Unifying self-responsibility and solidarity in social security institutions. The circular logic of welfare-state reforms in Europe

Abstract:

Welfare states and social security institutions are positioned at a nexus of the two principles self-responsibility and solidarity resulting in higher or lower social inequality. Despite historical and national particularities, it is possible to identify common tendencies in their relational developments in Europe. Here, four of them will be analysed. The analysis of these cross-national developments results in the observation that self-responsibility and solidarity are being redefined and have ultimately grown together into a strict circular logic of interdependency.

This, however, assumes very different forms of self-responsibility and solidarity and thereby a different concept and nexus of both principles than was the case some 20 years ago. Dominant discourses based on dualistic concepts are much too limited to comprehend this complex nexus. Instead, the changed institutions of social security implement institutional norms that correspond to a broad concept of interdependency.