El liberalismo social del Presidente Clinton. La cooperación como política pública

Bill Clinton recuperó la tradición de liberalismo social que, desde una perspectiva de transversalidad, conformaba su diseño de una Presidencia donde confluían la acción y la respuesta, en forma de política pública, de las demandas sociales. La Administración Clinton hizo de la democracia como un activo social de necesaria incorporación a la idea compartida de Buen Gobierno y servicio público. En este artículo se estudian diversos ámbitos de aplicación del liberalismo social implementado por el Presidente Clinton. Las políticas públicas constituyeron el centro de su acción de Gobierno, mediante la implementación de una elasticidad que abarcaba la atención al ciudadano y la defensa de su dignidad como miembro activo del demos. El despliegue de lo social como parte del patrimonio moral de la democracia.

Social Services in Times of Economic and Social Crisis: The case of Spain

The financial and economic crisis which originated in 2008 has had a severe impact on the population of the Southern European countries. The economic policies of austerity and public deficit control, as well as the neo-liberal and conservative social policies are redefining the public social protection systems, in particular the Social Services. In order to get to understand the current situation, we shall explain how the Social Services were developed in Spain and analyse the causes and consequences of the economic crisis. The working hypothesis is that the greater the increase on the population’s needs, the more developed the Social Services should be. We carried out a descriptive analysis of the situation as far as the social impacts of the crisis per region are concerned. We tested the hypothesis through a parametric model of analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) triangulating with the non-parametric Kruscal-Wallis test. The working hypothesis failed. The regions with better developed Social Services show a lower level of poverty and social exclusion. The challenges that the public Social Services system faces in times of crisis is three-fold: 1) re-modelling of local administration and transferring of the municipal Social Services responsibilities to the regional administration; 2) an increase of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion 3) impact on social policies.