![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, in various European welfare reforms, parts of the social insurance systems and the related resources were transferred to the financial market. In this sense, one can speak of privatisation and marketisation, both examples of a neo-liberal tendency. Now, after ‘the Fall of Finance Capitalism’, it is often stated that ‘the years of neoliberal triumph have come to an end’. This paper argues that there had already been a contrasting and powerful development previously, which might now be reinforced. This political and institutional development was moving towards extensive regulatory policies, in particular after the stock market crisis in 2001, and towards solidarity, two examples of a neo-etatistic tendency. I argue that the traditional exclusionary categorisation significantly underestimates the continuously changing mix. I will introduce a more complex approach which will be much more helpful to comprehend current developments in pension protection, and which might also be considered for providing an understanding of change in social protection schemes and welfare states in general. To my view, current changes in capitalist welfare societies are system-inherent substantiations of complexly intertwined dynamics, which can be comprehended by analysing changes in flows of resources and in the rights over these resources. These changes are manifest in what is termed social citizenship. Consequently, I will come to the conclusion that the observed changes promote new forms of social citizenship.
Notes
1. When looking at European welfare systems, we have to be aware that they differ widely, even when we focus on only one specific element, i.e., pensions. Moreover, reform measures are diverse, and even specific measures that are initially comparable can turn out to be very disparate in different social systems. This means that it is very difficult to make generalisations. Nonetheless, the mutual dependence of the mix of so-called neo-liberal and neo-etatistic developments does exist in each country; only its institutionalised nexus varies within each country.
2. As Atkinson (1999: 8) puts it, the ‘emphasis by economists on negative effects of the welfare state can be attributed to the theoretical framework adopted […] which remains rooted in a model of perfectly competitive and perfectly clearing markets’.
3. I will focus on western European pension reforms as I analyse the change in so-called mature welfare states; the post-socialist EU member states have shown comparable characteristics after they were forced to adopt to the Western manner of reforming pension systems (e.g., Müller Citation2008).
4. Depending on the source and definition, the specification of the level of reference differs.
5. And this is also the case when employees are meant to plan their work biography so that time can be saved and used either for learning, caring, leisure periods, early retirement or pension amelioration, as can be seen in the life-course savings scheme adopted in 2006 in The Netherlands (levensloopregeling) (Maier et al. Citation2007).
6. Scandinavian countries (except for Sweden, following its crucial pension reform) have rather indirect methods of paying pension credits to carers, for instance by fully or partly paying wages during care leave; care credits through tax credit systems such as in the UK are, ultimately, wage-related in-work benefits.
7. Generally speaking, the private pension schemes are subject to regulations concerning the identity of the bodies allowed to offer the private pension scheme as well as the rules of advertising, and the rules concerning conditions and forms of investments possible for the collected contributions (Germany with the Riester, France with the PERP, Plan d'Epargne-Retraite Populaire).
8. Within the French PERP (and some Eastern European schemes), the link is a direct one due to age-related obligations to invest in government bonds.
9. There are interesting changes taking place in the financing of (re)new(ed) pension systems, for instance in Germany and France, where they are financed neither through payroll taxes nor by general revenue, but through specific thematic taxes such as taxes on petrol or alcohol (see below). This results in new forms of redistribution.
10. Some of these parallel developments are promoted as ‘best practices’ under the Open Method of Coordination.
11. This is in contrast to concepts of ‘active citizens’ (e.g., Boltanski Citation2007) or of communitaristic ideas (top-down implementation of activeness in social rights terms) and much more comprehensive than the ‘quality jobs’ versus ‘make work pay’ criteria (Barbier Citation2005).
12. One might discuss to what extent the terms ‘passive’ and ‘inactive’ citizens categorised the deservingness of citizens differently in the past and the present.