Abstract

The socio-economic and financial crisis, which is affecting Europe since 2008, is spreading its influence to all European Union member countries. However, as the welfare models are different, the consequences could also be different. Therefore, in this paper we try to make an assessment of this diversity with the following aims: to analyze the weakening of European Welfare States, using as models the Central European (represented by German, Spain and Sweden); and to make a comparison between these three countries, belonging to disparate socioeconomic models. For this we have used a methodological triangulation from the analysis of three elements: semi-structured in-depth interviews (29) to experts in the three contexts under study; Analysis of official data from secondary sources; documentary review of paper related to the topic. The results, which show disparities between countries, have been grouped into four categories: (1) the lack of effective social policies; (2) adaptation strategies; (3) prominent factors in the three contexts -focusing on employment/unemployment-; and (4) the protective ability -changes in the swedish system-.

Abstract

Abstract

The subject of our research is the evolution of the concept of "freedom" in liberal political thought at the end of the 19th century – first half of the 20th century, as well as its influence on further academic discussions of "freedom" as a concept. Our main sources, therefore, are the texts by liberal, conservative as well as left-wing theorists of the period in question (Isaiah Berlin, Carl Schmitt, Edmund Burke, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, Walter Benjamin) and their interconnections with the subsequent development of the liberal tradition (Jurgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt) as well as its critics (Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler). The aim of the project was to confirm our basic hypothesis that the key transformation of the concept of "freedom" in political and social thought takes place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries – this was the moment when liberal doctrines took shape, in which collective freedom gave way to individual freedom. Thus, our project had three objectives: 1) to trace the transformation of the notion of freedom in the liberal tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 2) to identify lines of criticism of individual freedom in conservative and leftist thought of the early twentieth century, 3) to analyze the current crisis of liberalism related to the non-democratic basis of actual political representation and to show how the notion of freedom formed in early twentieth century liberal theory has affected the institutions of modern liberal democracy. The relevance of the research is determined by the deepening crisis of liberalism in our days and the pursuit of programmatic alternatives to liberal democratic institutions. Through an analysis based primarily on the "history of concepts" method, we have described the contradictions in liberal thought associated with the form of the democratic process and its elitist content. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that, for the first time in domestic political theory, an attempt was made to examine the key category of "freedom" in the liberal tradition in a broad historical and theoretical context, which made it possible to identify its contemporary understanding. We conclude that this anti-democratic and antiegalitarian element of the liberal tradition has common origins with the conservative critique of democracy of the early to mid-20th century. Since the Russian Federation's policy documents (in particular, the National Security Strategy) pay considerable attention to rethinking the relationship between individual freedoms and securing the collective freedom of the Russian people in the face of external challenges, the practical recommendation of the study is to further develop an original historical and theoretical concept of freedom that meets the contemporary conditions of our country.