Social Solidarity and the Power of Contract

Abstract

This article explores what contracts in the field of social policy can reveal about the forms of social solidarity that exist today. Taking workfare as its point of departure, the aim is to shed light on what these "social policy contracts" can tell us about the nature of social cohesion in contemporary Western societies. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's typology of social solidarity inThe Division of Labour in Society, and his later notion of individualism, it is argued that today's social policy contracts disclose, simultaneously, elements of mechanical and organic social solidarity. As such, these contracts can be thought to function in both punitive and restitutive ways. It is argued that the exclusionary and inclusive features of social policy contracts, and their corresponding focus on the classification of parts of the population and individualism, act as important sources of contemporary social solidarity.The second part of the article considers empirical evidence regarding the success of workfare programmes in various countries. This evidence highlights the important role that a number of 1 Sussex Law School, University of Sussex, UK, K.J.Veitch@sussex.ac.uk. The ideas contained in this article were first aired at a workshop on the 'Power of Law' at Helsinki Law School, University of Helsinki. I am very grateful to Toomas Kotkas for his kind invitation to participate in this workshop and to the participants for their discussion and feedback. For comments on a previous written draft, I thank Roger Cotterrell, John Harrington, Scott Veitch, Angela Williams, and the anonymous referees.Page | 2 structural factors play in the degree to which these programmes can be deemed to be successful. Reflecting on this, it is argued that the moralistic nature of the workfare contract, and the social cohesion to which this can be thought to be directed, obscures these deeper structural issues, thereby leaving in place the conditions that ensure the ongoing production of the type of misery and indignity characteristic of our post-Keynesian world. In that sense, it is contended that contract has a de-politicising effect in the field of social policy.

Adverse or acceptable: negotiating access to a post-apartheid health care contract

“…In Foucauldian terms, the social contract produces “deviant categories” of people – hazardous, useless or worthless – who simultaneously threaten and entrench the status quo and the docile bodies it safely includes [10]. In this section, we consider patient and provider accounts of access barriers to health care and ways in which these threaten the post-apartheid health care contract.…”

“…From a Foucauldian perspective, the social contract seeks to reward and re-integrate those on its margins (defaulting or suffering patients, overstretched or difficult providers) when they comply with contractual norms and return to the mainstream, while denying access to those who stay out of the contractual reach [10,46]. In this section, we consider some ways in which the post-apartheid health care contract strives to reassert itself when threatened by access barriers, including poverty, resource constraints and unacceptable service delivery.…”

“…Instead, the democratic ideal may depoliticize and hide structural issues, such as the “political economy, class, income inequity, education, and the bureaucratic compulsion to meet targets” [10], excluding certain people and groups (often those most in need of social assistance) as much as it includes [10,18,19]. In South Africa, two decades after apartheid, an inclusive, equitable society remains elusive.…”

Chapter 5 Relationship between Employment Status and Scope of Social Security Protection: The United Kingdom Example

“…18 In socio-legal terms, the dilution of the traditional legal forms of employment in favour of the fluidity of the gig economy could represent what Delanty has labelled the "emerging crisis of solidarity" 19 not only in the UK but throughout Europe, hastened by recession, a development which manifests itself in the weakening of historical ties between employer and employee in the labour market, and, importantly, as Veitch states, changes to traditional assistance offered to citizens via the welfare state. 20 In the UK context, this crisis of solidarity is perhaps aggravated by the welfare state regionalism effected by devolution, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 21 In this theory the move away from the contributory Bismarckian welfare state based on social insurance contributions to a common fund is mirrored by developments such as the growth of the gig economy, changes which serve to erode the various contractual links between different social groups and institutions.…”

Universal Credit, ‘Positive Citizenship’, and the Working Poor: Squaring the Eternal Circle?

“…62 Veitch has asserted that within the workfare contract (of which UC will be a central feature) it is possible to identify two forms of social solidarity, both of which have much in common with Durkheim's mechanical and organic social solidarity, in that they contain punitive and restitutive elements, designed both to exclude and include those members of the population in need of assistance. 63 Veitch further suggests that in the post-Keynesian world, workfare, and the contractual nature of benefit eligibility constitutes a method of manufacturing a form of collective individualism in a society which no longer inclines towards collective thought or action. 64 Lending support to this idea is the theory of Bauman that the development of the 'society of consumers', together with the progressive decline for the conditions necessary for social solidarity, has resulted in a simultaneous diminution of rights-based welfare benefits offered by the state.…”