Volume
16, No. 2, 2001
Contents/Sommaire
Katherine Duffy
Risk and Opportunity: Lessons from the Human Dignity and Social
Exclusion Initiative for Trends in Social Policy
Abstract
This article presents first, a summary of the findings of
the first phase of the human dignity and social exclusion
initiative (HDSE) of the Council of Europe and second, an
analysis of the implications for social policy of the four
themes identified in the report's conclusions.
These
four themes are: i) trends in risk, ii) the changing role of the state
in relation to risk, iii) convergence in social policy approaches in
Europe and iv) the challenge confronting social NGOs in defending the
least advantaged in risk society. Thus, the article uses the framework
of risk, social exclusion and social rights to explore the implications
of social policy trends for the lives of the least advantaged people
and to comment on effective strategies for combating poverty and exclusion
in the changing environment identified by the HDSE report.
Stephanie
Bernstein
Individualizing Social Risks: International and Legal Dimensions of
Privatization of Pension Schemes in Latin America
Abstract
The Chilean model of privatized pension schemes has expanded in Latin
America in the last ten years and has generated much interest at the
international level. This raises important questions in relation to
the individualization of social risks and the erosion of the human
rights underpinnings of social security. This article looks at the
characteristics of Latin American privatized pension schemes and explores
some of the motivating factors behind the trend toward privatization.
The approaches to pension scheme reform advocated by the World Bank
and the International Labour Organization are also compared. The legal
standards and principles having generally guided the design of pension
schemes until now provide insight for an examination of some of the
issues surrounding the implementation of privatized pension schemes.
Among these issues are the changing role of the State with respect
to social protection and the ability of more vulnerable groups to
exercise their right to social security.
Hugh Armstrong
Social Cohesion and Privatization in Canadian Health Care
Abstract
This paper addresses some of the tensions for social cohesion presented
by Canada's medicare system. This system, which constitutes the
country's best-loved social program, is broadly governed by the
five principles of the Canada Health Act. Independently and together,
these principles promote social cohesion. Medicare is however also
under threat from various elites, who favour elements of its privatization,
and whose principal strategy is here termed privatization by stealth.
The argument that privatization is disruptive of social cohesion
is advanced in general terms and with specific reference to the
case of Ontario's Community Care Access Centres, which broker public
funds to non-profit and for-profit home care agencies across the
province.
Estelle Krzeslo
Création d'emplois ou dérégulation ? La vocation ambiguë de l'économie
sociale
Abstract
Since the beginning of the crisis and the rise of unemployment,
the "social economy" has been given a strategic role in the defence
of those abandoned by the capitalist economy. The social economy
is regarded as an economy that produces social services and is
also a tool for the integration of the unemployed. This role is
all the more important because the social economy is historically
carrier of democratic and social values and forms part of a social
tradition dear to the workers' movement: a citizens' initiative,
an alternative to the market economy with its injustice and social
violence. It seems to us, from our experience in Belgium, that
the social economy sector has also served as a Trojan horse for
the deregulation of employment, constrained by the mode of subsidy
and with the approval of its protagonists. We wonder if the call
for the social economy development does not favor the weakening
of the public service and the State's gradual withdrawal from
public service ? Is it an ambition or an adverse effect of the
instrumentalisation to which this sector is subject ?
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