engleski

South-East Europe Regional Studies: Equity vs. Efficiency - Possibilities to Lessen the Trade-Off in Social, Employment and Education Policy in South-East Europe

The present volume combines all the studies and comments of the research cycle. The aim of the book is both to analyse and propose measures for alleviating the widespread existing conflict between equity and efficiency in social policy in the broader sense: including social welfare, education and employment. Education, social welfare and the labour market are closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Efficiency and adequacy (or lack of it) in one field has many positive (or negative) consequences in other sub systems. In South-East Europe (SEE) the discourse on social policy in the broader sense of equity versus efficiency is a new agenda, an agenda of transformational politics. Social policy in SEE has been created by economic discourse on market-making versus market-correcting policies. South East European states have relatively weak governments. They have a limited capacity to collect taxes, to tackle the unofficial or grey economy (a financially weak state) and thus, limited resources for the provision of public goods and services. The situation in SEE is far from satisfactory or optimistic. South-East European countries have to find and develop constitutional and legal arrangements that best suit their own historical, social, cultural and economic situations, conditions and possibilities. The government could and should provide a stable legal framework, the social infrastructure and with the co-operation of its citizens, establish the rule of law. Otherwise, the social groups in unfavourable conditions, primarily the poor and socially excluded, will suffer most from the lack of clear laws and the unwillingness of society to respect those that do exist.

education, social welfare, labour market, equity, efficiency.

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