Welfare state v konstruktivistické perspektivě: východiska výzkumu
The Welfare State in a Constructivist Perspective: Research Points of Departure

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the constructivist perspective on the study of welfare state. The aim is to promote programmatic conceptualization of welfare state research from this standpoint because this perspective is almost missing in the Czech political science. Firstly, the authors contextualize the constructivist perspective in the tradition of social sciences thinking about ontology and epistemology and the relations between these two important methodological levels. Concerning the methodological issue, they also present their own research position based on the new institutionalism (especially sociological and discursive institutionalism). Secondly, they focus on their own research of the welfare state from this point of view arguing that instead of one welfare state there are as many different welfare states as there is the number of different approaches to it. Thereafter they address the issue of the relation between social sciences (expertise) v. politics. They argue that there is generally only one kind of social sciences (expertise) demanded by political actors (politics) and there are only limited ways of politics accepting presented scientific (expert) proposals depending rather on normative than cognitive frames. The authors conclude with prospects of further research in this field.

• Details
• Contents