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Associazione Italiana di Sociologia
Sezione Politica Sociale
Beyond the traditional welfare state:
“relational inclusion” and the new welfare society
Pierpaolo Donati
WP No. 1
December 2015
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Beyond the traditional welfare state:
“relational inclusion” and the new welfare society
Pierpaolo Donati
∗
Department of Sociology and Business Law
University of Bologna
Strada Maggiore, 45 - Bologna
pierpaolo.donati@unibo.it
Abstract
While the welfare state is deteriorating at the macro-institutional level, we are witnessing interesting changes
and social innovations at the local level throughout Europe. The keywords are: stakeholder relationships,
social investment, public-private partnerships including the third sector, social governance by networking,
reconstructing poverty, shifting subsidiarity, flexicurity, integrating economic and social logics, co-
production, countercyclical social cooperatives, personalization of services, etc. Taken together, these new
lines of action suggest that they might design a new configuration of welfare interventions at the community
level, which the Author subsumes under the heading of a “new relational state”. The relational state operates
through relational inclusion, i.e. ways of co-producing welfare through relational networking among all the
stakeholders.
Keywords
Relational welfare, Relational inclusion, Social innovations, Local services, Societal citizenship.
1. The issue.
The traditional welfare state (WS henceforth) has embodied the political and ethical principles of Western
society throughout the last century, both in Europe and, in a different form, in North America, in as much as
it has represented the dream of the modern state as a national eudaimonistic project.
The current crisis represents a profound and radical turning point. The issue is: if it does represent a
turning point, how sharp and in what direction is the turn? The answer is neither clear nor simple. Many
contingent factors are involved. But, in any case, the current crisis of the WS is not a merely a temporary,
difficult phase among the many it has traversed.
Faced with serious, self-generated, internal problems and with external challenges that it must confront,
the WS no longer seems capable of expansion or of being sustained in the form which it has taken in the
West. The crisis of the traditional social-democratic Scandinavian model – exalted by G. Esping Andersen as
the polar star for all welfare systems – has been, and continues to be, paradigmatic.
The WS represents both the greatest political conquest and the structural limits of modernity. If one were
to attempt to exceed those limits in the sense of further expanding the Fordian-industrial model of the
Keynesian-Beveridge model of the WS beyond the boundaries that indicate the very possibilities of action,
∗ Pierpaolo Donati is full professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna (Italy). Email:
pierpaolo.donati@unibo.it
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society would simply no longer be the same. In the first place, society could not sustain such an expansion
because the lib/lab order of societal systems would be heavily modified, producing an excess of social
control and limiting social freedoms.1 Secondly, such an attempted expansion would provoke a further
dissolution of social ties. Once social relations are dissolved, the ‘societal” character of the WS disintegrates.
The capacities inherent to the WS’s associative nature to be and create ‘society” would be diminished
beyond repair.
The success-failure of the WS once again puts into question the political and ethical order of society. In
order to properly understand the crisis of the WS and its possible alternatives it must be situated within the
broader context of the crisis of modernity. Against the opinions of the neo-enlightenists, the neo-liberals, and
the neo-socialists, for whom the crisis of welfare structures is only a question of re-definition within the
modern model of the WS, I contend that the crisis is more radical, both in its current condition and in its
probable outcome. I believe that the WS will be forced to change the fundamental political and ethical
principles upon which it has been based from the early period of industrialization to today. The society of the
21st century, and the structure of the WS within it, will be an “after-modern” society in many respects 2, But
in what respects? What will the post-welfare state be?
I will focus on the idea that what is emerging is what I call, since many years, the relational welfare state
(Donati, 2004). I will propose that, although the WS will not be dismantled, it must be completely redesigned
according to a relational outline of what it means to “make society”.
An apt sociological theory is needed to address the topic of society in the 21st century and the future of
the WS. According to my relational theory, the issue of the WS configuration may be outlined in a scheme
according to which the societal system (‘society” at the macro level) is a complex interplay among four basic
subsystems: the economic system, the political-administrative system, the societal community (civil society)
and the families with their informal networks.
Over the past two hundred years the apparatuses of welfare have occupied an ambiguous position, due to
their being located partially within the political-administrative system and partially outside of it. At times
they have been confused with what are usually called intermediate social formations (social private
organizations, third sector, civil associations). To put it very briefly, the social institutions of welfare
ambiguously straddle the state-market complex and the life-worlds (civil society, families, informal
networks). The unresolved problem of the ambiguous location of the welfare apparatuses is one of the
principle challenges of modernity. In contrast with the opinion held by many scholars, I believe that this
ambiguous collection of social institutions is not salvageable, so long as we remain within the framework of
modernity.
To fully characterize the current processes of change and future alternatives, one ought to thoroughly
analyze: 1) the processes of differentiation among these various spheres of society (market, state, civil
society, families and informal networks); 2) the exchanges and interactions among these spheres; and 3) that
which is produced by such processes.
Modern society has been constructed through processes of differentiation that have augmented the
complexity of society through the systematic use of some basic distinctions. Its fundamental guiding
distinctions (right/left, progress/regression, etc.) are now changing. The guiding distinctions overcome the
dialectic lib vs lab (market vs politics), that has created a society of individuals and an increasing
privatization of society under the protective guardianship of the WS. Other possible distinctions could
emerge. For example, a new distinction between individual and collective citizenship as a basis of a possible
1 The term ‘lib-lab’ is used to express the dual structure inherent to postwar Western democratic society, which involves the continuous
negotiation and compromise between, on the one hand, the freedom of market (lib) and, on the other hand, the state in its function of control
exercised for the sake of social equality (lab). Lib-lab therefore represents a system for the management of the whole society which combines the
rival ideologies of liberalism on the one side and socialism on the other side. Cf. Donati (2002).
2 I have coined the term ‘after-modern’ to mean a radical discontinuity with modernity, and not simply a radicalization of modernity as
indicated by the term “post-modern” or “late modernit y” (Donati, 2001).
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‘society of social formations” that mediates between the state and the individual. This reformulation of the
guiding distinctions would entail a re-definition of the entire social order. In particular it would require new
forms of government and social governance, a new ethic of social inclusion and equality, a new policy for
the social formations that will “make” the welfare society of the 21st century (Bertin & Campostrini, 2015).
In order to outline the prospects of the coming relational WS within the next society, I will briefly recall
the current crisi and insurmountable limits of the traditional WS, then the current dilemmas and possible
alternative solutions, so to identify the future scenario and the concept of the “new” society. In the final part,
I will elaborate on the statement according to which the exclusively binary model of market-plus-state is
corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society
without being restricted to it, build up a new welfare society which requires a relational state.
