Abstract

The concept of global social policy has been elaborated to understand global efforts for social protection in a systematic manner and to devise more effective policy instruments for social protection in developing countries. This chapter first discusses the conceptual issues of global social policy in order to elaborate it as an analytical framework for an examination of the practices of global social policy that the global community has conceived and implemented over the last six decades. This chapter also discusses the question of whether these global social policy ideas and instruments are conducive to economic and social development in developing countries. Formulating global social policy in terms of ideas, actors, instruments and implementation, this chapter examines global social policy since the post-war period, including recent global efforts such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and points out that focusing only on the global dimension of policy will not be sufficient to understand global social policy, although it is vital to being engaged in global debates on social protection. It argues that integration of global social policy into policy framework at the national level has proven to be critical for the effective implementation of global social policy.