Citizenship in Nordic Welfare States

Dynamics of Choice, Duties and Participation In a Changing Europe

Bjørn Hvinden, Håkan Johansson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134120925
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Civismo y ciudadanía

This book offers an innovative analysis of the ways in which the relationship between citizens and welfare states - social citizenship - becomes more dynamic and multifaceted as a result of Europeanization and individualization.

Written by interdisciplinary contributors from politics, sociology, law and philosophy, it examines the transformation of social citizenship through a series of illuminating case studies, comparing Nordic countries and other European nations.

Dealing with the following areas of national and European welfare policy, legislation and practice:

• activation – reforms linking income maintenance and employment promotion
• scope for participation of marginal groups in deliberation and decision-making
• impact of human rights legislation for welfare and legal protection against discrimination and social barriers to equal market participation
• coordination of social security systems to facilitate cross-border mobility in Europe
• pension reform – efforts to make pension systems sustainable.

Citizenship in Nordic Welfare States will be of interest to students and researchers of social policy, comparative welfare, social law, political science, sociology and European studies.

Part I

Citizenship in contemporary welfare states

Issues and perspectives

1 Opening citizenship

Why do we need a new understanding of social citizenship?

Håkan Johansson and Bjørn Hvinden

Introduction

This book argues that ongoing changes in European welfare states, including the Nordic ones, call for a new, dynamic and multifaceted understanding of social citizenship. These changes involve new relationships between provision of income security and promotion of employment, between public and private responsibility for social risk protection (especially in old age), between rights to receive and duties to participate, between social redistribution and social regulation (especially of market behaviour), between benefit rights and the right to equal treatment and ultimately between national and supranational influences on social protection.

These transformations have made the contrasts and tensions between different aspects of social citizenship more manifest. First, the links between the rights and duties of citizenship have been strengthened, particularly in the contexts of activation reform and the integration of immigrants. Second, citizen self-responsibility and choice have been put in focus through public and private mixes of welfare provision, and more generally through the broader trend towards individualization. Third, citizen participation in deliberation, planning and decision-making has been both demanded and encouraged, most clearly under the headings of user involvement and consultation with stakeholder groups but also through public recognition of grassroots organization among marginalized citizens. Fourth, citizens are relying less on the benevolent discretion of administrators and professionals, and looking more to lawyers and the court system to secure access to welfare provisions, equal treatment and labour market opportunity.

Social citizenship as a purely national construct is under challenge, with a broad international trend towards strengthening human rights and protecting against discrimination on a number of grounds, e.g. gender or ethnicity. As these rights and protections become legally integrated at the national level, they add new dimensions to social citizenship. The decisions of national courts can under certain circumstances be appealed to supranational courts. The European Union (EU) has contributed to this process, for example through the Amsterdam Treaty and the Nice Charter of Fundamental Rights (EU 2000). Through its various action programmes, based on the open method of coordination, the EU has also created new channels of participation for organizations of citizens, even marginalized citizens. These new channels have opened new transnational arenas and opportunities for giving citizens some influence in policy development.

The efforts to establish a single European market and the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour mean that social provisions previously available only for national citizens are now accessible to citizens from other member states and are exportable to other countries. From the perspective of the individual, this accessibility extends the rights associated with national social citizenship. From the perspective of national governments, these processes diminish their control over the design and administration of social protection systems, and to some extent over the financing of social provisions.

Yet a strong tendency exists for dealing with these changing aspects of social citizenship in isolation, as completely separate phenomena, or as issues only weakly related to one another. Without denying the ways in which citizenship is socially stratified, we focus on the ways in which several dimensions of citizenship are potentially affecting citizens at the same time. For most people this situation means that they face new demands, as well as new opportunities, to become active citizens. These demands and opportunities call for a more dynamic and complex understanding of citizenship. We need to open the existing ways in which citizenship is conceptualized and empirically approached. In particular, we ought to become more sensitive to how contrasting aspects of citizenship may be combined and reconciled in new and unexpected ways. Although recent developments in citizenship theory will be helpful for this purpose, we also need to explore these issues in concrete empirical contexts. The aim of the book, therefore, is to investigate the implications of opening citizenship, both theoretically and empirically.

Active citizenship – a conceptual map

References to ‘active citizenship’ are frequent among policymakers, journalists and scholars, albeit usually in a general, ad hoc or strongly context-dependent way. A good starting point for a more systematic treatment comes from David Miller (2000). In his discussion of the challenges that a multi-cultural society raises for citizenship Miller distinguishes among three main understandings of citizenship and, consequently, of active social citizenship:

First, citizenship in a socio-liberal sense is a relationship between the individual and the state, involving encompassing sets of mutual rights and obligations. Here, a turn towards active citizenship could imply that the state asks the citizen to more actively fulfil specific duties, e.g. taking part in different forms of welfare-to-work (activation) programmes in return for social benefits of different kinds. Similarly, immigrants who want to become permanent residents and eventually be granted state citizenship more often must go through specific introduction programmes, courses in the language and culture of the host country, etc.

