Hiroya Hirano

This paper aims at understanding welfare in the socialist order comprehensively and systematically. With three analytical concepts, i.e., social policy, economic policy, and societal policy which consists of the former two, welfare was examined as a kind of socio-economic system, a "welfare system". In the socialist order, societal policy had the grand purpose of creating a new society to realize "the well-being of the people". However, due to coincidence of financial crisis and increase in the necessity of social policy, the conflict between social policy and economic policy increased. As a result, societal policy became difficult to pursue its purpose, so that the purpose was reduced to a limited area of social policy and lost its priority. This meant the collapse of the welfare system. "The well-being of the people" in the socialist order was undoubtedly the ideology and the purpose to be achieved in the initial stage, but its realization failed halfway.

This article argues the contemporary relevance of T. H. Marshall by reexamining his writings, "Value problems of Welfare Capitalism" and its "Afterthought", which are collectively called "Hyphenated Society". The article consists of two parts. Firstly, it attempts to reinterpret "Hyphenated Society" in the light of the social systems approach, and examines the validity of existing criticisms against Marshall. Secondly, with the analytical framework used in "Hyphenated Society", it examines the transformation of the relationship between the economy and the welfare sector from the 1980s onwards. In conclusion, "Hyphenated Society" is newly interpreted as an argument over processes of making structural problems acceptable through one's value preference in a specific social system. This means that the existing criticisms are not valid. And in the recent social context, because the relationship between the economy and the welfare sector has been changed and complicated structurally, it turns to be dysfunctional. Therefore value problems are becoming critical for the present social system. In this point, T. H. Marshall and his writings have great relevance even today.

This paper aims at understanding "welfare system" in the socialist order comprehensively. With three analytical concepts, i.e., social policy, economic policy, and societal policy which consists of the former two, the welfare system was examined as a kind of socio-economic system. In the socialist order, societal policy had the grand purpose of building a new society to achieve "the well-being of the people", but it became difficult to pursue its purpose by the conflict between social policy and economic policy. This means "the collapse of welfare system". As a result, the purpose was reduced to a limited area of social policy and lost its priority in the order. "The well-being of the people" in the socialist order was undoubtedly the ideology and purpose to be achieved in the initial stage, but its realization failed halfway.

The author has been concerned with the trend of the social security systems in Central Europe. In this paper, he points out the characteristics of the social security systems in Central Europe from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, what is called "the transition period", and examines the relationship between the economy and the social security systems with particular reference to Poland, and discusses their significance.<BR>Central European countries experienced diverse and dynamic changes in their societies by the transition started in the end of the 1980s. Under these circumstances, the social security systems in Central Europe during the transition period, which are characterized by "generosity" and "pathdependency", enabled rapid economic stabilization and growth, as well as contributing to political and social stability. Specifically, an application, properly modified, of the previous social security system constructed under the socialist order, and a postponement of their drastic and time-consuming reforms are the most important factors that made it possible for Central European countries to prioritize economic policies.<BR>Consequently, the high level of generosity in the social security systems in Central Europe during the transition period helped promote economic efficiency by absorbing those who emerged from the transition and could not adapt to the new social order by keeping them latent temporarily, and created the circumstances in which each government could concentrate on economic policies. In this sense, the social security systems in these countries contributed to a rapid progress of transition.