Syllabus
1. Social policy and its basic framework: Social problems, critical situations in the life of the people.
The individual, the family, the society and other subjects and objects of social policy. The relation to other branches of science 2.
Genesis of European social policy: The development of ideas and development of institutions. The Czech school and its contribution in the period between the wars. 3.
Current social policy: Social reform after 1989. Social doctrine. 5.
Values and ideology: Freedom, (In)equality and social justice as the basic values from which the approach to social policy ensues. 6. Social policy and welfare state. 7.
Crisis of welfare states. Criticism of WS.
Current problems and tendencies in the development of welfare states. Neo-conservativism and social corporatism. 8.
Social policy as practice: Main objectives, functions and principles of social policy.. Instruments of social policy.
Social security as the core of social policy. 9. Re-distribution as the main instrument of social policy: problems of equality and inequality in incomes and richness and question of social justice.
Measurement of income inequalities. Income differentiation in the Czech Republic after 1989. 10.
International organizations and institutions influencing social policy in the Czech Republic. Social policy and the European Union.
Annotation
It is the basic course the objective of which is to make the students acquainted with the history of social policy, with theoretical and ideological conceptions that are applied in the analysis of social policy, with methodology and instruments of social policy. Attention is paid to international context of social policy, especially, to the institutions influencing social policy in Europe and to the place of social policy in European integration processes.