Unifying self-responsibility and solidarity in social security institutions: The circular logic of welfare-state reforms in Europe

In all European countries, social security systems are being restructured. While most comparative studies emphasise the differences in systems and reforms (e.g., Hughes and Stewards 2004; Vanhuysse and Goerres 2012), or debate whether differences among welfare states (or single institutions) are disappearing (Mahoney 2000) or whether institutional change was to be expected or not (Pierson 2000), the essence of developments, as forms of common tendencies, is thereby hardly exposed. This contribution by contrast, as an overview analysis posing the question of cross-national trends in institutional reforms, uncovers four main common tendencies and by that detects a more general one.

In the process of restructuring, social security systems and their reforms are situated at the nexus of the two principles ‘self-responsibility’ and ‘solidarity’. The principle of solidarity in social security terms is understood here as a collective share of different risks and a collective share of costs and added value – in short, the classical conception of social insurance and (positive and negative) redistribution. The principle of self-responsibility focusses, however, on the individual capacities to combat and control the various risks, and thus refrains from redistributive measures – in short, the logic of the piggy bank or of private insurance (a detailed analysis of the different insurance concepts is given by Barr 2010; see also Ewald 1986; Amable 2010). While national definitions of these two principles differ, as for example in culturally varying attitudes (Pfau-Effinger 2005), the principles have always been connected in one way or another. This postulate goes back to Aristotle and still forms part of the relevant concepts of present welfare states differentiating market principles and welfare state principles in particular (first and foremost Marshall 1950, also Esping-Andersen 1990). The connection of these two principles, however, is not static; their nexus conforms to the conditions of a given time. In this contribution I want to pose the question of cross-national tendencies of development in this nexus. The analysis is predominantly based on pension reforms as the clearest indicator of the principles, both solidarity and self-responsibility, in the institutional norms rewarded in entitlements and resulting in higher or lower gender and social inequality. It is shown elsewhere that other social security institutions are being reformed in a comparable manner (Frericks 2011). As a cross-national trend analysis, it is neither the aim of this contribution to compare systems or regimes or to contribute to the debate on whether they converge or diverge. Nor is it the aim to analyse developments in the sense of comparing two or more points in time. These kinds of longitudinal or section analyses would require another research question and correspondingly another research design. The rationale of this contribution goes beyond the analysis of a single social policy measure to reflect upon the common tendencies across Europe in the nexus of the two named principles.

In the following, common trends in the concept and nexus of solidarity and self-responsibility in social security institutions will be identified. The four main tendencies of institutional change will be analysed. The first development is observed in the increasing demand for self-responsibility. The second tendency has to do with the financial side of the social security institutions and is observed in shifts related to principles, units and resources that also increase the demand for self-responsibility. The third tendency is that institutional reforms introduce new forms of solidarity. Fourthly, it will be shown that interest representations remain relatively constant in the definition of their solidarity group. The paper concludes by discussing the general development of institutional norms.

The strands of argument summarised here, which – depending on the national context – partly overlap one another, come together in a single thread and provide evidence of a fundamental change in the relationship between solidarity and self-responsibility. Considering the various tendencies in policy reforms together, I argue that solidarity and self-responsibility have ultimately grown together into a strict circular logic of interdependency. The new norms set by the institutional change prescribe self-responsibility in order for there to be benefit from solidarity, while at the same time both principles are being redefined and, as a consequence, start to assume very different forms of solidarity and self-responsibility than was the case some 20 years ago. This development might be interpreted as an institutional response to economic, social and cultural changes. In any case, it institutionalises a new concept of social citizenship which is, in more numerous and stricter ways, normatively constructed.