To overcome the present domination of the binomial market-state, which destroys sociality, and social
welfare with it, we need a societal configuration able to foster and enhance relational goods. Relational good
is the name of the common welfare in a highly differentiated and globalised society.
2. The difficult task of creating a new welfare state.
To overcome the crisis of the WS, Western societies must solve the dilemmas inherent to the following
pairs of contrasting goals:
• increase individual freedom, while mobilizing citizens’ responsibility for the consequences of
private behaviors;
• increase autonomy (self-management) for intermediate social spheres, while directing them to
the common good;
• increase social security, while avoiding the bureaucratization of society;
• increase social equality, while respecting differences (for example, cultural or gender
differences);
• respond to the individualization of human needs, while promoting solidarity among persons;
• join the globalization processes, while responding to local needs.
Which kind of “new” WS could be able to permit greater social differentiation while
assuring greater system and social integration? How can we enhance a less state-based society while
offering more coordination and political direction towards the common good of the entire society?
Clearly this is a quite difficult task to be accomplished.
The challenge of the “new” WS requires adopting courses of action that imply ethical choices. Which
ethical paradigms of welfare can be provided by modernity? Modernity has offered and continues to offer
three. (a) The Mandevillian paradigm, according to which private interests (also vices) can co-exist with or
even generate public virtues (social welfare). (b) A “national” ethic of the WS, inspired by the idea of a
State-providence (such as the proposal to “nationalize” the WS (Rosanvallon, 1995). (c) An ethic of political
solidarity that makes mandatory the assistance to those who are not capable of supporting themselves and
who must be socially included by means of free entitlements.
Can the modern WS resolve its dilemmas through the application of one of these three ethics? My
response is for the most part negative, and not simply because these ethics are in historical decline, but
because the modern WS — especially in Europe — has grown on the presupposition of the neutralization of
ethics. To resolve its dilemmas, the WS needs a radical change of the ethical principles upon which it stands.
To ask for a new WS is to ask that the political-administrative system puts itself at the service of those
ethical elements of society that are willing to deal with the aforementioned social dilemmas in order to
achieve the paradoxical goal of both greater differentiation and greater integration.
Until today, these dilemmas have been dealt with according to various methods that would require too
much space to recall and discuss here. In general, these methods have attempted to disembody the welfare
system from the state and make it a kind of intermediate field between the politics of the state and the so-
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called welfare society or caring society. Thus, there is an expansion of that social sphere which Hannah
Arendt has called “non-political” or, in the words of Alain Caillé (1993), “l’oubli du politique”. In reality,
this social sphere, situated between the state and civil society, is also the object of attention and exchange on
the part of the market economy. In Europe the “non-political” sphere is primarily conditioned by the state,
while in the US it is primarily linked to the market. In either case, the state and market tend to phagocytize
that “non-political” sphere, at least in the sense of imposing ethical criteria dictated by politics or by
economy. The colonization of the “non-political” by politics or economy impedes the emergence of a new
ethic of well-being and of adequate social institutions. In the West, many recognize the need to give the so-
called ‘social sphere” — or the sphere of the extra-familial, associative networks — an autonomous
constitution, making it a society on its own right. This sphere could thus become a truly Third Sector,
symmetrical and on par with the other two spheres, the state and the market. The difficulty of such a project,
however, is just as evident as its need.
Welfare must be designated as a problem of mixage, or better of differentiation and synergy, among the
various sectors of intervention. New horizons of welfare pluralism must be sought so to balance social
integration with system integration.
Unfortunately, the solutions currently advanced in response to the dilemmas of the WS are not inspired by
the type of logic that moves in such a direction. Instead there is, on the one side, the logic of systematic
integration and, on the other, the logic of social deregulation. The first type of logic seeks to assure welfare
by way of systemic apparatuses, and the second type seeks to assure it by way of a neo-liberalism that barely
can meet the needs of a civil culture in the lifeworlds.
The systemic kind of solutions involves government on the basis of a formal logic that relies upon the
primacy of politics and the functional primacy of the state. It is more and more designed to be implemented
through an impersonal matrix of communication. In this framework welfare is managed by means of
organizations run on the ground of automatic mechanisms that do not care about human relationships. Being
open to the processes of globalization, they supply standardized forms of uniform and/or highly anonymous
action, even in the field of welfare. The second kind of solutions, stemming from civil society, follow
different logics that, on the whole, are ambivalent: some of them are inspired by some sort of liberalism
oriented towards social deregulation, while other logics operate in view of the emancipation of a new civil
society brought about by social subjects (networks, groups, associations) able to generate well-being in a
caring society.
The combination between the state (system) logic and the market (free) logic gives rise to what I have
called the lib/lab model of managing welfare systems. The problem is precisely in the fact that these two
logics do not interact with each other in a way that promotes the more virtuous among the two. Rather than
having a state that pursues the common good in relation to free and responsible subjects, what prevails is a
system logic that has the (unintentional?) effect of sustaining individual and collective behaviors unburdened
of subjective responsibility. In the end, the system logics contribute to the creation of a specific “civil
society” which unloads its responsibilities on to the impersonal, organizational machines of social security.
The functioning of these two logics in reciprocal exchange may therefore be characterized as a perverse
synergy. Instead of reinforcing the social subjects in daily life so that they are more autonomous and
responsible, the system logics privatize them and alienate them even more. It is as if well-being has been
divided into two fields: that which is “public”, left to the great anonymous machine of social security which
is ethically indifferent; and that which is “private”, where a humanization of welfare services is sought that –
even if informed by ethical sensibility – nevertheless lacks the significant and foundational nexus between
freedom and responsibility which constitute the good life. Lacking in ethical responsibility, such a civil
society becomes un-civil. A WS conceived as an “institution of moral unburdening” represents both the
strength and the weakness of the so-called late-capitalistic Western society. We have to rethink what kind of
“welfare regime” we want, if any.
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3. A new scenario.
An analysis of the emerging society must begin with the present societal conditions, that is, from the fact
that such a new society is being produced by a new scenario of differentiation in which we find the four great
sectors of welfare with their particular characteristics. Table 1 provides a synthesis of the characteristics of
each of the four sectors.
What are the political and ethical implications of the current processes of differentiation of those social
spheres that generate welfare?
