Discovering keys to explain social policies within the social and democratic rule-of-law sate

There is a collective worldview on social policies that is expressed and understood by university professionals. However, it takes students time to construct this knowledge. Here, we provide fundamental ideas and a dynamic to facilitate learning of social policies. The preparation of a brief dictionary of significant terms is to be constructed as a group, alongside the maieutic work to be carried out by the teacher. The goal is to discover keys to understand the meaning of social policies and the underlying values that sustain a social and democratic rule-of-law state such as the one proposed in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Attention is focused on the structure of the mixed welfare state. This is an integral proposal and comprises three dimensions. First, it considers the state and its possible welfare agents: business, market, the Church and civil society. The attitudes with which universal and inclusive social action is promoted, breaking radically with the aid-based meaning contained in other systems, are then addressed. Finally, we examine human dignity as a principle and aim of intervention, a basis for understanding other concepts such as human, social, labour and political rights. It is to be hoped that these pages prove useful for both teaching staff and students.

La otra Ley de Foucault. Una lectura crítica

Few studies have addressed the relationship between law and power in the works of Michel Foucault. Some authors emphasize that law performs a completely secondary role in the diagram of power of modernity, while others argue that there is a close link between power relations and the law. Foucault's Law by Golden and Fitzpatrick aims to renew these discussions and reconstruct another law of Foucault. In this paper I make a critical reading of this work, highlighting the faulty presentation that the authors carried out of the works of Foucault.

Discourses on Modernization in the Employment Public Services: Towards a New Form of Governance?

The “crisis of the social issue” in the EU has led to a certain consensus in the need to renew the organizational and institutional model of public administration. The core of the reform implies important administrative changes in most of the European welfare states. Those changes are inspired on theories such as the new public management, management by objectives or partnership. Such changes involve both semantic (“sharing responsibilities”, “effective costs”, or the substitution of “citizen under an administration” by “consumer”) and political (predominance of scattered forms of power and the individualization of responsibilities) transformations which operate in the framework of individuals and State relations. The paradigms of activation and flexicurity have been central in this public administration modernization project. This commitment with new forms of governance of social issues has important consequences for the political and moral foundations of social cohesion, and the Spanish case is not an exception. This paper aims at looking at those representations of “modernization” (as they appear in debates about the employment services restructuring policies) in detail as well as providing references to the trajectory of such reforms of public services since the early eighties to the beginning of the crisis.

Citizens’ attitudes toward public services. Satisfaction in 2009-2011

The aim of this paper is to study the recent changes on citizens’ satisfaction with the performance ofpublic services, in the period 2009-2011 in Spain. Using data from the surveys on Quality of PublicServices, developed by the Sociological Research Center jointly with the National Agency for theEvaluation of Public Services and Quality of Services, our results show that the level of satisfactionhas slightly increased, which seems to display a greater tendency to positively value public servicesduring economic retrenchment. A major determinant of high satisfaction is self-reported ideology.Besides, immigrants display higher levels of satisfaction than Spaniards.

Conditional cash transfer programs and the representations of poverty in Bolivia and Peru

Bolivia and Peru adopted the same instruments of social policy —conditional cash transfer programs— to solve the same public problems under different political regimes. By means of the qualitative methodology of discourse analysis, this paper studies the representations of poverty and State made by key actors of those social programs. Underlying more differences than similarities, one demonstrates that the same social policy is linked to opposite social representations of poverty and the State role in every country. The main explanation for this is, far from being imposed by international organizations, those programs are adopted and adapted by each political regime.

A delphy study of the cooperativisation of the social services in the historical territory of Gipuzkoa

This article shows the main results obtained from the Delphi study, which was made of politicians and technicians from the Department of Social Policy in the County Council of Gipuzkoa, concerning the possibility of cooperativizing the provision of social services in this historical territory. With this in mind, the structure of this article is in two different parts. The first part develops the theoretical framework which serves as inspiration for the empirical work, where note is made of the main theoretical proposals that have a bearing on the collective dimension of citizen participation in the management of public services. Among the various models, those which prioritise public participation through social and solidarity economy entities stand out. The second part concerns itself with the presentation of the field research results. To this end, the methodological notes concerning the preparation process for the Delphi analysis are presented first and this is immediately followed by a synthesis of the main results obtained in this study. The article ends with a section of conclusions and future lines of action.

