A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Responsibility—which once meant the moral duty to help and support others—has come to be equated with an obligation to be self-sufficient. This has guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements conditional on good behavior. Drawing on political theory and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why this re-imagining of personal responsibility is pernicious—and suggests how it might be overcome.
“This important book prompts us to reconsider the role of luck and choice in debates about welfare, and to rethink our mutual responsibilities as citizens.”
—Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice
“A smart and engaging book… Do we so value holding people accountable that we are willing to jeopardize our own welfare for a proper comeuppance?”
—New York Times Book Review
“An important new book… [Mounk] mounts a compelling case that political rhetoric…has shifted over the last half century toward a markedly punitive vision of social welfare.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“A terrific book. The insight at its heart—that the conception of responsibility now at work in much public rhetoric and policy is both punitive and ill-conceived—is very important and should be widely heeded.”
—Jedediah Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene
Building on their previous research, Huber and Stephens show how high wages and generous welfare states are still possible in an age of globalization and trade competition.
In 1997 Eugenics and the Welfare State caused an uproar with international repercussions. This edition contains a new introduction by Broberg and Roll-Hansen, addressing events that occurred following the original publication. The four essays in this book stand as a chilling indictment of mass sterilization practices, not only in Scandinavia but in other European countries and the United States--eugenics practices that remained largely hidden from the public view until recently. Eugenics and the Welfare State also provides an in-depth, critical examination of the history, politics, science, and economics that led to mass sterilization programs in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland; programs put in place for the "betterment of society" and based largely on the "junk science" of eugenics that was popular before the rise of Nazism in Germany. When the results of Broberg's and Roll-Hansen's book were widely publicized in August 1997, the London Observer reported, "Yesterday Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish Minister for Social Policy, issued a belated reaction to the revelations. She said: 'What went on is barbaric and a national disgrace.' She pledged to create a law ensuring that involuntary sterilisation would never again be used in Sweden, and promised compensation to victims." Ultimately, the Swedish government not only apologized to the many thousands who had been sterilized without their knowledge or against their will, but also put in place a program for the payment of reparations to these unfortunate victims.
A searing critique of the “freedom” that America offers to the victims of its imperialist machinations of war and occupation
Meaningless Citizenship traces the costs of America’s long-term military involvement around the world by following the forced displacement of Iraqi families, unveiling how Iraqis are doubly displaced: first by the machinery of American imperialism in their native countries and then through a more pernicious war occurring on U.S. soil—the dismantling of the welfare state.
Revealing the everyday struggles and barriers that texture the lives of Iraqi families recently resettled to the United States, Sally Wesley Bonet draws from four years of deep involvement in the refugee community of Philadelphia. An education scholar, Bonet’s analysis moves beyond the prevalent tendency to collapse schooling into education. Focusing beyond the public school to other critical institutions, such as public assistance, resettlement programs, and healthcare, she shows how encounters with institutions of the state are an inherently educative process for both refugee youths and adults, teaching about the types of citizenship they are expected to enact and embody while simultaneously shaping them into laboring subjects in service of capitalism.
An intimate, in-depth ethnography, Meaningless Citizenship exposes how the veneer of American values—freedom, democracy, human rights—exported to countries like Iraq, disintegrates to uncover what is really beneath: a nation-state that prioritizes the needs of capitalism above the survival and wellbeing of its citizens.
Szalay situates his study within a liberal culture bent on security, a culture galvanized by its imagined need for private and public insurance.
Taking up prominent exponents of social and economic security—such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, and John Dewey—Szalay demonstrates how the New Deal’s revision of free-market culture required rethinking the political function of aesthetics. Focusing in particular on the modernist fascination with the relation between form and audience, Szalay offers innovative accounts of Busby Berkeley, Jack London, James M. Cain, Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, Betty Smith, and Gertrude Stein, as well as extended analyses of the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Richard Wright.
Women workers and the revolutionary origins of the modern welfare state
In May 1790, the French National Assembly created spinning workshops (ateliers de filature) for thousands of unemployed women in Paris. These ateliers disclose new aspects of the process which transformed Old Regime charity into revolutionary welfare initiatives characterized by secularization, centralization, and entitlements based on citizenship. This study is the first to examine women and the welfare state in its formative period at a time when modern concepts of human rights were elaborated.
