In a new article published in "Global Social Policy", Kerem Gabriel Öktem - working in project B01 on "Mechanisms of Social Policy Diffusion" - and Prof. Lutz Leisering from the University of Bielefeld explore the development of social assistance regimes in middle income countries, with a specific focus on the case of Turkey.
"Emerging social assistance regimes in middle income countries: Turkey in comparative perspective" (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14680181251384653)
Countries in the global South have expanded social security significantly since the late 1990s. What kind of social security are they heading for? Are they following models from the global North, or are genuinely Southern models building up? Focussing on middle income countries (MIC) and on the last safety net, social assistance, the authors investigate the social assistance regime that has emerged in Turkey and situate the Turkish case in the broader context of the global South and North. For this purpose, the authors draw on a rich variety of historical and new Turkish policy documents and on partially self-constructed quantitative data on the global South and North, which was generated by the research project FLOOR:
https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/soziologie/forschung/projekte/floorcash/
While most MIC have adopted social assistance programmes, which are a Northern model, the authors find that the institutional design, the objectives, the institutionalisation, and the scale of social assistance differ fundamentally from European models. The case of Turkey confirms this finding, and also exemplifies the formative influence of international organisations, such as the World Bank, on MIC. While some distinctive features may indicate deficiencies of "Southern" social assistance, others may be seen as appropriate adaptations of a Northern model to development contexts.
Contact:
Dr. Kerem Gabriel Öktem
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
E-Mail: oektem@uni-bremen.de