First, politics becomes a “more widespread function”. That is, no longer a monopoly of the state, politics
takes on a variegated presence throughout the sectors of society. Every sector and every actor has and makes
his own politics of welfare. Second, ethics likewise becomes a more widespread function. It must be given
adequate criteria in each specific sector and it no longer belongs to a sphere of its own, separate from society.
On the one hand, it is true that in such a society the risks to politics and ethics are even greater than in the
past because there is no longer a center or vertex of ethics and politics. The decentralization of ethics and
politics is a legacy of modernity which can no longer be eliminated. The increased contingency of society as
a whole can be dealt with and resolved only to the extent to which persons can act in concrete and
personalized spheres where it is possible to have a ‘societal community”. It is necessary to have orienting
common values which are drawn from universal principle, beyond the single and particular loyalties,
associations, and attributive characteristics of individuals. On the other hand, the “diffuse” nature of ethics
and politics should supply that generalization of common basic values needed to integrate—internally and
with each other—the various spheres of welfare and of the various segments (networks) of society. By means
of these processes of differentiation that never degenerate, a new culture of “making society” could be born.
The basic difference between this new order and modern welfare is that the state is no longer the center and
vertex of the organization producing well-being. In consequence, the very principles upon which society
rests change profoundly. Well-being is no longer a question of individuals and abstract social categories but
of association and communal networks. It is a matter of a pluralism of participation in the network of a
“caring society” which is ruled on the basis of a post-socialist and post-liberal principle of subsidiarity.
According to this order, the common good becomes a “relational good”, attainable throughout the various
levels of society.3
3 Cfr. Donati (2015).
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Table 1- Sectors that produce well-being and their relative indicators
Institutions
State
Market
Civil Society
Families and
Informal
Networks
Sectors that produce
welfare
State Sector
Market Sector
Third Sector
Informal Sector
(family and
primary
networks)
1. Principle of
coordination
Hierarchy
(command)
Competition
Free will
Personal
obbligation
2. Supply side
collective actors
Public
administration
Private enterprise
Non-profit
associations
Family and
networks of
relatives, friends,
and neighbors
3. Entitled actors
(demand side)
Citizen (social
rights of
citizenship)
Consumer or
client
Current or
potential member
of the association
Member of the
community
(familial, local, or
personal network)
4. Regulation of
access
Right guaranteed
upon legal
request
Ability to pay
Sharing a need
Ascription or
acceptance
5. Means of
exchange
Law
Money
Influence (topic,
communication)
Value
commitment
(evaluation of
value, personal
attention)
6. Central value of
admission
Equality
Freedom of
choice
Solidarity
through rules of
conditional
reciprocity
Full reciprocity
as symbolic
exchange
(altruistic)
7. Criterion of the
good added
Collective
security
Consume of
private goods
Social and civic
activity
(production of
secondary
relational goods)
Personal sharing
(production of
primary relational
goods)
8. Primary flaw of
each sector
Carelessness
concerning the
most personal
needs
Inequality due to
lack of money
Unequal
distribution of
goods and
services,
ineffective
structures and
poor management
Limitations of
free choice due to
moral obligations
of the person in
the family and
primary networks
In my opinion, the development of such a “new” society may only be achieved insofar as welfare is
reformulated within the context of an after-modern citizenship that, while no longer absorbing the person,
eliminates the separation between homme and citoyen. This transformation of citizenship may be described
as the transformation of state citizenship to societal citizenship.4 With societal citizenship society can be
constructed in a different way and on a very different scale (territorial and communal), in which the person
4 For a more extended description see Donati (2000); for an update see Donati (2016).
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always remains the fundamental reference point. In complex societies, social policies are designed according
to a model in which the state acts as the general coordinator of a societal system which seeks a maximum of
self-regulation.
The envisaged social policies of globalized societies may be described as a “relational guidance”
according to which the society regulates itself by maximizing the social autonomies which cooperatively
devise the rules used to determine universally binding decisions. The mutualist principle is once again
applied, although with a very different meaning and a very different structure and function with respect to its
origin in the society of “mutual help” of the 19th century. In today’s complex societies mutuality is now: (a)
united by the social (market) division of labor, in insofar as it must correspond to the other social needs; and
(b) is managed by means of a plurality or combination of actors where, in addition to the subjects of
mutuality, the state (public or semi-public entities), market agencies, families and new informal networks can
all have a role.
Today some still think that citizenship can be guaranteed only if the market is controlled by operating
rules that recover efficiency and productivity (by means of greater professionalization and
technologicalization) and render more resources available in order to include the weaker members of the
population (for example, by reducing the hours of work or other measures). Nonetheless, the formula “more
citizenship by means of a more efficient market” is dubious and restrictive. The formula perpetuates the false
idea that citizenship need be a question of a trade-off between the state and the market and limits the contents
of citizenship to such an exchange. On the contrary, the after-modern society represents a strong
discontinuity, even a severing with the past.
In particular, two great differences emerge. First, citizenship becomes a complex design that must
distinguish the various spheres (social, economic, political, and cultural) without either severing or confusing
them. Consequently, it must find appropriate norms in and for each of the spheres. If this is done, the
meaning and methodology of citizens’ rights will not be the same in the economic, in the political, in the
social, or in the cultural spheres. The reference point is no longer the worker, but the person. The new
citizenship has its symbolic reference point not in the poverty or riches of industrialization but in a culture
centered around the quality of life. Second, social policies are no longer limited to the state-market binomial,
but demonstrate precise and differentiated dynamics in the other spheres (outside the market and the state)
with their own actors, processes, and institutions. These subjectivities redefine the needs (as interests) and
the rights (as identities) of the citizen, and generate contrast with the “politics-economics” ensemble. The
ecological variable fosters a new reflection concerning the impact of social policies on the demographic,
social, economic, political and —above all— physical environment. Social policy is no longer a question of
the redistribution of the resources produced by the market, but a conflict of interests between the producers
and consumers of the environment, as though between different socio-cultural identities. In this deeply
modified scenario, new structural, functional, and moral foundations of citizenship are required, without
which innovative social policies cannot be taken forward.5
4. How can we conceive the new welfare society? The principle of «relational
inclusion”.
I claim that a possible solution to the troubles of the WS lies in passing from the modern symbolic code
of inclusion/exclusion (aut … aut) to the after-modern symbolic code of relationality (et … et), which means
to include people in the welfare system not on the basis of state citizenship, but on the base of societal
citizenship. The inclusion/exclusion code homogenizes (standardizes) people according to the lib/lab logic,
5 On the links between social innovation and citizenship rights see Bassi and Moro (2015).
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while the relational code respects and promotes the legitimate differences treating them according to criteria
of subsidiary reciprocity.
