Globalization, Welfare Reform and the Social Economy: Developing and Alternative Approach to Analyzing Social Welfare Systems in the Post-Industrial Era Special Issue on Globalization: Social Justice & Social Welfare

Our understanding of the relationship between globalization and contemporary social welfare systems is heavily influenced by three conventional approaches to studying welfare reform: the political economy, moral economy, and mixed economy approaches.In addition to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches, a central aim of this article is to introduce the social economy approach as an emergent alternative. Drawing from a growing body of work on institutional innovation within the European third sector, I argue that the social economy approach makes a valuable contribution to understanding the role of welfare networks in recon-figuring globalizations 'impact on the character and quality of social provision so as to better reconcile social efficacy with social justice.