Political Institutions and U.S. Social Policy

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Amenta ◽  
Amber Celina Tierney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Party System ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Administrative Authority ◽  
Social Insurance System

United States political institutions provide a compelling account of American exceptionalism in social policy: why the United States has a social insurance system that was late to develop and remains incomplete; spends relatively little on direct social policy; and relies on indirect and private social policy that is relatively ineffective in addressing poverty, insecurity, and inequality. Formal political institutions—including the tardiness of universal suffrage, many institutional veto points, federalism, the underdevelopment of domestic administrative authority, and a political party system founded on patronage and skewed to the right—go far to explain the formation of this unusual welfare state. Feedbacks from policies, political institutions themselves, help to explain why a few U.S. social programs, notably Social Security, remain strong, and why the U.S welfare state generally remains mired in the residual liberal model and is subject to drift. Feedbacks related to the world’s most extensive military and imprisonment policies also harm social policy.

Social work academia and policy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arati Maleku ◽  
Richard Hoefer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education ◽  
Policy Engagement

This chapter examines the engagement of social work academics in the policy process in the United States. It begins by presenting an overview of social policy and the welfare state in the United States and by discussing the emergence of the social work profession in that country. The development of social work education in the United States and its contemporary features are then depicted. Following these, the methodology and the findings of a study of the policy engagement of American social work academics are presented. The findings relate to the levels of engagement in policy and the forms that this takes. The study also offers insights into various factors that are associated with these, such as perceptions, capabilities, institutional support and the accessibility of the policy process. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the findings and their implications.

Who Voted with Hopkins? Institutional Politics and the WPA

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Amenta ◽  
Drew Halfmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
State Organizations

Scholars of the politics of public social policy have engaged in contentious debates over “institutional” and “political” theories. Institutional theories hold that U.S. social policy is inhibited by fragmented political institutions and weak executive state organizations. Political theories hold that the United States lacks a left-wing political party and a strong labor movement to push for social policy. Both theories are thus pessimistic about and cannot account for advances in U.S. social policy.

Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Swenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Industrial Societies

Current wisdom about the American welfare state's laggard status among advanced industrial societies, by attributing it to the weakness of the Left and organized labor, poses a historical puzzle. In the 1930s, the United States experienced a dramatically progressive turn in social policy-making. New Deal Democrats, dependent on financing from capitalists, passed landmark social insurance reforms without backing from a well-organized and electorally successful labor movement like those in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Sweden, by contrast, with the world's strongest Social Democratic labor movement, did not pass important social insurance legislation until the following two decades.

Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
Gretchen Ritter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Working Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Modern Welfare State

Comparative research on the origins of modern welfare states typically asks why certain European nations, including Great Britain, enacted pensions and social insurance between the 1880s and the 1920s, while the United States “lagged behind,” that is did not establish such policies for the entire nation until the Social Security Act of 1935. To put the question this way overlooks the social policies that were distinctive to the early twentieth-century United States. During the period when major European nations, including Britain, were launching paternalist versions of the modern welfare state, the United States was tentatively experimenting with what might be called a maternalist welfare state. In Britain, male bureaucrats and party leaders designed policies “for the good” of male wage-workers and their dependents. Meanwhile, in the United States, early social policies were championed by elite and middle-class women “for the good” of less privileged women. Adult American women were helped as mothers, or as working women who deserved special protection because they were potential mothers.

The Americanization of the European Left

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton J. Esman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Social Democratic

In The Debate That Continues To Rage Over The Question Of American exceptionalism, two facts are historically well established that have distinguished the United States from European countries: the United States failed to develop and to institutionalize an electorally viable social democratic or labour party that represents the interests of its unionized working class and aspires to achieve a socialist society; and the United States has lagged behind its European counterparts in building the institutions of a comprehensive welfare state.

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