Results by title

37 books match the query 'Welfare state'

cover of A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation

A Prelude to the Welfare State

The Origins of Workers' Compensation

Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor

University of Chicago Press, 2000

Workers' compensation was arguably the first widespread social insurance program in the United States and the most successful form of labor legislation to emerge from the early Progressive Movement. Adopted in most states between 1910 and 1920, workers' compensation laws have been paving seen as the way for social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and eventually the broad network of social welfare programs we have today.

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.
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cover of A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State

A Social Laboratory for Modern France

The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State

Janet R. Horne

Duke University Press, 2001

As a nineteenth-century think tank that sought answers to France’s pressing “social question,” the Musée Social reached across political lines to forge a reformist alliance founded on an optimistic faith in social science. In A Social Laboratory for Modern France Janet R. Horne presents the story of this institution, offering a nuanced explanation of how, despite centuries of deep ideological division, the French came to agree on the basic premises of their welfare state.
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.
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cover of Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies

Balance of Power

Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies

Éric Monnet

University of Chicago Press, 2024

Central banks now stand between societies and collapse, but are they still democratic?

Two decades of financial crises have dramatically expanded central banks’ powers. In 2008, and then again in 2020, unelected banking officials found themselves suddenly responsible for the public welfare—not just because it was necessary but based on an idea that their independence from political systems would insulate them from the whims of populism. Now, as international crises continue and the scope of monetary interventions grows in response, these bankers have become increasingly powerful.

In Balance of Power, economist and historian Éric Monnet charts the rise of central banks as the nominally independent—but unavoidably political—superpowers of modern societies. This trajectory, Monnet argues, is neither inevitable nor unstoppable. By embracing the political natures of today’s central banks, we can construct systems of accountability for how they interact with states and societies. Monnet shows that this effort will do more than guard against unjust power; it will put the banks to work for greater, more democratic ends.

With existential challenges looming and the work of the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank more important than ever, Balance of Power offers a trenchant case for what this century’s central banks can—and must—become.
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cover of Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom

Basic Income

The Material Conditions of Freedom

Daniel Raventos

Pluto Press, 2007

Basic Income is a policy idea that could help us revolutionize the way we organize society. This book is the first proper guide to basic income-what it is, how we can organize it, and how it can benefit everyone,rich and poor alike.
Basic Income is simply the idea that everyone has a right to a minimal income. This is paid by the state out of taxation. Set at a subsistence level, it would take the place of unemployment and other benefits. This would bring profound social changes. Anyone could opt out of employment at any time. Those with few skills would no longer be forced to take up jobs with poor prospects, and employers offering McJobs would be compelled to offer better terms. And money wasted by the state in means testing and tracing benefit fraud is saved.
The campaign in favor of basic income is growing and governments are beginning to take notice. The is a clear,concise guide to the principles and practicalities of this revolutionaty idea.
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cover of Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare

Citizens and Paupers

Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare

Chad Alan Goldberg

University of Chicago Press, 2008

There was a time when America’s poor faced a stark choice between access to social welfare and full civil rights—a predicament that forced them to forfeit their citizenship in exchange for economic relief. Over time, however, our welfare system improved dramatically. But as Chad Alan Goldberg here demonstrates, its legacy of disenfranchisement persisted. Indeed, from Reconstruction onward, welfare policies have remained a flashpoint for recurring struggles over the boundaries of citizenship.

Citizens and Paupers explores this contentious history by analyzing and comparing three major programs: the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Works Progress Administration, and the present-day system of workfare that arose in the 1990s. Each of these overhauls of the welfare state created new groups of clients, new policies for aiding them, and new disputes over citizenship—conflicts that were entangled in racial politics and of urgent concern for social activists.

This combustible mix of racial tension and social reform continues to influence how we think about welfare, and Citizens and Paupers is an invaluable analysis of the roots of the debate.
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cover of Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neomarxist, Postmarxist

