The Crisis of the Contemporary Welfare State amid Globalization

The purpose of this work is to study the conditions, causes and directions of transformation of the welfare state in the context of the crisis of normative legitimacy caused by changes in global and national political and economic contexts. The main research method is the discourse analysis, which allowed to identify normative and conceptual shifts in the interpretation of the categories of justice, solidarity and responsibility. Auxiliary methods include hermeneutic analysis of philosophical and political science concepts, as well as elements of a retrospective approach to identify the evolution of the idea of a welfare state from the classical universalist model to modern fragmented and algorithmically mediated forms of social policy. The paper reveals the institutional and regulatory restructuring of the welfare state under the influence of the processes of digitalization, managerial rationalization and cultural fragmentation. The conclusion is drawn that the modern welfare state is losing the former universalist foundations of legitimation and is shifting to hybrid models of redistribution and interaction with citizens. The authors emphasize the need to develop multi-level, "global" social policy strategies capable of combining global standards and local practices to preserve social justice and strengthen institutional legitimacy. The theoretical significance of the work consists in clarifying the parameters of the crisis of the normative legitimacy of the welfare state and rethinking its conceptual foundations. The practical significance lies in the possibility of applying the results in the development of models of "post-social" public policy, taking into account the current challenges of the digital age and global interdependence.