Artikel

De onoverzichtelijkheid in Welvaartsstaat: over symbolische politiek, onbestuurbaarheid en herbronde handelingsbereidheid

---

Abstract

The unsurveyability in the welfare state. On symbolical politics, ungovernability and the reborn preparedness for action - Modern mass societies face the fact that, while there is now more data available than ever before, the capacity to plan accurately has greatly decreased. This seemingly paradoxical situation can be explained by recognizing that successful planning consists of a combination of knowledge and the active support of loyal citizens. The unsurveyability which interferes with the governmental potential to plan and to steer is not due to particular problems from the knowledge-side of the planning process, but must be considered as the result of the failure to establish full-fledged democratic, egalitarian structures. Under the sway of modernity, society as a whole seems to have become incapable of conceiving its own future as an emancipatory project As Habermas and Offe explain, this unsurveyability is due to the contradictions inherent in the policy of the ’Keynesian’ welfare state. The welfare state has not the political power to curb sufficiently the violence of the economic process. The lifeworld of the citizens stands exposed to the dynamic of the accumulation process. Furthermore, the welfare state destroys, through juridification and bureaucratizetion of existential problems, the communicative actions which are needed to deliver loyalty to the political process. As a consequence of the limited political power and the distortions in the lifeworld, the social basis and the consensus that underly the welfare state disappear. If governments detect a lack of loyalty, they can sample more data, increase the level of economic compensations, and, in the last resort, take refuge in partial participation. These strategies, however, only reinforce societal unsurveyability and unpredictability. The fundamental difficulty is that the increasing need for loyalty on the part of the government is offset by a decreasing willingness to deliver loyalty on the part of the citizens. To this dilemma three answers have been given : that of the traditional left, that of the neoconservatives and that of the critics of economic growth. It seems that only the last group faces up to the political, economic and ecological deficiencies and contradictions which are characteristic of today’s far from perfectly working welfare state.

How to Cite:

Denayer, W., (1994) “De onoverzichtelijkheid in Welvaartsstaat: over symbolische politiek, onbestuurbaarheid en herbronde handelingsbereidheid”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 39(3), 237–262. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95176