Este trabajo es uno de los frutos empíricos del proyecto de investigación Reformas en el Estado de Bienestar: Actores y Apoyos Ciudadanos (REBAAC), http://www.iesam.csic.es/proyecto/rebaac.htm, dirigido por Luis Moreno, que se completará en los próximos meses con otros escritos sobre el tema. ; In recent years pressures for the reform of the Welfare State have been voiced despite that public opinion has kept opposed to the retrenchment of social policies. Some studies have pointed out that governments have learned how to avoid popular resistance to the reforms due to a change in citizens' attitudes. This Working Paper explores the attitudes of the Spaniards with respect to the process and outcomes of the welfare policies implemented in Spain in the last 20 years. Whenever possible this paper takes a comparative. Time series have been worked out covering the period under analysis. Likewise, preferences towards the various welfare policies and these and other public policies are also compared. The two main conclusions are that the support for the welfare policies is solid (despite some qualifications) and that the public preference for the meso or intermediate level of government as provider of social policies has increased.
The large variety of changes detected in the Welfare State (WS) in the last years hints at the difficulty of coming up with a universal definition of reform. These complex changes: 1) invite questioning the idea of institutional persistence or of simple adjustment as it was used so far; 2) call for the avoidance of an all too simple identification of the concept of WS reform with that of retrenchment; 3) suggest that new indicators other than public expenditure should be found to analyze welfare reform; 4) require us to develop reform definitions that are suitable for each policy area and even for each welfare regime. This paper seeks to improve our understanding of Welfare Reform and their present conditions. To that end, it analyzes Welfare Reform from a micro level. In contrast to analyses from a macro o meso level, that seek to pinpoint general changes in welfare regimes or policy sector trajectories, the micro analysis focuses on the observation of particular reforms, which enables the identification of concrete changes and its meticulous analysis. Through a comparative analysis of the reform of unemployment protection in France (PARE 2000) and in Spain ("Decretazo" 2002) this paper tries to answer the following questions: Under which conditions initiatives of Welfare Reform arise? What factors and actors are relevant in the process of reform? What is the impact of these factors and actors in the reform capacity of Welfare Reform observed in different countries and sectors? Some conclusions are reached in particular on the influence of politico-economic institutions, the content of actual welfare policies themselves, public opinion and the reform style pursued in the deliberate transformation of the WS in countries that have followed a bismarckian route.
Este trabajo es uno de los frutos de las actividades preparatorias del proyecto de investigación "Reformas en el Estado de Bienestar: actores y apoyos ciudadanos (REBAAC), http://www.iesam.csic.es/proyecto/rebaac-en.htm, dirigido por el profesor Luis Moreno. Una versión anterior fue presentada en Barcelona (España) durante Congreso Nacional de Ciencia Política en septiembre de 2003 y se ha beneficiado de los comentarios realizados por los integrantes del taller de Políticas Sociales Comparadas, en especial, de Elisa Chuliá. También agradezco sus valiosos comentarios a Luis Moreno y a César Colino. ; From the 1970s on there has been continuous discussion about the Welfare States crisis, followed in the next decade by a concern with welfare reform. Some very significant and influential studies and research argued that the force of some immovable objects had provoked that welfare state reform was only incremental, limited to adjustment of some welfare institutions or programmes. New empirical evidence, however, has established the occurrence of deeper reforms in welfare going beyond incremental changes. In this article I discuss the concept of reform and its scope. Additionally, I try to analyse what are the facilitating conditions and what strategies have been utilized by reformist governments to guarantee success and avoid the resistance to change of public opinion, the interest group, the institutions and the existing welfare policies.
39 págs ; Liberalism arrived early in Spain with the 1812 Constitution, which followed the War of Independence against the Napoleonic occupation. But the Constitution was influenced by the very country – Revolutionary and Napoleonic France – against which Spain was fighting, and it proclaimed the idea of national sovereignty and universal male suffrage. Spanish liberalism, however, was weak and had several peculiarities. It had to struggle during the whole nineteenth century with the supporters of the ancient regime —absolutists and Catholic traditionalists concentrated in some of the north-eastern territories. This meant that, although the moderate liberals who dominated the second third of the century favoured state centralization and created provinces on the model of the French départements in 1833, they failed to abolish some of the ancien régime privileges or charters (fueros) in such territories as the Basque Country and Navarre. Instead, they formed alliances with the local nobilities and bourgeoisies, who retained some special institutions and tax exemptions. Hence, there was never a true Spanish liberal Jacobinism seeking to overcome the remains of the ancien régime in several of the provinces (González Antón 2007). Centralism remained at the formal level but in practice localism prevailed. Liberal progressives, republicans and democrats were excluded from government for most of the century and when they came to power after the 1868 Revolution many of them also supported a more 'girondin' vision based on the old liberties of the old provinces and kingdoms as the basis of the Spanish democratic tradition. In contrast, other republicans and socialist parties would identify democracy with a new centralized state against the forces of the old regime. These forces would attack the First Republic again in the 1870s, with the second Carlist war (Nuñez-Seixas 2008). ; Peer reviewed
