Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden was the winner of the 1974 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs.
Contents
Chapter One – The Union’s Course: Between a Supranational
Welfare State and Creeping Decay 1
Chapter Two – The Significance of Cognitive and Moral Learning
for Democratic Institutions 33
Chapter Three – Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources 49
Chapter Four – Crisis and Innovation of Liberal Democracy:
Can Deliberation Be Institutionalised? 73
Chapter Five – Democracy Against the Welfare State?
Structural Foundations of Neoconservative Political Opportunities 99
Chapter Six – Toward a New Understanding of Constitutions 129
Chapter Seven – The Political Meaning of Constitutionalism 147
Chapter Eight – Citizenship and Identity: Aspects of a Political
Theory of Citizenship 163
Chapter Nine – Competitive Party Democracy and the Keynesian
Welfare State: Factors of Stability and Disorganisation 177
Chapter Ten – Main Problems of Contemporary Theory of
Democracy and the Uncertain Future of its Practice 199
Chapter Eleven – Constitutionalism in Fragmented Societies:
The Integrative Function of Constitutions 211
Chapter Twelve – ‘Homogeneity’ and Constitutional Democracy:
Coping with Identity Conflicts through Group Rights 227
Chapter Thirteen – Perspectives on Post-Conflict Constitutionalism:
Reflections on Regime Change Through External Constitutionalisation 255
Chapter Fourteen – Is There, Or Can There Be, a ‘European Society’? 283
Chapter Fifteen – Problems of Constitution Making: Prospects of a
Constitution for Europe 301
Chapter Sixteen – Revisiting the Rationale Behind the European
Union: The Basis of European Narratives Today and Tomorrow 317
Chapter Seventeen – Citizenship in the European Union: A Paradigm for
Transnational Democracy? 341
Chapter Eighteen – The Democratic Welfare State in an Integrating Europe 355
Chapter Nineteen – The Constitution of a European Democracy and
the Role of the Nation State 379
Chapter Twenty – The Problem of Legitimacy in the European Polity:
Is Democratisation the Answer? 389
Chapter Twenty-One – The European Model of ‘Social’ Capitalism:
Can It Survive European Integration? 417
Chapter Twenty-Two – Two Challenges to European Citizenship 449
Chapter Twenty-Three – Europe Entrapped: Does the EU Have
the Political Capacity to Overcome its Current Crisis? 471
Index 491
Claus Offe, born 1940, was Professor of Political Science at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he held a chair in Political Sociology and Social Policy. His previous positions include professorships at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bremen, where he served as director of the Center of Social Policy Research. He has held research fellowships and visiting professorships in the US, Canada, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. Since 2006 he has been Professor of Political Science at Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. His fields of research are democratic theory, transition studies, EU integration, and welfare state and labour market studies. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in these fields, a selection of which is reprinted as Herausforderungen der Demokratie. Zur Integrations- und Leistungsfähigkeit politischer Institutionen (2003). Recent book publications in English include Varieties of Transition (1996), Modernity and the State: East and West(1996), Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies (1998, with J. Elster and U.K. Preuß), Reflections on America. Tocqueville, Weber, und Adorno in the United States (2005) and Europe Entrapped (2014).
Ulrich K. Preuß is Professor emeritus of Law and Politics at Freie Universität Berlin and at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. In 1989-90, he co-authored the draft of the constitution as a participant of the Round Table of the German Democratic Republic. He has taught at, among others, Princeton University, New School University, the University of Chicago and Haifa University. He served as a judge at the Staatsgerichtshof (State Constitutional Court) in the Land Bremen [state of Bremen] from 1992 unitil 2011. His book publications include, among others, Constitutional Revolution. The Link Between Constitutionalism and Progress, 1995; Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies. Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (co-authored with Jon Elster and Claus Offe), 1998; Krieg, Verbrechen, Blasphemie. Zum Wandel bewaffneter Gewalt [War, Crime, and Blasphemy. On the changing character of armed conflict]. 2nd ed. 2003; Bedingungen globaler Gerechtigkeit, 2010.
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1 Review
Lacking its own distinct methodological identity, social policy has grown up under the wing of a number of cognate disciplines, most notably sociology.
