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1997 | Buch

Restructuring the Welfare State Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Restructuring the Welfare State

Theory and Reform of Social Policy

herausgegeben von: Professsor Dr. Peter Koslowski, Dr. Andreas Føllesdal

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Buchreihe : Ethical Economy

Enthalten in: Professional Book Archive

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Restructuring the Welfare State

Restructuring the Welfare State
Introduction
Abstract
The debate about the welfare state in Europe has entered a stage where it is not anymore the question whether the welfare state in the industrialised countries of Europe should be modified or not but how it could be restructured. The costs and financing problems of social security have shifted the emphasis in the discussion from questions of legitimacy as well as extension and reform of the welfare state to questions of its survival. Questions of legitimacy and questions of adaptation for survival can, however, not be completely separated since deficits in legitimacy very often point to shortcomings in construction as well.
Peter Koslowski

The Welfare State Under Siege in Western Europe

Frontmatter
1. Is the British Welfare System Sustainable?
Abstract
Britain is a good country with which to illustrate the question of sustainability of the welfare state. For Britain has tried harder and longer than most countries to restrain the growth of welfare spending. The extent to which it has succeeded says much about the difficulties of the exercise that all industrial countries will be forced to undertake in the years ahead.
Frances Cairncross
2. Is the Welfare System of the Netherlands Sustainable?
Abstract
When did the Dutch welfare state begin? Did it start with The Child Labour Law (1874), which is often viewed as the genesis of social legislation? Hardly. The need to regulate ruthless economic competition was a far stronger impetus behind the child labour law. This decree is more characteristic of an incipient interventionist state than of a welfare state. Could the Disability Law of 1901, which provided important guidelines for the social security system, be the cradle of the welfare state? Perhaps, although this legislation largely concerned the individual responsibility of employees and their employers. While this very modest system of risk retention eventually expanded into the social security network, the welfare state was motivated by more than mutual guarantee funds alone. The mutual guarantee funds blossomed into social solidarity.
Kees Schuyt
3. Is the German Welfare State Sustainable?
Abstract
The term 《welfare state》 has a broader meaning than a state organising a high level of social security for its citizens. But creating a high level of social security can be seen as the core of welfare state activity.
Diether Döring

The Social Security System in the East Central European Nations of Transition and in Japan

Frontmatter
4. The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Transition of the Welfare States in Central and Eastern Europe
Abstract
Our age may be characterised as the age of knowledge and information, but at the same time it has brought the end of experts, too. The world has become too confused to be under control. What is true in one field may cause serious damages in other fields. Old and new dangers are appearing: killing diseases and unknown, fast spreading insects, billionaire brokers manipulating exchange rates, religious terrorism, etc. No one is able to understand and make the whole system work properly. Although there may be some issue-areas for which a consensus may emerge among experts regarding causal laws (particularly with respect to technology, natural or biological science, or possibly some economic relationships), that may be seen as exceptions rather than the rule in creating welfare in nation states or even worse in 《an ever closer union》.
Tibor Czéh
Chapter 5. The Social Security System in Japan
Abstract
In spite of the 1994 reform, further drastic reform seems to be indispensable for the Japanese social security system with regard to its theory and practice.
Yoshifumi Fushimi

The Rise of the Welfare State in History and Theory

Frontmatter
6. State and Citizenship in the Age of Globalisation
Abstract
Back in the years of major Social Democratic influence in northern Europe there circulated a theory of the welfare state proposing a geographical explanation of its spread and variations: the factor determining the generosity of social benefits in any given country was proximity to Stockholm. Already Copenhagen and Oslo were departures from the alembicated purity of the Swedish welfare state. By the time one got to London or Bonn and then further afield to Paris, Rome and Madrid matters were distinctly less well organised. Washington and Ottawa, not to mention Tokyo, were scarcely within the pale of what could properly be considered a welfare state, with Sydney and Wellington slightly anomalous cases that should have been located, by this standard, perhaps somewhere near the Azores.
Peter Baldwin
7. Origins of the 《Social State》 in German Philosophy and 《Staatswissenschaft》
Abstract
In Germany, the origins of the 《Social State》 can be traced back to three different intellectual traditions: the socialist ideal of a transparent rational community of workers is as fundamental to it as are conservative defensive strategies against the social revolution. Standing alongside these sources have been, from the very beginning, deeply-rooted ideas of the 《Caritas》 of “Christian personalism.” These superficially contradictory basic concepts came together for the first time in today’s welfare state, based on the German constitution: the modern-day welfare state presupposes the acceptance of state and society as two forms of organisation, autonomous in principle, for the political and economic co-ordination of the human community (H. Zacher).
Stefan Koslowski

