Retrenchment of Social Policy by Other Means: A Comparison of Agricultural and Housing Policy in Turkey

Abstract

In many low- and middle-income countries, conventional welfare state institutions provide social protection only for the formally employed. In contrast, the rural and urban poor are often protected by “social policy by other means”. Based on a comparative analysis of two major unconventional welfare programs in Turkey, agricultural state support and access to squatter housing, this article explains retrenchment of social policy by other means. Agricultural retrenchment was the result of coercive policy transfer from international organizations in a post-crisis context, while the retrenchment of squatter housing was driven by domestic political entrepreneurs responding to decreases in the availability of urban land and the number of informal squatters. In both cases, retrenchment became politically sustainable due to functional replacement with more conventional welfare programs. This analysis challenges the narrow focus of mainstream welfare state research, provides an explanation of retrenchment of social policy by other means, and enhances our understanding of Turkey’s uneven welfare state development.     

The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality

Labour's 2017 general election manifesto contained a pledge to ‘end the punitive sanctions regime’ in the British welfare state. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not elaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a welfare consensus spanning over twenty years. The depth of the suggested changes on welfare are also evident in the scale of reform proposed to disability benefits, as well as plans—confirmed in August 2018 by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—to pilot universal basic income. Collectively, these policies would seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system, which over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet despite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it received very little media or public attention during the election campaign. This article explores Labour's ‘quiet revolution’ on welfare, examining whether Labour's new welfare approach is indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion on welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social attitudes. The argument presented is that whilst there are persuasive explanations that Labour is responding to a change in the public mood, there is also evidence of a more ambitious goal at stake: the aim of reshaping, not simply responding to, public opinion on the welfare state.     

The tax-welfare mix: explaining Japan's weak extractive capacity

Abstract

Despite having the highest level of public debt in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), higher than Greece or Italy, Japan has one of the lowest aggregate tax burdens of the advanced industrial democracies. This paper asks why Japan, once described as a strong developmental state, has had such a weak extractive capacity, an inability to raise revenues to confront deficits and public debt? In contrast to the existing explanations that focus on political institutions, partisan preferences, or economic globalization, this article argues that Japan's ‘tax–welfare mix’ – the combination of taxes and redistributive welfare polices – undermined the state's long-term capacity to secure adequate tax revenue. More than just a source of revenue, taxes can be used directly to achieve redistributive goals, such as targeting low taxes and exemptions to specific groups. This study shows how Japan's tax–welfare mix diminished its extractive capacity through three mechanisms: the political lock-in of a redistributive social bargain struck around low taxes, the timing and sequencing of its tax policy and welfare development, and the erosion of public trust, which undermined tax consent. Beyond offering a new theory of extractive capacity, the tax–welfare mix explains aspects of Japan's tax structure that defy existing explanations and contributes to our understanding of the capitalist development state by highlighting the redistributive political function of tax policy and its long-term impact on state capacity.     

Varieties of Social Policy by Other Means: Lessons for Comparative Welfare State Research

Abstract

Scholars can take a broader look at social policy and understand that traditional public welfare state programs are only one of the many potential sources of social protection and regulation. The contributions of this special issue invite social policy scholars to explore policy instruments that provide “social policy by other means” across a wide array of areas, including agriculture, energy, immigration, taxation, and legal regulation of private benefits and services. The article provides a concise overview of some of the key theoretical and empirical implications of social policy by other means for comparative welfare state research. In order to do this, it is divided into two main sections, which respectively discuss the nature and boundaries of social policy and the varieties of social policy by other means. This is followed by a short conclusion, which summarizes the key lessons of this special issue for comparative welfare state research.     

Citizens,Partners or Patrons? Corporate Power and Patronage Capitalism

Abstract

The addition of new social roles in public service and civil society to large business corporations' enormous economic power and substantial political influence suggests novel but little-understood changes in the institutional relations between business, state and civil society. Sociological emphasis on the centrality of power relations in business conduct and radical diagnoses of a corporate ‘take-over’ of public and civil society institutions is contradicted by other literature which portrays corporations as socially responsible benefactors rather than all-powerful behemoths. The present analysis assesses rival emphases on power relations and normative shifts toward corporate social responsibility in the sphere of business–civil society partnerships. It argues that, in the United States and Britain, a new set of institutional relationships is emerging to fill a vacuum in tackling social and environmental problems. In this new institutional field, large corporations are taking on the role of patrons to a variety of clients amongst public and civil society organisations. This social relationship parallels similar episodes of patronage when systems of community and public welfare disintegrated during the rise of capitalism.     

