The European Social Model Adrift

Europe, Social Cohesion and the Economic Crisis

Serena Romano, Gabriella Punziano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367598310
• eBook ISBN: 9781317033219
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume presents a new perspective for discussing the European social contract and its main challenges, bringing together single-nation and comparative studies from across Europe. Presenting both theoretical discussions and empirical case studies, it explores various aspects of social cohesion, including social protection, the labour market, social movements, healthcare, social inequalities and poverty. With particular attention to the effects of the international economic and financial crisis on social cohesion, particularly in the light of the implementation of so-called 'austerity measures', authors engage with questions surrounding the possible fragmentation of the European model of social cohesion and the transformation of forms of social protection, asking whether social cohesion continues to represent - if it ever did - a common feature of European countries. Breaking new ground in understanding the future of Social Europe and its main dynamics of change, The European Social Model Adrift will appeal to scholars of sociology, social policy and politics, with interests in social cohesion, the effects of financial crisis and the European social model.

Chapter 1
Introduction: The Remains of the European Social Contract

Serena Romano and Gabriella Punziano

The origin of the term ‘crisis’ has its roots in ancient Greece, where the word ‘κρίνω’ was mainly used to indicate the act of separating, discerning or, in a figurative sense, the overall process of deciding. Quite ironically, and perhaps unintentionally, the use we make today of the word ‘crisis’ has much more in common with its Greek original meanings than one might expect. Crises are often understood as turning points, even watersheds, produced by important transformations in politics, economics and society, and thus marking a profound shift, or separation, from one era to another. At the same time, crises are generally only overcome by means of important decisions concerning what is the best strategy to adopt in a given critical circumstance.

There is no doubt that the Global Recession that hit Europe in 2008 was a crisis. It marked the end of the prevailing blind faith in financial markets, the beginning of a new age of ‘permanent austerity’ (Pierson, 2002) in most advanced economies and possibly, as this book intends to discuss, the ultimate disruption of the past European inclusive model of social cohesion and solidarity. It also required a great deal of effort on the part of those involved in the decision-making process, especially, although not exclusively, in those countries where the initial global financial crunch was followed by a profound sovereign debt crisis that, in some cases, could only be surmounted with the help of international loans and commitment to strict austerity measures. It goes without saying that the scope of fiscal pressure exerted upon some European countries dealing with bail-out requirements only added to the challenging times Europe has undergone over the last six years. The combination of growth and social cohesion became increasingly demanding and required momentous political decisions. Six years since the international crisis hit Europe, the present book intends to contribute to the discussion over the ‘status’ of the European Social Model and its transformation – if not complete erosion.

Far from being exhausted, the debate around the social impact of the crisis is gaining new momentum. The news just emerging that austerity measures introduced in Greece have produced ‘a violation of human rights’ (FIDH/HLHR, 2014) demonstrates how timely and significant the topic of this book is.

This volume was initially conceived with a central objective in mind. The main purpose in collecting material concerning social cohesion and Europe in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 crisis was to re-open the debate on an alleged European version of social solidarity (or a European social contract) and to answer the following question: is the European model of social cohesion really ‘dead’? And, if this is the case, what is the role of the economic crisis? As a consequence, a predominant objective in our work is to look at the main dynamics of change that affect social cohesion vis-à-vis the most recent transformations which have occurred in Europe, first and foremost the economic crisis and its most direct consequences (austerity programmes, among others), and to discuss whether, and to what extent, social cohesion still represents a common feature of European countries or not, if indeed it ever has.

In this book social cohesion will be discussed from different perspectives but with a special emphasis on the current role of social solidarity and social protection in the light of ongoing austerity measures introduced in most European countries.

Nevertheless, this work is not intended as a comprehensive analysis of social protection reforms during the economic crisis. We have rather endeavoured to provide a multidisciplinary background in order to explore the most topical issues regarding social cohesion and social protection in Europe and their main dynamics of change.

Therefore, in this volume we have attempted to answer a number of topical questions, such as: what happened to the European Social Model? Is the European archetype of social cohesion in danger? Is it being fragmented or is it being revamped? What are the implications of the most recent events/transformations for social cohesion, social inclusion and inequality? Can one still refer to a distinctive European typology of social cohesion? How have EU countries responded to economic constraints and with what consequences for living conditions, solidarity and social cohesion in general?

A further underlying element in this book is the role played by the economic crisis. The discussion presented in each chapter contributes to the understanding of whether the fragmentation (or renewal) of the European social contract is only attributable to the financial situation or if a more general trend towards the erosion of social cohesion is in progress. While governments advocating public reforms and austerity measures continue to legitimise their decisions by referring to financial constraints, it is also true that many of the transformations discussed in this book began long before the economic crisis started. By looking at the specific dynamics of change, each chapter of this book can also be used to ‘test’ the very idea that the origin of the new wave of welfare retrenchment is to be found in the financial crisis.

