By the early 1990s, however, concerns arose about stability and the limits of structural adjustment, both in the OECD countries and elsewhere. Social cohesion became a key word in policy discussion and warnings appeared of the need to balance attention to economic restructuring with caution about societal cohesion in order to sustain that restructuring. In 1996, the OECD high-level conference, Beyond 2000: The New Social Policy Agenda, concluded with a call to its members for a ‘social investment approach for a future welfare state’ and new social expenditures focused on areas where returns are maximised in the form of social cohesion and active participation in society and the labour market (OECD, 1997). Social cohesion in this context was not defined and one had to decrypt from its usage that essentially it meant social stability.