The 1979 Constitution of Iran officially designates the country as a welfare state, endorsing social rights with the government as the responsible authority. However, the practical implementation of these policies has been quite different. Scholars have engaged in extensive discussions regarding Iran's social policies, often labeling them as clientelistic, populist, rentier, or part of an informal security regime. Existing studies have primarily focused on a single model to explain the post-revolution period, spanning over four decades. Nonetheless, it appears that during this period, Iran's social policies have undergone numerous changes, and the attempt to generalize them under a single model has hindered an in-depth exploration of these significant transformations. Hence, the fundamental question arises: What are the most substantial changes in Iran's social policies? How can we explain these changes, and have they been consistent across all areas of social policies?

This lecture aims to delve into these questions and shed light on the pivotal shifts in Iran's social policies, seeking to provide a comprehensive understanding of their evolution across various domains.

Yaser Bagheri is an Assistant Professor of Social Policy at the University of Tehran. He is currently on a seven-month study program in Germany. His academic interests revolve around social policies in Southern countries, particularly Iran, and he is associated with the Global Partnership Network. To date, he has conducted several historical studies on socio-economic changes and policy transfers, focusing on areas such as social protection, social transfers, social pensions, welfare organizations, and power dynamics within the Iranian social policy process. In addition to historical research, Yaser Bagheri has a strong inclination towards social data analysis and budgeting. He has organized several workshops in this area and has authored or managed the production of numerous policy notes.

Abstract: Existing welfare state theories have focused on internal dynamics, making it difficult to identify the point at which ‘global social policy’ influence within-state policymaking. I thus used the diffusion theory to examine if and how policy ideas from outside the state influenced the formation and change of disability policies. In particular, if we can capture the spread of similar types of disability policies even in countries with little political, economic, geographic, and historical proximity and similarity, we will be able to confirm that the influence outside the country is even greater.

In this study, we examine the process by which Social Rights was introduced into the disability policies of Korea and Brazil, and analyze the influence from outside the country and the dynamics of domestic actors to address the spread of the policies in both countries. Korea began to be influenced by the Asia-Pacific Decade of Action for Persons with Disabilities and continued to be influenced by international organizations until the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. At this time, it can be confirmed that policy diffusion occurred from below, with the disabled people's movement leading the policy diffusion. Brazil has also been strengthening social rights in its disability policy since the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by revising existing disability policies to suit the nature of the Convention or introducing new ones. Brazil also tried to enact domestic laws to enforce the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and promote its implementation through the disability movement by spreading policies from below. The significance of the study that can be confirmed through these two cases is as follows. In a current situation where nation-states are tightly connected globally, examining the formation and trajectories of disability policy in Korea and Brazil contribute to explaining how the path of the existing welfare regime is transformed with the introduction of new policy ideas.

Jun-Gi Heo is a researcher at the GwangJu Public Agency for Social Service (PASS), South Korea. His academic interests primarily focus on Korean disability policy. For his doctoral dissertation, he explored the formation and evolution of Korean disability policy by integrating policy diffusion and historical institutionalism. Driven by a commitment to inclusive research, he strives to infuse his work with the perspective of people with disabilities. This endeavor is particularly challenging yet personally significant for him as a blind individual. Consequently, he also delves into the study of disabled identity, welfare states, and social policy research from a disability perspective.

The interplay between trade liberalization—a cornerstone of globalization—and social welfare constitutes a pivotal and contentious subject in contemporary political discourse. This controversy has surrounded the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its antecedent, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), since 1947, both of which have played important roles in promoting trade liberalization. Central to this debate is the connection between free trade and labor standards, specifically the proposition of integrating a social clause within trade liberalization agreements. The discourse has ebbed and flowed in tandem with the globalization wave. Initially broached in 1947, the topic lay dormant until the late 1960s, a period when trade liberalization, chiefly orchestrated by Western nations with comparable policies and labor standards, went unchallenged. The dynamic shifted in the 1970s as nations with lower wages and labor standards entered the global market, propelling the issue to prominence in Geneva. With the ascent of new economies capable of competing in developed markets, the discourse over the interrelation of free trade and labor standards acquired a global dimension and became a focal point within the GATT framework. Despite heightened discussions in the mid-1990s, little progress was made on the social clause, mainly due to the resistance from emerging economies that had accrued substantial negotiation leverage in Geneva. The emergence of global economic integration in the 1970s underscored the disparities between competing nations at varying developmental stages, revealing the complexities of the trade-labor nexus. Concurrently, the burgeoning influence of emerging economies in global commerce altered the power dynamics within the GATT/WTO, effectively stalling the labor standards debate in Geneva.

Lucia Coppolaro is associate professor in International history at the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies of the University of Padova, Italy. Her research is primarily focused on international economic institutions and international trade. She has published numerous articles on the EU trade policy and the evolution of trade liberalization under the auspices of GATT/WTO in journals, including Contemporary European History and The International History Review.

Since the 1980s, living standards in Southeast Asia have improved markedly but unevenly and alsomore slowly and less equitably than could plausibly be achieved. While uneven capitalist development has permitted significant and at times impressive improvements in material conditions, the market-liberalising policy suites, weakly universalist social policies, and targeted legitimacy-seeking social protection programs promoted by ruling elites have failed to greatly accelerate improvements in human wellbeing, even as inequalities in income, assets, and the accessibility of quality social services have increased. Variegation in patterns of welfare and inequality in the region reflect differences in dynamic configurations of power, capital accumulation, and social reproduction specific to each country. The overall result is a region that exhibits weakly universalist social policies, the commodification and escalating costs of essential services, increased inequality, widespread precarity, and the persistence of eliminable human suffering even as average incomes, consumption, and living standards continue to rise.

Jonathan D. London is Associate Professor of Political Economy - Asia at Leiden University's Institute of Area Studies. London's research interests span the fields of comparative political economy, development studies, and the political economy of welfare and inequality. Fluent in Vietnamese, London is sole editor of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam (2023). His 2018 book, Welfare and Inequality in Marketizing East Asia developed a critique of theoretical literature on welfare regimes analysis and a comparative analysis of 10 East Asian countries.  He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.