There is an important premise that we shall adopt from the start in this book: that the relationships between social cohesion in Europe and the economic crisis may be understood on at least two different macro-levels, one being the policy-making aspect of social cohesion and the other one being social cohesion (and its discussed fragmentation) as an outcome.

The first level at which the economic crisis is accelerating the transformation of the former European model of social cohesion is in the sphere of policy-making. There is a strong argument for stating that, as an effect of increasing fiscal and political constraints, most European countries had to profoundly reconfigure their orientations towards public and social policy. Although there is wide consensus that a reconfiguration of the welfare state – if not a new ‘Silver Age’ of permanent austerity (Taylor-Gooby, 2002) – has been in progress in most capitalist democracies for at least three decades (Kuhnle, 2000; Palier, 2010; Bonoli and Natali, 2012; Hemerijck, 2012), the recent introduction of a new wave of severe austerity programmes throughout Europe is proof of an exacerbation of this general trend (Farnsworth and Irving, 2011; Matsaganis, 2012; Taylor-Gooby, 2012; Karger, 2014; Dukelow and Considine, 2014; Pavolini et al., 2015). This level of analysis has to do with the effects of the crisis on social protection, or rather, its effects on a European model of social protection (Hermann, 2014).

However, not only do austerity programmes re-shape social protection policy-making but they also add to the purely economic effects of the crisis, with evident implications on the transformation of what would be generally referred to as a distinctive European form of social cohesion and solidarity. As an example, the economic crisis and, more specifically, the austerity measures that are introduced to tackle it, is increasingly causing a deterioration in the living conditions of the working class, not to mention those of individuals excluded from the labour market, for whom the ongoing restrictions on social and economic rights generally result in even deeper material deprivation (De Agostini et al., 2010; Bush et al., 2013; Jenkins et al., 2013; Ridge, 2013; Chzhen, 2014; Matsaganis and Leventi, 2014). These dynamics constitute a second outstanding level at which the economic crisis is affecting the former type of social cohesion in Europe and this is worth investigating more profoundly, as this study does, than has been done so far in the literature. This second level of analysis concerns the effects that policy-making change has on social cohesion and solidarity. Together, these two levels of analysis may help us discuss to what extent the post-war European social contract has come to an end as an effect of the crisis. Our main argument is that the combination of economic crisis and austerity measures is putting the former European social contract under constant pressure, if not in severe jeopardy. In fact, such a ‘double effect’ of the crisis is used in our book as a principal point of departure for discussing the very disintegration of the European model of social cohesion.

From the Social Contract to the European Social Model

Most theoretical discussions regarding the notion of a ‘social contract’ draw upon a formal distinction between its classical and modern conceptualisations (Boucher and Kelly, 2003; Paz-Fuchs, 2008). Early social contract theories, such as those formulated by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, are essentially concerned with the overall establishment of power and sovereignty as social constructions that are created ‘by social contract’ between man and the state. By contrast, it is argued, modern and contemporary theorisations of the social contract, such as the one formulated by Rawls (1971) put a much greater emphasis on the rights and obligations that derive from the definition of such conventions. However, even early social contract philosophers showed, to some extent, a certain interest in the main obligations of governments towards their citizens. Rousseau ([1775] 2011, p. 135, emphasis added), for example, assigned a salient role to the contractual obligations of the state towards the welfare of the individual, by stating that:

Individual welfare is so closely linked to the public confederation that … this convention would be dissolved by right if just one citizen within the state were to perish who could have been saved … and if a single court case were to be lost because of an obvious injustice.

In effect, is not the commitment of the body of the nation to provide for the maintenance of the humblest of its members with as much care as for that of all the others?

Even if Rousseau wrote far before the emergence of the welfare state as an institution, a certain interest in the role of the state in providing for the well-being of the population and, quite surprisingly, in protecting those in need, can be found in his writings. Such a modern concern for what we would today refer to as the ‘social inclusion’ responsibilities of the state might qualify Rousseau as a key precursor of modern and contemporary social citizenship studies.

His idea that governments are responsible and obliged by contract to provide for the well-being of the whole population, in fact, places his studies in direct continuity with contemporary accounts of social and economic rights, first and foremost with those formulated by T.H. Marshall (2000 [1950], pp. 39–40), according to whom:

Social integration … and the diminution of inequality … have in part been met by incorporating social rights in the status of citizenship and thus creating a universal right to real income which is not proportionate to the market value of the claimant. … Social rights in their modern form imply an invasion of contract by status, the subordination of market price to social rights, the replacement of the free bargain by the declaration of rights.

During the second part of the twentieth century, the very idea of the social contract has been increasingly understood and explained by looking at the obligations of the modern state towards social security. This trend is especially associated with the development of social protection institutions in Europe, where the provision of (quasi) universal access to social and economic rights guaranteed by the welfare state became more and more acknowledged as a specific trait of European countries: social citizenship became the flagship of the ‘implicit’ European post-war social contract (Korpi, 2003, p. 595).

