The social movements and political parties that were building the universal welfare state in its most advanced form have failed to produce a vision for the future. Already in the late 1980s, scholars from the communitarian and critical traditions of social science expected a gradual breakdown of the universal welfare state due to a combination of bureaucratization and a missing space for civil society. Since the beginning of the new millennium, a gradual privatization and marketization of social responsibility and citizenship has intensified on a global scale. Scholars have argued that political parties most directly affiliated with the public welfare state were stuck in the victories of the past, unable to define a way forward, while remaining uninterested in collaborating actively with new social movements and organized civil society.
However, simultaneously there is an amazing diversity and creativity of vibrant citizen initiatives engaged in articulating new forms of reciprocity. Thus, the welfare framework seems fragile if not able to link positively the institutional capacity of the welfare state to these new citizen driven initiatives and hybrid entities that are emerging at an increasing speed. The increasing gap between a diversity of citizen initiatives and the welfare state creates a very dangerous situation for the future of democracy as well as for the social and economic sustainability.
Accordingly, it is of outmost importance to find ways of addressing and compensating the gradual withdrawal of the universal welfare state and it’s mass oriented types of solidarity (vertical solidarity) with more flexible types of collective efforts and citizen engagement (horizontal solidarity). If the withdrawal of the universal welfare state is happening without a simultaneous investment in the institutionalization of new links between the redistributive capacity of the state and the reciprocal capacity of civil society, citizens will intensify their competition and fight over scarce resources between themselves. In Europe, a continent renowned for its inclusive and rights’ oriented social policies and services, a dramatic and yet silent change may be occurring without much public attention.
Many researches in different countries are showing a converging trend of growing inequalities in multiple dimensions including housing, health, life expectancy, pensions and education. How such multi-dimensional patterns of inequality are reshaping societies stay invisible. Even in Scandinavia, marked by an institutional and universally oriented welfare state the impact of multi-dimensional inequality remains profoundly un-addressed. In Europe in general a dramatic and yet silent change is occurring without much public attention. In the city of Glasgow “life expectancy gaps up to 28 years between the richest and the poorest” communities (Roy, 2015), and in Spain a young professional woman dubbed a big part of her generation as “Mileuristas”. This concept depicts the fact that irrespective of educational background and experience her and her peers did never have the chance to earn more than 1000 Euros a month, and their income was usually based upon short term contracts, if any contract at all. In Denmark, a country previously known for its universal welfare system a multidimensional process of inequality is on the rise with big variations between municipalities in the expenditure of important social services (Jensen & Torpe, 2015). Such specific changes in policy implementation are examples of a deeper European process of segregation, privatization and rising inequality among regions, local communities and citizens.
9. Social and solidarity economy, civil society and social movements
