The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights are discursive, the relative power of various clientele interests plays a greater role in the distribution of benefits than objective conditions of need. Also, such notions as universality and solidarity are giving way to selectivity and individual responsibility as the paramount principles of the welfare state.