The "Enabling State?" from Public to Private Responsibility for Social Protection

Policies designed to advance the march toward private financing and delivery of social services follow five main pathways. While some of these approaches to privatization are more direct and transparent than others, all may be pursued simultaneously. Three approaches concentrate on increasing private financing and the other two on increasing the production and delivery of goods and services by the private sector: • Encouragement through tax incentives • Requirements through fees for service • Mandating through legislation • Providing public benefits in the form of cash or vouchers • Purchase-of-service arrangements. Along each of these five paths the state plays a direct or indirect role in stimulating private financing or delivery of benefits in cash or kind. All social welfare benefits are to some degree subsidized or mandated by the state — in part it is the public intervention by fiscal or legal means that makes these benefits “social.” Some social goods and services may be more amenable to public or private provision than others. And traditional relations among government, business, and labour in different societies will certainly influence the preferred paths toward increased private responsibility. In treading the pathways toward privatization, the objective is not to find the shortest route, but to avoid the pitfalls along the way – and to chart a course that is not so focussed on economic efficiency that it loses sight of the public purpose of social protection.