Where Now for European Social Democracy? - Policy Network

Social InsecuritiesMARISOL TOURAINEInsecurity and the feeling of insecurity are many-sided. The degreeof protection against violence, prerogative of states, is a powerfulindication of a society’s development. Protection allows us to besocially independent, to limit the uncertainties of our environment andto manage it better. The public debate on the security of property andpersons is relatively well-defined: no one is suggesting the reduction ofthese rights to cope with growing risks; no one is proposing to give thisrole to those not vested with democratic legitimacy. The rule of law isbased on the principle of the necessary protection of property.This has not been the case for protection against social risks; therewas no need for protection until the rise of capitalism. It was not untilthe middle of the twentieth century that the idea of a doubleprotection by the state against social and civil risks took hold. Today,under the guise of necessity, some are calling for the dismantling ofthis system, arguing that the mutations of capitalism demand thetightening of civil protection and the loosening of social protection. Wecan less accept that post-industrial capitalism imposes the reductionof social guarantees to a minimal level, since it is largely illusoryto oppose civil security and social protection. The two are mutuallyre-enforcing, but we do not always have the right to protection fromsocial precariousness 1 . A new social compromise must be redefined,which, as at the close of the last global conflict, guarantees nationalcohesion and democracy. Faced with transformations in nationalsocieties and globalization, the construction of this pact, whichattracts neither liberals nor those in favour of the status quo, is theground for radical social democrats’ choices.93