The Sharing of Risks and the Risks of Sharing: Solidarity and Social Justice in the Welfare State

Solidarity as a social phenomenon means a sharing of feelings, interests, risks and responsibilities. The Western-European Welfare State can be seen as an organized system of solidarity, historically grown from group solidarity among workers, later between workers and employers, moving towards solidarity between larger social groups: between healthy people and the sick, between the young and the elderly, between the employed and the unemployed. This sharing of risks at a societal level however, has revealed the risks of sharing. In the postwar development of the welfare state, solidarity has been organized mainly in administrative forms, run by anonymous bureaucracies and giving way to free riders and calculative citizens. This article describes this development and provides arguments for a reorientation of the welfare state and for the re-allocation of rights, risks and responsibilities.     

The Samaritan State and Social Welfare Provision

Christopher Wellman and some allied scholars argue that a ‘samaritan theory’ can justify state coercion. They also suppose that states may provide robust, social egalitarian welfare provisions for a variety of reasons that would arise within samaritan states. However, the most promising reasons—samaritanism itself, natural socialism, relational equality, and anti-crime paternalism—cannot support robust provision without discarding the strong presumption favoring individual liberty (including both personal rights and private property rights) which must motivate the samaritan theory. Consequently, a samaritan state cannot be a robust social welfare state.     

The purpose of analysis in Moore's principia Ethica

After distinguishing two senses of ‘analysis’, the author claims that the purpose of Moore's analytical (meta‐ethical) program in Principia Ethica was to serve as an indispensable tool for avoiding false judgments in substantial ethics and for establishing true ones. It is shown that Moore's analyses and assumptions are not normatively neutral in that, (1) he disagreed with other philosophers about the extension (as well as the intension) of moral terms, (2) he disagreed in extension with ‘common‐sense’ morality. Finally, an attempt is made to show that Moore's moral methodology, in which his analytical distinctions play the crucial part, is meant to be of practical value for everybody in their moral decisions.     

全球化背景下福利国家危机与变革的再思考

福利国家危机与变革一直以来都是学术界关注的一个核心议题.然而,在全球化背景下如何重新认识并诠释福利国家危机论,如何看待福利国家作为一种制度设计所具有的内在性与弹性,学者们远未达成共识.本文从理论和经验资料两方面试图阐释福利国家危机论及其局限性,分析和认识了近20年来全球化背景下福利国家的变革和弹性.作者指出,新自由主义思潮影响了福利国家危机论的形成,研究者还需要时间和更为充分的经验资料来证明上述危机的原因以及各种影响因素的关联性,受意识形态主导和依赖片面的经济学的假设来判定福利国家的危机是不可取的.     

个人社会服务与福利国家:对我国社会保障制度的启示

以收入保障为基本内容的经济神利和以个人需要为导向的个人社会服务是当代社会保障体制的两大基本方面.西方福利国家发展的经验表明,在福利国家发展的早期,社会政策的重点是各类社会保险和各种收入维持项目;随着福利国家的发展,个人社会服务的种类日益增加,成为福利国家的重要产出.改革开放以来,为了配合市场经济体制的建立,我国重点发展了以社会保险为核心内容的社会保障体制.然而,个人社会服务,作为一项重要的人类服务或公共服务,不论是在概念上还是实践上,一直都没有得到足够的重视.这种情况严重制约了我国社会保障事业的发展,不能适应 断变化的家庭结构、人口结构和社会经济转型的需要.本文认为,随着科学发展观的落实、服务型政府建设的推进,以及普惠型社会福利制度的建设,我国亟需在完善社会保险和社会救助制度的同时,积极推广和普及个人社会服务概念和实务,大力发展个人社会服务,并且确立个人社会服务在我国社会保障体系中的战略地位.     

Professional Discretion and Accountability in the Welfare State

The discretionary powers of welfare state professionals are in tension with the requirements of the democratic Rechtsstaat. Extensive use of discretion can threaten the principles of the rule of law and relinquish democratic control over the implementation of laws and policies. These two tensions are in principle ineradicable. But does this also mean that they are impossible to come to grips with? Are there measures that may ease these tensions? We introduce an understanding of discretion that adds an epistemic dimension (discretion as a mode of reasoning) to the common structural understanding of discretion (an area of judgment and decision). Accordingly we distinguish between structural and epistemic measures of accountability. The aim of the former is to constrain discretionary spaces or the behaviour within them while the aim of the latter is to improve the quality of discretionary reasoning. The focus in this article is on epistemic measures that are internally related to the main characteristic of accountability, namely justified use of discretionary power.     

Inclusive Values and the Righteousness of Life: The Foundation of Global Solidarity

Many scholars have argued that unity of humankind can be established on the basis of some basic or core human values. Instead of engaging in a comparative empirical research, compiling lists of core values derived from different cultures, discuss their relevance for human fellowship, I examine the simple values of life that during the 1980s united people in Poland and made them to form the powerful civic movement, which was Solidarity. Today we live in a world that is fundamentally different from that before 1989. We are no longer divided by a global ideological struggle between communism and liberal democracy. The key issue today is not a bipolar division but globalization. My thesis is today we need a new Global Solidarity and that this movement can take lessons from Poland’s Solidarity. It should not be grounded in any ideology, but in inclusive values that do not divide but can potentially unite all human beings, and these can be derived from basic human needs. In short, Global Solidarity should be based on what I call the “righteousness of life.” It can be achieved if there is a growing recognition of what is right for life and a growing interest in protecting and enhancing life.