Theoretical Framework for SWINS - Sustainable Wellbeing through Investment in Social Services

This document opened by identifying a central paradox of our time: the urgent need for a sustainable and inclusive reconfiguration of our economies exists in tension with a dominant discourse that remains narrowly focused on competitiveness and GDP growth. It is precisely this paradox that the SWINS framework seeks to navigate. Rather than offering a conclusive resolution, we have proposed a conceptual compass, an interdisciplinary and multi-layered approach, designed to assess the role of social policies and services within this tension. This document has been prepared primarily to establish a conceptual and operational framework for the SWINS Project, whose central aim is to develop a comprehensive procedure for assessing the multifaceted returns of investment in social services and policies. The elaboration of this theoretical framework has sought to situate SWINS within the broader reconfiguration of European welfare thinking. The project departs from narrow interpretations of social expenditure as a compensatory cost, and instead frames social services and policies as strategic investments that simultaneously enable individual capabilities, foster macroeconomic stability, and sustain transformative resilience in times of structural change. The framework responds to at least two interconnected needs. First, it seeks to provide a coherent point of reference for the empirical research that constitutes the core of SWINS. This encompasses not only the measurement component (mainly based on the application of econometric techniques), but also the legal, sociological, and political strands of research. Second, it is intended to guide the project’s impact, dissemination, and exploitation activities, ensuring their effectiveness and their consistency with the research in the strict sense. On this basis, the Theoretical-Operational Framework identified at least two key issues. The first concerns the definition of the object of inquiry. As the literature shows, the scope of policies and services included under the umbrella of social investment has broadened over time. Initially, the concept referred primarily to activation-oriented measures (e.g. active labour market policies). Subsequently, the range of policies considered has expanded. SWINS moves beyond the presumed dichotomies between social spending and social investment, or between protection and activation. Instead, one of the project’s central aims is to investigate whether, and to what extent, the interaction between protective and activating measures, as well as between services and cash transfers, generates enhanced societal returns. A second key issue relates to the answer to a fundamental question: what kinds of returns are we concerned with? Addressing this question has required a broader reflection on the role of social services and policies within the current political and strategic landscape. In this regard, a two-layered analytical perspective has been identified. The first, more closely aligned with the classic social investment approach, conceives investment in social services and policies as a strategy to generate processes of capacitation and activation across the life course, thereby ensuring its own sustainability by producing higher returns in terms of employment, growth, and income, and ultimately reinforcing fiscal sustainability. The second situates investment in social services and policies within the broader transition toward sustainable and inclusive wellbeing. Here, the hypothesis to be tested empirically is that investment in social services and policies can strengthen the mechanisms of transformative resilience that are necessary to support such a transition. At the same time, SWINS considers investment in social services and policies as a vehicle for the realisation of social rights, maintaining a right-based analytical perspective alongside the other dimensions of inquiry. By integrating these three logics—productivity, sustainability, and rights—the SWINS framework advances an interdisciplinary and multi-layered approach to welfare analysis. Importantly, integration does not imply the elimination of the irreducible differences that exist between these perspectives. Rather, it entails acknowledging and mobilizing such differences in a pragmatic way, using them as complementary entry points to engage diverse stakeholders and to strengthen the capacity of the framework to resonate across policy, academic, and societal arenas. In doing so, it provides both a normative horizon and an analytical architecture capable of linking micro-level mechanisms with macro-level outcomes, while remaining attentive to the contested and dynamic nature of welfare paradigms With SWINS, we aim to play only a small role, but in pursuit of a much larger objective. That objective is to contribute—however modestly—to the redefinition of how social policies and services are understood and valued in Europe. We are fully aware that we are living through a phase of profound structural change, one that is by definition fraught with uncertainties. Precisely for this reason, the framework outlined here is not a final word, but a starting point: a structure intended to guide multidisciplinary inquiry, stimulate dialogue among diverse stakeholders, and hold together the many strands of evidence and perspectives that the project will generate. The true ambition lies not in claiming theoretical novelty for its own sake, but in helping to show that social investment can be a foundation for resilience, inclusion, and sustainability. If SWINS succeeds, even in part, in this endeavour, it will have justified its small role within the larger task of shaping more just and forward-looking welfare systems.