Der Wohlfahrtsstaat und seine Bürger

Die Beschäftigung mit dem Staat und staatlicher Politik ist in den liberalen Sozialwissenschaften von formalen Begriffsbildungen geleitet. Wo wir Definitionen dessen, was der parlamentarisch-demokratische Rechtsstaat soziologisch ist, überhaupt antreffen, da beziehen sich diese auf Formen und Prozeduren, auf die Regeln und Instrumente der Staatstätigkeit, nicht auf deren Funktionen, Interessenbezüge und Ergebnisse. Die Webersche Definition des Staates als des „Monopols physischer Gewaltsamkeit“ verweist auf die formale „Letztinstanzlichkeit“ von Hoheitsakten, verrät aber nichts über die Gerichtetheit der Gewaltbeziehung: von wem wird sie ausgeübt, gegen wen ist sie gerichtet ?

The German welfare state – and similarly most other welfare states – can best be visualized as an institutional architecture that consists of four floors. This structure has been erected during the course of roughly one-and-a-half centuries. Both the sequence in which the floors were built and their internal structure are markedly different from the experience of other comparable capitalist industrial societies in the West.

Der „Sozialstaat“ ist als ein Ensemble von Institutionen, Rechten und Kollektivakteuren, als „Sozialsektor“ (Kaufmann 1997) zu beschreiben, und stellt die spezifisch deutsche Variante des sog. europäischen Sozialmodells dar. In den Sozialwissenschaften werden „Sozialstaat“ und „Wohlfahrtsstaat“ nahezu bedeutungsgleich verwendet (zumal „Wohlfahrtsstaat“ mit dem älteren Ausdruck „Wohlfahrt“ für das Sozialhilfewesen nicht mehr assoziiert wird), während Historiker z. T. auf der Differenzierung bestehen (vgl. Ritter 1989).

The welfare state has served as the major peace formula of advanced capitalist democracies for the period following World War II. This peace formula basically consists, first, in the explicit obligation of the state apparatus to provide assistance and support (either in money or in kind) to those citizens who suffer from specific needs and risks which are characteristic of the market society; such assistance is provided as a matter of legal claims granted to citizens. Second, the welfare state is based on the recognition of the formal role of labor unions both in collective bargaining and the formation of public policy.

Within any modern state, citizens are structurally related to state authority in three basic ways. Citizens are collectively the sovereign creators of state authority, they are potentially threatened by state-organized repression and coercion, and they are dependent upon the services and provisions organized by the state. The notion of citizenship within liberal-democratic welfare states involves all three aspects: citizens are conceived of as (1) the ultimate source of the collective political will, in the formation of which they are called upon to participate in a variety of institutional ways through the institutional devices of territorial and functional representation; they are also (2) the “subjects” against whom this will can be enforced and whose civil rights and liberties impose, by constituting an autonomous sphere of “private” social, cultural, and economic action, limits upon the state’s authority; and finally they are (3) clients who depend upon state-provided protection, services, opportunities, and collective goods for securing their material, social, and cultural means of survival and well-being in society.

Der Beitrag bietet einen knappen Überblick über die Hauptargumente von drei Perspektiven, aus denen Sozialstaatskrise und Umbaubedarf in der deutschen Diskussion diagnostiziert werden. Die erste operiert mit „veränderten Rahmenbedingungen“, denen das hergebrachte deutsche System sich anpassen müsse. Die zweite benennt innere institutionelle Defizite, die das System der sozialen Sicherung für veränderte Rahmenbedingungen so verletzbar machen.

Die gesamtgesellschaftlichen Funktionen des Bildungssystems lassen sich nicht zureichend in der Weise analysieren, dass man die erklärten (oder auch nur die in direkt erschließbaren und unterstellten) Absichtsbekundungen und Zwecksetzungen der Lehrer, der Curriculum-Theoretiker, der Schulbehörden, der bildungspolitisch aktiven Verbände, der Ministerien usw. zur Grundlage der Analyse machte; denn dieses Verfahren würde drei Fehlerquellen implizieren.

In der folgenden historisch-soziologische Skizze gehe ich davon aus, dass Städte in einer Weise, die wir bei keiner anderen sozialen Struktur oder Institution antreffen, zwei Arten von sozialen Funktionen erfüllen. Zum einen organisiert die Stadt die Verteilung von materiellen und symbolischen Lebenschancen. Die Stadt ist der Ort, an dem Handel und Gewerbe, Arbeit und Industrie, Dienstleistung und Verwaltung über Lebenschancen sowie Erfolg und Misserfolg seiner Bürger entscheiden; der Ort, an dem der Zugang zu Kultur- und Bildungsgütern vermittelt oder versperrt wird; der Ort, an dem in Nachbarschaft und Vereinsleben soziale Verkehrskreise bestehen, in denen die Bevölkerung nach Zugehörigen und Fernstehenden sortiert und wiedererkannt wird; und der Ort, an dem symbolische Güter wie Ehre und Ansehen, aber auch Stigma und Diskriminierung verteilt werden.

The basic mission of the modern welfare state is legally to guarantee social security (or ‘welfare’) through monetary transfers, services, physical infrastructure and regulatory policies in the areas of health, education, housing, social insurance, social assistance, labor protection, wage determination and assistance to families.

In current German and European debates on long term changes in labor markets, demographics and social policies, the reform project of a basic income (BI) and proposals for economic rights of citizens (rather than rights of workers or rights of thepoor) have come to the fore. National as well as international networks, most prominently BIEN , provide the setting for vivid debates and policy proposals, as well as research agendas, involving participants of various backgrounds: public intellectuals, representatives of political parties, academics, union activists, faithbased activists and officials of international organizations.

As is the case in any other policy area, so too with policies to fight poverty and exclusion: policy makers and administrators need to take decisions on what to do and what not to do, including decisions concerning the selection of a universe of options from which policy choices are to be made. Before making (rational) decisions, we must be aware of the options at hand, as well as their costs and consequences. I take it as axiomatic that decision-making, as well as the choice of the range of choices, is costly.

All societies, in order to reproduce themselves in a manner compatible with a notion of “social order”, must solve two reciprocal core problems in institutionalized ways. First, they must allocate (adult) human labor power to valued (“productive”) functions, thereby situating “people” into “places” within a system of division of labor. The set of allocation rules through which this task is performed includes selective exemptions from the expectation to perform economically valued activities that apply, in our society, to the young, the old, the sick, and the independently wealthy.

The paper provides a multi-disciplinary overview of normative and empirical issues concerning labor markets and inequalities in contemporary capitalist democracies. It begins with a discussion of philosophical controversies in relation to issues of distributive justice. This is followed by a review of peoples’ attitudes and opinions, as revealed in surveys and experiments, concerning inequality and fairness. In regard to contributions from economics, the question is discussed whether the relationship between equality/equity and efficiency should be seen as a trade-off. Finally, the thesis is advanced that most of the inequalities (for example in relation to income, job quality, job and income security) are reflected in but not caused by labor markets; instead, the institutional framework in which the labor market is embedded (labor law, education, training, wage determination, social security etc.) is responsible for the (in)equality of outcomes, as are managerial strategies positioning jobs and their holders in firms and other organizations. In his brief conclusion, the author refrains from advocating a normative solution to the issue of distributive fairness; instead, he highlights two axes of controversy that structure the debate.