In The Origins of the Welfare State, Lisa DiCaprio reveals how the women working in the ateliers, municipal welfare officials, and the national government vied to define the meaning of revolutionary welfare throughout the Revolution. Presenting demands for improved wages and working conditions to a wide array of revolutionary officials, the women workers exercised their rights as "passive citizens" capaciously and shaped the meanings of work, welfare, and citizenship. Looking backward to the Old Regime and forward to the nineteenth century, this study explores the interventionist spirit that characterized liberalism in the eighteenth century and serves as a bridge to the history of entitlements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In this highly original and persuasive work, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions, arguing that, rather than being an early progressive victory, workers' compensation succeeded because all relevant parties—labor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislators—benefited from the legislation. Thorough, rigorous, and convincing, A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation is a major reappraisal of the causes and consequences of a movement that ultimately transformed the nature of social insurance and the American workplace.
Probable Justice traces a history of social insurance from the eighteenth century to today, from the earliest ideas of social accountability through the advanced welfare state of collective responsibility and risk. At the heart of Rachel Z. Friedman’s investigation is a study of how probability theory allows social insurance systems to flexibly measure risk and distribute coverage. The political genius of social insurance, Friedman shows, is that it allows for various accommodations of needs, risks, financing, and political aims—and thereby promotes security and fairness for citizens of liberal democracies.
The Covid-19 pandemic has tragically exposed how today’s welfare state cannot properly protect its citizens. Despite the valiant efforts of public sector workers, from under-resourced hospitals to a shortage of housing and affordable social care, the pandemic has tragically shown how decades of neglect has caused hundreds to die. In this bold new book, leading policy analyst Ursula Huws shows how we can create a welfare state that is fair, affordable, and offers security for all.
Huws focuses on some of the key issues of our time – the gig economy, universal, free healthcare, and social care, to criticize the current state of welfare provision. Drawing on a lifetime of research on these topics, she clearly explains why we need to radically rethink how it could change. With positivity and rigor, she proposes new and original policy ideas, including critical discussions of Universal Basic Income and new legislation for universal workers' rights.
She also outlines a 'digital welfare state' for the 21st century. This would involve a repurposing of online platform technologies under public control to modernize and expand public services, and improve accessibility.
The Repoliticization of the Welfare State grapples with the evolving nature of political conflict over social spending after the Great Recession. While the severity of the economic crisis encouraged strong social spending responses to protect millions of individuals, governments have faced growing pressure to reduce budgets and make deep cuts to the welfare state. Whereas conservative parties have embraced fiscal discipline and welfare state cuts, left-wing parties have turned away from austerity in favor of higher social spending. These political differences represent a return of traditional left-right beliefs over social spending and economic governance.
This book is one of the first to systematically compare welfare state politics before and after the Great Recession, arguing that a new and lasting post-crisis dynamic has emerged where political parties once again matter for social spending. At the heart of this repoliticization are intense ideological debates over market regulation, social inequality, redistribution, and the role of the state. The book analyzes social spending dynamics for 28 countries before and after the crisis. It also includes in-depth country case studies representing five distinct welfare state types: Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, and the Czech Republic.
In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neo-liberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjørn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare.
Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neo-liberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top-down control.
As well as being a fascinating study in its own right that will appeal to students of economics and politics, The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State also points to an alternative way forward for the trade union movement based on concrete examples of struggles and alliance-building.
Horne explains how Musée founders believed—and convinced others to believe—that the Third Republic would carry out the social mission of the French Revolution and create a new social contract for modern France, one based on the rights of citizenship and that assumed collective responsibility for the victims of social change. Challenging the persistent notion of the Third Republic as the stagnant backwater of European social reform, Horne instead depicts the intellectually sophisticated and progressive political culture of a generation that laid the groundwork for the rise of a hybrid welfare system, characterized by a partnership between private agencies and government. With a focus on the cultural origins of turn-of-the-century thought—including religion, republicanism, liberalism, solidarism, and early sociology—A Social Laboratory for Modern France demonstrates how French reformers grappled with social problems that are still of the utmost relevance today and how they initiated a process that gave the welfare state the task of achieving social cohesion within an industrializing republic.
Will immigration undermine the welfare state? Trust beyond Borders draws on public opinion data and case studies of Germany, Sweden, and the United States to document the influence of immigration and diversity on trust, reciprocity, and public support for welfare programs. Markus M. L. Crepaz demonstrates that we are, at least in some cases, capable of trusting beyond borders: of expressing faith in our fellow humans and extending help without regard for political classifications.