The new moral bases of citizenship, both functional and structural, refer to a symbolic code which does
not work any longer by using the distinction included/not-included in the state political system, but
according to the distinction relational/not-relational in respect to what they need and what they can get in
terms of social welfare within their social contexts, namely the social formations in which they can enjoy or
not the opportunities they need.
The logic of inclusion/exclusion relies upon the argument according to which, if the market works well,
then the social can get the needed welfare resources; or: no economic development without social
redistribution. A logic which has been dominant in the decades of economic growth.
The relational logic, instead, argues in a different way: it says that society needs an economic
development which embodies social development (fair and sustainable well-being). Consequently, it is better
to give up some temporary economic advantages (profits) in case they produce social regressions or lead to
the implosion of the civic and social fabric.
The lib/lab logic has the following motto: let us give people full economic freedoms and subsequently,
when the free market will have produced more wealth, the state will be able to redistribute resources to the
most vulnerable. In other words: first, give more liberty to the economy, and afterwards, control social
conflicts, potentially linked to social inequalities, by distributing some social benefits to the poor.
The relational code, instead, says: economic freedom must have a social responsibility since its very
inception; freedom and social control are constitutive of one another (which means that freedoms should be
positive, and not negative, a quality which implies their being auto-normative and not only subject to
external procedural rules); there should not be any economic growth without social development.
The basic idea of the relational code is: let us create a new social web by putting in synergy the economic
means and the social norms enhancing human exchanges, so to configure a ‘societarian society”, i.e. a kind
of societarism as the product of the effect of reciprocity (Wechselwirkung) between the economic and the
social. Such reciprocity should be “normal” in everyday life, instead of looking for an ex post combination of
the opposites – i.e. lib (freedoms without control) and lab (redistributions without freedom) – as the modern
code indicates. In this line, what we call ‘social welfare” is not a benefit granted by an enlightened political
élite (as advocated by R. Dahrendorf), but the outcome of a collective contract which a priori links the
economic actions within the market to their social consequences.
The lib/lab logic works in two steps: first of all, it disengages people from their social bonds (i.e. those
social relations which hinder the free market) and, in a second step, tries to compensate those who lag behind
by granting them public welfare through state apparatuses and means-tests that are forms of inclusion devoid
of any relationality. The relational (societarian) logic works differently: it assumes that collective welfare is
the product of social subjects who are oriented to each other according to principles of reciprocal subsidiarity
(fair relationality), given the fact that what should be produced, i.e. social welfare, is in itself a relational
good. An example of the latter are those employment contracts which I call “relational contracts”, i.e.
contracts which do not give absolute primacy to the economic performance and its remuneration, but are
focused on the subsidiary relationship between the workplace and the private life of people involved, so to
provide them with the opportunities necessary to get a balanced and sustainable way of life on which
personal and family welfare depends.
Differently from the lib/lab logic of social inclusion, which entrusts to the state apparatuses the task to
include the excluded, the relational (or societarian) logic assigns the task of inclusion to each social sphere –
with respect to its internal specific responsibilities – and then relates the different spheres of action on the
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basis of principles of reciprocal subsidiarity and solidarity 6 (as I will argue in the next section). This is what
I call “relational inclusion”.
5. After the crisis of the lib/lab welfare state.
What are the mechanisms that make the lib/lab configuration of society unsustainable? I would like to
analyse the problematic aspects of lib/lab systems and verify whether there can be a societal configuration
that can overcome these limitations.
Let us first look at intrinsic faults of the lib/lab set-up.
a) According to the lib/lab approach, society is an intertwining of economics and politics against which
the rest is seen as insignificant for the common good and for citizenship. In particular, life worlds are
conceived as a merely “private” sphere. I myself would rather point out that, from a sociological point of
view, what lies outside the state-market pair is not insignificant for the achievement of the common good, for
citizenship and for the workings of both market and state. If life worlds are conceived as “left overs”, the
lib/lab system falls into a chronic crisis it cannot remedy.
b) For the lib/lab system, there is no alternative to the combination of liberalism and socialism.7 Such a
societal configuration, though, essentially considered as a problem of balancing between (anti-systemic)
freedom and equality (in view of extending individual freedoms), refrains from tackling the social
integration problems posed by such an approach. Even though one may agree that society’s systemic
planning is not a workable regulatory response, still it is clear that the lib/lab combination says almost
nothing on social integration problems in contemporary societies. To put it another way, lib/lab systems
generate increasing social integration deficits (the socalled “modernity pathologies”) for which they provide
no remedies.
c) The lib/lab set-up seeks to tame the “competition-profit vs. solidarity-social redistribution” conflict
without providing alternatives to the permanent opposition between these two contradictory needs. The
conflict is seen and dealt with as an insoluble opposition, which may only be kept under control through
political democracy, especially in the form of neo-corporativistic democracy. The two oppositions, though,
bring about a structural imbalance. In the USA, the competition-profit side has the upper hand over social
citizenship rights, which entails serious social inequality and poverty indexes in developing countries. In
Europe the solidarity-redistribution side prevails on the basis of a citizenship principle that seeks to be
unconditional without actually succeeding in that.
The world system (or globalisation), marked by the economy’s financialisation, is the outcome of this
current worldwide societal lib/lab structure.
What determines the crises occurring in systems based on the lib/lab compromise between state and
market is the very “economic logic”8, which is not purely capitalistic, but is based on the intertwining of
market and state, and thus embraces society as a whole (starting with the market). Such an economic logic
has unexpected effects, side effects and negative externalities which erode the civil society on which the
lib/lab system is based. What is this logic about?
Let me summarise it in Figure 1. The economic logic I am talking about consists in using political power
to increase consumption, which in turn will foster productivity and profits, so as to be able to draw on fiscal
drag for the financial resources needed to push consumption. The rest is irrelevant. Banks and financial
systems serve this logic.
6 For more details see Archer and Donati (2008).
7 The champion of this approach, Ralph Dahrendorf, sees citizenship as a gift granted (octroyée) by an enlightented political élite, including
entitlem ents guaranteed by the state versus other provisions offered by the free market (Dahrendorf, 1994).
