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Addressing current socio-economic crises strains public budgets and may threaten fiscal sustainability. Particularly in the welfare sector, where high expenditures meet poor controllability, efficient resource usage is essential to ensure future governments' capability to act while alleviating current problems. Consequently, this paper asks: why are some countries more efficient in translating social expenditure into welfare outcomes? To answer this question, it is argued that efficiency is a matter of institutional structures and their vertical policy-process integration (VPI): efficiency depends on institutional structures' capability to (1) ensure policymakers' responsibility and to (2) provide coordinated feedback, thus pushing for considerate and informed resource use. Analysing the effect of VPI on the relationship between welfare efforts and social outcomes in 21 OECD countries over three decades, the results show that VPI can not only turn 'less' into 'more', but it also compensates for performance losses in the face of spending cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This themed issue, guest‐edited by Jurgen De Wispelaere and Troy Henderson, is devoted to examining, first, whether the widespread use of immediate and unconditional cash transfers as a policy response to the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID‐19 crisis has provided a boost to cash transfer programmes generally and to emergency basic income (EBI) policies more specifically. The set of articles then charts the reception of EBI‐type policies as a pandemic response in specific country or regional contexts, and reflects on their relevance for the future development of universal social protection and, especially, universal basic income (UBI). While the contribution to be made by basic income to realizing resilient and agile social protection policy responses merits serious consideration, in particular in a context where existing social protection systems are patchy and fragmented, important questions remain as to how to evaluate the time‐limited EBI crisis response in light of the more durable needs which a permanent UBI purports to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on existing European research findings, we assess factors driving Brazilian social security street‐level officials' deservingness perceptions through survey and administrative data. Ordered regression analyses gauge the effects of socioeconomic status, social work academic background and face‐to‐face contact with the public on these officials' perceptions towards social assistance beneficiaries under seven deservingness criteria. A middle‐class socioeconomic status increased the odds that beneficiaries are seen as undeserving under the criteria of social investment, control and reciprocity, while a high socioeconomic status is linked to benevolent perceptions of their need. A social work academic background is strongly linked to higher overall deservingness perceptions, whereas frequent face‐to‐face contact with the public can reduce them under the control deservingness criterion. The research takes a new step in the direction of deservingness survey studies, suggesting the formulation of new analytical frameworks and increasing policymakers' awareness of the importance of variables driving bureaucracy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes weekly visita de cárcel records from the Audiencia of Quito covering the years 1732–91. The first section considers the jail census as a manuscript form and performative practice. The second section identifies patterns in the visitas that document shifting carceral priorities during periods of political crisis and reform, increased detention of women, and the function of racial categories. These patterns suggest that Bourbon reformers used policing power as a form of social control while the visitas continued to operate as a performance of royal authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how service delivery (SD) affects state legitimacy (SL) and conflict (C) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, drawing particularly on frameworks that move beyond a state-centric approach. Focusing on the majority-Arab countries of MENA, the paper aims to: (1) offer a preliminary explanation of the distinctiveness of this region in light of some of the main findings of the introductory paper by the lead guest editor Timo Kivimäki and (2) explore the potential of a social policy perspective in explaining the relationship between SD, SL and C. This is achieved by combining research insights acquired through extensive qualitative social policy research in the MENA region with a re-reading of the existing literature on SD, SL and C. To support a comprehensive re-examination of the issues at hand, the paper also draws on the 5th Wave of the Arab Barometer micro-level survey (ABS) on Arab citizen perceptions of socio-economic conditions in their countries and macro-level social welfare expenditure data from the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI). By bringing insights from the social policy literature on the MENA region into conversation with broader research on the relationship between SD, SL and C, we identify several distinctive features of service delivery in the MENA context and examine their implications for state legitimacy and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]