In Europe, the welfare state developed under conditions of relative homogeneity that fostered high levels of trust among citizens, while in America anxiety about immigration and diversity predated the emergence of a social safety net. Looking at our new era of global migration, Crepaz traces the renewed debate about "us" versus "them" on both sides of the Atlantic and asks how it will affect the public commitment to social welfare. Drawing on the literatures on immigration, identity, social trust, and the welfare state, Trust beyond Borders presents a novel analysis of immigration's challenge to the welfare state and a persuasive exploration of the policies that may yet preserve it.
"Crepaz contributes much to our knowledge about the link between immigration and social welfare, certainly one of the central issues in current national and international politics."
---Stuart Soroka, Associate Professor of Political Science and William Dawson Scholar, McGill University
"Finally! A book that challenges the growing view that ethnic diversity is the enemy of social solidarity. It addresses an issue of intense debate in Western nations; it takes dead aim at the theoretical issues at the center of the controversy; it deploys an impressive array of empirical evidence; and its conclusions represent a powerful corrective to the current drift of opinion. Trust beyond Borders will rank among the very best books in the field."
---Keith Banting, Queen's Research Chair in Public Policy, Queen's University
"Do mass immigration and ethnic diversity threaten popular support for the welfare state? Trust beyond Borders answers no. Marshaling an impressive array of comparative opinion data, Crepaz shows that countries with high levels of social trust and universal welfare state arrangements can avoid the development of the welfare chauvinism that typically accompanies diversity."
---Gary Freeman, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin
Markus M. L. Crepaz is Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS).
The Welfare State and Beyond was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The welfare state emerged in a number of industrialized countries after the First World War as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism. The aim of architects of the welfare state was to abolish the injustices and hardships that accompanied capitalism and to do so without wholesale social or economic revolution. Establishment of the welfare state created something close to euphoria among many observers; it was, it seemed, the answer to many, if not all, troubling social questions. But it eventually became obvious that this type of society was not immune to problems.
In The Welfare State and Beyond Gunnar Heckscher examines four Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—not to either criticize or defend the welfare state but to shed some light on a number of questions: Has the welfare state achieved what it attempted? Are the results generally held to be satisfactory? What important problems remain unsolved and what types of solutions have been proposed? Although Heckscher has been associated with the Conservative party in Sweden, his objective, clear-eyed analysis cites both the accomplishments of the welfare state and the troubling problems that still await resolution.
This volume presents ten essays that examine Sweden's economic problems from a U.S. perspective. Exploring such diverse topics as income equalization and efficiency, welfare and tax policy, wage determination and unemployment, and international competitiveness and growth, they consider how Sweden's welfare state succeeded in eliminating poverty and became a role model for other countries. They then reflect on Sweden's past economic problems, such as the increase in government spending and the fall in industrial productivity, warning of problems to come. Finally they review the consequences of the collapse of Sweden's economy in the early 1990s, exploring the implications of its efforts to reform its welfare state and reestablish a healthy economy.
This volume will be of interest to policymakers and analysts, social scientists, and economists interested in welfare states.
Drawing on extensive research in Argentine archives, Guy reveals significant continuities in Argentine history, including the rise of a liberal state that subsidized all kinds of women’s and religious groups. State and private welfare efforts became more organized in the 1930s and reached a pinnacle under Juan Perón, when men took over the welfare state and philanthropic and feminist women’s influence on child-welfare activities and policy declined. Comparing the rise of Argentina’s welfare state with the development of others around the world, Guy considers both why women’s child-welfare initiatives have not received more attention in historical accounts and whether the welfare state emerges from the top down or from the bottom up.
Work and the Welfare State places street-level organizations at the analytic center of welfare-state politics, policy, and management. This volume offers a critical examination of efforts to change the welfare state to a workfare state by looking at on-the-ground issues in six countries: the US, UK, Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
An international group of scholars contribute organizational studies that shed new light on old debates about policies of workfare and activation. Peeling back the political rhetoric and technical policy jargon, these studies investigate what really goes on in the name of workfare and activation policies and what that means for the poor, unemployed, and marginalized populations subject to these policies. By adopting a street-level approach to welfare state research, Work and the Welfare State reveals the critical, yet largely hidden, role of governance and management reforms in the evolution of the global workfare project. It shows how these reforms have altered organizational arrangements and practices to emphasize workfare’s harsher regulatory features and undermine its potentially enabling ones.
As a major contribution to expanding the conceptualization of how organizations matter to policy and political transformation, this book will be of special interest to all public management and public policy scholars and students.
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