The text presents a synthesis of the international debate on the pertinence of a State with a strong intervention profile centralized on universal social policies or the need of flowing to decentralizing formulas, aimed at the selective protection of the underprivileged. It argues for a re-hierarchization of the "social issue" through a relational model of social management. In this context, it evaluates the gains and limitations of the social policies of socialist transition, in Cuba, as well as the effects of the crisis and reform of the nineties on the Cuban society, in the increment of the inequality and of the poverty, generating a reestratification and a larger social complexity. It concludes that such scenario demands changes in public intervention, aimed at: the economical sustainability of the social policy; the substitution of the egalitarian conception for a perspective that recognizes the diversity of needs, according to different groups and individuals; the modification of the strategic priorities of the social expense in favor of the satisfactions in the household-individual-family sphere; the emphasis in the endogenous local development and in the local actors in decision making; and the enlargement of the contents and limits of the participation in the construction of the social agenda, prioritizing co-management elements, strategic formulation and popular control of the process and of its results.
social policies; management of the social development; relational management; social reestratification; Cuba
