European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

76 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYultimate goal is to bridge that “gap” between institutions and thepeople created since the post-war till today, under the influence of ademagogic policy and an abuse of the institution of democraticrepresentation expressed through voting, converted many times into agenuine mandate, by both parties.This has generated gigantic and bureaucratic institutions at variouslevels but which are deprived of life and of a relation to reality andfaced with an unmotivated and indifferent population concerning themanagement of the “public thing”; that is, a society that perceives thegovernment as a monolithic power, impossible of modification. Thetransformation, on the other hand, must consist of individualizing theinterpretative frameworks that place the government at the service of itscitizens while not excluding the latter from participating in the solutionsto its own problems. One can also define this change as a transformationof bureaucratic administration into policy “management” (postbureaucracy):where the government of a territorial space is no longer anundisputable monolith, but rather is converted into an instrument forverification, valuation and reorganization while keeping in mind costs,earnings, aims and resources.Forms of resistance have been created with a view to open updialogue, which represents a step towards transformation-change,recovering the collective political sense and remote meanings of thepower of the people as sovereign in decision-making in a democraticcontext.These forms of resistance have facilitated the process of WelfareReform, which has stimulated the questioning of Institutions and haschannelled the move away from Government to Governance.The first term is that with which the institutions are most frequentlyin agreement: an exclusive site of public authority. The second, theconcept of Governance, implies the interconnection between moreactors —public institutions, private reality and civil society— in theorganized participation of decision-making power.The concept of “good governance” forms part of a wider debateon State Reform as Society Reform (Welfare Society), 8 derogation,8“...The old organised form of the Welfare State has to open the way for a newstructure of Welfare Society where market and State are integrated with a Third sector,that is to say, by the responsible participation of the members of civil society.”In the viewpoint of Welfare Society, citizens not only receive services, but also mayplay a decisive role.State Reform speeds up procedures and structures in favour of a more informedpopulation that is motivated to assume their responsibilities and rights in policy making.