The Emerging Minimal Social State in Europe

As an ideal-type, the « minimal » social state has become the model towards which national social protection systems are converging in Europe. This translates as a shift from the universalistic redistributive aims of the social state to policies of management of the poor who are tightly bound in administrative webs of constraint and control. Starting from the hypothesis that the generalisation of means-tested benefits cannot be understood as a « natural » adaptation to global market forces, this article reintroduces political power as an important variable, with the aim of identifying state action and not merely its reaction to external constraints. Though state autonomy is constrained by the « new constitutionalism » in Europe, state intervention has contributed in decisive manner to social minimalism, altering the foundations of the post-1945 social democratic pact and undermining the balance of social forces that it generated.