Comparing the welfare states of Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, the authors trace the origins of social policy in these regions to political changes in the mid-20th century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.
For most of this century, the habit of thinking about politics and economics in terms of grand and simple alternatives has exerted a powerful influence over the minds of those concerned with economic organization. Politics, Economics, and Welfare is a systematic attack on the idea of all-embracing ideological solutions to complex economic problems.
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.
The essays in this volume explore the moral foundations and the political prospects of the welfare state in the United States. Among the questions addressed are the following: Has public support for the welfare state faded? Can a democratic state provide welfare without producing dependency on welfare? Is a capitalist (or socialist) economy consistent with the preservation of equal liberty and equal opportunity for all citizens? Why and in what ways does the welfare state discriminate against women? Can we justify limiting immigration for the sake of safeguarding the welfare of Americans? How can elementary and secondary education be distributed consistently with democratic values? The volume confronts powerful criticisms that have been leveled against the welfare state by conservatives, liberals, and radicals and suggests reforms in welfare state programs that might meet these criticisms. The contributors are Joseph H. Carens, Jon Elster, Robert K. Fullinwider, Amy Gutmann, Jennifer L. Hochschild, Stanley Kelley, Jr., Richard Krouse, Michael McPherson, J. Donald Moon, Carole Pateman, Dennis Thompson, and Michael Walzer.
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.
Democracy, Capitalism, and the Welfare State investigates political thought under the conditions of the postwar welfare state, focusing on the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1989). The volume argues that the welfare state informed and altered basic questions of democracy and its relationship to capitalism. These questions were especially important for West Germany, given its recent experience with the collapse of capitalism, the disintegration of democracy, and National Socialist dictatorship after 1930. Three central issues emerged. First, the development of a nearly all-embracing set of social services and payments recast the problem of how social groups and interests related to the state, as state agencies and affected groups generated their own clientele, their own advocacy groups, and their own expert information. Second, the welfare state blurred the line between state and society that is constitutive of basic rights and the classic world of liberal freedom; rights became claims on the state, and social groups became integral parts of state administration. Third, the welfare state potentially reshaped the individual citizen, who became wrapped up with mandatory social insurance systems, provisioning of money and services related to social needs, and the regulation of everyday life. Peter C. Caldwell describes how West German experts sought to make sense of this vast array of state programs, expenditures, and bureaucracies aimed at solving social problems. Coming from backgrounds in politics, economics, law, social policy, sociology, and philosophy, they sought to conceptualize their state, which was now social (one German word for the welfare state is indeed Sozialstaat), and their society, which was permeated by state policies.
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.
This book is a fully revised and updated version of Hans van den Doel's Democracy and Welfare Economics. It presents the economic theory of political decision-making (otherwise known as new political economy, or public choice), providing students with an accessible and clear introduction to this important subject. The authors identify four different methods of decision-making by which the political process transforms the demands of individual citizens into government policy, and these are analyzed in turn with reference to economic theory.