scholarly journals Welfare without rent seeking? Buchanan’s demogrant proposal and the possibility of a constitutional welfare state

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Lehto ◽  
John Meadowcroft
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Constitutional Political Economy ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Majoritarian Democracy ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Future Task ◽  
Negative Income Tax

AbstractIn a number of works, James M. Buchanan set out a proposal for a ‘demogrant’—a form of universal basic income that applied the principles of generality and non discrimination to the tax and the transfer sides of the scheme and was to be implemented as a constitutional rule outside the realm of day-to-day politics. The demogrant has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, but this article locates it in Buchanan’s broader constitutional political economy project and shows it was a logical application of his theoretical framework to the problem of inefficient and unfair welfare systems when reform to the basic institutions of majoritarian democracy was not forthcoming. The demogrant aims to end the problems of majority cycling and rent seeking that plague contemporary welfare states and therefore offers a model of welfare without rent seeking—a constitutional welfare state. We compare Buchanan’s demogrant model to other universal basic income and negative income tax models and consider the most important criticisms. We conclude that rescuing the demogrant model from relative obscurity would be a fruitful future task of applied constitutional political economy and public choice.

scholarly journals Social Investment, Redistribution or Basic Income? Exploring the Association Between Automation Risk and Welfare State Attitudes in Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
MARIUS R. BUSEMEYER ◽  
ALEXANDER H. J. SAHM
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Using Data

Abstract Rapid technological change – the digitalization and automation of work – is challenging contemporary welfare states. Most of the existing research, however, focuses on its effect on labor market outcomes, such as employment or wage levels. In contrast, this paper studies the implications of technological change for welfare state attitudes and preferences. Compared to previous work on this topic, this paper adopts a much broader perspective regarding different kinds of social policy. Using data from the European Social Survey, we find that individual automation risk is positively associated with support for redistribution, but negatively with support for social investment policies (partly depending on the specific measure of automation risk that is used), while there is no statistically significant association with support for basic income. We also find a moderating effect of the overall size of the welfare state on the micro-level association between risk and preferences.

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.

Breaking the Mold

2019 ◽  
pp. 92-173
Author(s):  
Jason Beckfield
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
European Welfare State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Distribution Of Income

This chapter describes how the resources generated by the integrated European economy have been distributed as social rights of citizenship. As the European economy has developed, have European welfare states expanded, stabilized, or retrenched? These trends and effects matter because they reveal the changing structure of political inequality in Europe, and because the European welfare state has a strong effect on the distribution of income across European households. The first part of the chapter addresses the question of whether the development of the integrated European economy contributed to expansion of the social rights of citizenship, which would be a sign of reduced political inequality within European nations. The second part addresses the subject of political inequality in Europe as an integrating whole more directly by engaging with the convergence debate: with respect to citizenship rights, does it now matter more or less which national political economy one inhabits?

Why all Welfare States (Including Laissez-Faire Ones) Are Unreasonable

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald F. Gaus
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Laissez Faire

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to “positive liberty,” are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny the usefulness of this familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also “welfare-state” liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional “welfare-state liberals” such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that “freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end.” To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the “classical-liberal welfare state” claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to “correct market failures” in the provision of welfare.

Welfare State Research and Comparative Political Economy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silja Häusermann
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
State Research

Which risks are social and which are private? How much of their GDP do states spend on social welfare? Who exactly is entitled to which benefits? Is it still possible to finance an encompassing welfare state in times of deindustrialization, technological and demographic change, and globalization? And why do the answers to these questions differ so much across countries? These and similar questions—all central to social cohesion in capitalist democracies—ensure that the analysis of welfare politics is one of the theoretically as well as methodologically most dynamic and richest research areas within comparative political economy and political science more generally. Besides outlining the comparative development and the difficulty of measuring social policy, the focus of this contribution lies in a critical review of the most important past and current theoretical debates in the field of welfare state research, as a subfield of comparative political economy. These debates include party- and power-resource-centered approaches and their critiques, institutional explanations of welfare state retrenchment and restructuring, and the importance of multidimensional distributional effects for the analysis of social policy. The article concludes with a review of three more recent debates: the importance of public opinion and individual preferences for the development of the welfare state, the interaction of social policy and the changes of party systems, and the increasing relevance of social investment policies. The political and scientific need for innovative political science research will continue for the foreseeable future: Theory building and methodological possibilities are developing quickly, and the welfare states as research subject are constantly being challenged.

