1994 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study on the Basis and Boundaries of State Intervention in the Modem Welfare State
| Project/Area Number |
05620020
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Public law
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
OSUKA Akira Waseda University, School of Law, Professor, 法学部, 教授 (80063593)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NISHIHARA Hiroshi Waseda University, School of Social Sciences, Associate Professor, 社会科学部, 助教授 (10218183)
IMASEKI Motonari Waseda University, School of Law, Associate Professor, 法学部, 教授 (90147942)
GOTO Mitsuo Waseda University, School of Social Sciences, Professor, 社会科学部, 教授 (70170470)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1993 – 1994
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| Keywords | Social State / Welfare State / Human Rights / Constitutionalism / Democracy |
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| Research Abstract |
This study aims at setting up criteria with which we can distinguish legitimate state activities from illegitimate ones. In achieving this goal, we looked the main characteristic of the modern state in its feature as a social state, welfare state. The contemporary state intervenes always in the life its citizens, so as to guarantee the fundamental conditions of human liberties and to adjust the conflict of interests. What kind of activities are inhibited to the state, allowed to the state and obliged to the state?
The social state shows ambivalence if seen from the constitutional point of view. On the hand, the social state supplies the people with many kinds of infrastructure through its administrative activities, and provide economically weak people with important safeguards in fulfillling the idea of social justice. In such feature, the social state has a meaning definitively positive for the freedom and human dignity of the citizens. On the other hand, the providing administration tends to concentrate great power to the administrative sector. In such a tendency, the state exploits the dependence of the citizens on the administrative provision as means to establish its ruling position against the citizen. There are a lot of possibilities of invading personal freedom. Therefore we always have to be aware of both negative and positive meanings of social state for the human liberty. In doing so, it is important to set up democratic and constitutional boundaries against the social state.
Especially, in order to avoid the administrative dictatorship, the necessity of democratic control over the administrative activities must always be emphasized. Furthermore, in avoiding that the social state concentrates a variety of benefits on the democratic majority, in victimizing the interests of minorities, it is inevitable for the legitimacy of the social state that the constitutional control functions from the liberal point of view.
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