Critical Theories of the State

Marxist, Neomarxist, Postmarxist

Clyde W. Barrow

University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

Critical Theories of the State is a clear and accessible survey of radical perspectives on the modern state.  By focusing on Marxist theory and its variations, particularly as applied to advanced industrial societies and contemporary welfare states, Clyde W. Barrow provides a more extensive and thorough treatment than is available in any other work. 
    Barrow divides the methodological assumptions and key hypotheses of Marxist, Neo-Marxist, and Post-Marxist theories into five distinct approaches: instrumentalist, structuralist, derivationist, systems-analytic, and organizational realist. He categorizes the many theorists discussed in the book, including such thinkers as Elmer Altvater, G. William Domhoff, Fred Block, Claus Offe, and Theda Skocpol according to their concepts of the state’s relationship to capital and their methodological approach to the state.   Based on this survey, Barrow elaborates a compelling typology of radical state theories that identifies with remarkable clarity crucial points of overlap and divergence among the various theories.  
    Scholars conducting research within the rubric of state theory, political development, and policy history will find Critical Theories of the State an immensely valuable review of the literature.  Moreover, Barrow’s work will make an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in political science and sociology, and can also be used by those teaching theory courses in international relations, history, and political economy.

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cover of Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America

Democracy and the Left

Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens

University of Chicago Press, 2012

Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage.

In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain.
 
The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.
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cover of Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets

Development and Crisis of the Welfare State

Parties and Policies in Global Markets

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens offer the most systematic examination to date of the origins, character, effects, and prospects of generous welfare states in advanced industrial democracies in the post—World War II era. They demonstrate that prolonged government by different parties results in markedly different welfare states, with strong differences in levels of poverty and inequality. Combining quantitative studies with historical qualitative research, the authors look closely at nine countries that achieved high degrees of social protection through different types of welfare regimes: social democratic states, Christian democratic states, and "wage earner" states. In their analysis, the authors emphasize the distribution of influence between political parties and labor movements, and also focus on the underestimated importance of gender as a basis for mobilization.

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.
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cover of Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland

Eugenics and the Welfare State

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland

Gunnar Broberg

Michigan State University Press, 2005

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.

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cover of Meaningless Citizenship: Iraqi Refugees and the Welfare State

Meaningless Citizenship

Iraqi Refugees and the Welfare State

Sally Wesley Bonet

University of Minnesota Press, 2022

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.

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cover of New Deal Modernism: American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State

New Deal Modernism

American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State

Michael Szalay

Duke University Press, 2000

In New Deal Modernism Michael Szalay examines the effect that the rise of the welfare state had on American modernism during the 1930s and 1940s, and, conversely, what difference this revised modernism made to the New Deal’s famed invention of “Big Government.”
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.
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cover of Not for Patching: A Strategic Welfare Review

Not for Patching

A Strategic Welfare Review

Frank Field and Andrew Forsey

Haus Publishing, 2017

In his famous report of 1942, the economist and social reformer William Beveridge wrote that World War II was a “revolutionary moment in the world’s history” and so a time “for revolutions, not for patching.” The Beveridge Report outlined the welfare state that Atlee’s government would go on to implement after 1946, instituting, for the first time, a national system of benefits to protect all from “the cradle to the grave.” Its crowning glory was the National Health Service, established in 1948, which provided free medical care for all at the point of delivery. Since then, the welfare system has been patched, beset by muddled thinking and short-termism. The British government spends more than £171 billion every year on welfare—and yet, since the Beveridge Report, there has been no strategic review of the system, compared to other areas of government and public policy, which have been subject to frequent strategic reviews. Reform of the welfare system need not mean dismantlement, Frank Field and Andrew Forsey argue here, but serious questions nonetheless must be asked about how the welfare state as we understand it can remain sustainable as the twenty-first century progresses.
 
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cover of Poverty and Society: The Growth of the American Welfare State in International Comparison

Poverty and Society

The Growth of the American Welfare State in International Comparison

Levine, Daniel

Rutgers University Press, 1988

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cover of Probable Justice: Risk, Insurance, and the Welfare State

Probable Justice

Risk, Insurance, and the Welfare State

Rachel Z. Friedman

University of Chicago Press, 2020

Decades into its existence as a foundational aspect of modern political and economic life, the welfare state has become a political cudgel, used to assign blame for ballooning national debt and tout the need for personal responsibility. At the same time, it affects nearly every citizen and permeates daily life—in the form of pension, disability, and unemployment benefits, healthcare and parental leave policies, and more. At the core of that disjunction is the question of how we as a society decide who should get what benefits—and how much we are willing to pay to do so.

