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Aftermaths of global-ranging economic crises prior to 2008 generated some policy innovation associated with threatens to the political order, emerging through the interaction of different ideas. In its turn, the post-financial collapse portrayed mild expressions of these factors, consequently amounting little policy novelty. The normalisation of the neoliberal discourse blaming social programmes for economic problems appears to contribute to the lack of different and plausible ideas on welfare reform as an alternative to the neoliberal formula. Likewise, the ruling economic elites and leading political forces have experienced few status quo variations in the immediate after-crisis. One the one hand, the growth of global and European economic inequality illustrates that economic elites’ power remains steady years on. On the other, the pro-exclusion and anti-system feelings nurtured by the neoliberal discourse have bestowed political support from the centre to radical streams in Europe. This later process opened room for questioning whether this ‘call for action’ to the political centre will develop into new coalitions and social policy orientations. The present research narrated such puzzling scenario as the aftermaths politics, inquiring how a social welfare scheme can cope with it.

The analysis of recent welfare reform and social policy-themed documents of the Commission, EPP, PES, EESC and ETUC demonstrated that traditional social ideas are going through changes, which are rather interpretative than innovative. The ideas of social justice, equal opportunities and solidarity acquired discursive predominance in a way that allows them to be communicated alongside the neoliberal discourse, instead of opposing to it. This work conducted the exercise of looking at the normative foundations of the welfare state reform debate. It has not resolved the academic gap of detailing either the normative uses of social policy in the 21st century nor the pathway for a sociological thought capable of filtering what belongs to modernity and what reflects the neoliberal project. The objective was much more modest: investigating what a possible political convergence on social

welfare ideas may indicate about the social welfare space within the social policy orientation taking form in the EU. At the ideational level, the answer is twofold.

First, it entails the suggestion that the social policy limitations of neoliberalism have been increasingly stressed without the political implication of breaking with the neoliberal paradigm. The loss of electoral support to social-democrats seems to have constrained the considered left-inclined actors to rebrand traditionally left ideals to cope with the aftermaths politics. This appears to validate scholarly explanations on the deep-rooted neoliberal enterprise, not only in the present but also in times that are yet to come. For instance, Ossewaarde (2017) articulates the colonisation of the future with the neoliberal discourse. Secondly, the ‘new’ social momentum in Europe indicates that social advocates’ efforts to rebalancing economic and social dimensions have enacted a space for action against the background of increased economic inequality, including intergenerationally, whereby millennials can play important tax-paying and electoral roles. What lacks to move such social image of Europe is political support. This is the case with the EPSR, for example, which can enable the socialisation of the European semester and promote transnational protection to workers; though European labour initiatives can equally be an instrument for unleashing market forces.

The identified social space builds largely on the idea of opportunities and social inclusion, wherein, in policy action terms, the three studied sets of actors endorse resource allocation for some mix of education, research, training and lifelong learning policies. This ideational-policy combination is more convenient for economic elites since it overlooks the distribution of outcomes, envisioning therefore little structural alteration. Nevertheless, it seems hard to conceive a viable (non-revolutionary) social welfare strategy that does not count with such policy elements and can play along with existing power relations. Accordingly, the social investment approach has been treated as a quiet revolution. Just as the EPSR, the social investment case demands political support to function for social welfare. The present study theorises that social advocates may respond to the neoliberal discourse distortion with a discursive strategy. The opportunity of rebranding Keynesian

social expenditure under an investment label seems to have been fruitful among different political audiences, including in the social-democratic efforts to build a ‘new left’, as verified in the document analysis.

The remaining social challenge is to build a unified and stronger case concerning the institutional complementarities of buffer, stock and flow policies, instead of selectively picking some of them. This movement is required to both altering the notion that the social investment approach amends neoliberal excesses but does not modify the primary reliance on individualism and self-responsibility (Midgley et al., 2017: 4), and compensating for the damages of utilitarian uses of social welfare ideas, which tend to reward more the better-off and less the worst-off. While the social investment strategy may not portray the purely social policy-intended reform plan, it seems to be compatible with the ideational convergence retrieved in this study and to offer a framework for putting forward a social agenda. Perhaps, this might sound somewhat conformist, but it also entails strategic potential to advance social welfare for aftermaths.