Studies on the implications of welfare reforms generally focus on one specific dimension. Diverse case studies, for instance, show the particularities of one single system or of one single social policy reform (for pension policies, see for instance Hughes and Stewart 2004; Meyer et al. 2007; Ebbinghaus 2011), and thus contribute to understanding those systems in detail. Other studies often have a specific focus, contributing for example to the better comprehension of poverty, new social risks, or in- and exclusions, all of which are mostly related to changes in employee rights and workfare (Barbier 2005; Bonoli 2005; Ranci 2010). Various studies on institutional change after the shift towards marketisation and New Public Management help in comprehending the implications of welfare reforms and particularly their influence on carers, employees, professionals and so forth (e.g., Newman 2001; Eichler and Pfau-Effinger 2009). These studies may be comparative, analysing the differences among ‘welfare regimes’ (Esping-Andersen 1990; Seeleib-Kaiser 2008) or between ‘bismarckian’ and ‘beveridgean’ systems (Bonoli 1997; Bonoli and Palier 2007), or deriving categories from gender-analytical concepts such as the ‘male breadwinner model’ or others (Lewis 1992; Lister 2003), and some discuss methods for appropriate comparison (Clasen and Siegel 2007). The conceptual studies thereby contribute to clustering welfare states; to debating on whether differences among welfare states (or single institutions) are diminishing (conceptualised as divergence versus convergence, Mahoney 2000, more recently Guardiancich 2009); to comprehending institutional change as conservative or unexpected (path dependency versus path departure, Pierson 2000, more recent Ferber and Simpson 2009); and perhaps to elaborating on the forces that drive reforms, often dominated by retrenchment perspectives.

The different research foci are, however, also put into question. One objection is that many researchers follow the concepts of mainly international social policy players and ‘implicitly accept the world organisations' orthodoxies’; therefore, social policy reforms are analysed ‘in isolation from the bigger picture’ (Harvey 2005: 586), or, they focus on employee rights without taking into account their gender dimension or the dimension of social cohesion. This paper aims to contribute to ‘the bigger picture’. It identifies common trends in the redefinition of solidarity and self-responsibility through pension reforms, also as these reforms are linked to other social policies (active labour-market policies, care and family policies, financial market policies). In this paper I argue that the concept and nexus of solidarity and self-responsibility in social security institutions have been altered by change in the institutional norms on labour-market participation, care tasks, individual and collective responsibilities and so forth, thereby reconceptualising social citizenship.

The nexus of solidarity and self-responsibility is instituted differently in the various pension systems by differences in number and relevant weight of reasons for building up pension rights. Being entitled to the various pension rights depends on instituted normative assumptions about adequate behaviour and biographies, and on their actual implementation (for an overview, see Frericks 2007). These normative assumptions comprise a specific relationship between self-responsibility (including freedom of choice, privatisation understood as individualisation or subsidiarisation, and roll-backs in ‘paternalistic’ public schemes) and solidarity (including redistributive measures reflecting social and political values, equal-opportunity guarantees and compensation for labour and financial market failures). The dominant discourse of passive versus active citizenship is much too limited to be able to comprehend this (past and present) complex nexus. Instead, the changed arrangements of social security with its redefined institutional norms give rise to a new form of social citizenship, as will be shown. Most significant about this new form is its implementation as neither dualistic in state-versus-market terms, nor in individual-versus-society, i.e., self-responsibility-versus-solidarity terms. In short, this contribution aims to deliver an empirically-based analysis of common trends in social security institutions by demonstrating changed assumptions about social citizenship that might inspire further studies on welfare institutions and their societal embeddedness.

Many authorities, among them the EU (as in its 2010 EC-Report), call for increased self-responsible action to secure ‘adequate’ retirement income. Correspondingly, conditions for pensions have been changed, benefits from public pension schemes have been reduced, and supplementary pension provision in general, and so-called private provision in particular, have increased in (absolute and relative) importance (Ervik 2005; Hyde et al. 2006; SPC 2008; OECD 2012). The discourse accompanying and initiating the reforms strongly supports this dynamic, motivated by the need to shore up public account balances (public pension obligations form part of the calculated public debt).

In public pension systems which are still the most important pension schemes in all European countries, particularly for people of medium and low income, the necessary number of years in employment to meet the target replacement rate has increased. While some countries already calculate pension benefits on the basis of a ‘lifelong’ labour-market participation (e.g., for Germany, 45 years, and other European countries around 40 years), many countries are now moving towards raising the norm, as for instance Austria and Belgium (towards 45 years) or France (towards 42.5 years). This target replacement rate is defined differently in each country (and all increasingly require a combination of different pension schemes, see later)¹ ; however, in most countries it also requires a particular labour-market exit age, which is also increasing (towards 67 years in Denmark (linked to life-expectancy), The Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden, and towards 68 years in the UK and Ireland; see EC-Report 2010; MISSOC 2011).

