The paper will analyze the phenomenon of ''shared social responsibility'' as being indicative of a trend that Richard Sennett has described in terms of a simultaneous increase of the state’s bureaucratic power and a decrease in its authority. On this basis, I will advance the hypothesis that we have entered a fourth sequential constellation in the pattern of state-society relations, after those characteristic of (1) entrepreneurial 19th-century capitalism, (2) the “organized” capitalism of the post-WWII welfare state, and (3) the neoliberal capitalism of the late 20th century. The new, fourth constellation is marked by a particular repartitioning of the political responsibility for the social consequences of welfare-state reform which this paper will address in detail.