scholarly journals The political economy of immigration and welfare state effort: evidence from Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Welfare Generosity

AbstractThis article explores whether immigration plays a role in determining national welfare state effort in 16 European countries. It examines the relationship between stocks of migrants, the foreign-born population, on two different indicators of welfare state effort – social welfare spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and a welfare generosity index. The nexus between immigration and welfare is a controversial and highly sensitive political issue, and as such it typically divides opinion. Traditionally, it has been argued that increases in immigration create pressures for governments to reduce levels of social welfare provision. By building on theories and results from the political economy literature, this article provides further evidence on the debate through using a fresh approach to operationalize welfare state effort. The empirical results show that the foreign-born population has a positive and statistically significant relationship with social welfare spending and no statistically significant association with the welfare generosity index. The findings provide no evidence to support the hypothesis that the higher levels of immigration lead to reduced levels of social welfare provision. On the contrary, these findings lend support to the view that increasing immigration leads to welfare state expansion rather than retrenchment, and that European welfare states remain resilient in the face of the globalization of migration.

Liberal Political Economy And Philosophy Of James Buchanan

2013 ◽  
pp. 34-52
Author(s):  
A. Zaostrovtsev
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Austrian Economic ◽  
Constitutional Political Economy ◽  
James Buchanan ◽  
Scientific Legacy ◽  
Majoritarian Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Constraints ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Generality Principle

The article examines the scientific legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan (1919—2013). The focus is on the evolution of his views on constitutional political economy. The article shows the displacement of Buchanan’s preferences from the expansion of inclusiveness of collective choice rules and the number of constitutional constraints to the generality principle — a non-discriminatory democracy as a means to counteract majoritarian democracy failures. It is concluded that finally Buchanan adopted radical subjectivism of the Austrian economic school and post-Keynesianism embodied in the concept of constitutionally limited evolution.

scholarly journals The Property-Owning Democracy vesus the Welfare State

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Weale
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Individualism And Collectivism ◽  
Private Savings ◽  
Negative Income Tax ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThe political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls’s a priori specification of the welfare state. An inductively derived specification of ideal-typical welfare states suggests that horizontal redistribution, in line with the principle of social savings, is more important than vertical redistribution. Rawls’s preference for a social dividend or negative income tax scheme can be contrasted with the use of social insurance, but the latter has a claim to instantiate Rawlsian ideals better than a social dividend. There is a potential problem with the pre-emption of private savings in the welfare state, but this turns out not to be troublesome empirically or conceptually. The irony of the discussion is that those who have interpreted Rawlsian theory as justifying the welfare state have the better of the argument, despite Rawls’s own views.

Welfare Democracies and Party Politics

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Party System ◽  
Growth Models ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
New Combination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Landscapes

Europe’s political landscapes are in turmoil; new radical parties challenge the established political order. This book locates Europe’s contemporary challenges within the longer economic and political trajectories of its “welfare democracies.” It argues forcefully that it is imperative to understand the specific structures of political competition and voter–party links to make sense of the political and economic turmoil of the last decades. In four distinct European welfare democracies (Nordic, continental, southern, and Anglo-Saxon), the political economy, the party system, and the structure of the political space are co-determined in a specific way. Accordingly, specific combinations of policies and politics and distinct patterns of alignment between core electoral groups and political parties exist in the four welfare democracies and shape their reactions to current challenges. With this, the book provides an analytical framework that links welfare states to party systems, combining recent contributions to the comparative political economy of the welfare state and insights from party and electoral politics. The book identifies three phenomena: in electoral politics it states a certain homogenization of European party systems, the emergence of a new combination of leftist socio-economic and rightist socio-cultural positions in many parties, and finally the rise of the radical right in the north of Europe and the radical left in the south. The contributions to this book also indicate a confluence toward renewed welfare state support among parties and voters. Finally, the Europeanization of political dynamics, combined with incompatible growth models, has created pronounced European cleavages.

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