PWS Notes
WEEK 1 - Economic and philosophical analyses of the welfare state
Garland
Historically tracing the emergence of the welfare state as a specific mode of government, its
distinctive institutional forms will be described and its basic functions and effects will be explained.
The welfare state is a necessary dimension of contemporary capitalist democracies. The concept of
the welfare state refers to a specific mode of governing that deploys a particular set of social and
economic techniques and specific forms of administration. It is a governmentality, a rationality of
governing combining specific conceptions of the problems and processes to be addressed, specific
ways of thinking and acting upon these practical objects and specific forms of knowledge and
technology with which to do so. Welfare state government is often viewed as being intimately liked
with a particular politics, but it is important to regard the governmental and political dimensions as
analytically distinct. The aim in this text is to address some important prior questions about the
fundamental character of this historically-emergent social fact.
The phrase welfare state functions as both an analytical and an ideological term, with it often being
identified with the politics of social democracy. Rather than welfare, the term is about social
insurance, rights, provisions and regulations of economic action, of which mostly the middle classes,
workers and corporations benefit. And these things do not necessarily rely on government
involvement, but also on religious and voluntary associations. Further, governments tasks expand
beyond welfare provision. The phrase welfare state carries wrong connotations, evoking values of
something for nothing, an overbearing state. It should be changed, were it not so deeply embedded.
It is not the aim of promoting welfare that defines the welfare state, but instead the deployment of
specific means of governing, a distinctive governmentality. The most important discontinuity marking
the emergence of the welfare state is seen as a change in conceptions of the problems being
addressed and the emergence of new ways of conceiving the relationship between the social and the
economic and the new rationality of governing that followed from it. The thinking and acting on
problems of employment and security no longer affect merely the poor, but the whole economy and
population. Raising workers’ wages and providing income transfers to the poor became virtues
bringing economic and social benefits in their wake. Managing risk, providing healthcare, relieving
poverty, securing employment, insuring household income, all become functions to be undertaken at
an aggregate level. In that sense, the welfare state is a form of macro-economic and macro-
sociological governance, directed and overseen by the nation state. The welfare state is more
comprehensive, routine, systematic and encompassing than any prior form of social provision,
making it mainstream instead of for marginalized.
There are three main conceptions of the welfare state:
- Welfare for the poor. Income support such as supplementary benefits, food stamps, public
assistance. American.
- Insurance, income maintenance and health and social services. Includes the institutions that
account for the greatest part of government social expenditure. Entitlement programs or
universalism.
- Government at the level of the economy and the population. Broadest and least frequently
used. Fiscal, monetary and employment policies. Frequently overlooked.
,These conceptions are not mutually-exclusive, but supplement each other when integrated.
Government of the economy and population in the interest of security, stability and welfare, utilizing
the tools of insurance, economic management and comprehensive social provision together with
taxes, legal regulations and expertise.
Five main sectors of welfare state government and their technologies:
- Social insurance: insurance against loss of earnings. In addition to private insurance. Possible
because of compulsory nature. Redistribution between classes and generations.
- Social assistance: income support programs for those outside the system of insurance or with
insufficient income. Often means-tested. Looked down upon.
- Public services and social rights: access to essential goods. Mostly unstigmatized egalitarian
aspects. Also employee rights and labour laws. Vary greatly between nations.
- Personal social services: social work and children’s services, elderly, disabled, probation.
Normalizing and disciplining while extending care and support. Regulation of family.
- Government of the economy: fiscal and monetary policies. Assuring economic growth,
controlling inflation, curbing conjuncture etc.
These five factors are independent dimensions, also in terms of success. Then you have the hidden
welfare state, benefits that are channelled through the tax system or private employment contracts.
Operating at the macro-level of the national economy and population and at the micro-level of
families and individuals, these factors modify the economic outcomes and social relations that
capitalist markets would otherwise create, while not undermining the fundamentals of the capitalist
economy or liberal democracies. However, welfare state policies are rarely carried out smoothly
because the relation between the welfare state and market capitalism is at once a necessary and
contradictory one. They sustain and undermine each other. A welfare state can only survive if it is
underwritten by a flourishing economy and sustained economic growth. Contradictions, conflicts and
crises are characteristics of all welfare states. Three types of problems are discussed:
- Problems of administration: stigmatization, poverty trap, dependency, moral hazard and
such are prone in a context of demographic change and labour market restructuring.
However, most problems are amenably by pragmatic solutions of some kind. Often these
problems go hand in hand with market failures, not necessarily welfare failures.
- Adaptation problems: when economy, individuals and families change, welfare state
programs have to change accordingly. Removing or reducing existing benefits is hard.
However, this is mostly a political problem, political institutions have to manage the changes.
- Political problems: because welfare is a struggle over scarce resources, many interest groups
are involved. There are powers and compromises. Interests and representation are hard.
The enactment of new welfare programs has always been the outcome of historical processes
involving individual reformers, social movements, political parties and the choices, contingencies and
compromises these involved. Welfare states were a product of the new-found power of working
class voters and organized labour occurring at a time when states were becoming capable of taking
on tasks of this scale and complexity.
Next to the 20th century perspective, there is a long-term perspective on the welfare state. Free
market economic arrangements were once forcibly established by government action that
overturned customary laws and set aside traditional collective safeguards working people had long
enjoyed. In the wake of the free market capitalism revolution and its social dislocations, the modern
welfare state was established. Welfare was the tradition, briefly interrupted by the emergence of
free-market capitalism. Social groups have always been interdependent.