Informal Service Access in Pro-Cyclical Welfare States: A Comparison of Electricity Theft in Slums and Regular Residential Areas of Montevideo

Abstract

It is often thought that political incumbents in developing countries abandon the poor during economic crises because of narrow and pro-cyclical welfare policies. In contrast to that view, this article argues that informal transfers for those excluded from the welfare state represent an example of “social policy by other means”. During dire economic conditions, democratic incumbents, who need the support or acquiescence of dislocated groups, expand irregular access to the electricity service counter-cyclically. Comparative time series data from slums and residential areas of Montevideo show that electricity losses respond to the political provision of both informal social insurance and informal redistribution.     

Housing and the Welfare State in Norway

This article discusses housing and the welfare state in Norway in 1980 and 2005 by applying Esping‐Andersen's theories of welfare state regimes to this sector. How should Norwegian housing policy be understood in light of Esping‐Andersen's conceptual framework, and what is the impact of post‐industrial change? In 1980, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by social‐democratic traits such as market regulation, substantial public expenditure and universal subsidies for both renters and a large owner‐occupied housing sector. The effects of post‐industrial changes, including deregulation of the credit and housing markets, marked a major turn in housing policy and the housing market in Norway. By 2005, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by traits that are typical of a liberal welfare regime: market economics, low public expenditure and subsidies for small, targeted groups, while other segments of the Norwegian welfare state remain characterised by social‐democratic traits. Esping‐Andersen's claim that the effect of post‐industrial transformation was different in different welfare regimes is thus not supported by the case of the Norwegian housing sector.     

Class and social policy in the knowledge economy

Recent studies of welfare state attitudes in the knowledge economy find very high generalized support for generous welfare state policies, both among the working and the middle classes. Has class become irrelevant as a predictor of social policy preferences? Or do we simply mis-conceptualise today's class conflict over social policy? To what extent has it changed from a divide over the level of social policy generosity to a divide over the kind of social policy and – more specifically – over the relative importance that should be given to different social policies? Answering these questions is not only relevant to understand welfare politics in the twenty-first century, but electoral politics as well: only when we understand what working- and middle-class voters care about, can we evaluate the role distributive policies play in electoral processes. We use original survey data from eight West European countries to show that middle- and working-class respondents indeed differ in the relative importance they attribute to social investment and social consumption policies. Middle-class respondents consistently attribute higher absolute and relative importance to social investment. We also show that this emphasis on investive policies relates to the middle class expecting better future economic and social opportunities than the working class. This divide in anticipated opportunities underlies a new kind of working- versus middle-class divide, which contributes to transforming the class divide from a conflict over the level of social policy to a conflict over the priorities of social policy.     

Policy planning and management dialogue with countries in transition

The economic and social transformation of the socialist state is a central concern of public policy planning. This article discusses three aspects of this challenge: the growth of policy interventions in the welfare state; modalities of public policies; and the organization of public policy planning. Modernization of public management in the west underscores the respective rationalities of state and market. The modern welfare state is now under financial pressure, cutbacks proceed and privatization and deregulation take hold. The author appraises these trends and their implications for countries in transition. Emphasis is placed on the need to demarcate public and private whilst at the same time building in social protection through public participation in policy planning.     

T.H. Marshall and his critics: reappraising ‘social citizenship’ in the twenty-first century

T.H. Marshall's concept of ‘social citizenship’, developed in the 1949 lecture ‘Citizenship and Social Policy’, remains a vital study of welfare in developed nations. However, Marshall's social citizenship has come under attack as undermining civil liberties, or falling short of offering real equality to marginalised groups. This article returns to Marshall's lecture to show that he was in fact aware of such problems, but nonetheless held the provision of social rights to be a valuable normative project. Furthermore, this article argues that a new social citizenship, incorporating collective rights claims, could present a strong challenge to neoliberalism in contemporary welfare debates.     