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.
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cover of Recasting Welfare Capitalism: Economic Adjustment in Contemporary France and Germany

Recasting Welfare Capitalism

Economic Adjustment in Contemporary France and Germany

Mark I. Vail

Temple University Press, 2009

In Recasting Welfare Capitalism, Mark Vail employs a sophisticated and original theoretical approach to compare welfare states and political-economic adjustment in Germany and France. He examines how and why institutional change takes place and what factors characterize economic evolution when moving from times of prosperity to more austere periods and back again. Covering the 1970s to the present, Vail analyzes social and economic reforms, including labor policy, social-insurance, and anti-poverty programs. He focuses on the tactics and actions of key political players, and demolishes the stagnation argument that suggests that France and Germany have largely frozen political economies, incapable of reform.

Vail finds that these respective evolutions involve interrelated changes in social and economic policies and are characterized by political relationships that are continuously renegotiated—often in unpredictable ways. In the process, he presents a compelling reconceptualization of change in both the welfare state and the broader political economy during an age of globalization.
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cover of Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden

Reforming the Welfare State

Recovery and Beyond in Sweden

Edited by Richard B. Freeman, Birgitta Swedenborg, and Robert H. Topel

University of Chicago Press, 2010

Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. 
Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.
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cover of Reinventing the Welfare State: Digital Platforms and Public Policies

Reinventing the Welfare State

Digital Platforms and Public Policies

Ursula Huws

Pluto Press, 2020

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.

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cover of South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis

The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society

Jesook Song

Duke University Press, 2009

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997–2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.

Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the “IMF homeless,” people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the “new intellectuals,” young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.

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cover of State of Empowerment: Low-Income Families and the New Welfare State

State of Empowerment

Low-Income Families and the New Welfare State

Carolyn Barnes

University of Michigan Press, 2020

On weekday afternoons, dismissal bells signal not just the end of the school day but also the beginning of another important activity: the federally funded after-school programs that offer tutoring, homework help, and basic supervision to millions of American children. Nearly one in four low-income families enroll a child in an after-school program. Beyond sharpening students’ math and reading skills, these programs also have a profound impact on parents. In a surprising turn—especially given the long history of social policies that leave recipients feeling policed, distrusted, and alienated—government-funded after-school programs have quietly become powerful forces for political and civic engagement by shifting power away from bureaucrats and putting it back into the hands of parents. In State of Empowerment Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.

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cover of The Bill of Rights in the Modern State

The Bill of Rights in the Modern State

Edited by Geoffrey R. Stone, Richard A. Epstein, and Cass R. Sunstein

University of Chicago Press, 1992

Although the Bill of Rights has existed for two hundred years, the last half century has seen dramatic changes in its meaning and scope. The essays collected in this volume represent the full range of views and interpretations of what these first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution mean today as guarantors of individual rights.

The contributors to this volume are among the most prominent constitutional scholars in the country. Most of the essays are grouped in pairs, each of which offers conflicting positions on current constitutional controversies, including property rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, levels of generality in constitutional interpreation, and unemumerated rights.

The contributors are: Bruce Ackerman, Mary E. Becker, Ronald Dworkin, Frank H. Easterbrook, Richard A. Epstein, Charles Fried, Mary Ann Glendon, Philip B. Kurland, Frank J. Michaelman, Michael W. McConnell, Richard A. Posner, Kathleen M. Sullivan, John Paul Stevens, David A. Strauss, and Cass R. Sunstein.

"A thoughtful and well coordinated set of exchanges between leading modern constitutional theorists about the most significant issues related to the Bill of Rights and the Welfare State. These issues are debated through penetrating essays by opposing theorists who get to the heart of these issues and provide significant answers to their debate opponents' points."—Thomas R. Van Dervort, Southeastern Political Review
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cover of The Birth of Solidarity: The History of the French Welfare State

The Birth of Solidarity

The History of the French Welfare State

François Ewald

Duke University Press, 2020

François Ewald's landmark The Birth of Solidarity—first published in French in 1986, revised in 1996, with the revised edition appearing here in English for the first time—is one of the most important historical and philosophical studies of the rise of the welfare state. Theorizing the origins of social insurance, Ewald shows how the growing problem of industrial accidents in France throughout the nineteenth century tested the limits of classical liberalism and its notions of individual responsibility. As workers and capitalists confronted each other over the problem of workplace accidents, they transformed the older practice of commercial insurance into an instrument of state intervention, thereby creating an entirely new conception of law, the state, and social solidarity. What emerged was a new system of social insurance guaranteed by the state. The Birth of Solidarity is a classic work of social and political theory that will appeal to all those interested in labor power, the making and dismantling of the welfare state, and Foucauldian notions of governmentality, security, risk, and the limits of liberalism.
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cover of The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality

The Foucault Effect

Studies in Governmentality

Edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller

University of Chicago Press, 1991

Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to Power/Knowledge. In these lectures, Foucault examines the art or activity of government both in its present form and within a historical perspective as well as the different ways governmentality has been made thinkable and practicable.