Current Problems of the Welfare State

Frontmatter
8. Do Welfare Obligations End at the Boundaries of the Nation State?
Abstract
Welfare states tend towards egalitarian principles of distribution of social opportunities and wealth. Their citizens hold that a just society should not only secure a decent standard of living for all, but also prevent large inequalities of shares of power and wealth.
Andreas Føllesdal
9. Meeting Needs Versus Respecting Autonomy — Dilemmas of the Welfare State
Abstract
The practice of the Swedish welfare state can be characterised as very contradictory. On the one hand, this practice can guarantee a certain degree of welfare, security and life without suffering. On the other hand the same practice can control the individual. This contradiction has become more evident over the last few years through cutbacks in spending on social programs. This has been regarded by some as a crisis of the welfare state and the end of its future. But cutbacks can also serve as starting points for a new debate about the dilemma of the welfare state, and can initiate the development of a deeper knowledge of its practices and how to deal with its contradictions.
Elisabeth Lilja
10. Forward to the Nineteenth Century: Has Growing Old Gracefully Become a Luxury?
Abstract
The Twentieth Century will soon be history. It has witnessed enormous advances in economic and social welfare within Western Europe, which has created the expectation that each successive generation will enjoy a higher standard of living than its predecessor. The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine whether this expectation has become unrealistic, at least until well into the next century.
Peter Curwen
11. The Unpaid Work of Mothers and Housewives in the Different Types of Welfare States
Abstract
Are European welfare states converging in terms of the way unpaid household work is divided between men and women, or do European countries in fact differ considerably on this point? That is the central issue that will be addressed in this chapter. European data on the distribution of household work between men and women lead to different conclusions (Section II). One observation is that, although increasing numbers of women have jobs outside the home, household work is still largely women’s work in almost all Western nations. This “stalled revolution” (Hochschild, 1989) is an intriguing social fact for which there are different sociological and economic explanations (Section HI). The gender perspective complements the classic explanations. Definition processes, some more subtle than others, appear to contribute to the traditional division of domestic tasks between men and women in many countries in Europe (Section IV).
Anneke Van Doorne-Huiskes
12. Social Rights in a Gender Perspective
Abstract
In Scandinavia the crisis of the welfare state is much discussed and questions concerning the future of the welfare state have been given new impetus during a period of prolonged economic problems, with unemployment reaching the highest levels in the post-war years. Moreover, the negotiations concerning Sweden, Norway and Finland’s membership in the European Union actualised questions about the construction and content of the social rights of citizens. Public debate voices more disagreement over welfare state expenditure and over the egalitarian concept of the welfare state embedded in the Scandinavian political tradition. A stronger demand for privatisation and a broader desire to limit public spending is also sharpening political discussions over the welfare state. At the same time, the demands of an ageing population and of the employed-mother family have turned the public provision of caring into a hot political topic, and the welfare state is criticised for doing too little. The future of the welfare state is discussed not only in terms of social security and maintaining the welfare state as a safeguard against the perils of the market, the public provision of caring is also important when welfare state legitimacy is the issue. Although the conceptualisation of 《state》 and 《individual》 has changed, the present debate thus has revived interest in one of the main themes of political theory, concerning the character of the relationship between the state and the individual.
Arnlaug Leira
13. Does the Welfare State Destroy the Family?
Abstract
The relation between the state and the family has always been put into question. Both elements of this relation are prototypical for social systems and both of them have undergone deep transformations in that recent period of history that we call modernity. For Aristotle (in his theory of friendship and “oikos”) and still for I. Kant (in his“Recht der häuslichen Gesellschaftoikos”) personal and material spheres were still integrated. Starting with J.G. Fichte and especially with G.W.F. Hegel, family itself becomes explicitly conceptualised as a juridical relation. In his “philosophy of Rights” Hegel puts the role of family and marriage into the centre of his social theory. For him, family is the starting point of “civil societyoikos” (“bürgerliche Gesellschaft”) and in so far a “second root of the stateoikos” (cf. Weber 1986). In contrast to Kantoikos’s concept of “moralityoikos”, Hegeloikos’s idea of “Sittlichkeit” tries to overlap the private and the public sphere, the individual and the collective aspects of social life. “Familyoikos” is a centre of this overlapping consensus (“das Sittliche der Ehe besteht im Bewußtsein dieser Einheit als substantiellem Zweck”, B 163).
Michael Opielka

