Michael Leutelt
Global Social Policy - The Diffusion of Social Cash Transfer Policies as a Global Model
The research topic of my dissertation is about the diffusion of social policies among countries in the global South. The basic principle to give people a financial income of last resort is usually associated with OECD countries and it is not self-evident to expect the spread of social pensions, family and child allowances, and social assistance in middle- and last-income countries. However, especially in Latin America such a spread has taken place within the last ten to twenty years recently reaching to African and Asian countries. This is a short time-frame for the spread of such complicated and demanding systems.
In parallel it is to recognize that international organizations and non-governmental organizations have changed in this time-frame their agendas accordingly and heavily support the transfer of such policies. Through my research I identify the key player in the process of policy diffusion and try to understand the role global actors have played in national policy making. Based on world culture theory (John W. Meyer) it is assumed that globa l actors are carriers of world cultural models that are able to spread policies globally by, one the one hand, implementing understandings of what is a legitimate "best practice" to base decisions on, and, on the other hand, enforcing such understandings by giving scientific credit to programs that correspond with the models advocated by them. Conforming systems are legitimate deviant systems run risk to be discredited. Next to a strong emphasize on global cultural norms like rationalization and the human rights, global actors might also be influential by providing technical assistance and financial resources for pilot projects and system set-ups.
A quantitative study will measure the value of explanations based on world culture theory, whereas this is complemented by a quantitative study to give more detailed information about the actual process and mechanism one can identify for key global actors and different types of actors.
Curriculum Vitae
- Michael Leutelt was born and grew up in Lübeck (Germany).
- He studied Political Science at the Bielefeld University (Germany) graduating in 2009 with the Bachelor Degree.
- Focus of his studies were global governance, international systems, and social policies; all under the aspect of networked governance.
- His profession in networked governance was deepened through an International Master Program of Political Science at the VU University Amsterdam (Netherlands) with focus on transnational governance, international security, and global environmental governance.
- He was rewarded with a Masters Degree for his work titled "City Networks in Global Environmental Governance. Analysis of the C40 Network and its Effect on Stimulating Commitment".
- Since September 2010, Michael Leutelt is research assistant in the FLOOR research project "Social Cash Transfers - The Global Construction and Diffusion of the Right to a Monetary Minimum" at the Bielefeld University.