8 The term “economic” here is used in an analytical generalized sense.
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Figure 1 – Lib/lab systems” economic logic (working as an evolutionary model which is supposed to bring us to
“progress”)
incentives increase in increase in resources available
to consumption production (+ profits) for social expenditure (welfare state)
redistribution from the political-administrative system
to private consumption
Such a systemic logic, with all its internal mechanisms, cannot be extended over certain thresholds,
because great social problems arise once certain economic growth levels are exceeded. The present societal
model proves functional to break away from poverty and under-development, whereas it becomes
dysfunctional for a welfare society. In particular:
a) consumerism generates a broad range of problematic or pathological human conditions since
consumption needs are artificially induced and technologies, especially the media, are misused;
b) the social inclusion model that is supported by this logic (founded on a simple extension of the typical
twentieth-century WS) makes beneficiaries ever more passive and produces distorted effects: for instance, it
creates various “traps” (the poverty trap, the “crystal roof” limiting women’s social mobility and distorting
equal opportunities on the basis of gender, etc.), and above all immunises individuals from social relations.
Many will point out that there are no alternatives to the systemic logic I am talking about (Figure 1)
because: a) if you curb consumption, you also stop economic growth; b) if you cut social expenditure (the
WS), you create poverty.
What shall we do then?
The proposals put forward are centred on introducing two kinds of correcting tools:
1) putting “more ethics into the market”, as proposed by some, in the hope of making actors more
responsible: two examples of this are “business ethics” at the production stage and a “fairness ethics” in the
distribution of goods - such proposals are especially aimed at correcting the lib side of this set-up.
2) extending citizenship, as proposed by others, to make it “more inclusive” to embrace the weakest
social segments, in order to reduce poverty and social problems - such proposals are especially aimed at
correcting the lab side of this set-up.
I note that such corrective measures do not modify the systemic logic of lib/lab systems. As generous as
the above proposals may be, they do not stand many chances of succeeding. They do not stand many chances
of succeeding because it is the lib/lab system itself which makes them ineffective. The system continues to
work in such a way as to be functional to a moral order centred upon individual, instrumental and utilitarian
values and criteria. Though sensitive to the need for personal honesty and greater social justice (in the form
of equal opportunities), these values and criteria fail to meet the need to create a civil society capable of
supporting honest and fair behaviour. On the whole, it is a self-contradictory model, because it is the
economy that drives morality and not viceversa. We have to modify the lib/lab logic. I shall now attempt to
present these arguments in more detail.
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6. Should we yield to Darwinian evolution laws?
The lib/lab view of the world system urges us to let society run in accordance with its own evolutionary
tendencies. Such an approach is implemented through a socalled “reflexive” modernisation model, which in
essence chronically questions itself. As Beck, Bonss and Lau (2003: 3) put it, «“Reflexive” does not mean
that people today lead a more conscious life. On the contrary, “reflexive” does not signify an “increase in
mastery and consciousness, but a heightened awareness that mastery is impossible”. Simple modernity
becomes “reflexive modernization” to the extent that it disenchants and then dissolves its own taken-for-
granted premises». This leaves the referent, the purpose and the point of “reflexivity” highly ambiguous.
The society envisaged by the lib/lab way of thinking is a society which suffers from a permanent identity
crisis, pervaded as it is by insoluble social and personal risks. Reflexive modernisation is seen as a radical
uncertainty affecting every sphere of social life.
According to my argument, on the basis of modernity’s own assumptions, the above mentioned correcting
measures (i.e. ethical injections into the market and extension of citizenship rights and their beneficiaries) do
not work because: i) the lib/lab logic is relativistic from an ethical point of view and neutralises any attempts
to replace economic criteria by “non-negotiable” ethical criteria; ii) the extension of citizenship rights (in
terms of more rights and more beneficiaries) is always unstable and problematic, and, at any rate, if it is
viewed according to the typical twentieth-century lib/lab welfare state model, faces increasing failures (fiscal
crises, inclusions generating exclusions, etc.).
In short, the present modernisation processes do not tolerate any restrictive, external regulations of the
lib/lab logic (in the three stages summarised in Figure 1: consumption, for profit production and
redistribution through the WS). The only regulations this logic can endure are functional ones, that is
functional to its own reproduction.
Neo-functionalism, though, does not ensure any society capable of avoiding the dilemmas and social
pathologies produced by such a societal model. It cannot produce any stable social system, it can only
determine the same problems again and again. Neo-functionalism turns to be just “another way”, only
outwardly non-ideological, of describing the commodification of the world and an evolutionary adaptation of
the whole society to such commodification processes.
Basically, the lib/lab model proposes us to live in a society that adapts to Darwin’s evolutionary laws,
lacking any finalism and pushed by its competition and survival skills. This is globalisation’s own world
system.
Is there an alternative to a social evolution without finalism? Can we think of an alternative to the
functionalist and evolutionist model I have been discussing? I think that the world needs a post-functionalist,
indeed an after-modern development model, i.e. based on the assumption of definitely overcoming
functionalism – theoretical and empirical – as its intellectual infrastructure.
However, a word of caution is needed here. Functionalism cannot be overcome by a backward-looking
humanistic view, unable to match the competitive skills of functionalism. It has to be a humanism proving
capable of taking functionalism into account while overcoming its limitations.
Such a post-functionalist development configuration or logic ought to be able to do two things:
a) at a macro level, to reduce systemic determinisms, in favour of organisational networks capable of self-
steering;
b) at a micro-level (i.e. of individual action), to modify life styles, i.e. consumption habits, according to
more austere value guidelines, to avoid functionalistic commercialisation mechanisms. Life worlds, i.e.
primary (face-to-face) relations and interactions, taking place within families, small groups, associations”
networks based on interpersonal relations, have to be given a chance to speak. One has to take into account
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the decisive role of personal reflexivity (seen as inner conversation) and the role of social reflexivity as a
quality of relations” networks.9
It is clear that such changes are not possible within a consumption economy whose only ruling principle
is the GDP growth imperative. They become possible, though, as soon as one takes on board the fact that
GDP has been a useful well-being parameter when used for developing countries with quite a low average
income and with widespread poverty problems, but it becomes hardly significant for societies that have
reached a certain well-being threshold, such as post-industrial countries. In these countries, GDP has to be
replaced by other units of measure, such as Gross Domestic Well-Being (GDWB), which should be adopted
not only by developed countries, but also by developing countries.
