Abstract

Drawing from the classical streams of the literature on social rights, the Marshallian and the Polanyan one, and taking insights from the Weberian understanding of rights as resources of power, this article engages with the ongoing debate on European social citizenship. The contribution is twofold. Firstly, the article provides an original analytical framework to unbundle the notion of social right into its internal components. Notably, we identify three sets of individual power resources (normative, instrumental and enforcement) that rights confer to citizens. In so doing, our conception allows to move beyond the view according to which the litmus test for the existence of a right is its justiciability and casts light on the importance of resources which may facilitate the delivery and enable individuals to access benefits. Secondly, our analytical framework lends itself to better grasp the role played by the European Union and the interactions between multiple tiers in the provision of social rights to citizens within its multi-level governance setting. Further, through an in-depth case study of a recent European initiative, the Youth Guarantee, the article provides a first empirical corroboration of our analytical framework.