Coordinatori: Massimo Baldini (Università di Modena e Reggio-Emilia); Gianluca Busilacchi (Università di Macerata); Elena Granaglia (Università di Roma Tre)
Over the last few years there has been a wide debate on the conditionality of social rights and on the possibility of binding their practice; this debate has crossed different fields of intervention of the Welfare State.
First, the Social Investment strategy, launched by the EU as a possible cornerstone of the ‘new’ Welfare State, in some cases is interpreted as grounded on the fairness of giving something through social policies and getting something back for the society, through the social investment. Second, especially in healthcare, the idea is increasingly spreading that patients who are “undeserving” (e.g. smokers, alcohol and drug addicted, etc.) should pay their treatments, as they cannot be a burden on general taxation. According to this idea, public regulations must therefore discourage harmful behavior. These two trends, even though different, share the same trait – the erosion of the concept of social rights seen as unconditional rights – and a similar political foundation – the risk of financial unsustainability of the Welfare State.
Nowadays, especially because of the pandemics, another tension is occurring in the relationship between individual behavior and social rights, namely that some individual choices may produce not only a serious harm for those making them, but also severe negative externalities for the rest of the population.
Traditional cases of not prudent behavior may determine negative externalities as well (for example car accidents from alcohol use), but new and more widespread risks are emerging, and the obvious example is the case of a substantial proportion of the population refusing to vaccinate.
A vast debate is taking place on what the State should do in order to reduce or avoid the risk that the individual refusal to get the vaccine may damage other individuals and their social rights.
The State could make the vaccination compulsory, or find other regulative or tax-transfers mechanisms that define the conditionality of the right to receive help in case of need.
The aim could be both to change behaviors in order to reach the aim of collective wellbeing, or to simply obtain the resources needed to guarantee that the Welfare State can still provide an effective safety net for all. Can the State find legitimacy for binding individual freedom and/or steering individual behavior to promote collective responsibility? Which changes in the financing schemes of the Welfare State could be envisaged when the State must confront with an increasing heterogeneity in lifestyles and opinions towards the results of scientific research? To what extent could the individual participation to the costs of the Welfare State be based on personal preferences and life choices?
Papers that seek to respond to these questions at both theoretical and empirical levels are welcome.
In particular, we encourage papers that focus on the following dimensions:
- the evolution of the relationship between collective and individual responsibilities and behavior in the different domains of social policy;
- the legal dimension of social rights, and the ethical perspective on the relation between rights and duties;
- the analysis of the ethical conundrum posed by single case-studies on health care policy during the pandemic;
- the comparative analysis of alternative policies: prohibition, incentives (taxation, subsidies etc.), nudge, etc.;
- the empirical effects of past examples of these alternative policies.
Contatti coordinatori: Massimo Baldini (massimo.baldini@unimore.it)
Gianluca Busilacchi (gianluca.busilacchi@unimc.it)
Elena Granaglia (elena.granaglia@uniroma3.it)