Despite progressive transformations in the European post-war models of social citizenship (such as those produced by market forces) (Korpi, 1989; Esping-Andersen, 1990; Alber, 2006), the strong relationship between state interventions and social cohesion as a general objective of European societies was preserved and even more emphasised by scholars over the last century (Hannequart, 1992; Ferrera, 2010; Vanderbrouke et al., 2013). In fact, most social, political and economic studies conducted over the last two decades have relied on the alleged existence of a specific model of economic and social cohesion characterising most (Central, Northern and Western) European countries, generally referred to as the European Social Model.

Social Cohesion and the European Social Model

In referring to the transformations of the European model of social cohesion and solidarity we should consider two distinctive, apparently opposing, conceptual and historical developments that have contributed to the definition of the current debate on Social Europe. The first one concerns the Europeanisation process (i.e., the integration of EU member states into an economic and monetary union – Radaelli, 2004) and the emergence of a ‘European social dimension’ discourse (Paasi, 2001). The debate on a European Social Model has been especially promoted by European Union institutions and its existence has become a central theme in the European Commission political agenda. The second process is related to the development of the ‘social cohesion’ discourse supported by international monetary and economic institutions.

The concept of social cohesion was first used by Emile Durkheim in 1893 (1984, p. 119) in describing the general attitude of human societies towards social solidarity, characterised by the fact that:

Not only do fellow-citizens like one another, seeking one another out in preference to foreigners, but they love their country. They wish for it what they would wish for themselves, they care that it should be lasting and prosperous, because without it a whole area of their psychological life would fail to function smoothly.

While the notion of social cohesion has become widely discussed and re-conceptualised in sociological and political studies over the last century (Mann, 1970; Berger-Schmitt, 2002; Friedkin, 2004; Chan et al., 2006; Jenson, 2010), its most recent reformulation only appeared in the contemporary political debate during the 1980s, when the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF began to promote the idea that economic growth should be combined with overall social cohesion objectives. Such an approach to social cohesion has been frequently criticised as a ‘softer’ neoliberal commitment towards social inclusion and as a way to:

treat equality as only one value among several and [… to] mark a clear shift away from efforts to achieve social justice via the active promotion of equitable outcomes. (Jenson, 1998, p. 5)

Social cohesion, solidarity and social protection, however, have also been gradually merged in the debate on the social dimension of Europe; eventually even EU institutions (European Committee for Social Cohesion, 2004, p. 3) started referring to social cohesion as:

the capacity of a society to ensure the welfare of all its members, minimising disparities and avoiding polarisation.

At the same time, these concepts started being referred to as the predominant characteristics of a European Social Model. Two major views regarding an European model of social cohesion and solidarity can be identified. Authors advocating the existence of a European Social Model generally maintain that the European process of economic integration has been paralleled, over the years, by a similar process occurring in the social sphere, eventually (and gradually) resulting in the establishment of a ‘Social Europe’ (Hemerijck, 2002; Albers et al., 2006; Threlfall, 2007). ‘Democracy and individual rights, free collective bargaining, the market economy, equality of opportunity for all and social welfare and solidarity’ (EU Commission, 1994, p. 2) and, in more general terms, the combination of economic growth and social integration are generally indicated as the main trademarks of the European Social Model (for a comprehensive discussion of the European Social Model refer to Chapter 2 by Francisco Jorge Rodríguez Gonzálvez). The distinctive model of social solidarity found in European countries (Baldwin, 1990), it is frequently argued, represents the ‘added value’ of Europe (Spidla, 2006, p. 114). It stands as a major element of protection for European populations against the social risks deriving from the market economy: poverty, soci...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The Remains of the European Social Contract
• 2 The Dynamics of the European Social Model: An Evolving Polarisation?
• 3 The Roots of Social Cohesion: Urban Spaces, Community and Neighbourhood in European Cities
• 4 Policy Responses in Britain and the Economic Crisis: The Failure of Social Democracy?
• 5 Missed Recalibration or Retrenchment? The Development of Long-Term Policies in the Italian Case
• 6 Outplacement: The Polish Experience and Plans for Development in the Labour Market
• 7 The Swedish Model during the International Financial Crisis: Institutional Resilience or Structural Change?
• 8 Ethics of Austerity in the ‘Weak Link’ of Europe: Retrenchment Trajectories and Social Justice in Central-Eastern and Southern European Countries
• 9 The European Economic Crisis and Rising Secessionism: New Demands on the European Social Model in Scotland, Flanders, and Catalonia
• 10 Convergence versus Autonomy in Europe: Welfare and Regimes of Social Cohesion in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the UK in Times of Crisis
• 11 Democracy, Austerity and Crisis: Southern Europe and the Decline of the European Social Model
• 12 Social Spending, Inequality and Growth in Times of Austerity: Insights from Portugal
• Conclusions Black Swans, Elephants and Managers: The Protective Function of European Welfare States and its Transformation
• Index