In addition, no-claim bonus regulations have been introduced into pension calculations in many European countries – that is, positive (bonus) or negative (malus) financial incentives for a longer work career of older employees (bonus-malus in Sweden, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Germany; malus in Spain and in Denmark's ATP system; bonus in the UK; details in MISSOC 2011 and OECD 2012). The main reason for this is that some pension reforms attempt to increase the financial sustainability of the systems, for example by trying to reduce the high costs of the early retirement that in some countries have got out of hand. In addition, pension calculation norms for women have been equalised to those of men in several countries (Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria, UK; EC-Report 2010). These institutional changes favour a life-long labour-market participation of each individual. Consequently, and due to the fact that pension contributions are not proportional to pension entitlements, those who interrupt or stop paying contributions earlier are disadvantaged by the institutions. In France for example, one consequence of the pension calculation system is that someone who has ‘only’ paid 35 years of pension contributions instead of the required 40 years must manage on roughly 50% of the public pension level, i.e., they receive half of the pension amount received by those with 40 years of contributions. Regarding these disproportionately high-value last few years of employment, Veil (2002) speaks of the ‘terror of the 40 years’. In other countries too, pension formulae have led to disproportionate pensions compared to income, for example in The Netherlands where an income of twice the average can lead to a four times' larger pension (Herderscheê 2004). Income differences and differences in labour-market participation, codetermined by institutional regulations (e.g., child-care facilities, tax systems) have therefore been exacerbated by the pension formulae in old age (Frericks et al. 2008).

Current institutional reforms more directly correlate pension entitlements with the individual lifetime income. This tendency corresponds to the ideal of increased emphasis on self-responsibility in individualised labour-market terms and reduces former forms of solidarity such as institutionalised family bonds. The heavier weighting of income-dependent pensions increases self-responsibility independently of the widely varying pension systems. For example, in countries with universal basic pensions such as The Netherlands and Denmark, the relative and the absolute decrease in universal pensions² leads to a heavier weighting of income-dependent pensions (Frericks et al. 2006).

The emphasis on so-called self-responsible action has been criticised in many different ways (e.g., Minns 2001; Schmidt 2002; Langley 2004; Barr 2010). While Nullmeier (2006) nicely shows that the term and concept are absurd, it is also shown that although requirements on self-responsible action have increased in number and extent, the conditions for meeting them have not been (sufficiently) adjusted, as pension systems and reforms are still viewed in isolation from developments in pension-determining factors (Harvey 2005; Frericks et al. 2008). The political ideal of future pension systems, as formulated at national, European and international levels and partly substantiated in pension reforms, therefore, rather ignores some important socio-economic facts. For instance, increasing the number of years in paid employment in pension formulae overlooks that on average in Europe (EU 15 and EU 27), the employment rate of older employees (55–64) is some 20% lower than that of 15–64-year-olds (LFS 2010). Some European countries have extremely low employment rates of older men and women, such as Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Austria, and, at the most extreme, Italy, where in 2009 only 46.7% of men and 25.4% of women between 55 and 64 worked. Other countries showed much higher employment rates for the older workforce such as Denmark, Portugal and the UK, with Sweden having the highest rate at 73.2% of men and 66.7% of women in that age range in paid employment. Nonetheless, also in these countries the employment rate of older people is much lower than that of the whole workforce. The institutional norm of the target replacement rate is consequently met by very few people.³ In addition, pension reforms focus on individual compliance while not taking into account the consequences of so-called ‘linked lives’ (Moen 2003), that is, of two people who organise their lives together and often arrive at a ‘neo-traditional’ (Born 2003: 290), gender-differentiated way of life which is not compatible with the idea of (institutional) individualisation. In some systems pension-splitting was introduced to improve the situation of divorced women, i.e., the equal division of pension entitlements acquired during the marriage. As an all-encompassing solution for pension differences dependent on the overall system, this is however insufficient, since it leads to pension entitlements for the marriage period only, while a cut-back life-course cannot immediately be changed into an ‘ideal’ labour-market biography afterwards (Román and Schippers 2005). Also, general developments on labour markets are not in accord with the design of pension reforms: pension formulae increasingly require strictly ‘lifelong’ full-time employment, while many employees, particularly in times of ‘new social risks’ (Taylor-Gooby 2004), such as precarious, un- and part-time employment, changing family formations and transformed social protection (e.g. reduced benefits in times of unemployment), have difficulty complying with this norm (Eurostat 2008; Frericks 2011; LFS 2011). As a result, the institutional norms substantiated in the calculation formulae put higher expectations on the individual citizen today than they did some 20 years ago.