Second, citizenship in a libertarian sense conceives of the relationship between state and individual more narrowly, with the emphasis on the self-responsibility and autonomy of the individual. The responsibilities and legitimate tasks of the state are therefore limited to guaranteeing and protecting the few but fundamental rights of the individual. Individuals should be able to exercise choice and freely enter contracts to promote their own well-being and protection against risks of various kinds. According to this understanding, a turn towards active citizenship could mean that citizens have greater scope for exercising individual choice and foresight as knowledgeable consumers in a mixed welfare market.

Third, citizenship in a republican sense generally focuses on the citizen’s participation in the affairs of his or her community, and on the expectation that the individual is committed to acknowledging and promoting the well-being of the community as a whole. A turn towards active citizenship with this understanding could aim to achieve broader and more intensive citizen participation, both in deliberation and dialogue with relevant agencies and in self-directed activity. Increased participation might take both individual and collective forms. On the one hand, individual ‘users’ might engage in a dialogue to clarify the appropriate measures or courses of action; on the other hand, they might be involved in consultation and negotiation over the design and planning of new policies.

We elaborate on Miller’s theoretical distinctions for somewhat different purposes than his. We emphasize that greater openness between the national welfare state and its international environment changes the meanings of all three understandings of citizenship. Transnational processes have substantial impacts on citizens’ rights and duties and on citizens’ scope for choice and participation. Although nation-states are still the major contexts for the discussion, formation, implementation and enforcement of social protection policy, they are increasingly constrained by decisions made at a supranational level. This development means that diverse dimensions of national social citizenship are opening up, combining and transforming in new configurations.

Why do we see a turn towards active citizenship?

The turn towards active citizenship is not a simple one-way process, where external pressures on the welfare state bring about new forms of citizenship or where new citizens’ capabilities and demands force the welfare state to change. Rather we must view this change as the outcome of mutually reinforcing processes, transforming modes and structures of governance, citizen participation and self-directed activity. Many social scientists believe that the ‘stateness’ of contemporary welfare states is challenged ‘from above’, whether ‘above’ is called globalization, Europeanization or denationalization. They believe that this condition limits the de facto sovereignty of national governments, requires stricter budgetary discipline and new regulative measures, narrows the range of legitimate policy options and instruments at the state level, and shifts the balance between politics, markets and international courts as sources of material advantage, security and protection against risks.

But national welfare states clearly also face pressures ‘from below’. Citizens are challenging long-established bureaucratic or paternalistic modes of administration, rigidity and inflexibility, as well as the arbitrary exercise of discretionary powers. People have become more knowledgeable, self-confident and conscious of their rights when dealing with front-line agency staff and professional helpers. They expect to have the option of influencing decisions relating to their own welfare, whether these options are expressed through co-determination, user involvement, informed consent, group consultation or freedom of choice. The emerging regime of international human rights, along with the more particular development of institutions in the European context, gives more force and legitimacy to these expectations.

Resulting from these processes are complex, sometimes paradoxical changes in the relations between state and citizens. Citizens are expected (and themselves expect) to play more active roles in handling risks and promoting their own welfare. In some respects the turn towards active citizenship corresponds to a more active role for the state; in other cases, it involves a more passive role. Increasing limitations of the scope for encompassing and redistributive welfare states (like the Nordic ones) may leave more to the agency of citizens. Individual responsibility for achieving self-sufficiency, protection against risks, and the active use of available opportunities in the market becomes more important.

The impact of economic openness and Europeanization

With a more open and globalized world market, stronger competitive pressures, and economic integration in Europe, national governments have the impetus to prevent further growth or even reduce public spending. Many argue that ‘large’ encompassing and redistributive welfare states (of the Nordic kind) have become too expensive – and therefore unsustainable – in a more competitive world that includes the emerging single European market. Governments attempt to reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of existing public services, in combination with changing labour market conditions (Chapter 4). Even in countries where public authorities have for a long time been the main provider of services, the governments attempt at leaving more to markets and private providers (e.g. by putting out services for open tender) and at encouraging citizens to take greater individual responsibility for social risk protection (e.g. by offering partial tax exemptions for personal pension plans).

Scholars like Majone have argued that we will see a gradual shift of emphasis from redistributive welfare provision to promoting welfare objectives through ‘social regulation’ (Majone 1993). Social regulation involves public efforts to influence the behaviour of non-governmental actors, especially actors operating in the market, to realize social objectives. Generally speaking, social regulation has the potential of strengthening citizens’ scope for exercising active citizenship through their participation in the market as both workers and consumers.

