Purpose

The need to alleviate poverty and achieve the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Universal Social Protection (USP) mechanisms is a high priority for governments and international organisations (IOs). This paper focuses on the recent introduction of a general minimum income (GMI) in Greece, in the context of the international diffusion of governing expertise. It examines whether the “universal” scheme being implemented constitutes a paradigm shift likely to offer solutions to the country's previous fragmented and unjust welfare system, and to problems the society has faced since the 2010s depression.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses critical grounded theory, with data gathering through iterative field observations and semi-structured interviews.

Findings

Results highlight the elusiveness of USP normative promises: rather than enhancing people's effective freedoms to act as self-determining agents, USP pushes the poor to adapt to current degraded socio-economic conditions. Participation in the shadow economy is a structural feature of USP; it is implicitly tolerated insofar as it is regarded, in the words of the World Bank (WB), an “engine for growth”. This constitutes an institutional and governance challenge for the implementation and expansion of social welfare programmes and could compromise the 2030 SDGs Agenda.

Originality/value

While research to date has examined the “modernisation” of the Greek welfare system in a national or comparative perspective, it adds to the literature by framing the study in the field of global social policy, shedding light on the discrepancies between internationally designed mechanisms and the normative aims of USP.

中文翻译：

---

普遍社会保护的难以捉摸的承诺：以希腊一般最低收入 (GMI) 为例

目的

通过普遍社会保护 (USP) 机制减轻贫困和实现联合国 (UN) 2030 年可持续发展目标 (SDG) 的需求是政府和国际组织 (IO) 的高度优先事项。本文重点关注最近在管理专业知识国际传播的背景下，希腊引入了一般最低收入 (GMI)。它考察了正在实施的“普遍”计划是否构成范式转变，可能为该国先前支离破碎和不公正的福利制度以及社会自 2010 年代大萧条以来面临的问题提供解决方案。

设计/方法/方法

本文使用批判性扎根理论，通过迭代实地观察和半结构化访谈收集数据。

发现

结果凸显了 USP 规范性承诺的难以捉摸：USP 不是增强人们作为自决代理人的有效自由，而是推动穷人适应当前退化的社会经济条件。参与影子经济是 USP 的结构性特征；用世界银行（WB）的话来说，它被视为“增长的引擎”，因此它是被默许的。这对社会福利计划的实施和扩展构成了制度和治理挑战，并可能危及 2030 年可持续发展目标议程。

原创性/价值

虽然迄今为止的研究从国家或比较的角度审视了希腊福利体系的“现代化”，但它通过在全球社会政策领域构建研究，增加了文献，阐明了国际设计机制与USP 的规范性目标。