Pension systems are changing towards increased self-responsibility in three more ways: in their institutional principles, units and resources. These are correlated with the classical operations of social policy: establishing sources and the rights over the resources (Harvey and Maier 2004).

As for the first shift, classical social insurance principles are coming more and more to resemble individual contracts (Frericks 2011). Although it is not new for contribution payments and pension entitlements to correlate, their development into pure ‘defined contribution’ systems (DC), which base their calculation on the individual's contributions, resembles more the precautionary principle of the piggy bank than social insurance. Also, ‘notional defined contribution’ schemes (NDC), such as introduced in Italy, have ‘no redistributive features’ (Raitano 2008: 172).⁴ Depending on the concrete national system, public schemes involve different mechanisms of solidarity. The factual redistribution of public pensions has varied since their implementation and involved redistribution both towards the better-off as well as to those who were somewhat advantaged by institutional regulations (e.g., early retirement schemes that minimised the negative consequences of lacking contribution years,⁵ or for those who grew very old). More important for this analysis is the fact that pension resources of public schemes are not resources guaranteed under private law, but societal resources. Firstly, these societal resources are circulated, i.e., in pay-as-you-go systems paid out to those who contributed in the past and reached pension age. Secondly, the calculation of entitlements is in most cases not based on the individual contributions but on an average collective value. In Germany, which is an example of contribution-based public pensions, pension entitlements are calculated on the basis of the average German employee's income – not on the individual employee's income. And in The Netherlands – an example of tax-based public pensions – entitlements are calculated on the basis of a politically decided level of minimum wage.⁶ In short, pension rights have been social rights in the sense of redistributing socialised resources in public systems following the welfare states principles (already Marshall 1950). Currently, they are developing into individual property rights, and contributors and institutions increasingly refer to these resources as individual property rights corresponding to the idea that the individual old-age income mirrors the individual effort and by that the taken self-responsibility (see also Hann 2007).

As to the second shift, the changing unit covered by the pension systems represents another increase in self-responsibility: Pension entitlements derived from partnerships are being reduced or totally abandoned. There is a rapid progression of this individualisation of calculation norms and individualistic assumptions of life-course politics (Meyer et al. 2007). One essential aspect of the individualised unit of pension logic is its correlated change in the conception of social insurance. It is argued that only benefits generated from labour-market contributions and paid from wages legitimately entitle employees to benefits from social security schemes. In particular, the payments ‘unrelated to insurance’⁷ play a primarily discourse-forming role (Schmidt 2002; Langley 2005). But since contribution-financed pension systems which were instituted during the periods of mostly male breadwinner-oriented societies always contained family components, it is questionable whether family-related benefits are indeed unrelated to insurance. Consequently, I argue that it is the very concept of social insurances which is in a process of redefinition.

As for the third shift and corresponding to this redefinition, social insurances are fragmented and partly marketised. The individual needs for additional but necessary insurances which have gained in importance for old-age income all over Europe (Frericks et al. 2007; OECD 2012) – and apart from pensions this also holds for health, disability, unemployment and so forth – ideally have to be foreseen and insured in market-based schemes (Frericks 2011). The political assumption of ideally planned, foreseen and insured events in one's private and labour-market biography has thereby replaced the former social and collective character of insurance. The market-based schemes follow other logics (in the sense of fees, guarantees, etc.) and information policies (competition, profit-orientation, diversity and confusion) than public systems do (Hills 2004; Barr 2010), and public institutions now rather concentrate on consumer protection including for instance guaranteed nominal value of the investments – i.e., not on social but civil rights. As a side-effect, this transformation of resources shifts parts of the former employer payments to employees and taxpayers (e.g., Riester in Germany, Perps in France, Pip in Italy, and parts of the new systems in Central and East European countries, Frericks et al. 2010). Shifts in resources at the same time reduce the potential capacity of public pensions to manoeuvre and to include ‘solidaristic elements’ (a term put forward by Myles 2002). In addition, and due to cost containment considerations, the guaranteed maintenance of a specific standard of living on the normative pension level – earlier interpreted by Musgrave and Musgrave (1989) in the positive sense of shared added value, i.e., pensioners should profit from economic growth through indexing tied to wage increases – is developing into a solidarity of joint belt-tightening.⁸ The introduction of a cohort adjustment (demographic or rather labour-market dependency ratio) factor in pension calculation in Sweden and Italy is an example of this.