An austere life-style does not mean a “poor” economy that reduces aspirations to a greater well-being. It
does not mean, for instance, a mere de-industrialisation or a demise of medical services or schooling as
proposed in the past, nor does it mean rejecting technology. It does not mean going back to a naively
“naturalistic” way of life. These are utopias without any hope or sense. A different economy is made possible
by a different notion, relational and not merely materialistic, of well-being and of happiness. We need
another economic logic, if we realize the relational character of society which follows from the “happiness
paradox” (according to which the well-being in the advanced countries does not increase over time, or even
declines, in spite of the rising trend of income, while people continue to strive for money).
We have to ask ourselves if and how it is possible to envisage an economy centred upon the human
quality of individual and social life and focused on humanising social relations.
The economic crisis that emerged worldwide in 2008 is at the root of the following novelties (see Figure
2):
• consumption habits are becoming (and shall become) more reflexive,
• we are seeing an expansion of an economy that we may call relational because it envisages the
economic stages of production-distribution-consumption of goods and services in terms of social
relations and aims at producing a synergy between profit and non-profit;
• the rule of the welfare state is gradually replaced by a societal governance (plural and subsidiary
welfare, featuring a market-state-third sector triangle);
• societal governance seeks to operate reflexively both on consumption and on market differentiation
(for profit, non profit, civil economy, etc.) in order to produce relational goods.
Such changes point to the rise of another type of societal configuration, as outlined in Figure 2.
Figure 2 – The economic logic of a relational society
Production of relational goods
9 See Archer (2003); Donati (2011).
Reflexive
consumption
habits
(quality of
life, human
ecology)
For profit economy
(material economy
GDP)
Relational economy (non
profit GDWB)
Societal
governance
(plural and
subsidiary welfare,
based upon the
triangle ‘State-
market-civil
society’)
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It is important to emphasise the role of the social spheres commonly called “third sector”. Not only does
the influence of their economic role increase (in terms of turnover and workforce), but above all such spheres
operate as an “engine of a civil society” that is alternative to the market underpinning the lib/lab set-up. This
can be described as the welfare seen through the “relational lens” (Ashcroft, Childs, Myers & Schluter,
2016).
It is the vast world of co-operation (social co-operation, social enterprises), of voluntary associations, of
ethical banks and of various forms of microcredit, of fair trade, of NGOs, of multiple forms of enterprises
which we call “civil”. Such bodies create their own financial markets, such as the Bolsa de Valores Sociales
y Ambietais (BVS&A) in Brazil, SASIX (South African Social Investment Exchange) in South Africa, the
KIVA project in the USA, the Asian Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) managed by the Social Stock
Exchange Asia (SSXA) in Singapore, GEXSI (Global Exchange For Social Investment) in the UK, MYC4 in
Denmark and Social Stock Exchange Ltd. in the UK, involving the Rockefeller Foundation, and finally the
FacciaperFaccia [Face for Face] event at the Falacosagiusta fair in Milan. Others have proposed to create a
‘social stock exchange”, aimed at managing ‘social and welfare business”, which would become an integral
part of a horizontal subsidiary set-up a state could not ignore. And this might happen by setting up a sort of
AIM (Alternative Investment Market), whose financial instruments would be shares (issued by low profit
enterprises and non-profit social enterprises) and debt bonds (equally issued by for profit and non profit
bodies).
Such new enterprises as low profit limited liability companies and community interest companies, as well
as new financial markets, can produce a different response to the world economic crisis, not merely by
adapting themselves but by giving moral standards priority in economic and social action and by being able
to modify life, work and consumption styles. Compared with traditional capitalist enterprises, such
enterprises have a number of peculiar features: for instance, they produce relational goods (and more
generally intangibile goods), they show greater flexibility and value lateral social mobility rather than
upward or downward job mobility.
These new economic entities do convey a new model of society, but to implement it they have to
overcome a number of obstacles: (i) internally, they have to develop their own reflexivity; (ii) externally,
they have to get rid of their structural dependence on the state (above all in Europe) and on the for-profit
market (above all in the USA).10
7. Rethinking the welfare civil society and its economic foundations.
The problem with modernity having reached the globalisation era is that civil society is still seen as a
capitalist economy tending to financialise real economy. The 2008 crisis has revealed this way of seeing civil
society and has at the same time started to elaborate a new way of interpreting civil society. In other terms,
the 2008 crisis has highlighted the difference (a real splitting) between the old and the new civil society. We
may have reached a turning-point between the one and the other.
On the one hand, the old civil society is still amongst us, tending to subject every good to the sequence by
which money is invested in goods which in turn are used to make more money [Money-Good-Money (M-G-
M)]. Actors, that is, invest money in a good they have no need for, but which is only instrumental to making
more money. At first, they attribute to that good a monetary (functional) value and then trade it to make more
money. It is important to understand that this mechanism presides over the whole lib/lab system. The state
also uses it in its relationship with the market: the state uses the market to get the money to pay for public
welfare, which in turn is the source of votes, the political system’s own money. In this context, civil society
is identified with the market.
10 As an indicator that a lib-lab configuration is prevailing in the USA too (and not only in Europe), it can be reminded that 97% of the private
debt in the St ates passes through the State.
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On the other hand, a new civil society has emerged, which is identified with real economy. In real
economy, in contrast with the previous case, the good is evaluated in itself and money (also in forms
different from currency) is only used by actors as a tool to acquire the goods they need [according to the
sequence: Good-Money-Good (G-M-G)]. A good is translated into the money needed to obtain another
necessary good (for instance: work provides the money used by actors to buy the goods they want).
Rethinking civil society means understanding whether, and how, it is possible, and necessary in the first
place, to shift from the M-G-M sequence to the G-M-G sequence. This shift requires a more complex view
of society than modernity’s own view. At the core of this view lies the relational nature of goods. Indeed, if it
is true that the distinctive feature of a modernising economy is to erase the relational nature of goods and
economic processes, the building blocks of a new economy will be precisely the new needs for individual
and social relationships. It is not by accident that we see gifts coming back into so many social spheres and
in many different forms. From a sociological point of view, free giving points to the pursuit of social bonds
and to the need for social relations to be forged to cement the sense of community.
Let me explain the distinction I have been drawing between the two societies: the modern one and the
one I call after-modern, in more detail (Table 2).
The key element of this distinction is the fact that after-modern society is confronted with the need to
produce a variety pool of options (in goods consumption and production, in life styles, in welfare measures)
which cannot be “accidental”, or amount to a merely functional monetary equivalence (as Luhmann holds),
but has to be endowed with sense, permitting the creation of common goods, by which I mean relational
goods.11
This results in the rise of a new Zeitgeist. Whenever we say that future society will have to be inspired by
the ethical criterion of ‘sustainability”, we have many different things in mind, the first being that
instruments, such as finance, technology, etc., must match human needs and not viceversa. Which in turn
implies that means have to be used only as means and not as self-standing ends or goals.