This book is an attempt to shift the study of social policy away from a predominantly sociological perspective and into the realm of political science. The policies chosen for analysis are British and Swedish old-age pensions and unemployment insurance programmes, and the techniques and concepts used are derived from pressure-group theory, systems analysis, political theory and political history. Mr Heclo begins his study by identifying certain preconditions for
public welfare policies in both countries, emphasizing particularly economic
growth, population stability and humanitarian reaction against the tradition of
poor relief. He then proceeds to a comparative analysis of inputs, processing,
outputs and feedback in the growth of social policy over the past hundred years.
Drawing on a wide range of mainly secondary sources, he examines the role of
electorates, parties, interest groups, politicians and free-lance intellectuals and
he concludes with an analysis of social policy as part of a 'process of social
learning' - a process which he sees not merely as the product of power relationships
but as 'a form of collective puzzlement on society's behalf.
Many illuminating parallels are drawn between the British and Swedish
systems. In both countries the electoral significance of social welfare is found to
be slight. In both countries the civil service is singled out as the most powerful
force in policy formation - if not in the actual initiation of policies at least in
their drafting, scope and subsequent modification. In both countries there
appears to have been a high level of ideological discontinuity, policies which were
originally sponsored by the 'left' later re-emerging as policies of the 'right' and
vice versa. In both countries purely negative influences, such as ignorance,
inertia and failure to correct unintended consequences, are seen as significant
88 Reviews
policy sources, and in both countries the inheritance of past policies appears to
be the single most crucial factor in determining what is feasible at any given
time.
Nevertheless the author avoids a convergence position, and the contrasts
which he draws are in many cases as instructive as his parallels. In Sweden
centralized government long preceded social welfare, whereas in Britain social
welfare has been the cause rather than the consequence of the growth of a
centralized state. In Britain social policy was largely a response to industrialization
whereas in Sweden it was a response to rural proletarianization. In Britain
social insurance has helped to stifle a more rational use of the labour force, and
one of the most significant facts in this book is that Sweden with a labour force
one-sixth the size of Britain's has four times as many places for industrial retraining.
In Britain social policies have been forced to accommodate a much
larger and more powerful voluntary sector, but perhaps paradoxically governments
in Sweden have been much more successful at integrating pluralistic
organizations into the policy-making elite. This contrast is most striking and
most politically important in relation to trade unions, which in Sweden have
for many years played a dynamic role in the planning of social welfare whereas
in Britain they have been much more exclusively concerned with wages and
conditions of work. Similarly there seems to have been much more co-operation
in Sweden between the different political parties. This has not precluded quite
severe political conflict (for example over 'cost of living areas' in the 1930s and
national superannuation in the 1950s); but battle has been joined not as a
conditioned reflex of preconceived party loyalties but at the conclusion of
intelligent and open public debate. In general social policy formation in Sweden
comes across as an altogether better-informed, more professional and more
sophisticated process than the parallel process in Britain - quite apart from the
more adult level of political discussion Swedish policy-makers have nearly
always been much more thorough in both research and consultation, through
the use of investigatory commissions, academic and technical advisers and
the 'remiss' (translated by Heclo as 'the circulation of a paper to interested
parties for comment').
Certain criticisms may be made of Heclo's study at both an analytic and a
technical level. He greatly exaggerates the social homogeneity of contemporary
British society (although the lack of just such a homogeneity by comparison
with Sweden must surely help to account for many of the perceived differences
in political process and structure). He defends himself against the charge of
'taking politics out of political behaviour'; but a more serious charge might be
that he takes people out of politics; and certainly one would prefer a more
detailed and close-grained analysis of the perspectives and motives of some of
his leading actors and of their political philosophies (particularly the latter,
which Heclo would probably do rather well). His use of historical statistics is
sometimes rather odd, for instance under-fifteen-year-olds are classified as social
'dependants' right back to the middle of the eighteenth century. The book is
littered with minor but irritating errors in names, titles and typography, which
one hopes will be corrected in any further editions. Nevertheless this is a
powerful and stimulating work, which should considerably broaden the
boundaries of theoretical discussion, not least by reminding us that Aristotle
may have at least as much to contribute to social policy as Durkheim and Marx.
The book is dedicated to Richard Titmuss and is a worthy reflection of Titmuss's
lifelong attempt to balance historical materialism with the study and generation
of autonomous political ideas.
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