General conclusions

• Author: Rodolfo Gutiérrez Silva
• Profession: PhD (Candidate) in Law, University of Hamburg, Germany
• Pages: 125-130

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General conclusions

RODOLFO GUTÉRREZ SLVA

T

he objective of this research was to evaluate the dierent challenges and op-

portunities that states have in the protection of the right to health while main-

taining at the same time a fair balanced system of checks and balances. e study

was intended to uncover in what type of contexts judicial activism could make a

substantial contribution to the protection of the right to health.

e cases studied show us several elements that when combined and compared were

able to reveal a picture of dierent structural patterns aecting the protection of the

right to health and the role that courts have in protecting it. To begin with, from the

perspective of Social Policy it can be seen that there is a dynamic tendency originated

by dierent forces to move the welfare systems of the studied countries very slowly

towards the cluster of the liberal welfare state. According to Esping-Andersen (1990,

p. 27) the liberal welfare state is a cluster where “e state encourages the market,

either passively - by guaranteeing only the minimum - or actively by subsidising pri-

vate welfare schemes” and its main characteristic is the minimising of benets granted

by the state and social exclusion that is based on stigma. Indeed, already well-known

factors such as the economic and migratory crisis have forced countries such as Spain

and Italy to make cuts and impose limitations in their health systems characterised

by Beveridge’s universalist elements and in this way to rethink who can be a bene-

ciary or a right holder in their welfare systems. What is interesting in the analysis is

that these measures are being adopted by new populist governments, either from the

extreme right or the left, which are reacting to a series of structural dysfunctions that

are occurring at this stage of globalisation.

e austerity measures in Italy, adopted earlier, did little to lift the country out of

the economic growth crisis. Poverty, migrational crisis and distrust with the previ-

ous government led to several opposition groups coming together to confront the

government, promising to get out of the crisis. In this way, a new far-right populist

government was consolidated, which has proposed carrying out an entire immigration

reform in the country, a factor that they consider is seriously aecting the welfare