I summarise the distinction between modern and after-modern set-ups in Table 2.
Table 2– Two paradigmatic configuations of economy
In a “Modern” society
In an “After-modern” society
M
(means)
Money = currency
Money > currency (money takes
many different forms, monetary and
non monetary)
G
(goals)
The only constraint set by money is
for it to provide more money
Functional constraints are set for the
use of money (in its various monetary
and non-monetary forms), i.e. money
is embedded within social contexts
S
(social
respons.)
Enterprises only have an internal
social responsibility to their
employees
Enterprises also have an external
responsibility (to the community’s
stakeholders)
V
(values)
Value motives are individualistic,
instrumental, acquisitive
Value motives are relational (inspired
by subsidiarity and solidarity to
produce goods seen as relational
goods)
11 For a detailed description of the common good as ‘relational good’ see Donati and Solci (2011).
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(i) In modern society:
M) Financial economy is based on the equation: money = currency
G) Money is a goal in itself, because of the functional culture which makes all goods and services
subjectable to monetary equivalence;
S) Enterprises have no broader social responsibility than that strictly associated with their own
employees;
V) the cultural motives of economic action are individual, instrumental, acquisitive.
(ii) In after-modern society, on the other hand:
M) financial economy assumes that money does not only amount to currency, but there can be other
forms of money, meaning by money an entitlement to access goods and services [money > currency, or
money = currency plus other forms of entitlements].12 This economy, therefore, draws a distinction between
monetary and non-monetary forms of money, by connecting them to “real economy” (in which many goods
and services do not allow for monetary equivalents). Hence arises an observable multiplication of forms of
money, labour and capitals (not only financial capital, but also political, social and human) and also a
multiplication of contracts, in brief, of all the goods needed to pursue an economic objective;
G) money is embedded in social contexts, and therefore subjected to social constraints which represent
social goals that go beyond their functional performance (for instance new forms of social vouchers, new
terms of trade, new forms of money as an entitlement for the access to goods and services and not as a
currency, etc.); this is the way through which social expenses should operate as ‘social investments”;
S) corporate social responsibility is extended outside the company to the surrounding community and to
stakeholders (profits do not only or entirely go to shareholders, but must be shared with the stakeholders);
social responsibility is also broadened with regard to employees with forms of reconciliation between work
and family, with relational contracts, as well as corporate citizenship;
V) the cultural motives of economic action relate individual interests to principles of subsidiarity and
solidarity which are necessary to produce common goods, which will be relational goods.
The new societal configuration (as outlined in Figure 3) does not erase modernity, but sees the modern
lib/lab set-up only as a particular case, that is as a way of operating (of organising economy, politics, etc.)
which is no longer general and which cannot be generalised throughout all social actors and spheres, but is
only applicable to ever more limited action areas. Earlier on modernisation was seen as potentially
extendable throughout all spheres of society. This in turn legitimised the fact that the compromise between
state and market was able to turn life worlds into commodities. The new set-up that I call after-modern is not
characterised by a logic of dominance of a pole (market or state) over the other or by commercial negotiation
logics between sub-systems or social spheres, but by a network-like logic which is forced to make the
different societal spheres more co-operative, or at least to follow a mutually non-destructive competition
logic, within a world-system’s global sustainability project.
Empirical evidences come from practical examples of new stakeholder relationships, social investment,
public-private partnerships including the third sector, social governance by networking, reconstructing
poverty, shifting subsidiarity, flexicurity, integrating economic and social logics, co-production,
countercyclical social cooperatives, personalization of services. All these innovations, to some extent, are
forms of a societal configuration intertwining system and social integration.
12 On the different forms of money, see Donati (2001).
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Figure 3 – The new configuration of after-modern society
STATE (G)
Public good
P-GS-P (political power)
MARKET (M) CIVIL SOCIETY (S)
Private goods Associational relational goods
M-GS-M (money) T-GS-T (third sector)
LIFE WORLDS (V)
Primary relational goods
based on a relational anthropology
R-GS-R (the good of human relation)
Symbols: M (money); GS (goods and services); P (political power); T (third sector, civil society
associations); R (social relations)
To implement such a set-up, one needs a relational configuration that modernity was unable to tolerate,
because it was overwhelmed by cultural movements conceiving of modernity as a way to immunize people
from sociality.
8. Towards the “relational welfare state”.
The world system based of the financialisation not only of economy but, we may well say, of all social
relations, experiences a chronic crisis and has to be reconverted. But how?
My argument is that we do not have to resort to an abstract welfare “model”, but rather to facilitate some
ways of life (forms of a modus vivendi), i.e. ways of operating and making society, which may trace the
original practices of a civil society that is not subordinate to the compromise between state and market.
It is possible to apply to the new civil society a notion of “reconversion” by analogy with what happened
to market reconversion, when we shifted from an economy based on large industrial concerns to the
information and knowledge economy. It can be defined as a reconversion of civil society if we think of it as a
“bottom up” promotion of networks of social relations which do not respond to functional imperatives
imposed by state laws and to monetary equivalence criteria, but meet the need to create relational goods.
The reconfiguration of civil society according to the scenario I am outlining here will redefine the ways of
being of state and market as well.
In order to meet the big and new challenges facing the present WS, it is not an answer simply to privatise
the old model, which is what so much reforms are bound to do, in particular by Maino and Ferrera (2013)
when they suggest to give room to “a second welfare” besides the “first” one (which one?).
Area of system
integration/
inclusion
Area of social
integration/
inclusion
Societal
configuration
intertwining
system and
social
integration
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We need a “relational state”, whose rationale is based upon a relational theory of society. This theory was
launched in a book (1991)13 showing how the traditional WS state was based on an outdated, transactional
model that should be replaced by a new societal configuration characterized by the fact of being shared,
associational and relational. Since then, it has become more and more evident that we need a truly
responsive WS that builds the capabilities of all relying upon a relational work (Folgheraiter & Donati, 1991;
Folgheraiter, 2004): services that value and build on relationships. A form of welfare that understands that a
social issue stems from a factual configuration of the social relations between people and not in their good or
bad will; that loneliness makes you sick and eventually kills; that personal insecurity or poverty depends on
the lack of a reliable social network surrounding you; that you need a social network to find a job when most
of jobs are never advertised; that you need someone to stand by your side when you have grown up in a
community that no longer remembers decent work and you are confronting all the problems of violence,
depression and anxiety that go along with this.
