Państwo dobrobytu (opiekuńcze)/en

WELFARE STATE – aims to protect citizens against the risks associated with the operations of market economy, in particular the risk of losing their job, health, as well as the risk associated with old age; also a group of state institutions that provide social benefits and services to citizens. The policy of w.s. is implemented, generally, through the redistribution of income – financing of benefits and services – by means of the state budget, through social insurance, legal regulations for the operation of companies and the labour market. In addition to unemployment benefits, health care financing and pension programmes, over time, the state also began to finance help for families, housing programmes, equalizing the chances of social minorities, preparing for the profession, training the unemployed, social assistance programmes for those affected by poverty. The doctrine of w.s. was born on the basis of criticism of the assumptions of traditional liberalism based on the concept of the state as the “night watchman”. The w.s. programme thus consisted of the theory of the positive, or active, role of the state. The term welfare state appeared in Great Britain during World War II in opposition to the German warfare state and at the same time as a symbol of British unity. In the USA, the term welfare has a different meaning and means social help for the helpless. One can speak of w.s. in relation to the most economically advanced countries after World War II, in which the civilization of capitalism shaped in the 18th and 19th centuries was modified. Until the 1960s, the fight against unemployment, based on → Keynes’s theory, was an element of the policy of the w.s. Until the end of the 1960s, w.s. was considered an undisputed social achievement – a group of institutions that allows combining effectiveness that is a product of the market with social security. Criticism of the w.s. appeared in the stagflation of the 1970s, and attempts to reduce and reconstruct it in individual countries have appeared at least since the 1980s. Supporters of the w.s. are of the opinion that the benefits associated with it include: encouraging personal development by protecting individuals against social poverty; fostering greater productivity of the society through a healthier and better educated labour force; increasing social cohesion by ensuring everyone’s participation in the society. Critics are of the opinion that it hampers economic growth through higher tax burdens; it reduces poverty but it does not address structural inequalities and discrimination; it creates dependence by reducing the fear of poverty, and thus reducing the motivation to work. In Germany, the development of w.s. was started by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s with compulsory health and unemployment insurance; its institutions were developed by the Weimar Republic, they survived the Third Reich period and were expanded in the 1950s. On the other hand, in Great Britain the social legislation was created at the beginning of the 20th century (the stages of doctrine forming include social reforms in England in years 1906-1914 and the Labour Party’s rule in 1945-1950), and Beveridge’s plan (1942, Social Insurance and Allied Services. The Beveridge Report in Brief) was a breakthrough and had symbolic significance. It contributed to the popularisation of social security and the introduction of public health care. In Sweden, w.s. started in the 1930s. In the USA, social security institutions were created during the New Deal period (1933–1939) under the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the programme of Great Society (Great Society, 1963–1969) of President Lyndon Johnson was similar to the idea of the European w.s. There are three models of w.s.: liberal, corporate-conservative and social-democratic. They differ in: the scope of responsibility they impose on the individual, family, lower-level communities – professional, territorial and state; institutional construct; the scope of eliminating social differences; level of benefits; share of social security expenditure in GDP. [J.G. Otto]

Literature: K. Dziubka, B. Szlachta, L.M. Nijakowski, Idee i ideologie we współczesnym świecie. Wielkie tematy [Ideas and ideologies in the modern world. Big subjects], Warszawa 2008 ■ A. Heywood, Politologia [Political science], Warszawa 2006 ■ Przewodnik po współczesnej filozofii politycznej [A guide to contemporary political philosophy], ed. R.E. Goodin, F. Pettit, Warszawa 2002.