The Changed Welfare Paradigm: The Individualization of The Social

The first part of this paper offers a cumulative review of the changes in global objectives and operating principles and their global consequences, characteristic of the shift from the ideal type of the modern welfare state to the neo-liberal or post-modern paradigm. The paper then spells out some of the implications of this shift for social security in the "transition countries" of Central and Eastern Europe. The tendencies (from marketization to the spread of means-testing) are similar to those in the West; but they are much more marked and there is much less political and popular resistance to these changes. One of the crucial ingredients of the shift is the undermining of the age-old solidarity between generations, a trend also strongly recommended by the supranational agencies. The "catch", or the "paradox of democracy" is that, for all the lack of resistance, people do not seem to approve of the rapid withdrawal of the state and the loss of their existential securities.