Disentangling the Relationship Between Social Protection and Social Cohesion: Introduction to the Special Issue.

While there is substantial evidence of the effect of social protection on poverty and vulnerability, limited research has focused on societal outcomes. This paper serves as introduction to a special issue (SI) examining the relationship between social protection and social cohesion in low- and middle-income countries. Over the last years, social cohesion has emerged as a central goal of development policy. The introduction and the papers in the SI use a common definition of social cohesion as a multi-faceted phenomenon, comprising three attributes: cooperation, trust and inclusive identity. This introductory article provides a conceptual framework linking social protection to social cohesion, shows the current empirical evidence for the bi-directional linkages, and highlights how the papers in the SI contribute to filling existing research gaps. In addition to this introduction, the SI encompasses seven papers, covering different world regions and social protection schemes, and using different quantitative and qualitative methods.

Il existe d'importantes données probantes concernant l'effet de la protection sociale sur la pauvreté et la vulnérabilité. Cependant, les études qui se penchent sur les effets au niveau de la société sont peu nombreuses. Cet article fait office d'introduction à un numéro spécial qui étudie la relation entre la protection sociale et la cohésion sociale dans les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire. Au cours des dernières années, la cohésion sociale est devenue un objectif central de la politique de développement. L'introduction et les articles de ce numéro spécial utilisent une définition commune de la cohésion sociale en tant que phénomène à multiples facettes, comprenant trois attributs: la coopération, la confiance et l'identité inclusive. Cet article introductif fournit un cadre conceptuel reliant la protection sociale à la cohésion sociale, montre les preuves empiriques actuelles des liens bidirectionnels et met en lumière la façon dont les articles de ce numéro spécial contribuent à combler les lacunes de la recherche existante. En plus de cette introduction, le numéro spécial comprend sept articles qui couvrent différentes régions du monde et divers régimes de protection sociale, et font usage de différentes méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives.

Achievements and needs for the climate change scenario framework.

Long-term global scenarios have underpinned research and assessment of global environmental change for four decades. Over the past ten years, the climate change research community has developed a scenario framework combining alternative futures of climate and society to facilitate integrated research and consistent assessment to inform policy. Here we assess how well this framework is working and what challenges it faces. We synthesize insights from scenario-based literature, community discussions and recent experience in assessments, concluding that the framework has been widely adopted across research communities and is largely meeting immediate needs. However, some mixed successes and a changing policy and research landscape present key challenges, and we recommend several new directions for the development and use of this framework.

Governing the Interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals: Approaches to Attain Policy Integration.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2015 form a universal and integrated policy agenda to be realized over the next 15 years. One of the targets is the attainment of policy coherence for sustainable development, which requires the individual goals to become interlinked. This article's main research interest lies in assessing how national governments and their competent ministries interpret and strive to implement the target of policy coherence for sustainable development. Drawing on the Voluntary National Reviews submitted in 2016 and 2017 by six countries, this study shows that at the national level, the links among the different goals and the idea of policy integration are subject to divergent interpretations. The differences observed do not stem from the interlinkages of the SDGs as defined by the United Nations, neither do they result from different levels of income or degree of political centralization. Instead, the respective domestic policy-making processes are likely to explain the implementation strategies adopted by the individual states. For example, the implementation approach adopted by the government of Turkey suggests that path-dependency is critical, whereas the Colombian approach consists of defining new policy measures and institutional arrangements.