Whither Georgian social policy?

An article in 'Social Policy and Society' (October 2007) on the connection between Turkey's EU ambitions and its social policy developments makes me wonder where Georgia's social policy thinks it is heading?

The article by Nick Manning, of the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, uses fairly old data to make his points - eg in the case of Eastern Europe he uses GDP data up to 2000, or he quotes from papers which see the 2004 accession as still in the future. Things move too fast out East to use such old data credibly.

But anyway. We lucky European citizens have, under EU law, entitlement to education, healthcare and insurance against life-time risks, mostly free (in the case of pre-university education) or covered by insurances one way or another (health care and lifetime risks like old age, unemployment etc), more or less generously. Countries like Spain have used the accession to the EU to push through increasingly generous welfare entitlements (though it has had to rein back its expenditure a little). In Eastern Europe where welfare entitlements were good under the Soviets, the pressure of the World Bank, who got at them first, lead to a severe dismantling of the welfare state, though the countries are now recovering (I'm told that in Lithuania women giving birth now get their full salary for the first year of the baby's life, and 80% for the second year). In Turkey such systems did not exist.

Manning quotes from another paper by Öniç that suggests that while within Turkey there is half-hearted support by the elite for EU membership, this applies less to the European elite outside Turkey nor to the mass society either within or outside Turkey. This fractional support then clearly makes it hard for anyone to push through changes relating to social protection, or other EU required changes. Since the article was researched I think that social protection has developed in leaps and bounds in Turkey, judging by what I have read in the media.

Georgia, a Christian country (I don't think that matters, but other people do), has huge ambitions to join the EU, with an EU flag outside every public building. This ambition was a bit shaken up by the events of November 7 last year, though now it seems to be motoring in the right direction, maybe? (Though my friend Wu Wei's report links to a paper that suggests that all was not well with the election process, despite what OSCE may have said publicly. And if you think that Saakashvili did not win in the large cities - which perhaps were more accessible to observers, but won in the snowbound and partly inaccessible countryside .....).

The problem with Georgia is that all those young blades who are in Government these days studied in the US. Hence they have the US approach to social policy, whereby everyone should take care of their own health and wealth. Hospitals are being privatised, they are talking of deregulating doctors...ok, they have promised to increase pensions, but that's due to the election. Social solidarity probably exists with the older people, but no-one has time to do something about this because they are all scrambling to survive.

Now, call me picky, but I don't think Georgia (republic of) could become the 51st state, especially if the others already contain a state called Georgia. But joining Europe, with this social policy outlook? It's time the EU put the boot in!