 30 active IOs. On the other hand, this thematic expansion was also due to internal organisational factors, i.e. the IOs proactively expanded their portfolio. This happened, for example, because it enabled them to better fulfil their actual core mission.

We also should not neglect the fact that certain policy fields were discursively expanded to include a social policy component. For example, the interpretation of water as a natural resource has expanded to include a social policy component: water and access to it is a social good.

Let's move on to the second part of your analysis, the discourses. In the social policy areas you can find a lot of active IOs. Do they cooperate or compete with each other?

Dennis Niemann: Both. Of course, the fundamental views of certain IOs on priorities in social policy are quite diverse and partly bipolar. While one side prefers economic efficiency, other IOs want to see social cohesion guaranteed first and foremost. These two perspectives are often difficult to reconcile. But it is not impossible. We see that pragmatic approaches are taken in numerous initiatives and that IOs from different "families" cooperate productively in specific projects. For example, the World Bank, OECD and ILO have developed a common approach in family policy since 2008. Something similar can be observed in areas of youth unemployment and the migration of health care workers.

You write that the tendency to cooperate has increased in the last 10 years or so. Why is that?

Dennis Niemann: Well, I think that all kinds of IOs are increasingly able to combine their programmatic points of view - perhaps due to the rather basic cooperation projects that have been started. We should not forget, however, that in social policy, different ideas often continue to compete; perhaps just no longer in fundamental opposition. The fact that certain values have become more universal and valid certainly also plays a role in increased cooperation. A catalyst for this were the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. They established certain normative reference points for IOs in social policy, which increasingly guide their arguments and actions. And a common basis of values makes cooperation much easier.

Some IOs are dominant in the social policy discourse. What factors cause an IO to dominate a field or at least to take an influential position?

Dennis Niemann: First and foremost, probably timing and resources. When IOs hit the zeitgeist, they enjoy an additional legitimacy that enables them to determine social policy discourses. IOs that also have the necessary resources to implement their programmatic guidelines can obviously have a more influential effect than IOs that lack these resources to generate outreach.

Finally, let's take a look at the future: The influence of IOs on social policy has increased in the past. Will this trend continue or even reverse in some areas?

Dennis Niemann: My crystal ball may be a little foggy on this, but in principle we have always seen an increase in the importance of IOs in social policy in the past. At the moment I can't think of many reasons that would cause a reversal of the trend. What I could imagine, however, and what is also emerging to some extent, is that individual IOs will lose significance and others, e.g. the big players, will become even bigger. Likewise, the discursive camp formation could become more pronounced again. In general, however, one should not ignore the social policy outcomes. As long as the IOs "deliver", i.e. can point out solutions to socio-political problems and help shape them, they will continue to be central actors in this field and will still present us with many exciting research tasks.

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Read the full book (open access):
Kerstin Martens, Dennis Niemann, Alexandra Kaasch (eds.)(2021): International Organizations in Global Social Governance. Palgrave Macmillan. Cham

Contact:
Dr. Dennis Niemann

Book four of the series, edited by Kerstin Martens, Dennis Niemann and Alexandra Kaasch, examines the influence of International Organisations on the development of several social policy fields.

International organisations (IOs) are important political actors that affect the development of many social policy fields. The volume "International Organizations in Global Social Governance" enhances and systematises our understanding of the role IOs play in global social policy.

In 14 chapters, the authors shed light on the engagement of IOs in the social policy fields of labour, migration, family, education, as well as environment and health. They record which IOs are involved in the discourse in each field and which trends they set. The authors also examine the discourse within and between the IOs. This book thus makes a significant contribution to research on social policy and international relations, both in terms of theoretical substantiation and the empirical scope.

The book is based on an international workshop of the CRC 1342 project A05 "The Global Development, Diffusion and Transformation of Education Systems", which took place at the University of Bremen in May 2019.

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Read the full book (open access):
International Organizations in Global Social Governance

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Martens
Dr. Dennis Niemann