A relational WS is not just an idea. Its basic principle is to provide better lower level welfare, sustainable
primary care, and to solve a number of practical ordinary tasks, through the building of a rich social network
empowering the people involved in a difficult condition.
The relational state is a way to design services aiming at empowering people and families in order to face
many difficulties in day to day life. The families have the potential to change their own lives. Relational
services provide the framework for those at the front line to create a new relationship with families that starts
from a different place, and supports transformation.
A relational approach defines not just the goals but the way people can get there. Relationships are the
glue that keep people together and the relational state can build public services that foster good relationships.
For instance, a service can create opportunities for those seeking work, by providing someone to vouch for
you, to support you, and reflect with you. It will build a social network around you within this framework,
including the support for the small businesses that will drive job creation.
A recent report has tried to outline the features of such a new state (Cook & Muir, 2012). There are four
areas, though, where scholars should set out their ideas more fully.
The first is how people working in public services can be supported to acquire the skills required by the
relational state. The skills and capabilities of people working in a relational state will be different to those in
the “delivery state”. There are plenty of new local initiatives showing the ability to empathise, communicate,
listen and mobilise networks of stakeholders (citizens, professionals, public and private organizations, thirs
sector associations) to achieve social goals” (Donati & Martignani, 2015). These initiatives suggest that we
make healthcare more like education, deliberately aiming to raise the skills of the public through, for
instance, courses or e-tutorials to support elderly people at home. We need to identify new roles that staff
will play in twenty-first century public and private services (“catalyzers”, “navigators”, “brokers”,
‘storytellers”, “resource-weavers”, “activators”) as part of a process of supporting citizens to be co-authors
of their own lives. Social workers should be trained in learning new methodologies of relational work.
Supporting professionals in acquiring these skills and building effective relationships is a key challenge, but
one which professional bodies, universities and service providers are not yet well set up to meet. There needs
to be an emphasis on how to share learning across welfare professionals and informal carers and to ensure
that those engaged in relational services, such as health care assistants, social care workers, and classroom
assistants, become keen on how to do a relational observation, a relational diagnosis and a relational
guidance (what I call ODG steering systems of welfare).
A second area where more development would be useful is on how the emphasis on relationships will
intersect with an outcomes-focus. Some of the goals of social policies have to be concerned with concrete
outcomes – fewer families in crisis, for instance, or better survival rates in hospitals. But other targets can
13 A recent update of that perspective can be found in Donati (2009).
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and should be relational. Outcomes are not the opposite of relational, provided that we understand how to
manage relational feedbacks instead of mechanical (positive/negative) feedbacks (Donati, 2013). In fact, we
can talk of relational outcomes as a new configuration of relations, achieved through relational steering,
leading to the resolution of a social problem. Relational outcomes can be measured, although with different
methodologies in respect to quantitative performances. The complex links between social relationships,
outcomes and culture can be investigated within the new framework of social morphogenesis (Archer, 2014;
Colozzi, 2012).
A third area is concerned with the discussion about the practices of devolving funding down to the
individual level through personal budgets and pupil premiums and how they will intersect with the emphasis
on relationships. The literature on social work has highlighted potential tensions between individualised
funding and a therapeutic social work based on valuing relationships. Personalisation does not (and should
not) mean individualisation. To reduce the human person to an “individual” means to embrace an
impoverished ontology, namely one that fails to accord sufficient weight to the primordial and existential
realities of human inter-dependence, inter-being and symbolic interaction. This is not to deny the importance
of personal choice and control in life planning, but rather to argue that they are best positioned within an
ontological framework where inter-being, sociality and the socially reflexive nature of the self are to the
fore. 14 The relational state should refers to “relational subjects”.
Fourth, more attention to broader issues of political economy in the relational state is needed. The idea
that the level of funding can be weighted to favour those with less power or resources of their own (as is the
case with the pupil premium) could be detrimental to a more ambitious approach to the redistribution of
wealth. But redistribution could not be only in the hands of the state, it should be widespread among all the
social corporate actors, in the public as well as in the private sector, and in particular by the third sector’s
actors, big and small charities, social cooperatives, non-profit agencies, and the companies working in the
field of civil economy.
In the end, the relational state situates the relations between the public and private sectors, between
the state and civil society, in the sphere of co-responsibility. The relational state is a perspective based on the
thesis that changes affecting the economic and political structure in recent decades have transformed the
roles and capacities of social agents, above all in public and government sectors. The globalization of the
economy is transforming the traditional WS model into a relational state model, above all in its function as
public manager. The organizational model to which the relational state belongs is that of the social
entrepreneur, capable of creating and managing complex inter-organizational networks in which public,
private and civil society organizations play their part. This new relational model of governance relies more
on de-centralized civil society initiatives, media exposure and business self-regulation than on active state
intervention. It adopts the principle of subsidiarity together with the principle of solidarity, which means to
overcome the defensive and restricted interpretation of subsidiarity as mere “devolution” or “let people do
things by themselves”. It means enforcing an active and promotional interpretation of subsidiarity as “a way
to help people to do what they have to do”.
In the end, how can we define a relational WS? To me, it is characterized by the following features: (I) at
the local level, the WS is no longer the centre and vertex of society, it does not “produce” the latter, but
becomes a subsystem that has to act in a subsidiary way towards all other subsystems proving welfare
(market, third sector, families and informal networks), by adopting forms of social governance working
through social networks; (II) the task of the local WS is to realize a relational citizenship, which has three
basic characters: a) it consists in the complex of civil, political, social, economic and human rights,
understood and managed as relational rights (which includes entitlements not only to the individuals, but also
to those social spheres where these rights are to be implemented); b) it must interconnect the rights stemming
14 Cfr. Donati and Archer (2015).
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from “above” (state citizenship) with the rights stemming from “below” (societal citizenship), so to promote
the flourishing of differentiated and multiple forms of citizenship; c) it should confer citizenship not only to
the individuals, but also to the intermediary social formations operating in civil society, where free and equal
citizens can practice an associational democracy generating relational goods. In other words, the relational
WS takes care of the social relationships among citizens, and operates relationally in the field of welfare
activities run by all societal actors.
We need a model of social development which reinforces the best aspects of systemic and social
integration at the same time. This can be obtained only if we adopt a relational logic of social innovation that
can produce solid social relations and reinforce reciprocal human capacities, rather than nullifying,
weakening, or destroying the relational character of welfare, its quality and causal properties.
References
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