In short, it can be cross-nationally observed that previous aspects of solidarity within and between generations are partially shifting in the direction of self-responsibility. While social rights, and pensions in particular, are a kind of ‘societal property right’ (Musgrave and Musgrave 1989) instituting socialised ownership and needing to be conserved over time (Harvey and Maier 2004; Pension Commission 2005), the shift of resources (and with it, the eligibility for entitlements) towards ‘the extension and growth of stock markets and “liberalized” financial markets’ (Minns 2001: xii) is definitely alarming. Although this shift's extent and exact direction cannot yet be foreseen and might take somewhat less extreme forms and be subject to increasing regulations as a result of the 2001 and current financial crises (Frericks 2010), it is likely to lead to large upheavals both within and across generations as the possibilities for redistributing and implementing solidaristic elements, i.e., the opportunities for democratic manoeuvre to ensure national principles of social welfare, decrease.⁹

In addition to shifts of resources within the pension systems, a range of institutional innovations can be observed. New solidarity forms influence pension calculations. In this way, pension entitlements which derive from care tasks (for child care in particular, and in some countries also for elderly and grandchild care) have been introduced and/or expanded in several countries such as France, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and to a certain extent also in the UK and Italy. The incorporation of these care-related pension-entitling periods differs in form and extent markedly from country to country and is very complex. It is, for example, necessary to make a distinction between offset periods and entitlement periods in the sense of waiting times, as well as between generalised (flat-rate or lump-sum) and income-dependent entitlements, and so forth. Therefore, providing an itemised table on this aspect is challenging (cf. the rather confusing attempt at a list in the Missoc tables, 2011). These entitlements for periods partly spent out of the labour market or at its margins (e.g., part-time employment), however, are for many reasons not only advantageous for the calculation of the final pensions of those concerned, since the calculations are (still) based on assumptions of ideal and full labour-market participation. One might think of a mother, in particular a mother of two children or more, who is released from her ‘duty to participate in the labour market’ in order to care for her children (parental leave): It is highly likely that, for a variety of reasons, her future and lifetime income level will be reduced compared to that of someone who has taken no parental leave. This is particularly due to cumulative institutional effects (Román and Schippers 2005; Frericks et al. 2008). However, although the new solidarity forms have not yet been sufficiently integrated into the overall framework of entitlement formulae and resources (Frericks et al. 2008), they expand the legitimacy of pension benefits corresponding to former social insurance principles and are a proof for institutional change which contradicts retrenchment and solidarity reducing policies.

Also regulations on building up pension entitlements during periods of education are changing in Europe, although they follow somewhat opposing paths: In France for instance, offset periods for study time can be acquired (by purchase) and in Germany, entitlements are increasingly only valid for specific further training programmes run by employers, while in Sweden pension entitlements for periods of study (discontinued in the German system) have recently been introduced (see OECD 2012). In order to make various employment interruptions coverable under pension law, some countries such as Belgium and The Netherlands have developed a life-course savings scheme (Meyer et al. 2007), while others use employment- and company-related savings schemes for employment interruptions (e.g., TRF in Italy, Langzeitkonten in Germany). Pension entitlements, however, are built up by means of wages since the leave is financed in terms of so-called deferred wages (Frericks 2011).

These different forms of generation-internal solidarity measures as well as the new generation-spanning solidarity measures referred to above (‘demographic’ measures within pension institutions) are meant to serve economic and demographic developments to guarantee pensions across generations. They are primarily and increasingly funded by tax money (Eurostat 2011). As such, they enter into public pensions, and not, or hardly, into supplementary pensions. Here, the issue of ‘payments unrelated to insurance’ raised earlier in this paper comes up again. Questions arise about which resources should be used to finance which entitlements, and which solidarity community should still be supported by pension (insurance) entitlements in the future. After reform of tax- and contribution-based public schemes, the mix of pension provision by different schemes will result in considerably changed pension rights. Therefore the definition of contribution- or tax-financed solidarity is of importance for the overall classification of citizens who want or are meant to be more than individual piggy-bank fillers.

Rights not (or not directly) related to employment indicate an esteem of other than labour-market-related activities, which are seen as necessary to the overall sustainability of societies (above all related to fertility rates and care, see for instance EC 2012; Sinn 2000). This broader concept of valuable activities I called ‘activeness’ elsewhere (Frericks 2010) in contrast to both the primarily political and contested concepts of ‘activation’ and of ‘social investment’, which are defined in labour-market and classical economy defined growth terms only. Embedding pension norms and the related benefits into overall societal functioning (covering more than labour-market and financial market functioning) was in addition evaluated as possibly preventing pension savings traps, i.e. non-participation in necessary but voluntary pension schemes (Hinrichs 2005; Frericks 2007).

