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The THEME

Social Policies: Local experiments, Travelling ideas

There are increasing signs in the OECD world and the global South that the key locations in which social policy ideas are discussed, deliberated and designed are shifting.  Of course, the national level remains significant.  Nonetheless two other locations are involved in a major way.  On the one hand, inter- and supra-national bodies are important sources of policy innovation, introducing new elements to national and sub-national policy debates and actions.  On the other hand, regions and local communities are being assigned greater responsibility and sometimes autonomy, as practices of decentralisation spread.  The program committee for RC19 2009 is particularly interested in analyses that address one or more dimensions of these dynamics.  Local experiments involving local partnerships, rescaled citizenship rights, municipally constructed welfare regimes and so on would be welcome.  So too are analyses of the diffusion of ideas, policies and practices across levels from the inter- or supra-national to the national and local and/or across countries and regions.