The welfare state: too precious to fall

Abstract

The Welfare State is the political institution that further took the idea of solidarity and social justice in the History of Humanity. Unequally developed in the world, it reached high levels of efficiency in Europe in improving the living conditions of the populations and in promoting social rights. It is, however, under pressure from financial constraints and threatened politically and ideologically by neoliberalism and financial capitalism in a globalized world. Therefore, in the last decades, the word “crisis” is, perhaps, the most often used in the debates and research on the Welfare State. And yet, the Welfare State goes on showing trends of expansion, finding paths to evolve, and is, indeed, concerned with a new set of challenges that require the development of new functions. The present paper’s objective is analysing these challenges and functions, in a global perspective, focusing on the ones that are already being tackled and developed, and putting forward the new technological and environmental ones, that are merging and not yet fully known.