Foucault's thoughts on political discourse and governmentality are supplemented by the essays of internationally renowned scholars. United by the common influence of Foucault's approach, they explore the many modern manifestations of government: the reason of state, police, liberalism, security, social economy, insurance, solidarity, welfare, risk management, and more. The central theme is that the object and the activity of government are not instinctive and natural things, but things that have been invented and learned.

The Foucault Effect analyzes the thought behind practices of government and argues that criticism represents a true force for change in attitudes and actions, and that extending the limits of some practices allows the invention of others. This unique and extraordinarily useful collection of articles and primary materials will open the way for a whole new set of discussions of the work of Michel Foucault as well as the status of liberalism, social policy, and insurance.
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cover of The Government-Citizen Disconnect

The Government-Citizen Disconnect

Suzanne Mettler

Russell Sage Foundation, 2018

Americans’ relationship to the federal government is paradoxical. Polls show that public opinion regarding the government has plummeted to all-time lows, with only one in five saying they trust the government or believe that it operates in their interest. Yet, at the same time, more Americans than ever benefit from some form of government social provision. Political scientist Suzanne Mettler calls this growing gulf between people’s perceptions of government and the actual role it plays in their lives the "government-citizen disconnect." In The Government-Citizen Disconnect, she explores the rise of this phenomenon and its implications for policymaking and politics.
 
Drawing from original survey data which probed Americans’ experiences of 21 federal social policies -- such as food stamps, Social Security, Medicaid, and the home mortgage interest deduction -- Mettler shows that 96 percent of adults have received benefits from at least one of them, and that the average person has utilized five. Overall usage rates transcend social, economic, and political divisions, and most Americans report positive experiences of their policy experiences. However, the fact that they have benefited from these policies has little positive effect on people’s attitudes toward government.  Mettler finds that shared identities and group affiliations, as well as ideological forces, are more powerful and consistent influences. In particular, those who oppose welfare tend to extrapolate their unfavorable views of it to government in general. Deep antipathy toward the government has emerged as the result of a conservative movement that has waged a war on social welfare policies for over forty years, even as economic inequality and benefit use have increased. 
 
Mettler finds that voting patterns exacerbate the government-citizen disconnect, as those holding positive views of federal programs and supporting expanded benefits have lower rates of political participation than those holding more hostile views of the government. As a result, the loudest political voice belongs to those who have benefited from policies but who give government little credit for their economic well-being, seeing their success more as a matter of their own deservingness. This contributes to the election of politicians who advocate cutting federal social programs. According to Mettler, the government-citizen disconnect frays the bonds of representative government and democracy.
 
The Government-Citizen Disconnect illuminates a paradox that increasingly shapes American politics. Mettler's examination of hostility toward government at a time when most Americans will at some point rely on the social benefits it provides helps us better understand the roots of today's fractious political climate.
 
 
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cover of The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society

The Great Debate

Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society

Georg Brandes and Harald Høffding

University of Wisconsin Press, 2024

In 1889, Danish literary critic Georg Brandes published “Aristocratic Radicalism: An Essay on Friedrich Nietzsche,” which transformed the as-yet-unknown German-Swiss philosopher into a European, and ultimately global, phenomenon. The article sparked a furious public debate between Brandes and a fellow Dane, philosopher Harald Høffding, who swiftly issued a rebuttal,  “Democratic Radicalism: An Objection.” What began as a scholarly disagreement over Nietzsche’s philosophy rapidly spiraled into a sprawling contest of competing visions of society’s future, one radically aristocratic and the other radically democratic.