,Characterizing the welfare state as moral and altruistic greatly simplifies the motivations involved in
its creation and fails to capture the values and power relations that underpin its long-term
reproduction. The welfare state has always been about economic efficiency as well as social equity
and it has served the interests of rulers as well as the needs of the ruled. Capitalism is not abolished
by the welfare state, but altered in ways that make it socially and politically sustainable. Market
capitalism is an inherently self-destructive social formation, which is protected from itself by the
operation of anti-market and market-moderating processes. The welfare state is the name given to
these countervailing forces. The welfare state is an essential basis for capitalist flourishing in human
society, making it very much a thing of the present and the future. It is a technique for the better
management of modern capitalism that preserves that system’s essential principles and makes it
socially and politically viable.
Goodin
In pragmatic terms, governments want to satisfy the desires of their electors in order to stay in office.
Economically, improving human capital is a productive investment and giving poor people purchasing
power simulates economic demand. However, there are also moral reasons for welfare spending.
Moral norms matter insofar as people can be motivated to act upon them. Morals have to be
internalized. Different ideologies may interpret, operationalize and weight values differently, but in
one way or the other, everyone would like ideally to seem them being served. These values
represent the standards of assessment by which the performance of various welfare regimes can be
assessed. There are six values which welfare states have been supposed to serve:
- Promoting economic efficiency
- Reducing poverty
- Promoting social equality
- Promoting social integration and avoiding social exclusion
- Promoting social stability
- Promoting autonomy
Low poverty rates, social stability, social integration and high economic growth rates are goals that
are internalized by all welfare regimes, just like freedom and equality. When these values come into
conflict, one will simply have to decide which of the criteria matters most.
Promoting economic efficiency: it is better to do things efficiently than inefficiently, because
efficiency allows us to achieve more of what it is we want. Welfare policy is supposed to remedy the
failures of the market. Intervening into the operations of markets through welfare policies is risking
upsetting the instruments and institutions which are also working to promote welfare. For
economists, the highest goal is pareto efficiency. This makes the value morally agnostic, as it is non-
committal with regards to the deeper values it is to serve. Goes for murder and welfare. So, efficiency
is not an ultimate, but instrumental value and relative to that which is being done efficiently.
Reducing poverty: poverty can be defined as having resources inadequate to meet one’s needs. The
central issues with this, lie in needs and adequacy. A minimalist position believes physical existence
should be sustained. However, there are relative as well as absolute necessities. Calories are very
absolute, but the money needed to obtain them depends crucially upon how much others have.
Reducing poverty thus does not just include basic necessities, but also instrumental goods necessary
to secure the more basic ones. In terms of social functioning, many people can be seen as poor.
Promoting social equality: once equality in legal terms was achieved, people became concerned with
equality of material conditions and the state’s role in providing this. A simple definition of equality is
‘of equal concern and respect’. In many parts of the world, this has been achieved, and the focus has
, shifter to equal opportunity and equal outcomes. Equal resources is a less high demand than equal
welfare. However, these demands are vague, often only assessable by the produced outcomes.
Because of this, more demanding forms of social equality are preferred. Further, it is thought
different sorts of goods should be distributed according to different rules. Food and housing should
be acquirable regardless of income and your access to them should not be tradable for money,
making equality in access to them more important than financial equality. The modern case for
welfare rights is largely defined in terms of rights of social citizenship. A crucial component of this, is
the right to work.
Promoting social integration, avoiding social exclusion: community, fraternity and solidarity are both
a descriptive reality and a social ideal. Welfare policies follow from this conception. Mutual aid is
both cause and consequence to tightly integrated communities, building social capital. The state can
benefit its formation by protecting and nurturing intermediary institutions, like families, churches
and other civic associations. The state’s safety net should complement and strengthen what is
provided by broader social institutions. Exclusion as deeper source of poverty should be combatted.
Promoting social stability: much of social security policy aims to stabilize people’s incomes,
guaranteeing individual stability. Most forms of social insurance guarantee a relatively stable level of
income. These kinds of benefits seem more pro-rich than pro-poor. One reason for this is that
earnings-related benefits preserve people’s social status. For those who regard status as arbitrary
and unjustified, this forms a critique of such arrangements. But for those who value tradition,
stability and order, this is a major service. Another part of this, is that we want to make something of
our lives and derive our identities and senses of self from this, which social policy helps preserve.
Promoting autonomy: poverty provides very little freedom for manoeuvre. In conditions of
inequality, this leads to social unfreedom, since some have to be primarily concerned with their
sustenance. To avoid manipulation and exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society,
welfare assistance should be run by state agencies and payments should be made as entitlements on
the basis of well-specified welfare rights. In the limiting case, this could be an argument for basic
income. Receiving unconditional state support enhances the freedom and independence of people in
receipt of it. Both positive freedom, allowing you to do certain things, and negative freedom, from
state interference are regulated through compulsory taxation. The issue is then how to weight the
competing freedoms involved. And a larger issues is the extent to which those who rely upon the
state for subsistence can truly be said to be autonomous. But rather than eliminating dependency
altogether, critics of welfare dependency just propose shifting to market or family dependency.
Which form is preferable, remains open. We do know that autarky is not an option.
Where welfare regimes differ, is in how much weight they attach to each of these goals. Liberal
regimes attach more importance to economic efficiency. Social democratic regimes attach more
importance to equality. Corporatists value social integration and stability. However, what all these
welfare regimes share is at least as important as their differences.
Lindbeck
Narrow definitions of the welfare state comprise two types of government spending arrangements:
- Cash benefits to households
- Subsidies or direct government provision of human services
Broader definitions also include price regulations, housing policies, work environment regulations or
environmental policies. The amount of GDP spent on welfare, is related to the degree of universality
of public social spending. There are three categories of efficiency justifications for intervention:
- Market failures, such as advantageous or adverse selection in insurance, free riding,