Theory and Critique of the Welfare State

Frontmatter
14. The Justification of Welfare Rights
Abstract
The welfare state has for many years been the unquestioned triumph of a long era of social engineering. It has been so widely accepted that its administrators might never have felt the need to justify it in moral terms. Things have changed, however. Today the welfare state is more and more considered as a tax-payers’ burden, something that has grown too big and too expensive. The public sector has even been blamed for contributing to a decrease in industrial investment, and hence, at least indirectly, to be responsible for the present economic depression, both by means of legislation (regulation of environmental and other conditions of work) and by means of taxation (redistribution of wealth).
Per Bauhn
15. Risk, Justice and Social Policies
Abstract
Justice probably demands that the most unfortunate citizens be protected one way or the other, at a cost paid by more fortunate persons. However, these situations result in particular from risk-taking, and individuals may want to try their luck at obtaining a good situation at the risk of ending up among the losers. Therefore, a policy motivated by justice may violate individuals liberty to take the risks they want — in particular, risks that concern only themselves and may even imply actions favourable to others. This policy may indeed also, for this reason, cut down incentives to enterprise, innovation, investment, research, etc., and hence reduce employment, productivity, the social output and growth. If all individuals prefer ex ante to take the risk, in a democracy they would rule out the justice policy considered, by unanimity (this is, however, unanimity ex ante, rather than ex post, since ex post the unfortunate persons regret the protection if it does not exist). The same logic underlies the debate about whether certain insurances should be free or should be compulsory, and this includes in particular the question of the status of “social insurances” (health, unemployment, etc.) which concerns both a notable part of GNP and major social questions, and for which various countries and societies choose opposite solutions. This interference between justice and risk, and the resulting possible opposition between justice on the one hand and liberty, efficiency and democracy on the other hand, thus seem to cover a number of the most crucial problems of modern societies. Furthermore, social policies commonly want to compensate for certain handicaps, yet not for all characteristics of the individuals, and this begs the basic question of how this separation can be made.
Serge-Christophe Kolm
16. Sweden: Towards a 21st Century Post-Modern People’s Home?
Abstract
Already in the mid 1930s Sweden was presented, in particular to North Americans but also in other parts of the Western world, as a “middle way》 between unbridled capitalism and totalitarian socialism. During the depression of the 1930s, to the proponents of a New Deal in the United States, Sweden and the political-administrative solutions adopted at that time in this country, fitted into their image of a better and more just society. In terms of democracy and welfare — thus, in terms of civil, political and social rights — Sweden became an example for other countries. At a time when most advanced countries were threatened by the prospects of authoritarian rule, the ethics of the social policies discussed and partly also adopted in this remote Northern European country received considerable global attention. However, it was not until the 1960s, after the demise of the Beveridge model in its native country, the UK, that the flower of the Far North fully blossomed. This institutional or universal welfare model has later also been dubbed a Social Democratic model of social policy. Here, it is important to emphasise that this moral approach to social policy had broad popular support from most sectors of society.
Sven E. Olsson Hort
17. The Social State in the Post-Modern
Abstract
The crisis in social insurance systems compels us to adopt a new approach to the theory of the state and of social security systems. The crisis in the social state is above all a crisis in the ethical and cultural presuppositions of social insurance. Social policy, geared to socio-technology, has underestimated the cultural and ethical conditions for social security provisions. It is emerging today that the institutions of the social state, set up as functionalist sociotechnical institutions, are undermining their own ethical-cultural foundations, and are not able to reproduce, on the scale required, their ethical presuppositions: that those covered by insurance live according to a sense of their own responsibility; and that there is a culture in which we make basic provisions and organize our own lives. A point is being reached where there are considerable risks in social insurance. On the other hand, these risks are finding expression in the damage to the relationship between the different generations, in the fact that justice between different generation is becoming problematical, and in the situation where there is over-provision of social security in other groups in society, as well as in acute financial short-falls in social insurance.
Peter Koslowski

Conclusion

Frontmatter
18. On the Moral Foundations of the Welfare State Three Research Programmes
Abstract
While discussing the ethical issues raised by present-day social policy and the restructuring of the welfare state, the authors of this book have been talking about the moral foundations of the welfare state in three distinct senses. I shall illustrate each of them with a number of examples, mostly borrowed from the papers included in this collection or from the discussions that followed their oral presentation. Each example is cited (usually without any specific attribution, so as to spare qualifications) because it illustrates an interesting pattern of argument and/or a promising avenue of research, not necessarily because I am committed to its validity.
Philippe Van Parijs
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Restructuring the Welfare State
herausgegeben von
Professsor Dr. Peter Koslowski
Dr. Andreas Føllesdal
Copyright-Jahr
1997
Verlag
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-642-60652-6
Print ISBN
978-3-642-64494-8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60652-6