3
Active Inclusion: A New Policy Paradigm
in the Wake of the 2008 Economic Crisis
3.1 Active Inclusion: Its Origin and Diffusion
The success of the idea of active inclusion goes back to the begin-
ning of the twenty-first century, when international organisations like
the OECD and the EU, leading academics and political elites moved
to support an active welfare state, after decades of recommendations
for the retrenchment of the state, deregulation, and a reduction in the
weight of social policy (Bonoli 2013; Pierson 1995). The reorienta-
tion of social policy was primarily meant as a response to the changing
nature of social problems and to the emergence of new social risks
(Anderson 2015; Armingeon and Bonoli 2006; Taylor-Gooby 2004).
The new wave of the welfare state (Hemerijck 2013) was conceived as
a transition from the passive logic of inclusion through compensation
to active and preventive models, in which inclusion is realised through
training and participation in work. The objective of social policy shifted
from the protection of income and indemnification—in the case of
unemployment, sickness, the elderly and invalidity—to re-insertion in
society through labour market participation and the protection of new
social groups, such as women and younger people (Ferrera and Rhodes
© The Author(s) 2020
G. Scalise, The Political Economy of Policy Ideas,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55750-8_3
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