THE GERMAN WELFARE-STATE - PRINCIPLES, PERFORMANCES, PROSPECTS

Against the background of the current debate on the crisis and reorgan ization of the welfare state the article shows that its historically d eveloped institutional arrangement on the one side and its structure o f actors oriented towards consensus on the other side made the welfare state's way of functioning appear to be a ''fourth factor of producti on''. Secondly the paper discusses the consequences of the economic pr ocesses of globalization, German Unification in 1990 and European inte gration for employment in Germany. Because of its principles of organi zation the continuous ''crisis of employment'' turns out to be the cru cial reason for the crisis of the German welfare state. Thus in a thir d step the author discusses two fundamentally opposed political strate gies for the reorganisation of the German regimes of distribution and securing: the reestablishment of full employment or the decoupling of a claim to income and gainful employment. As the first option does not seem to be very realistic, the author argues for a gradual strategy t o realize the second alternative.