Social Policy by Other Means: Theorizing Unconventional Forms of Welfare Production

Abstract

The goal of this special issue is to highlight the importance of unconventional social policies, theorize their development in comparison with traditional welfare state accounts and outline a new research agenda. In this introduction to the special issue, the editors present the concept of social policy by other means as encompassing two kinds of unconventional social policy (from the point of view of mainstream comparative research): First, functional equivalents to formal systems of social protection and, second, non-state provision of benefits. The concept builds upon a sizeable, but fragmented literature in comparative welfare state research. While numerous examples demonstrate that social policy by other means is more pervasive in both OECD and non-OECD countries than often acknowledged, a brief survey of the top 20 articles in the field reveals that this fact is not sufficiently reflected in the academic literature. With reference to both existing studies and the contributions to this special issue, the editors go on to explore (1) the different forms of social policy by other means, (2) explanatory theories and (3) their effectiveness in terms of social outcomes. They close by outlining a research agenda.     

The evolution of Israeli citizenship: an overview

Israel's citizenship discourse has consisted of three different layers, superimposed on one another: An ethno-nationalist discourse of inclusion and exclusion, a republican discourse of community goals and civic virtue, and a liberal discourse of civil, political, and social rights. The liberal discourse has served as the public face of Israeli citizenship and functioned to separate Israel's Jewish and Palestinians citizens from the non-citizen Palestinians in the occupied territories. The ethno-nationalist discourse has been invoked to discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens within the sovereign State of Israel. Last, the republican discourse has been used to legitimate the different positions occupied by the major Jewish social groups: ashkenazim vs. mizrachim, males vs. females, secular vs. religiously orthodox. Until the mid-1980s the republican discourse, based on a corporatist economy centered on the umbrella labor organization – the Histadrut – mediated between the contradictory dictates of the liberal and the ethno-nationalist discourses. Since then, the liberalization of the Israeli economy has weakened the republican discourse, causing the liberal and ethno-nationalist ones to confront each other directly. Since the failure of the Oslo peace process in 2000, these two discourses have each gained the upper hand in one policy area – the liberal one in economic policy and the ethno-national one in policy towards the Palestinians and the Arabs in general. This division of labor is the reason why on the eve of its 60th anniversary as a state Israel is experiencing its worst crisis of governability ever. While Israel's economy is booming and the country's international standing remains high, due to the global ‘war on terror,’ public trust in state institutions and leaders is at an all-time low, so that the government cannot tend to the country's pressing business.     

Accommodating Bureaucrats in Canberra: A History of the Commonwealth Bureaucracy's Office Space in the National Capital During the Howard Decade

This article seeks to explore an important intersection of the Commonwealth's administrative and spatial histories by examining the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space accommodation practices between 1996 and 2006 in the urban spatial context of Canberra. After initially conceptualising and describing the experience of the Howard decade and contrasting it with previous policy and practice, the article seeks to theorise the general experience of the last ten years through stressing the interweaving of neoliberalism, path‐dependencies, and contingency. In doing so, the piece offers a number of insights into not just the Howard government, the Commonwealth and Canberra, but also of neoliberalism, and the potential impacts of social spaces on policy processes and public sector practice.     

The Future of Belgian Federalism as Seen Through the Eyes of the Social Partners: A Continuing Obstacle to Social Policy Decentralization?

In this article, we take a look at the discussion on the devolution of social policy. Despite the pressure of strong nationalist movements to decentralize socio-economic matters, the federal welfare state does not erode. In their study up to the early 2000s, Béland and Lecours explain this relative standstill by pointing to the institutionalization of neo-corporatistic organizations. These organizations, which are strongly involved in the management of the welfare state, have not split along language lines and prevent the decentralization of socio-economic policies in order to preserve their power. Based on empirical evidence, this paper shows that federal social partners are an important obstacle to social policy decentralization in Belgium while the regional social partners have differing opinions on the devolution debate.     

Institutional competitiveness in the global economy: Denmark,the United States,and the varieties of capitalism

Despite high taxes, a large welfare state, and much economic regulation, Denmark competes successfully against other advanced capitalist economies. Denmark’s success is based in large part on its institutional competitiveness – its capacity to achieve socioeconomic success as a result of the competitive advantages that firms derive from operating within a particular set of institutions. The institutional basis for successfully coordinating labor markets and vocational training programs are examined for Denmark and the US – two countries that were very different institutionally but very successful in the 1990s and in the 2000s. We show that there is no one best way to achieve success in today’s global economy, except with respect to social inequality; that the mechanisms underlying institutional competitiveness are more complex than often recognized; that institutional hybrids can be as successful as purer political economic cases; and that high taxes and state spending can enhance socioeconomic performance. As such, this paper challenges both neoliberalism and the varieties of capitalism school of comparative political economy.     