Una versión anterior y más reducida fue publicada en Colino, C. y Del Pino, E. 2006. "Un Fantasma Recorre Europa: Renovación democrática mediante política de promoción de la participación ciudadana en los gobiernos locales (Alemania, Francia, Reino Unido y España)", en Sosa, J. (editor) Política pública y participación social. México: UNAM, p. 1 a 34. ; Los últimos han puesto de manifiesto un renovado interés por la participación ciudadana en los gobiernos locales de algunos países como el Reino Unido, Francia, España Alemania. En todos estos países los años 90 han supuesto la formalización legal de nuevos o renovados instrumentos participativos –presupuestos participativos, jurados ciudadanos, consejos sectoriales, referenda--. Tanto políticos de izquierdas como de derechas se declaran interesados en la implicación de los ciudadanos; los gobiernos nacionales y regionales de algunos países la promueven mediante programas e infraestructura, surgen profesionales públicos y privados de la participación, y hasta los reformadores preocupados meramente por la eficacia administrativa yfinanciera de los servicios aconsejan su uso. Más allá de estos rasgos comunes las diferencias entre países siguen persistiendo en lo que se refiere a los motivos de su puesta en marcha, el grado de utilización de los mismos o la propia definición del concepto de participación ciudadana. En este trabajo exploratorio se trata de profundizar en los rasgos comunes y diferentes de la iniciativas participativas en cuatro países: Alemania, España, Francia y el Reino Unido tratando de responder cuando se puede a preguntas como: ¿en qué consiste y de dónde viene ese consenso general y el interés de algunos gobiernos en promoverla desde arriba? ¿Implica el aumento de las posibilidades de participar una verdadera renovación de la democracia desde abajo, o es un nuevo instrumento legitimatorio en manos de políticos asediados por la fatiga o el descontento representativo? ¿Responde el interés generalizado a una valoración realista de lo que la participación puede ofrecer, o estamos ante un caso de superoferta y política simbólica que produce expectativas infundadas sobre su potencialidad? ¿Tiene la participación ciudadana sólo virtudes o puede acarrear efectos negativos en función de nuestros valores tradicionales de democracia, justicia y buen gobierno? ¿Es el fenómeno una moda pasajera que pronto se olvidará o responde a transformaciones estructurales de la sociedad y la política finisecular? ¿Puede realmente el nivel local ser por sí mismo el verdadero ámbito de renovación democrática? ¿Es posible superar el conjunto de obstáculos y dilemas que plantean las iniciativas concretas de participación, entre ellas la propia voluntad participativa de los ciudadanos y las barreras institucionales y sociales? ¿Cuáles son los otros obstáculos que encuentra en Europa para desarrollarse?¿Puede acaso observarse algún efecto real de la en las políticas públicas y la adopción de decisiones? ; Peer reviewed
The European influence has served as an inspiration for developing the Spanish Welfare State since the early 1980s through a wide range of legal, cognitive, political, institutional and financial resources and mechanisms. However, convergence with the EU has gone through times of advance and frustration. The Spanish social protection system was in a very early phase of development when other European countries were starting to pursue cost-containment and recalibration strategies by the mid-1990s. The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 has frustrated the many political expectations that the Spanish Welfare State can converge with European countries. The efforts at recalibration, coverage of new social risks and tentative steps towards social investment made in the 2000s have been either abandoned or put on hold. Sweeping austerity measures have had detrimental effects over the protective capacity of the Spanish Welfare State. Abrupt structural reform and indiscriminate cuts on social protection do hardly appear as appropriate strategies to reduce inequality gaps and heightened social polarization caused by the economic and financial crisis, let alone to promote the broadening of protection for new social rights. The institutional framework of the Spanish Welfare State has to be reoriented towards more intense protection of new social risks, if its capacity for supporting sustainable and inclusive economic growth is to be strengthened in a postcrisis context. The re-design of the welfare state after the crisis should put an emphasis on reconciliation of work and private life, public care provision for children, the disabled and the elderly, effective minimum income schemes, protection for long-term unemployed and active labour market policies. ; Peer reviewed
With the authorisation of the magazine for authors CSIC, this article describes the fiscal consolidation strategies developed by the central government from 2010 to tackle the crisis: putting the emphasis on reducing expenditure, relieving regions of much of the responsibility to make adjustments and allowing for the deterioration, by action or omission, of some of the social policies. Consideration is also given to the extent to which these adjustments affect the social protection system, paying particular attention to processes of remercantisation, re-militisation, deuniversalisation, declining capacities and transforming its governance. ; Peer reviewed ; With the authorisation of the magazine for authors CSIC, this article describes the fiscal consolidation strategies developed by the central government from 2010 to tackle the crisis: putting the emphasis on reducing expenditure, relieving regions of much of the responsibility to make adjustments and allowing for the deterioration, by action or omission, of some of the social policies. Consideration is also given to the extent to which these adjustments affect the social protection system, paying particular attention to processes of remercantisation, re-militisation, deuniversalisation, declining capacities and transforming its governance. ; Con autorización de la revista para autores CSIC En este artículo se describen las estrategias de consolidación fiscal desarrolladas por el Gobierno central a partir de 2010 para afrontar la crisis: poner el énfasis en la reducción del gasto, descargar en las comunidades autónomas buena parte de la responsabilidad de realizar los ajustes y permitir el deterioro, por acción u omisión, de algunas de las políticas sociales. Asimismo se estudia hasta qué punto dichos ajustes afectan al sistema de protección social, prestando especial atención a los procesos de remercantilización, refamilización, desuniversalización, disminución de sus capacidades y transformación de su gobernanza.
This paper analyses public support for government spending on science and technology (S&T) and its determinants. It constructs hypotheses based on previous findings from two streams of research: public preferences for government spending and public understanding of science. Using data from a large national survey in Spain, it develops multivariate models to test the relevance of various predictors of public support for government spending on S&T. Findings identify several variables that are clear and consistent predictors of public support for government spending on science and technology: the respondent's educational level, interest and participation in science, knowledge of science, and positive values and views of science and technology. However, the effects of other variables also related with general attitudes toward science are less clearly associated with support for government spending on S&T. ; Peer reviewed
