abstract: 'Beyond the insidious and morally contemptible personality of the

  authoritarian political leaders that have emerged in the last decade,

  the political ``supply{''''} of populism responds to a real ``demand{''''}

  for popular policies that exists in advanced societies. This demands a

  rebalancing of economic policies in favour of the working classes, the

  middle classes and the social groups that have not benefited from the

  economic growth of the last decades.

  This social demand responds to an objective cause: the increase in

  inequalities and economic insecurity. Coinciding with the neoliberal

  shift in social and economic policies that accompanied the shift to

  conservatism in the late 1970s and with the hyper-globalization and the

  change of skin that global corporate capitalism experienced from the

  1990s onward, large groups of middle classes in developed countries saw

  their jobs, their welfare, their opportunities, and the lifestyles of

  the communities in which they lived disappear or deteriorate. The

  Covid-19 pandemic has only accentuated these inequalities.

  This malaise with inequality and economic insecurity is fertile ground

  for political polarization and authoritarian political populism. In this

  sense, inequality and economic insecurity have acted as a powerful

  solvent of the glue that every liberal society needs to function

  harmoniously, to make the market economy inclusive, and to prevent

  democracy from falling into the chaos of authoritarian populism.

  The challenge now is to rebuild that glue, as it was done after the

  Great Depression of the 1930s and World War 11. This essay argues,

  first, that this glue must come from a new post-pandemic social

  contract. Secondly, that the core of that new social contract is in the

  reform of the enterprise to correct the misallocation of surplus (value

  added) between wages, top management salaries and dividends.

  The correction of this malfunctioning distribution requires

  investigating its causes. Here it is argued that there are two. On the

  one hand, the bias that capitalism acquired from the eighties in benefit

  of shareholders and to the detriment of workers, suppliers, customers

  and communities. On the other hand, that corporate concentration and the

  market power acquired by large corporations has led to stagnation of

  real wages and the precarization of employment.

  The malfunctioning of distribution is not, however, the only source of

  inequality and economic insecurity. They also come from the

  malfunctioning of pre-distribution. To the extent that technological

  change has opened a gap between the capabilities and skills of the

  population and the professional profiles needed by companies, this gap

  brings about inequality of income and employment opportunities. On the

  other hand, the redistributive mechanisms of the Welfare State, both

  taxes and social programs, have seen their capacity to correct the

  inequality produced by the economy reduced.

  To respond to this inequality and economic insecurity, the political

  offer of new social contracts is wide and varied: the neoliberal, the

  extreme right, the extreme left and the radical progressive. All try to

  respond to the problem of distribution, but they do so through different

  paths, depending on whether they emphasize pre-distribution,

  redistribution, or distribution. The historical experience of the 1930s

  teaches us that not everyone is well reconciled with the future.

  A new progressive social contract must be based on the recovery of the

  fundamental role of the third pillar of prosperity: the Social Economy.

  Its abandonment in recent decades in favour of the market and the State

  is one of the causes of the inability of market economies to generate

  good jobs now.'
affiliation: 'Costas, A (Corresponding Author), Univ Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.

  Costas, Anton, Univ Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.'
author: Costas, Anton
author-email: acostas@ub.edu
author_list:
- family: Costas
  given: Anton
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.7203/CIRIEC-E.100.18715
eissn: 1989-6816
files: []
issn: 0213-8093
journal: CIRIEC-ESPANA REVISTA DE ECONOMIA PUBLICA SOCIAL Y COOPERATIVA
keywords: Social contract; progress; democracy; Social Economy; pandemic
language: Spanish
month: NOV
number-of-cited-references: '15'
pages: 11-29
papis_id: 1a5fa39d9a605b09bf156d650042531b
ref: Costas2020newpostpandemic
times-cited: '2'
title: A new post-pandemic social contract. The role of the Social Economy
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000595937600001
usage-count-last-180-days: '1'
usage-count-since-2013: '15'
volume: '100'
web-of-science-categories: Economics
year: '2020'