Examples of social regulation include anti-discrimination legislation and the setting of what the EU defines as binding standards for universal design, meant to promote participation and equal opportunities for people with impairments (disabilities). Such regulative measures help to correct market imperfections or the undesirable consequences of unrestricted market competition, even if the need for correcting market failures is not necessarily the main impetus for introducing these measures (Majone 2005). Compared with the introduction of new tax-financed redistributive provisions, social regulation is more compatible with an opening and liberalization of international markets (Hvinden 2004). (The existence of observable significant weakening of the redistributive effects of national welfare schemes or of increased inequalities after taxes and social transfers resulting from European integration is a complex issue that falls outside the scope of this book.)

In the ongoing Europeanization process, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has become an important actor. The ECJ has taken on an active role in clarifying the implications of common EU regulations for social policies (Pollack 2003; Leibfried 2005). The ECJ has made many decisions (under the single-market regulations) that have had substantial impact. For instance, one effectively extended the rights of EU citizens to have the authorities in their own country reimburse the costs of medical treatment in other member states (Ferrera 2005: Chapter 10).

The European Commission is another significant actor within the field of European welfare policy, as it has the authority to propose new European legislation. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 gave the EU power to combat discrimination on a number of different grounds, and the Commission later proposed two related directives in 2000, complementing earlier EU legislation against gender discrimination. The first directive implements the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial and ethnic origin (Council Directive 2000/43/EC). The second directive establishes a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, covering discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation (Council Directive 2000/78/EC). Both direct member states to introduce laws – new or amended – and the administrative provisions necessary for compliance with these directives, with the Commission supervising and monitoring this process of ‘transposition’.

The Commission also has the power to initiate joint action programmes in the social field (EU 1997). An ambition for several of these programmes has been to achieve greater similarity or convergence in the objectives of the social protection in member states, through what is now known as ‘the open method of coordination’ (Porte and Pochet 2002: Chapter 9). Although member states are to agree on overall joint objectives, especially for the direction of their social protection systems, they are free to choose the means for accomplishing these objectives. The EU, for example, has developed programmes based on the open method of co-ordination in the areas of employment, pensions and social inclusion (Chapter 9).

Following earlier initiatives from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), EU employment and inclusion programmes have emphasized the need for shifting from ‘passive’ to ‘active’ policies: the primary goal of social protection systems is to promote labour market participation among people of working age. Only for those who cannot work is the main objective to be providing adequate and secure income support. A key goal is to make social protection systems more ‘employment-friendly’, including to ‘make work pay’ and to ensure that the conditions, levels and duration of benefits do not create disincentives to work.

Similarly, the EU and the OECD claim that national governments should improve the ‘employability’ (skills, knowledge, etc.) of those who are at risk of becoming permanently excluded from economic activity and self-sufficiency. Likewise, governments should make the continuation of benefit payments for people of working age conditional on their accepting offers to take part in employment training measures. Thus various forms of ‘activation’ of protection systems, of recipients of cash benefits or of unemployed citizens should play a key role in the future development of European welfare states. Reforms of this kind are highly relevant for what we have called active citizenship according to a socio-liberal understanding (Chapters 4–6).

In the case of old-age pensions, achieving ‘sustainability’ means ensuring that the working population will not face disproportional and unrealistic financial burdens resulting from the design of ‘pay as you go systems’, combined with the ageing of populations and insufficient economic growth. One way or the other, people must downscale their expectations of their future pension levels, while shouldering greater individual responsibility for securing the purchase power of their pensions (Chapter 14).

Many researchers see the aspects of EU economic integration, legislation and action programmes that we touch upon here as exemplifying new constraints on the freedom of national governments to design and change their systems of welfare provisions (e.g. Ferrera 2005; Leibfried 2005). Yet we do not wish to overstate the degree to which ‘Europeanization’ has diminished the decision-making capacity of member states (Cowles et al. 2001; Olsen 2002). Moreover, ‘social issues’ or ‘social policy’ is still marginal within the common policy-making of the EU and secondary to the complete establishment of a single (and now enlarged) European market. The focus of the EU’s involvement in the ‘social dimension’ has mainly been to ensure that national social protection systems do not impede the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour within the single market. Member states, reluctant to give up control over their redistributive systems (e.g. social benefits, employment, health and social services) refer to the subsidiarity principle of the Maastricht Treaty, meaning that what the member states can do adequately should not be done by the EU, unless it can do it better. At the same time, several scholars have suggested that national decision-makers have not fully realized the consequences of the greater economic openness resulting from European integration (Ferrera 2005; Leibfried 2005).

The impact of incorporating human rights in national legislation

The development of an international regime of human rights and protection against discrimination has important implications for the rights, opportunities and scope of citizen participation. We will briefly point to some important examples (Chapters 10 and 12):

• The UN Convention on Elimination of all Discrimination against Women (the Women’s Convention, 1979) has – through ratification by national governments – granted women stronger formal protection.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I Citizenship in contemporary welfare states Issues and perspectives
• Part II Towards a new balance of rights and duties Activation reform
• Part III The increased scope for participation and inclusion of marginal groups
• Part IV Marketization of citizenship? Choice, anti-discrimination and human rights
• Reference
• Index