‘Marxism and Ecology: From Political Economy to Political Ecology’

One of the reasons for the 'fin de seicle' angst within western liberal capitalist societies is the rise in prominance of ecological concerns within these societies. Long before the New Right declared the post-war welfare state to be untenable, early green critics had claimed it to be ecologically unsustainable. The addiction of the welfare state on ever increasing levels of economic growth was pronounced to be simply impossible within the context of a finite planet. Although it was not expressed in this manner, what these early ecological concerns with Limits to Growth were in effect saying was that the accumulation of capital rendered capitalism unsustainable. Yet the ecological critique of capitalism has not found much favour within the Marxist critique untile recently. Early Marxist analyses of the ecology movement dismissed them as ‘petty bourgeios radicals’ while many greens still view Marxism as ‘fair shares in extinction’. The lack of positive engagement and dialogue between Marxism and ecology has in recent years been put right with a discernable overlap between the two critiques of capitalism. This article seeks to present the areas of disagreement and agreement between the two and seeks to provide an ‘environmental audit’ on both the Marxist method and political project.

"New" and "Old" Social Risks: Life Cycle and Social Class Perspectives on Social Exclusion in Ireland

The life cycle concept has come to have considerable prominence in Irish social policy debate. However, this has occurred without any systematic effort to link its usage to the broader literature relating to the concept. Nor has there been any detailed consideration of how we should set about operationalising the concept. In this paper we argue the need for "macro" life cycle perspectives that have been influenced by recent challenges to the welfare state to be combined with "micro" perspectives focusing on the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social exclusion. We make use of Irish EU-SILC 2005 data in developing a life cycle schema and considering its relationship to a range of indicators of social exclusion. At the European level renewed interest in the life cycle concept is associated with the increasing emphasis on the distinction between "new" and "old" social risks and the notion that the former are more "individualised". Inequality and poverty rather than being differentially distributed between social classes are thought to vary between phases in the average work life. Our findings suggest the "death of social class" thesis is greatly overblown. A more accurate appreciation of the importance of new and old social risks requires that we systematically investigate the manner in which factors such as social class and the life cycle interact.

Explaining levels of deprivation in the European Union

In this paper we seek to explain variations in levels of deprivation between EU countries. The starting-point of our analysis is the finding that the relationship between income and life-style deprivation varies across countries. Given our understanding of the manner in which the income-deprivation mismatch may arise from the limitations of current income as a measure of command over resources, the pattern of variation seems to be consistent with our expectations of the variable degree to which welfare-state regimes achieve 'decommodification' and smooth income flows. This line of reasoning suggests that cross-national differences in deprivation might, in significant part, be due not only to variation in household and individual characteristics that are associated with disadvantage but also to the differential impact of such variables across countries and indeed welfare regimes. To test this hypothesis, we have taken advantage of the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) comparative data set in order to pursue a strategy of substituting variable names for country/welfare regime names. We operated with two broad categories of variables, tapping, respectively, needs and resources. Although both sets of factors contribute independently to our ability to predict deprivation, it is the resource factors that are crucial in reducing country effects. The extent of cross-national heterogeneity depends on specifying the social class and situation in relation to long-term unemployment of the household reference person. The impact of the structural socio-economic variables that we label 'resource factors' varies across countries in a manner that is broadly consistent with welfare regime theory and is the key factor in explaining cross-country differences in deprivation. As a consequence, European homogeneity is a great deal more evident among the advantaged than the disadvantaged.

