scholarly journals Policy Liberalism and Political Institutions

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Kim Chon Kyun
Keyword(s):  
Job Performance ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
Job Approval

This paper examines the impacts of political institutions, especially a president`s party affiliation and job performance, on the generosity of social welfare benefits, which are one of the characteristics of policy liberalism, through an investigation of U.S. social welfare expenditures. Findings indicate that a president`s party affiliation is a key predictor of his policy preferences, agendas, and policy liberalism or conservatism despite institutional and political constraints, whereas a president`s job performance, measured by either success on congressional votes or job approval, is not linked to the generosity of social welfare benefits. In an age of global capitalism undergoing radical changes in the political and economic environment, however, a president`s party affiliation is not a crucial indicator of policy preferences or policy liberalism/conservatism. Additionally, political leaders` policy preferences and tools appear to determine more significantly the destiny of welfare programs than a president`s job performance or economic conditions like unemployment.

The Transformation of American Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Social Security Act

With passage of the Social Security Act, in 1935, the American government took on new social welfare functions, which have expanded ever since. As a work of political theory “on the ground,” The Transformation of American Liberalism explores the arguments American political leaders used to justify and defend social welfare programs since the Social Security Act. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, the arguments of America’s political leaders fall well short of values of equality and human dignity that are often thought to underlie the welfare state. Individualist—“Lockean”—values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America’s leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and individualist assumptions inherent in American political culture. The American welfare state is notably ungenerous in its social welfare programs. To some extent this may be attributed to the shortcomings of public justifications. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in America’s political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
The Welfare State

With passage of the Social Security Act, in 1935, the American government took on new social welfare functions, which have expanded ever since. The Transformation of American Liberalism explores the arguments American political leaders used to justify and defend social welfare programs since 1935. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, the arguments of America’s political leaders fall well short of values of equality and human dignity that are often thought to underlie the welfare state. Individualist—“Lockean”—values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America’s leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and individualist assumptions inherent in American political culture. The American welfare state is notably ungenerous in its social welfare programs. To some extent this may be attributed to the shortcomings of public justifications. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for these programs in America’s political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

Agenda Setting and Political Control in India’s Sanitation Policy Subsystem

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.C. Martel
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Policy Subsystem

India has the worst sanitation situation in the world. Over the past century, Indian political leaders have made public statements expressing the intensity of the problem, deeming sanitation more important than political freedom, independence and religion. Recently, two prominent political parties—National Congress and Bharatiya Janata—argued about who deserves credit for improving India’s cleanliness. In response, this article is guided by the question: Does it matter which political institutions are supporting sanitation improvements in India? Using two theoretical lenses, agenda setting and political control of bureaucracy, this article discusses (1) the problem, politics and policies in India’s sanitation policy subsystem, and (2) mechanisms to align policy preferences across levels of government. Utilizing an agenda setting conceptual framework, the discussion highlights the role of international organizations in problem identification; party ideology and values and capacity issues that challenge the policy arena. The discussion turns to alignment of policy preferences across India’s multi-level governance structure, pointing to monitoring to reduce principal-agent problems, drawing from political control of bureaucracy theory. Given that national political leaders observably support sanitation, this article proposes that aligning policy preferences between national political institutions and local implementation agencies is imperative for achieving sanitation policy goals in federalist India.

Generous to all or ‘insiders only’? The relationship between welfare state generosity and immigrant welfare rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friederike Römer
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Composite Index ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Sensitivity Analyses ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Welfare Generosity ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
Generous Welfare

Two sharply contrasting accounts exist for the relationships between welfare generosity and immigrant social rights. The dualization hypothesis argues that due to fiscal pressures and welfare chauvinism, generous welfare states are more likely to exclude immigrants from access to welfare benefits. The generosity hypothesis argues that on the contrary, in generous welfare states, an immigrant will be granted greater access to benefits for material, institutional and cultural reasons. Using newly collected data from the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project that covers 18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states over 30 years (1980–2010) the two hypotheses are tested using pooled time series analyses. Both a composite index of welfare generosity and social welfare expenditures are used as explanatory variables. Furthermore, the analyses include a number of controls from the welfare state literature, as well as a measure for overall immigration policy restrictiveness. The results broadly support the generosity hypothesis. By contrast, the analyses yield no support for the dualization hypothesis. The index of welfare generosity is positively and significantly associated with immigrant access to benefits, while social welfare expenditures are positively signed but not significant. A number of sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of the results. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that generous welfare states are more likely to grant immigrants access to welfare benefits, and less generous welfare states are more likely to exclude immigrants from access.

Understanding the Expansion of Latin America’s New Social Welfare Regimes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rehan Rafay Jamil
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Party Ideology

Latin American countries have been described as truncated welfare states. However, the recent expansion of innovative social welfare programs have brought millions of excluded citizens access to social benefits. This review article examines a new body of scholarship that studies how democratic political competition has created the institutional context for social welfare expansion. This literature makes several important contributions to the study of distributive politics. It moves beyond regime type and party ideology and focuses on the nature of domestic political institutions and citizen-state linkages within Latin American democracies. Countries with robust political competition and denser ties to constituents have had the most extensive welfare expansion, and non-partisan programs have undermined clientelism. In single party dominated settings, the political incentives for informal and clientelist provision remains significant.

Remittances and the Politics of Austerity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Germano
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social Welfare Function ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Poor Families ◽  
International Migrants

Remittances sent by international migrants have become an increasingly important source of social welfare in the developing world. This chapter explores what remittances are, why migrants send them, and how poor families use them. I argue in this chapter that remittances are more than just gifts from one relative to another. They play a larger social welfare role that complements funds that governments spend on social welfare programs. This social welfare function has become particularly important in recent decades as developing countries have prioritized austerity and integrated into volatile global markets. I argue that by filling a welfare gap in an age of austerity, remittances help to reduce the suffering and anger that so often trigger political and social instability during times of economic crisis.

Trust in a Polarized Age

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Downward Spiral

Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic institutions are capable of creating and maintaining trust, even through polarized times. Combining philosophical arguments and empirical data, the author shows that liberal democracy, markets, and social welfare programs all play a vital role in producing social and political trust. Even more, these institutions can promote trust justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.

The Rise of Block-Granting as a Tool of Conservative Statecraft

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Block Grant ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.

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