The Welfare State: Purpose, Values, and Models
Understanding the Welfare State Model
Social heterogeneity and the existence of mismatched interests express the values and purposes attributed to the state. The actual experience of the Welfare State makes it a model that cannot be denied. It is often seen as the only instrument that can effectively tackle inequality while preserving freedom.
Core Purpose: Addressing Inequality and Ensuring Freedom
It is useful to recall the concept of existential provisions. The State must provide all that is necessary for the continuation of physical existence. However, scientific advances and technological change substantially redefine what is considered necessary.
Expanding Needs: Beyond Basic Survival
When discussing welfare, it’s understood that not only basic needs should be covered, but also secondary ones, such as culture and leisure. The culture of welfare has involved a process of enlarging public assistance, leading to various forms of state action. For social democracy, this type of state is the way to achieve higher levels of equality.
Welfare State and Democratic-Liberal Values
The Welfare State does not inherently dispute the basic values of the democratic-liberal state, such as freedom, individual ownership, the role of the market, legal equality, and citizen participation through the ballot.
Reconciling Equality, Freedom, and Security
Proposals aiming to reconcile equality, freedom, and security can sometimes lead to conceptions focused on superficial uniformity, regulation, and conflict integration. Other doctrines continue to recognize the Welfare State as a particular model, arguing that the rule of law, by itself, has no specific purpose concerning the lives of its citizens. A stream of democratic liberalism viewed the welfare state as a stage of maturity for freedom.
Citizenship Rights: Civil, Political, Social
This perspective meant the development of three areas of rights: civil, political, and social-economic. The fullness of this concept of citizenship provides a channel for conflict integration and a potential weakening of class identity. Its goal concerns the potential for the exercise of these rights.
Alternative Perspectives on the Welfare State
A Marxist Interpretation: Control and Legitimation
An explanation from a Marxist orientation views the welfare state as a feature of modern capitalist societies. It is understood as inherently contradictory: seen as a control system for the masses, yet rejecting possible reductions in state spending. It functions as both a tool for capital accumulation and an instrument of legitimation. It is contradictory because it must address these two functions simultaneously.
Moral Foundations: Needs and Community Obligation
It has also been argued that the notion of need is central in the search for a moral foundation for the welfare state. A developed society aims to guarantee its members the satisfaction of needs, which is inseparable from the idea of full citizenship. This implies a principle of community obligation to ensure opportunities for all its members.
Economic Intervention and Welfare State Types
The Welfare State engages with the economy in various ways; its essential intervention affects distribution. The welfare state has expanded its role from seeking distributive justice to ensuring existential security. In practice, this statement is quite nuanced.
Classifying Models: Geography and Ideology
Such variability has led to different classifications or types:
- Geographic or geopolitical distinctions (e.g., Nordic, Continental, Catholic/Latin).
- Reference to foundational figures or systems (e.g., Bismarck and Beveridge models).
- Differentiation based on underlying principles, such as Richard Titmuss’s models:
- Residual model (minimalist, means-tested).
- Industrial achievement-performance model (social insurance based on work).
- Institutional redistributive model (universalist, based on need).
These models, often based around self-interest and ideological blocs, are widely present in the current debate on the crisis of the welfare state.