Age discrimination before the ECJ - Conceptual and theoretical issues

Although only addressed by EU law from 2000, age discrimination has been the theme of quite a few cases before the Court of Justice, with a high proportion decided by the Grand Chamber recently. This is due to the conceptual and theoretical challenges that a prohibition to use age as differentiating factor poses. After all, age has been an important stratifier used to synchronize life courses through welfare State regimes in Europe. Partly due to these traditions, there are stereotypes associated with old age, and young age, that in turn lead to disadvantage in employment. For the same reason, age discrimination frequently intersects with discrimination on other grounds, such as sex, race or disability. EU legislation on age discrimination has sought to accommodate the traditional role of age in employment policy by allowing wider justifications than for other forms of discrimination. This leads to contradictions within the larger field of discrimination law, which may even threaten to dilute its efficiency. This article analyses how recent case law of the Court of Justice, and in particular its Grand Chamber, deals with the theoretical challenges posed by these conflicting demands on age discrimination and on discrimination law at large.

Cities and The Spirit Level: Reasserting the Public Interest in Planning Governance

Urban planning in Europe has its roots in social reform movements for reform of the 18th and 19th centuries and in the UK evolved into the state-backed comprehensive planning system established as a pillar of the welfare state in 1947. This new planning system played a key role in meeting key social needs of the early post-war period, through, for example, an ambitious new town programme. However, from the late 1970s onwards the main priorities of the planning system have shifted as the UK state has withdrawn support for welfare and reasserted market values. One consequence of this has been an increased inequality in access to many of the resources that planning seeks to regulate, including affordable housing, local services and environmental quality.
Drawing on evidence from recent literature on equality, including Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level this paper will question the role of planning in an era of post-politics and a neo-liberal state. It will review some of the consequences for the governance and practice of planning and question what this means for the core values of the planning profession. Finally, the paper will discuss the rise of the Healthy Urban Planning Movement in the US and Europe and ask whether this provides any potential for reasserting the public interest in planning process.

Symmetrical Solutions, Asymmetrical Realities: Beyond the Politics of Paralysis

The historic significance of the Good Friday Agreement and its role in ending organized political violence is acknowledged at the outset. The article then goes on to probe the roots of the political paralysis built into the architecture of the Agreement that are predicated on a misplaced political and cultural symmetry between the “two communities.” It is suggested that the institutionalized relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. facilitates a cross-party, populist, socio-economic consensus among the nationalist and unionist political parties on the welfare state, taxation and maintaining the massive British subvention to the region. This in turn allows them to concentrate on a divisive culturalist politics, i.e., on antagonistic forms of cultural and identity politics over such issues as flags, parades, and the legacy of the “Troubles” which spills over into gridlock into many areas of regional administration. The article argues for a much broader understanding of culture and identity rooted in the different, if overlapping and interdependent, material realities of both communities while challenging the idea of two cultures/identities as fixed, mutually exclusive, non-negotiable and mutually antagonistic. It then focuses on the importance of Belfast as a key arena which will determine the long-term prospects of an alternative and more constructive form of politics, and enable a fuller recognition of the fundamental asymmetries and inter-dependence between the “two communities.” In the long run, this involves re-defining and reconstructing what is meant by the “Union” and a “United Ireland.”

European Union Non-Discrimination Law: Comparative Perspectives on Multidimensional Equality Law

EU equality law is multidimensional in being based on different rationales and concepts. Consequently, the concept of discrimination has become fragmented, with different instruments envisaging different scopes of protection. This raises questions as to the ability of EU law to address the situation of persons excluded on a number of grounds. This edited collection addresses the increasing complexity of European Equality Law from jurisprudential, sociological and political science perspectives. Internationally renowned researchers from Scandinavian, Continental and Central European countries and Britain analyse consequences of multiplying discrimination grounds within EU equality law, considering its multidimensionality and intersectionality. The contributors to the volume theorise the move from formal to substantive equality law and its interrelation to new forms of governance, demonstrating the specific combination of non-discrimination law with welfare state models which reveal the global implications of the European Union. The book will be of interest to academics and policy makers all over the world, in particular to those researching and studying law, political sciences and sociology with an interest in human rights, non discrimination law, contract and employment law or European studies.