Alongside the generation-spanning (‘inter-generational’) contract, there are also ‘intra-generational’ contracts serving to concretise solidarity principles within generations, such as certain forms of employee solidarity or the ‘gender contract’ (Sinn 2000; Esping-Andersen 2002; Myles 2002). Interest representatives and power relations play an important role in this process of defining and shaping solidarity measures. In this context, it is noticeable that trade unions in most European countries still primarily represent the interests of male employees and not those of female employees on the same level (Handler 2004; Rein and Anderson 2008). As a recent example one might think of the Life Course Savings Scheme (LCSS) in The Netherlands, which came into force in 2006 (Meyer et al. 2007, currently to be replaced by the ‘Vitality Scheme’ which, however, hardly differs from the LCSS in terms of the present argument). This scheme was intended to make it easier to combine the various requirements of modern life, for example work, further education and childcare, in a more flexible way (the so-called combination scenario), particularly with the intention of levelling care-task, income and pension differences between the life-courses of men and women. In the end however it was the trade unions, of all people, who diverted this legislation in a direction contrary to the original intentions, such that the early retirement scheme, which was threatened with abolition, was revived for the benefit of their preferred clientele. Data show that the majority of participants (men) use the LCSS for early retirement, and less than a quarter (women) for parental leave (Rijksoverheid 2012). These two quite distinct categories of use have severely undermined the expectations as originally formulated.

The interests of the female workforce are represented more effectively by national and supranational players (in particular the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice). Examples of this are improvements in the conditions attached to occupational and/or company pensions which have until now disadvantaged women and their position on the labour market (by imposition of minimum age, minimum contribution years, or minimum income, earlier also through forms of direct discrimination), and supplementary or ‘private’ pensions, calculating gendered pensions or entitlements based on women's different life-expectancy, which were first altered and only recently dismantled (2011), primarily through European judicial decisions. As a consequence, some state-supported ‘private’ or supplementary pension schemes have abolished gender-differentiated pension calculation.

Another intervention that limits the concept of self-responsibility in terms of pensions is the regulation of pension markets. The pension reforms of the past two decades have been characterised by high interest in privatising and financialising¹⁰ parts of the public pensions (Minns 2001; Frericks 2012). This ‘privatisation’ has found its concrete expression in the so-called 3^rd pillar schemes (favoured by national and supranational political actors as well as interest groups such as insurance companies and banks). Individual risk-taking and individual (private) insurance of social risks – termed self-responsibility – are favoured by the pension reforms. However, these mainly financial market-based schemes have penetrated the pension systems with various, mainly negative consequences: administration costs, lack of information, stock-market risks and others (for an overview, see Barr and Diamond 2009). Since the 2001 financial crisis (also earlier and more so later), some of the negative consequences have been subject to political interventions. First and foremost regulations are being introduced to reduce the risks of stock-market investment of pension contributions (e.g., in the Dutch pension funds or by reducing or abolishing market-based schemes in some CEEC, see MISSOC 2011). In short, marketisation of social security is (after corrections) not to be found without new regulations (Frericks 2010).

The tendency highlighted here has to do with the different definitions of solidarity used by different social actors. While in public discourse a mainly neo-liberal development has been observed (with current hangovers) that benefits the highest-income earners (Engelen 2003; Hughes and Steward 2004; Langley 2004; Ervik 2005; Crouch 2011), and trade unions practice male employee solidarity, another movement implements forms of a broader solidarity by regulating market-based social security schemes (Frericks 2010). It is, as shown, European and national legislation and judicial decisions which remain indispensable to bringing about emancipatory pension regulations, thereby advocating equal rights as social rights and acknowledging the collective characteristics of social risks.

In this paper four tendencies of institutional norms were analysed. The first development is observed in the increasing demand for self-responsibility. Policy reforms change the characteristics of social security by increasing the required self-responsibility and institutionalising ever-stricter life-course norms. The second tendency concerns the financial side of the social security institutions and is observed in a shift of social security resources, units and principles towards the individual ‘piggy-bank’ accounts opened at insurance companies (self-responsibility). The third tendency is, however, that institutional reforms introduce new forms of solidarity both within and across generations, disproving the overall assumption of retrenchment policy. Finally, the fourth tendency concerns the interest representation of different solidarity groups. It was shown that interest representations remain relatively constant in the definition of their solidarity group despite social change and life-course developments; therefore, national and supranational legislation and law remain indispensable to the implementation of encompassing solidarity forms.

