Social policy and populism: welfare nationalism as the new narrative of social citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Markus Ketola ◽  
Johan Nordensvard
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The People ◽  
Policy Narratives ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter investigates the relationship between far-right populism and social policy. The chapter argues that an approach anchored in framing and policy narratives will yield new understandings of how far-right populist discourses have come to challenge social democratic and neoliberal welfare narratives. The new narrative challenges and denigrates the economic and political elite as self-serving and corrupt, claiming to represent the interest of the ‘people’ instead. In defining ‘people’, the interests of certain societal groups are prioritised on the bases of culture or ethnicity. Importantly for social policy, this chapter argues, in this universal social rights and social citizenship are reframed in ethno-nationalist and welfare chauvinist terms. The chapter draws upon the case of Sweden in order to briefly exemplify the discursive strategies at play.

scholarly journals Reviewing the relationship between social policy and the contemporary populist radical right: welfare chauvinism, welfare nation state and social citizenship

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Ketola ◽  
Johan Nordensvard
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWhilst populism has a long-standing relationship with social policy, the recent emergence of radical right populism as a considerable political force across Europe and beyond compels us to think further about this relationship. The aim of this review essay is to bring together literature on populism, welfare chauvinism and social citizenship in order to highlight the role social policy plays in the rhetoric and political approach of the populist radical right. This essay reviews, how, by developing artificial distinctions between culturally homogeneous ‘people’ and corrupt ‘elite’, the populist radical right generates interpretations of social citizenship that confers social rights based on of cultural or ethnic belonging, rather than as a matter of right. By simplifying the nature of complex social policy problems, radical right populism further problematises the mainstream social policy agenda. Consequently, radical right populism will continue to present a significant challenge to progressive and inclusive social policy.

scholarly journals Social Citizenship, Social Policy and Refugee Integration: a Case of Policy Divergence in Scotland?

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARETH MULVEY
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Refugee Policy ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Refugee Integration ◽  
Scottish Government ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees

AbstractThe relationship between Holyrood and Westminster is an evolving one where there is some evidence of policy divergence. Underpinning policy approaches are different views of social citizenship, with the Holyrood approach maintaining elements of the post-1945 welfare settlement. The place of refugees and asylum seekers within these differing approaches is currently underexplored. This article looks at the Scottish and UK Governments’ views of social rights and how they apply to asylum seekers and refugees. It suggests that despite refugee ‘policy’ being at least partly reserved, the Scottish Government has been able to take a different approach from that of Westminster, an approach underpinned by these differing welfare outlooks.

Business and Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 234-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Harriss ◽  
Andrew Wyatt
Keyword(s):  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
The Political ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Illegal Activities ◽  
The Relationship

The political economy of Tamil Nadu presents a puzzle: in spite of politics that are generally considered to be unhelpful to development, the state does relatively well in terms both of economic growth and of human development. The chapter argues that Tamil Nadu is neither a developmental nor a social democratic state, while having some of the features of both. It is, rather, characterized by Bonapartism. While the state has generally been supportive of big business, the relationship between the corporate sector and the political elite is distinctly “arm’s-length.” The power and influence of business groups has not “grown enormously,” as has been claimed elsewhere. Tamil politicians do not rely for financial resources on big business but have their own sources of finance, some of them in semilegal or illegal activities such as sand mining and granite quarrying.

L'État-nation, Une forme de fermeture sociale

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Wimmer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Examination ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

The study begins with a critical examination of two opposing, theories of nationalism. Next, the relationship between the State and nationalism in the form of the nation state is seen as a process of social formation during which a compromise is established between public and private elites, and the people: loyalty is exchanged for the right to participate in social rights. In the third part, the author considers the future of a number of Southern states in relation to the fundamentals of nation formation.

scholarly journals Navigating the market of welfare services: The choice of upper secondary school in Sweden

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Hjort ◽  
Alexandru Panican
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Ethnic Segregation ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
The Relationship

Due to increased market orientation and deregulation, welfare services in Sweden have taken on the form of market-based services. The body of research on deregulation and privatization is quite substantial regarding the implications of this kind of development. However, studies of the actual process of how choices are made are less common. This article discusses the implications of greater freedom of choice for Swedish citizens in diverse socioeconomic situations, focusing on factors that limit opportunities for choice. Deregulation and the increasing number of alternatives affect the relationship between the citizen and the welfare state in several ways. The Swedish school system is used here as an example of an empirical field. The analytical focus of the article consists of two different kinds of restrictions on choice: structure-based and agency-based. One conclusion is that both affluent and underprivileged citizens have limited choices. Another conclusion is that social citizenship, when freedom of choice is stimulated, can reproduce and even increase social and ethnic segregation. An additional potential consequence is that, when we consider social rights in their tangible form, the development of greater freedom of choice is focused increasingly on the consumer’s range of choices and less on the quality of the service offered.

