Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor. "With one out of five children currently living in poverty and more than 100,000 families with children now homeless, Gilens's book is must reading if you want to understand how the mainstream media have helped justify, and even produce, this state of affairs." —Susan Douglas, The Progressive "Gilens's well-written and logically developed argument deserves to be taken seriously." —Choice "A provocative analysis of American attitudes towards 'welfare.'. . . [Gilens] shows how racial stereotypes, not white self-interest or anti-statism, lie at the root of opposition to welfare programs." -Library Journal
Few American social programs have been more unpopular, controversial, or costly than Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Its budget, now in the tens of billions of dollars, has become a prominent target for welfare reformers and outraged citizens. Indeed, if public opinion ruled, AFDC would be discarded entirely and replaced with employment. Yet it persists. Steven Teles's provocative study reveals why and tells us what we should do about it. Teles argues that, over the last thirty years, political debate on AFDC has been dominated by an impasse created by what he calls "ideological dissensus"—an enduring conflict between opposing cultural elites that have largely disregarded public opinion. Thus, he contends, one must examine the origins and persistence of elite conflict in order to fully comprehend AFDC's immunity to the reform it truly needs-the kind that unites the elements of order, equality, and individualism central to the American creed. One of the first studies to analyze AFDC from a "New Democrat" position, Whose Welfare? sheds new light on the controversial role of the courts in AFDC, the rise of welfare waivers in the mid 1980s, the failure of the Clinton welfare plan, and the victory of block-granting over policy-oriented welfare reform. Teles, however, goes beyond mere critical analysis to advocate specific approaches to reform. His thoughtful call for compromise built around the centrality of work, individual responsibility, and opportunity offers a means for dissolving dissensus and genuine hope for changing an outdated and ineffectual welfare system. Based on interviews with participants in the AFDC policymaking process as well as an unparalleled synthesis of the voluminous AFDC literature, Whose Welfare? will appeal to a wide array of welfare scholars, policymakers, and citizens eager to better understand the tumultuous history of this problematic program and how it might fare in the wake of the fall elections.
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.
Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.
Robert Goodin passionately and cogently defends the welfare state from current attacks by the New Right. But he contends that the welfare state finds false friends in those on the Old Left who would justify it as a hesitant first step toward some larger, ideally just form of society. Reasons for Welfare, in contrast, offers a defense of the minimal welfare state substantially independent of any such broader commitments, and at the same time better able to withstand challenges from the New Right's moralistic political economy. This defense of the existence of the welfare state is discussed, flanked by criticism of Old Left and New Right arguments that is both acute and devastating. In the author's view, the welfare state is best justified as a device for protecting needy--and hence vulnerable--members of society against the risk of exploitation by those possessing discretionary control over resources that they require. Its task is to protect the interests of those not in a position to protect themselves. Communitarian or egalitarian ideals may lead us to move beyond the welfare state as thus conceived and justified. Moving beyond it, however, does not invalidate the arguments for constantly maintaining at least the minimal protections necessary for vulnerable members of society.
Hancock argues that beliefs about poor African American mothers were the foundation for the contentious 1996 welfare reform debate that effectively 'ended welfare as we know it.' She shows how stereotypes and misperceptions about race, class and gender were used to instigate a politics of disgust.
Traditional public policy and welfare economics have held that market failures are common, requiring the intervention of government in order to serve and protect the public good. In Beyond Politics, William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons carefully scrutinize this traditional view through the modern theory of public choice. The authors enlighten the relationship of government and markets by emphasizing the actual rather than the ideal workings of governments and by reuniting the insights of economics with those of political science. Beyond Politics traces the anatomy of government failure and a pathology of contemporary political institutions as government has become a vehicle for private gain at public expense. In so doing, this brisk and vigorous book examines a host of public issues, including social welfare, consumer protection, and the environment. Offering a unified and powerful perspective on the market process, property rights, politics, contracts, and government bureaucracy, Beyond Politics is a lucid and comprehensive book on the foundations and institutions of a free and humane society.
It's hard to imagine discussing welfare policy without discussing race, yet all too often this uncomfortable factor is avoided or simply ignored. Sometimes the relationship between welfare and race is treated as so self-evident as to need no further attention; equally often, race in the context of welfare is glossed over, lest it raise hard questions about racism in American society as a whole. Either way, ducking the issue misrepresents the facts and misleads the public and policy-makers alike. Many scholars have addressed specific aspects of this subject, but until now there has been no single integrated overview. Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform is designed to fill this need and provide a forum for a range of voices and perspectives that reaffirm the key role race has played--and continues to play--in our approach to poverty. The essays collected here offer a systematic, step-by-step approach to the issue. Part 1 traces the evolution of welfare from the 1930s to the sweeping Clinton-era reforms, providing a historical context within which to consider today's attitudes and strategies. Part 2 looks at media representation and public perception, observing, for instance, that although blacks accounted for only about one-third of America's poor from 1967 to 1992, they featured in nearly two-thirds of news stories on poverty, a bias inevitably reflected in public attitudes. Part 3 discusses public discourse, asking questions like "Whose voices get heard and why?" and "What does 'race' mean to different constituencies?" For although "old-fashioned" racism has been replaced by euphemism, many of the same underlying prejudices still drive welfare debates--and indeed are all the more pernicious for being unspoken. Part 4 examines policy choices and implementation, showing how even the best-intentioned reform often simply displaces institutional inequities to the individual level--bias exercised case by case but no less discriminatory in effect. Part 5 explores the effects of welfare reform and the implications of transferring policy-making to the states, where local politics and increasing use of referendum balloting introduce new, often unpredictable concerns. Finally, Frances Fox Piven's concluding commentary, "Why Welfare Is Racist," offers a provocative response to the views expressed in the pages that have gone before--intended not as a "last word" but rather as the opening argument in an ongoing, necessary, and newly envisioned national debate. Sanford Schram is Visiting Professor of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Joe Soss teaches in the Department of Government at the Graduate school of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, D.C. Richard Fording is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky.
