Economic Regulation and the Social Contract: An Appraisal of Recent Developments in the Social Control of Telecommunications

AbstractThis paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

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Institutional Economics and the Progressive Movement for the Social Control of American Business

The Business History Review ◽

10.1017/s0007680519001259 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 93 (4) ◽

pp. 665-696

Author(s):

William J. Novak

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Institutional Economics ◽

New Technologies ◽

Social Economy ◽

Economic Regulation ◽

American Business ◽

Progressive Movement ◽

Modern Capitalism ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

This article investigates the history of the Progressive Era effort to develop new techniques and technologies of control over American business and corporations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A revolution in Progressive economic regulation was rooted in the intellectual work of the so-called institutional economists—particularly in the context of what economists and lawyers like Richard Ely, John Commons, and Walton Hamilton ultimately talked about as the movement for the “social control” of business, with distinct emphasis on the legal and regulatory “foundations” of modern capitalism. With increased attention to dynamics rather than statics, the real social economy rather than ideal rational actors, and historical and institutional rather than theoretical and abstract renderings of business, industry, and the market, the institutionalists were directly concerned with problems of control, particularly those mechanisms of control available through law, politics, the state, and new technologies of legislative and administrative regulation.

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Shall We Dance? Welfarist Incorporation and the Politics of State–Labour NGO Relations

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741015001174 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 223 ◽

pp. 702-723 ◽

Cited By ~ 42

Author(s):

Jude Howell

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Social Contract ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Local Governments ◽

The State ◽

Social Organizations ◽

The Social ◽

State And Market

AbstractRelations between the state and labour NGOs in China have been particularly fraught. In 2012, they took an interesting turn when some local governments made overtures to labour NGOs to cooperate in providing services to migrant workers. This article argues that this shift is part of a broader strategy of “welfarist incorporation” to redraw the social contract between state and labour. There are two key elements to this strategy: first, a relaxation of the registration regulations for social organizations, and second, governmental purchasing of services from social organizations. These overtures have both a state and market logic to maintain social control and stabilize relations of production.

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Social Control Theories of Social Policy

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279400009521 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 1-23 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Joan Higgins

Keyword(s):

Social Work ◽

Social Policy ◽

Social Control ◽

State Intervention ◽

Social Policies ◽

Individual Freedom ◽

Urban Crisis ◽

The Social ◽

Recent Developments ◽

Control Theories

ABSTRACTThe concept of social control is crucial in explaining both the growth of social policies and their effects. It raises important questions about the legitimacy of state intervention, the maintenance of order and the protection of individual freedom. The term is widely used in the social policy literature but there have been few attempts to define it or to explore its various meanings and connotations. The aim of this article is to examine some of these issues. It begins with an account of the growth of social control theories focusing particularly upon recent developments in Marxist thought and the literature on the ‘urban crisis’ and ‘radical social work’. The second and third sections of the article explore the different usages of the notion of social control and evaluate some of the main propositions of social control theories of social policy.

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Transparency and Executive Authority

10.1093/oso/9780190922542.003.0011 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Chris Naticchia

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Contract ◽

The United States ◽

Sovereign Power ◽

Intelligence Gathering ◽

Executive Authority ◽

The Social ◽

Recent Developments ◽

The Government ◽

Government Secrecy

This chapter will examine the extent (if any) to which sovereign power and executive authority may be justifiably exercised through secret laws. Generally speaking, social contract views reject such secrecy—insisting instead that laws must be public. In opposition to this apparent view of the social contract tradition, we have recent developments in the United States. These developments go beyond mere government attempts to classify information or to bar disclosure of intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities. They also include maintaining secrecy in the law through which the government exercises the authority it claims. For example, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issues classified rulings, creating a body of secret law that determines, by implication, which surveillance activities are consistent, and which inconsistent, with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches without a particularized warrant based on probable cause. This chapter will argue that the social contract tradition itself may contain resources for defending these sorts of actions. It will explore whether paternalistic principles, whose scope is determined through contractarian reasoning, might be able to account for some government secrecy that extends beyond classifying information and protecting intelligence methods and capabilities to maintaining secrecy in some governing laws themselves. The question would be whether such limited paternalism—limited to cases involving “infirmities” of our reason or will—may be justifiably expanded to cover cases where those infirmities are absent, but where typical citizens may simply be “squeamish” about the judgments that certain executive decisions require.

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