Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Citizenship and Social Welfare in Croatia: Clientelism and the limits of 'Europeanisation'
Paul Stubbs and Sinia Zrinak
Edinburgh June 2013
Emphasis on hybridity, heterogeneity, fluidity, instability and unfinished nature of both citizenship and welfare rarely coherent and unitary regimes Conjunctural analysis /thick contextualisation open to the play of contingency Europeanisation (de-/re-)constructs subjectivities, identities and policy domains No necessary correspondence between legal regulations and lived practices importance of talking back Citizenship and welfare framed by relationality and multiscalarity
Political science: clientelism as patronage and exchange Linked to capture of state, public administration, judiciary, mass media, etc., even within formally democratic systems Particularistic governance Exclusivist citizenship Asymmetrical (re-)distribution Kitschelt and Wilkinson: contingent; direct; viable; predictable; compliance; monitoring; enforcement Clientelism within welfare assemblages Southern European and post-communist models
Tuman HDZ: authoritarian nationalism and charismatic clientelism state subsidies; public sector jobs; privatisation proceeds Sanader HDZ: modernising, Europeanising and/or rescaling clientelism? Origins in political capitalism (upanov) Sub-national clientelisms: cities, regions, minority parties Enrolment of diaspora and Bosnian Croats Importance of veterans associations
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Thesis of social welfare and radical break too simplistic Centres for Social Work rationing in war conditions: categorical (displaced refugees), symbolic (deserving/ undeserving) and instrumental-particularistic (veze) Bosnian Croats: dual citizenship/residence allows access to welfare benefits and services; Cro budget spending on Cantonal health and education programmes Croatian Serbs: slow removal of de jure obstacles to welfare benefits; de facto obstacles remain; little or no recognition of fluidity of return and settlement
War veterans: symbolic category (0.5 m. on register); partially hidden in constructed categories of benefit recipients Passive, compensational approach not geared to reintegration of ex-combatants Evidence: 2013: new Govt 8,689 pupil-student scholarships cost 5.4m (avge 620); 2012: War pensions (HV) 70,579 beneficiaries (avge 700); 2011: 12,000 disability pensions per 100,000 pop; 138,962/328,018 war-related; 2010: 51.7% of social protection expenditure on sickness/healthcare and disability
Does the concept of clientelism help or hinder analysis Problems of statistics/data/evidence hidden as a result of the same processes Relationship between welfare clientelism and residual/ neo-liberal approaches to social policy not clear Role of international actors: EU, World Bank and relationship to economic and financial crisis/austerity/ new European periphery needs more exploration Importance of wider regional/post-Yu context
pstubbs@eizg.hr sinisa.zrinscak@zg.t-com.hr