Princíp aktivácie v sociálnej politike a jeho vzt'ah k zmierñovaniu chudoby a sociálneho vylúčenia.

The paper focuses on activation bias of current social policies and its relation to alleviation of poverty and social exclusion. Activation is viewed as a policy paradigm that changes relationship between the welfare state and individuals. Author distinguishes between narrow and broader understandings of the activation approach. In the broader sense, the activation aims at raising opportunities to fully-fledged social participation in all domains of society. In the narrow sense, the activation is only related to labour market participation and decreasing of unemployment. Author analyses three forms of activation that are important in order to reduce poverty and social exclusion: workfare strategies embodied in the social assistance systems, changes of key parameters of tax-benefit systems, and last but not least active labour market policies. Author pays attention to their potential to activate poor people and their consequences both for target groups and social policy. The focus is also on political discourses and assumptions which determine implementation of these programmes. Finally, the paper deals with activation potential of Slovak social policy and suggests some principles how to evaluate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]