Social Rights and Their Realization – the Saga of Croatian Pensioners

U raspravama o socijalnim pravima naglasak se više stavlja na zakonska prava negoli na njihovu realizaciju u praksi, jer se smatra da propisana prava administracija automatski provodi. Autor – na primjenu umirovljeničkih prava – dokazuje da taj automatizam u Hrvatskoj ne funkcionira, jer za to nedostaju neki bitni uvjeti. Faktično suspendiranje jednog bitnog prava umirovljenika promatra socio-dinamički: razmatra ponašanja i motivacije sukobljenih strana (vlada i umirovljenici) kao i „treće stran“ (Ustavni sud, Sabor, političke stranke, sindikati, masovni mediji) te pokušava utvrditi glavne faktore (ekonomski, politički, socio-kulturni), njihovu uzajamnu povezanost i ulogu u ponašanju aktera.Starting from the assumption that rights and the realization of rights are two separate issues, not only in the domain of political but also in the domain of social rights, the author first establishes conditions for the realization of (any) rights. This are: „strict regime“ of the legal protection of rights and the professional expertness and commitment of the administration. The insufficiency of these conditions in Croatia leads to the general assumption that there is an actual suspension of specific social rights by executive autority. To illustrate this, the author has chosen the suspension of pensioners\u27 rights, particularly the ones which specify that pensions should be linked to increases in salaries, which has caused pensions to fall behind and has consequently worsened the pensioners\u27 socio-economic standing from the time of the economic stabilization (October 1993). The main issues are analyses of the behaviour and motivaiton of all the parties who take part in this social drama, either as directly interested parties, or as a „third party“. Also, there is the role and correlation of key factors, namely economic, political, social and cultural. The main conslusions of this study are the followind: (1) economic factors have prepared a scene but they have failed to distribute the roles on the scene; (2) the roles have been distributed by political factors, in the first place there is the government\u27s priority scale and the perception of the social power (powerlessness) of the pensioners and an estimate of their response (or the absence of it). These factors are connected to the whole range of other variables (inherited political culture, the level of organization and leadership of pensioners\u27 accociations, social and psychological variables); (3) social and cultural factors (ageism, stereotyping the elderly, stigmatizing and labeling) have been playing a supportive role: they anaesthetized the third party, in other words, they created a consensus among working-age population that transferring the biggest burden of stabilization onto pensioners is socially self-explanatory