Social interventionism is an action which involves the deliberate intervention of a public or private organization into social affairs for the purpose of changing them. In other words, it is a deliberate attempt to change society in some way, "an alteration of the social structure". In the late 20th century, with the rise of the

Washington Consensus The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered in the 1980s and 1990s to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for Economic crisis, crisis-wracked developing country, developing countries by the Was ...

, social interventionism fell out of favor in international political thought. Academic research of social interventions occurs in many

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a Group decision-making, decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to Problem solving, solve or address relevant and problematic social issues, guided by a conceptio ...

schools around the world. Some universities also have dedicated research centres or clusters covering social intervention, for example the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

Hoffman framework

David Lloyd Hoffmann, Distinguished Professor of History at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

, with expertise in Russian and Soviet history, describes social interventionism as one of the two defining features of

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...

and modern political systems (the second feature being

mass politics Mass politics is a political order resting on the emergence of mass political parties. The emergence of mass politics generally associated with the rise of mass society coinciding with the Industrial Revolution in the West. However, because of ...

). According to Hoffmann, a general ethos of social intervention arose across Europe by the 19th century, in which both state officials and non-governmental professionals working for charitable institutions or private companies tried to reshape their societies in accordance with scientific or aesthetic norms. This new ethos was based upon Enlightenment

rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...

, with its belief that human society can and should be improved through the application of

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

, as well as 17th century

cameralism Cameralism ( German: ''Kameralismus'') was a German school of public finance, administration and economic management in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at strong management of a centralized economy for the benefit mainly of the ...

that pioneered the use of

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

and

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

in making government decisions. Social interventions could take many forms depending on the

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

of the people or institutions undertaking them, and both the

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * ''Left'' (Helmet album), 2023 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relativ ...

and

right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...

wings of European politics supported the broad idea of social interventionism, though they disagreed on how society should be improved and what "improvement" meant. Therefore, social interventionism is not defined as a specific set of goals or policies, but rather as the "impulse to manage society through the application of bureaucratic procedures and categories", or the "rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws".Hoffmann, David L. ''Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941''.

Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University, an Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. It is currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, maki ...

. Pp.

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References

{{reflist, 2 Social philosophy Social policy

Hoffman framework

See also

References