Social rights and citizenship

The present essay aims at offering a foundation of social rights both from a neoliberal perspective and from a more substantive view of citizenship. At the same time, though, it will highlight the difference between the two positions and defend the second one. In the first part, it will discuss Hayek's ideal of Great Society, which represents an avatar of the idea of society that characterizes the liberal tradition. Furthermore, it will present a more substantive view of society as a body politically organized in a State-form and it will show the necessity of policies aiming at inclusion, understood not only in socio-economic sense, but also in a political and civic sense. The main thesis is that guaranteeing social rights is necessary both for a society's stability and for the legitimacy of social institutions.