Marshall revisited: EU social policy from a social-rights perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-435
Author(s):  
Stefanie Börner
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level ◽  
Social Commitment ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

The common legal and economic framework of the European Union (EU) has turned the vast socio-economic differences within Europe into virulent problems of social inequality – issues that it attempts to tackle within its limited resources. The article takes the EU’s self-expressed social commitment as a starting point and analyses its approaches to social policy from a social-rights perspective. It first discusses why Marshall’s social-citizenship concept provides a useful analytical tool to assess the social policies enacted so far at the European level and then presents an institutional analysis of the EU’s four major social-policy activities: harmonising, funding, coordination and cooperation. This analysis focuses on the horizontal and vertical relationships and the addressees of these policies to determine how these policies measure up against social-rights standards. The findings point to the poor development of transnational social citizenship given the special nature of EU social policies. The only social rights that exist at the European level are in the field of social-security coordination. And even those are marked by a double selectivity that excludes citizens who are not transnationally active and those who are but lack the necessary means to provide for themselves.

‘The People’ and Their Social Rights: What Is Distinctive About the Populism-Religion-Social Policy Nexus?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Jawad ◽  
Daniel Béland ◽  
Emmanuele Pavolini
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
North Africa ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Preceding Paper ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The aims of this review article are two-fold: (1) to set out the key theoretical trends in the study of religion, populism and social policy as antithetical concepts that also share common concerns; (2) to re-assert the relevance of social policy to the social and political sciences by making the case for studying outlier or indeed rival topics together – in this case populism and religion. Social policy scholars do not necessarily associate these two topics with modern social policy, yet they have a long history of influence on societies all over the world; populism is also especially timely in our current era. The article contributes to the literature by: (a) helping social policy better understand its diverse and at times contradictory constituencies; (b) contributing to a more complex and inclusive understanding of social policy and, therefore, social welfare. In setting out the state-of-the-art, the article also draws upon research on social policy which spans various continents (North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America) and a preceding paper collaboration by the authors on religion and social policy (Pavolini et al., 2017).

scholarly journals A Posture of Protest? The Search for Christian Identity in A Post-Secular Society: Between Secularised Eschatology and A Sacralisation of History

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariëtta Van der Tol ◽  
Matthew Rowley
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Relationship

This article theorises ideations of “the people” in a comparative reflection on Latin-Christian theologies and typologies of time and secularised appropriations thereof in right-wing as well as far-right movements in Europe and the United States of America. Understanding the world in grand narratives of “good” and “evil” emerges from Christian eschatological hope: the hope of the restoration and renewal of the cosmos and the final defeat of evil prophesised in association with the return of Christ. However, this language of good and evil becomes detached from the wider corpus of Christian belief and theology. In its secular expression, it may attach the good to an abstract and normative account of “the people”, who are defined in contrast to a range of others, both internal and external to the nation. Secular iterations might further echo the stratification of present, past and future through a sacralisation of the past and a dramatization of the future. The context of contemporary right-wing and far-right movements poses a series of questions about the relationship between belief and belonging, the acceptability of the secularization of Christian traditions and theologies, and the extent to which Christian communities can legitimately associate with right-wing movements.

scholarly journals THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS ELITE IN CONTEMPORARY MACEDONIAN SOCIETY

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Dushka Matevska
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Conflict Period

In contrast to the political parties which are a relatively new social phenomenon, the religiosity is a universal social one which has been incorporated in almost every significant civilization and was established on the grounds of a certain religious component. Regarding the Christianity, this act has been directly bounded to the recognition of the Christianity as an official religion of the Roman Empire which led to an impermissible relationship between the church and the state. The Church began to neglect its holy duties more frequently by turning to secular ones. It was no longer a Church that served the people but, rather, it became a Church aspiring towards power and dominion. The focus of this paper will be the influence of the political elite on the religious situation in the Macedonian post-communist society. We will do our best to determine both the genesis and the reasons that led to such a firm link between the political parties of the Macedonian provenience and the Macedonian Orthodox Church, as well as the possible negative impact of this “matrimony” between the holy and the secular over the Macedonian multi-cultural, multi-ethnical and multi-confessional society especially in the post-conflict period.

scholarly journals The hydroxychloroquine alliance: how far-right leaders and alt-science preachers came together to promote a miracle drug

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Guilherme Casarões ◽  
David Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implications ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
The People ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Knowledge Claims

Abstract Soon after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw far-right leaders uniting to promote hydroxychloroquine despite controversial results. Why have some leaders actively promoted the drug since then, contradicting recommendations made by their own government’s health authorities? Our argument is twofold. First, hydroxychloroquine has been an integral tool of medical populist performance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopt Lasco & Curato’s (2018) definition of medical populism as a political style based on performances of public health crises that pit ‘the people’ against ‘the establishment’ using alternative knowledge claims to cast doubt on the credibility of doctors, scientists, and technocrats. Second, rather than being an individual endeavor, medical populism addressing the coronavirus crisis has led populists to build an alt-science network. We define it as a loose movement of alleged truth-seekers who publicly advance scientific claims at a crossroads between partial evidence, pseudo-science, and conspiracy theories. It comprises scientists, businesspeople and celebrities united by their distrust of governments and mainstream science. In this article, we look at how the hydroxychloroquine alliance was formed, as well as its political and policy implications. To this end, we compare why and how Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have appealed to medical populist performances when addressing the health crisis. By mobilizing the concepts of medical populism and alt-science, this paper aims to contribute to the scholarship on the relationship between populist politics and policy-making.

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