The developments in the nexus of solidarity and self-responsibility as analysed above allow us to observe a more general tendency, namely that self-responsibility and solidarity are being redefined and newly linked, so that they will ultimately form two sides of the same coin. This interpretation of the tendencies is based on the identification of three threads of developments.

First, solidarity is increasingly located in the guarantee factor, i.e., a certain pension level is guaranteed. This pension level, however, corresponds to newly adapted regulations and indexing. One might think here of pension schemes defining benefits that become Defined Contribution schemes, or of new level-determining factors being developed (such as Notional Defined Contributions, or demographic factors), and, of new public regulations and legislation that will bring welfare markets more into line with the standards of public social security schemes (e.g., gender-neutral calculation, life-long payments).

Second, redistribution possibilities are decreasing because of the shift of public pensions towards private provision and financial markets. Also, resources to cover solidarity-defined pension entitlements are shifting from contributions towards being tax-financed. Among other reasons, this changed state-responsibility in financial terms also explains the central concern of politics to promote an ‘active’ life course (in the sense of ‘activation’). It is insufficient to interpret this as paternalistic or even ‘pedagogical’.¹¹ In pension terms, changes to pension formulae such as the introduction of malus-regulations in forms of, for instance, higher labour-market exit age in order to increase employment ratios of older people – while labour markets still do not offer sufficient work for these older employees – might be better understood as a form of pension retrenchment. It contains, in any case, a financial component which cannot be interpreted as ‘pedagogical’.

Third, solidarity has come to be tied to an ideal fulfilment of the various requirements of self-responsibility. Stricter and more demanding pension norms are a clear sign of this. In addition, life-course savings schemes, the fragmentation and outsourcing of social insurances, the redefinition and individualisation of social rights, the self-responsibility for ‘adequate’ insurance and the necessary investments, and relatedly, the requirement of employability, are examples of the growing number of ever more all-encompassing conditions put on guaranteed solidarity (Frericks 2010). In other words, self-responsibility is being defined as much broader, more active and more norm-oriented, and with that, also further from socio-economic realities. While some speak of a de-standardisation of the institutionalised life-course (e.g., Geißler 2004), I argue that life-course norms and personal responsibilities are, in fact, being much more narrowly defined and constructed. This includes an ideal of lifelong individual participation in the labour market, a well-planned old-age provision invested in the long term, responsible behaviour with regard to health and education including lifelong learning, with potentially the foundation of a family that is ideally incorporated into the life-course, and the ideal planning of foreseen and insured events in one's private and labour-market biography (Frericks 2011). One might argue that this is an ambivalent development: reducing labour-market solidarity and increasing benefits for mainly family-related care tasks. Social security, however, is neither provided for interest groups as a whole (e.g., grasped in dualising concepts of winners and losers in these decennias' reform policies), nor for life-course risks as such. Instead, possibilities are being created to be individually insured against related risks depending on ideal planning and life-courses. Therefore one might speak of a new concept of social citizenship which is, in more numerous and stricter ways, normatively constructed.

This increasing ‘strictness’ is based on the argument of (financial) sustainability: Only if the sustainability of the social system is guaranteed can the necessary conditions for guaranteed solidarity be met. Individual duties and collective duties become indistinct and modify the related rights. Here then, a circle, which one might call the S-circle (see Figure 1), is complete: Only those who comply ideally with the redefined norm of self-responsibility and thus contribute to the necessary sustainability of the system may claim the (reduced) guaranteed solidarity and through that, enjoy social security.

Dr. Patricia Frericks is Assistant Professor in Sociology at Hamburg University. PhD at Utrecht University, Department of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, on resource flows and instituted life courses. Teaching and research at the Universities of Utrecht, Hamburg, Erfurt and London (LSE). Research focus and publications in peer-reviewed journals on institutionalisation of European societies, sociology of institutional change, comparative analysis of welfare states, social citizenship and social inequality. Patricia Frericks has been involved in several European research projects and she currently published, together with Robert Maier, the monograph ‘European capitalist welfare societies: The challenge of sustainability’ with Palgrave Macmillan.