Classical Class Analysis and Assessment of Contemporary EU-Policies - Ontology and Epistemology of Social Policy Debates

Abstract:     
The present paper puts the argument forward that social policy analysis today lost very much its ground of systematically approaching its objective. Rather than analysing the objective relations, processes and their foundation political arguments and discourses are very much developed on moral grounds and remain on the level of studying empirical evidence. In this way they fail to provide both, a sound analysis and the development of strategic thinking for policy development.

After briefly reminding at some issues brought up by classical analysis of class structures and stratification theories, the text goes on by utilising these perspectives for cursorily assessing some trends in major fields of EU social policy debates. Hereby the ground is provided for looking for principal points of tensions in policy analysis and development, not least reminding critical and left approaches to avoid the trap of a kind of left-intellectual populism.

Keywords: History of Economic Thought through 1925, Value of Life, Forgone Income, Public Policy

JEL Classification: B1, J17, J18

working papers series