Marking the moment at which the uniquely Nordic concept of social democratic welfare was first contested in the public sphere, this debate provides insights into not only Nietzschean philosophy and its immediate reception but also the foundational concept of modern Scandinavian social, cultural, and political organization. This volume presents, for the first time in any language other than Danish, the debate in its entirety: three essays by Brandes and three by Høffding. A critical introduction by editor and translator William Banks explores the exchange in its context and convincingly argues that the principles contested by the two Danish luminaries still very much resonate in Western society today.
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cover of The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy

The Moral Neoliberal

Welfare and Citizenship in Italy

Andrea Muehlebach

University of Chicago Press, 2012

Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism and its focus on the bottom line, but in The Moral Neoliberal morality is shown as the opposite: an indispensible tool for capitalist transformation. Set within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, Andrea Muehlebach tracks the phenomenal rise of voluntarism in the wake of the state’s withdrawal of social service programs. Using anthropological tools, she shows how socialist volunteers are interpreting their unwaged labor as an expression of social solidarity, with Catholic volunteers thinking of theirs as an expression of charity and love. Such interpretations pave the way for a mass mobilization of an ethical citizenry that is put to work by the state.
 
Visiting several sites across the region, from Milanese high schools to the offices of state social workers to the homes of the needy, Muehlebach mounts a powerful argument that the neoliberal state nurtures selflessness in order to cement some of its most controversial reforms. At the same time, she also shows how the insertion of such an anticapitalist narrative into the heart of neoliberalization can have unintended consequences. 
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cover of The Origins of the Welfare State: Women, Work, and the French Revolution

The Origins of the Welfare State

Women, Work, and the French Revolution

Lisa DiCaprio

University of Illinois Press, 2005

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.

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cover of The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey: How Social Movements and Elite Competition Created a Welfare State

The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey

How Social Movements and Elite Competition Created a Welfare State

Erdem Yörük

University of Michigan Press, 2022

In The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey, author Erdem Yörük provides a politics-based explanation for the post-1980 transformation of the Turkish welfare system, in which poor relief policies have replaced employment-based social security. This book is one of the results of Yörük’s European Research Council-funded project, which compares the political dynamics in several emerging markets in order to develop a new political theory of welfare in the global south. As such, this book is an ambitious analytical and empirical contribution to understanding the causes of a sweeping shift in the nature of state welfare provision in Turkey during the recent decades—part of a global trend that extends far beyond Turkey. Most scholarship about Turkey and similar countries has explained this shift toward poor relief as a response to demographic and structural changes including aging populations, the decline in the economic weight of industry, and the informalization of labor, while ignoring the effect of grassroots politics. In order to overcome these theoretical shortages in the literature, the book revisits concepts of political containment and political mobilization from the earlier literature on the mid-twentieth-century welfare state development and incorporates the effects of grassroots politics in order to understand the recent welfare system shift as it materialized in Turkey, where a new matrix of political dynamics has produced new large-scale social assistance programs. 
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cover of The Repoliticization of the Welfare State

The Repoliticization of the Welfare State

Ian P. McManus

University of Michigan Press, 2022

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.

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cover of The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

Asbjorn Wahl

Pluto Press, 2012

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.

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cover of The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State

The Sympathetic State

Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State

Michele Landis Dauber

University of Chicago Press, 2012

Even as unemployment rates soared during the Great Depression, FDR’s relief and social security programs faced attacks in Congress and the courts on the legitimacy of federal aid to the growing population of poor. In response, New Dealers pointed to a long tradition—dating back to 1790 and now largely forgotten—of federal aid to victims of disaster. In The Sympathetic State, Michele Landis Dauber recovers this crucial aspect of American history, tracing the roots of the modern American welfare state beyond the New Deal and the Progressive Era back to the earliest days of the republic when relief was forthcoming for the victims of wars, fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
 
Drawing on a variety of materials, including newspapers, legal briefs, political speeches, the art and literature of the time, and letters from thousands of ordinary Americans, Dauber shows that while this long history of government disaster relief has faded from our memory today, it was extremely well known to advocates for an expanded role for the national government in the 1930s, including the Social Security Act. Making this connection required framing the Great Depression as a disaster afflicting citizens though no fault of their own. Dauber argues that the disaster paradigm, though successful in defending the New Deal, would ultimately come back to haunt advocates for social welfare. By not making a more radical case for relief, proponents of the New Deal helped create the weak, uniquely American welfare state we have today—one torn between the desire to come to the aid of those suffering and the deeply rooted suspicion that those in need are responsible for their own deprivation.
 
