Non-profit organizations and hybrid solidarity: the French financial aid system between institutionalization and globalization

"The social security systems of Western societies are to a considerable extent supported by third sector organizations. Both within these organizations and in the structure of the overall system itself, hybrid mixtures of two dimensions of solidarity arise: economic and moral (or equivalence and care logic). The differentiation of institutional competences in the welfare state has partly been achieved through different mixing relations between these patterns of solidarity; here, each specific national setting has emerged, within which the mixing relations currently change and at the same time the gravity of the institutions at work. This also applies to health insurance. In France, it is additional cooperatives that are at the heart of current shifting tendencies towards the principle of economic solidarity. For a long time there had been a specific austarization of both patterns of solidarity (cash-specific flat rates, on the one hand, the norm of anti-selection and nonprofit services on the other). Now, however, many coffers have to move on to commercial business practices close to private insurance practices. Meanwhile, their umbrella organizations - knowing that the population has a broad “cultural” support - oppose the regulatory frameworks that drive this privatization of the complementary sector. The implementation of the European insurance directive in French law plays a major role here, which the government has not been able to enforce until now. Despite some adjustments, the system is likely to remain within the traditional framework in the medium term, so that the cultural idiosyncrasies of national social systems seem to fall into a growing tension with current globalization trends. New social conflicts therefore seem preprogramed."(author’s abstract) "Die sozialen Sicherungssysteme westlicher Gesellschaften werden in einem beachtlichem Ausmaß von Organisationen des Dritten Sektors getragen. Sowohl innerhalb dieser Organisationen als auch in der Struktur des Gesamtsystems selbst ergeben sich dabei hybride Mischungen zweier Solidaritätsdimensionen, nämlich einer ökonomischen und einer moralischen (bzw. einer Äquivalenz- und einer Fürsorgelogik). Die Ausdifferenzierung der institutionellen Zuständigkeiten im Sozialstaat hat sich dabei z.T. entlang unterschiedlicher Mischungsverhältnisse zwischen diesen Solidaritätsmustern vollzogen; hier sind je spezifische nationale Settings entstanden, innerhalb derer sich gegenwärtig die Mischungsverhältnisse