Contenu du sommaire : La protection sociale en perspectives

Origins and uses of the idea of joint worker-employer management in the French social welfare system. Late 19th-mid 20th C. Social welfare was built in France on uneven pillars, each supporting a specific organization. The conflicts and compromises relative to the administration of these agencies have formed an important and often underestimated element in the structuring of the system from its very beginning. Joint management first appeared in the very specific field of unemployment and wartime worker placement. Not until the end of the 1930s did it begin to become a mode of administration of social protection. Its privileged field of action was the protection of the salaried middle classes, before they became part of a system of social insurance then reserved to low salary earners, and after the establishment of Social Security, within the framework of the management of complementary protection. After 1945, the opposition between the traditional claim for worker management and the joint management model was a major point in the conflict of systems characteristic of a modern social welfare which tended to substitute the structuring of the salaried middle class to the resolution of the labour problem.

The influence of the Beveridge report on the French social security plan of 1945 The French Social Security plan of 1945 was inspired by the Beveridge Report ? the guarantee of balance between past and future, its place as part of a general policy, the formalization of cooperation between the State and individuals ? and its 3-U doctrine : unity, universality, uniformity. But the French reformers deviated from the Report on two major points : they did not take any public stand on the various techniques of Social Security and how they would operate within the French plan ; they also favoured the workers and their representatives within the system, mainly by turning the management of the agencies over to them and by guaranteeing compensation based on previous income, a clear rejection of the principle of uniformity.

The Beveridge compromise. Contract versus citizenship in social protection, 1934-1948 The paper analyses the continuing British debates on "contract" versus "citizenship" as the prime basis of entitlement to public support ? from the Unemployment Insurance Act of 1934 down to 1948. It discusses the apparent paradox that schemes based on limited notions of contract have often been, or have been perceived as being, more "universal" than schemes based on broader notions of citizenship. This paradox can only be explained with reference to a broader framework of political and constitutional ideas, both "academic" and "popular".

Erhard or Bismarck ? The orientation of German social policy in the light of the reform of social insurance in the 1950s During the 1950s, the West German social policy system stood at a crossroad. The traditional « Bismarckian » system of social welfare could not keep pace with the dynamics of the incipient « economic miracle » which quickly widened the gap between the development of real wages and that of old age pensions. One alternative idea, the adaptation of the German system to the comprehensive flat-rate coverage of the British welfare state based on the Beveridge Plan was dropped early for pragmatic reasons. The second alternative ? opening the system of Social Security to the free market in accordance with the rules of the "social market economy" ? was intensely discussed but finally dropped, because the social market economy policy was obviously unable to realize its dreams of egalitarian distribution of incomes and Volkskapitalismus (general ownership of industrial shares). Against this background, the Bismarckian system had a brilliant comeback after being reformed in 1957 by the introduction of wage-index-bound "dynamic" old age pensions. After several years of uncertainty, the German system of social policy was back to its traditional (classical) path.

A fragmented and contested welfare State The development of social citizenship in France. Comparisons with Belgium, Germany, Italy and Sweden The paper begins with a discussion of the problems raised by the concept of social citizenship and the development of comparative measurement indicators. A typology of welfare states reflecting the institutional structure of the major social insurance systems is proposed, followed by a brief review and discussion of the development of social welfare legislation in France. The measurement and description of social rights are based on indicators on social citizenship in an original database whose content is outlined. The development of social rights in France within three social insurance programs from 1930 to 1985 is compared with that found in Belgium, Germany and Italy, as well as in Sweden, often considered the model welfare state.

Between Bismarck and Beveridge Social security « crises », policies and politics As many other fields of public action, social protection experienced in France in the late 1970s problems which were considered new and which were gradually interpreted with reference to a « crisis of Social Security ». This « crisis » seemed to express and involve deep changes of organization, procedures, functions and even principles. The three-fold analysis of the « crises » (financial, economic, social) of Social Security in the political context of new modes of public intervention in the social field and confrontation of groups of actors with contradictory interests makes it possible to illuminate the general trends of mutations that the French social protection system is experiencing.