Contrary to conventional thought, the history of federal disaster relief is one of remarkable consistency, despite significant political and ideological change. Dauber’s pathbreaking and highly readable book uncovers the historical origins of the modern American welfare state.
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cover of The Welfare State and Beyond: Success and Problems in Scandinavia

The Welfare State and Beyond

Success and Problems in Scandinavia

Gunnar Heckscher

University of Minnesota Press, 1984

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.

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cover of The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model

The Welfare State in Transition

Reforming the Swedish Model

Edited by Richard B. Freeman, Robert H. Topel, and Birgitta Swedenborg

University of Chicago Press, 1997

Once heralded in the 1950s and 1960s as a model welfare state, Sweden is now in transition and in trouble since its economic plunge in the early 1990s.

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.
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cover of Trust beyond Borders: Immigration, the Welfare State, and Identity in Modern Societies

Trust beyond Borders

Immigration, the Welfare State, and Identity in Modern Societies

Markus M.L. Crepaz

University of Michigan Press, 2010

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).

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Urban Planning in the Nordic World

Ellen Braae

University of Wisconsin Press, 2022

Urban planning is a keystone in the materialization of the Nordic welfare states. That is not to say that there is one particular city form or planning practice that is synonymous with the emerging welfare city, as welfare per se is far from normative. On the contrary, welfare is a highly ambiguous and contested notion that has changed over the postwar decades, which is also reflected in the development of the welfare city.
 
However, welfare in urban planning has mainly been associated with ideas of “the good life” and egalitarianism. In a Nordic context, the state has taken the lead in providing the social engineering “hardware” for advancing this universal aim. Social demographic welfare is economically based on full employment, and in this regard housing and caregiving support are key components. Yet education, infrastructure, and leisure facilities are also basic features in the distribution of universal welfare services for citizens’ entire lives. The results, ideally, are green and spacious welfare cities.
 
This book outlines the origins, development, challenges, and lived realities of the changing welfare city, focusing primarily on Denmark. Strategies have changed over the decades as models of development have shifted and as the needs of society and a warming planet have come into focus. The current welfare city can be described as an urban landscape characterized by, on the one hand, a division of functions and, on the other, mutual competition. The role of the state has been minimized, turning municipalities into the new major agents in attracting taxpayers and providing goods—both by means of urban planning.

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cover of Why Welfare States Persist: The Importance of Public Opinion in Democracies

Why Welfare States Persist

The Importance of Public Opinion in Democracies

Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza

University of Chicago Press, 2007

The world’s richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades.

Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare state’s demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the world’s most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.

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cover of Women Build the Welfare State: Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880–1955

Women Build the Welfare State

Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880–1955

Donna J. Guy

Duke University Press, 2009

In this pathbreaking history, Donna J. Guy shows how feminists, social workers, and female philanthropists contributed to the emergence of the Argentine welfare state through their advocacy of child welfare and family-law reform. From the creation of the government-subsidized Society of Beneficence in 1823, women were at the forefront of the child-focused philanthropic and municipal groups that proliferated first to address the impact of urbanization, European immigration, and high infant mortality rates, and later to meet the needs of wayward, abandoned, and delinquent children. Women staffed child-centered organizations that received subsidies from all levels of government. Their interest in children also led them into the battle for female suffrage and the campaign to promote the legal adoption of children. When Juan Perón expanded the welfare system during his presidency (1946–1955), he reorganized private charitable organizations that had, until then, often been led by elite and immigrant women.

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.

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cover of Women and Welfare: Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe

Women and Welfare

Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe

Hirschmann, Nancy J

Rutgers University Press, 2001

The social welfare state is believed by many to be one of the great achievements of Western democracy in the twentieth century. It institutionalized for the first time a collective commitment to improving individual life chances and social well-being. However, as we move into a new century, the social welfare state everywhere has come under increasing pressure, raising serious doubts about its survival.

Featuring essays by experts from a variety of fields, including law, comparative politics, sociology, economics, cultural studies, philosophy, and political theory, Women and Welfare represents an interdisciplinary, multimethodological and multicultural feminist approach to recent changes in the welfare system of Western industrialized nations. The broad perspective, from the philosophical to the quantitative, provides an excellent overview of the subject and the most recent scholarly literature. The volume offers a crosscultural  analysis of welfare “reform” in the 1990s, visions of what a “woman-friendly” welfare state requires, and an examination of theoretical and policy questions feminists and concerned others should be asking.

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