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Planning Approaches to the Welfare State Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Bernard Cazes
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MY INTENTION IN THIS ARTICLE IS TO PRESENT A BIRD'S-EYE view of various planning approaches to the welfare state crisis that are currently being initiated or at least discussed in a number of Western democracies. They fall into three broad categories which, I believe, bear some relation to the kind of diagnosis made about the 'crisis' to be dealt with. First of all, those who believe that the welfare state's main weakness comes from the disappearance of sustained, fast growth of the GNP, put their hopes in economic recovery in Beyond this strictly quantitative solution there are interpretations of the welfare state's predicament in terms of dee - order to return as soon as possible to ‘welfare state as usual’. seated, ‘structural’ imbalances which allegedly require fairly radical transformation in order to provide this ailing system with the more effective command and control mechanisms needed to make it viable again, Finally some people argue that the welfare state has exhausted its growth potential alto ether, so that its crisis can only be overcome through a quaftative change toward a different system (hence the phrase ‘metasystemic’ solution).

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1985 , pp. 386 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 In this context the word ‘planning’ does not necessarily imply the existence of a formal comprehensive plan of the French or Belgian type. It rather refers to any systematic mode of reasoning based on a combination of (hopefully) well understood processes and well‐designed policies that are expected to cope successfully with the welfare state crisis.

2 In a French official report on the future of social welfare one finds remarkably candid evidence of this kind of attitude: ‘No, our social welfare system is not sick; on the other hand it is not really in good health, a state it can return to only with resumed economic prosperity’, Commissariat Général du Plan, L’Avenir de la protection sociale, Paris, Documentation Française, 1983, p. 121.

3 Secretariat for Future Studies. Care and Welfare at the Crossroads, Stockholm, 1982.

4 Babeau, A., ‘Finances publiques et politiques sociales. Explication de leurs évolutions dans les économies de marché’. Proceedings of the 39th Budapest Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, 1983. Table 1.Google Scholar

5 See Calot, G., ‘Perspectives demographiques françaises’, Futuribles, 06, 1983 Google Scholar.

6 For France see Desplanques, G., ‘L’inégalité sociale devant la mort’, économie et Statistiqwe, No. 162, 1984 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Macrae, N., ‘Health Care International — A Survey’, The Economist, 28 04 1984 Google Scholar.

8 For France see Lévy‐Garboua, L. and Orivel, F., ‘De l’inefficacité de l‘enseignement supérieur française’, Commentaire, Spring, 1983 Google Scholar.

9 Calot, op. cit.

10 Cotta, A., ‘Une nouvelle dualité’, Le Figaro, 7–8 07 1984 Google Scholar.

11 Macrae, op cit., p. 27.

12 Rose, R., Understanding Big Government, London, Sage Publications, 1984 Google Scholar. Needless to say that any progress, however significant, toward a reduction in the fiscal overload will not by itself correct the negative trends and patterns discussed above, as they bear no clear relation to the existence or the magnitude of the overload.

13 d’htignano, B. and Stephan, J. C., Hippocrate et les technocrates, Paris, Calmann‐Lévy, 1983 Google Scholar.

14 Dutailly, J.C., ‘Les prélvements obligatoires sont‐ils progressifs en France?’, Commentaire, 1984, No. 25, pp. 74–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Macrae, op cit.

16 See Savas, E., Alternatives for Delivering Public Services, Boulder, Westview, 1977 Google Scholar. Garello, J, ‘Les transfers sociaux’, in Prigent, M.(ed.), La liberte a refaire, Park, Hachette, collection Pluriel, 1984 Google Scholar.

17 Macrae, op cit, p. 35.

18 d’htignano and Stephan, op cit., pp. 182,187.

19 According to the projections of the Institut National d’ études Demographiques (Calot, op. cit.) stabilizing French pension rights to their current worth would require a significant increase in retirement age (seven years under the most unfavourable assumption for future fertility trends).

20 Gershuny, J., After Industrial Society?, London, Macmillan, 1978 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Such a daring prediction was made among others by Burns, Scott, The Household Economy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1977 Google Scholar.

22 Rose, R., ‘Getting By in Three Economies’, Glasgow, University of Strathclyde Studies in Public Policy, No. 110, 1983 Google Scholar.

22 E.g. Naisbitt, J., Megatrends, Warner Books, 1983, ch. 6Google ScholarPubMed.