Charismatic Economies: Pentecostalism,Economic Restructuring,and Social Reproduction

Pentecostalism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, expanding most quickly in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia. To make sense of this expansion in so many developing regions, I suggest that Pentecostalism fosters norms and behaviors that harmonize with neoliberal economic restructuring. I frame this theoretically with Polanyi's notion of double movement. In our current era of weakened state governance vis-à-vis neoliberal trade and fiscal policy, non-state sites of reaction have emerged. Pentecostalism is one such site, and, in contrast with Polanyi's example, I suggest that Pentecostalism has embedded the self-regulated aspects of neoliberal capitalism. I make this argument by using the feminist political economy theorization of social reproduction to interpret a number of empirical studies of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism addresses dilemmas of social reproduction engendered by neoliberalism, and so may be said to embed this form of economic organization in human social life in a way that reinforces neoliberal capitalism.     

Crisis for the State or Crisis of the State?

The Conservative‐Liberal Democrat government's policy risks turning the financial crisis into a crisis of the state. This article argues that the current trajectory of the British state risks exacerbating the very social antagonisms which it has fought so hard to contain in recent years. It contends that the crisis (2007–09) was a crisis of neoliberalism and yet, paradoxically, neoliberalism—in the form of further depoliticisation and a new politics of debt—is being re‐invoked to deal with the post‐apocalyptic condition of the British economy. The article suggests that the state lacks the necessary political discourse to secure popular consent and—as a result—is resorting to a more coercive form of political management; and that the effects of austerity are being offset through an increased indebtedness of the British public. Both risk igniting social conflict. In the conclusion several points are indicated for an alternative political agenda.     

‘Marx’ or the Market? Intra-party Power and Social Democratic Welfare State Retrenchment

Differences in the intra-party balance of power explain variation in social democratic responses to the economic crisis of the late 1970s. This article evidences this claim by analysing the case of welfare state retrenchment by social democratic parties. Welfare state retrenchment is electorally risky for social democrats and often contrary to their principles. Therefore cases of welfare state retrenchment by social democrats provide an excellent case study of the difficult trade-offs parties have to make between office, policy and vote pay-offs. The article claims that leadership-dominated parties advance office-seeking strategies and are therefore responsive to economic conditions and public opinion. Conversely, activist-dominated parties advance policy-seeking strategies and therefore support traditional social democratic policy platforms or seek more radical solutions. By comparing seven social democratic parties (Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK) between 1980 and 2005, this article explains variation in when social democrats introduced welfare state retrenchment.     

Approaching the EU and Reaching the US? Rival Narratives on Transforming Welfare Regimes in East-Central Europe

Post-communist welfare regimes are frequently portrayed as a hybrid consisting of the relics of communist social policy and a neophyte imitation of the US model of welfare. Both components of that hybrid are regarded as incompatible with the 'European social model'. At the same time, most welfare reformers in East-Central Europe try to avoid falling into the trap of first, conserving the statist, inefficient and pseudo-egalitarian character of the old system of social policy; second, seeking new forms of welfare collectivism along the national-conservative/populist 'third roads' between capitalism and communism; third, triggering popular discontent by dismantling the old welfare regimes too rapidly, or in a haphazard way; and fourth, targeting an end-state which has become unsustainable in the Western world during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the emerging welfare regimes in the region are far from being identical and the reformers do not find stable institutional arrangements in the West to copy. In an effort to make sense of this complex picture, the paper examines what has 'really' happened in the welfare sectors in the region during the past decade by presenting three dominant narratives of the social transformation: 'leaping in the dark', 'marking time' and 'muddling through'.     

Squaring the Virtuous Circle: Exploring the Potential of the ‘Five Cs’

During his May 2014 visit to Australia Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organization, urged ‘public institutions, civil society, and global businesses’ to forge ‘creative coalitions’ for the purpose of engaging constructively and positively with the complex problems standing in the way of achieving social and economic sustainability. Lamy's visit was but the first of several occasions during 2014 in which intense public discussion erupted about the need for government, business, and civil society to pool their capacities in boundary‐spanning efforts to address complex policy problems. This article investigates whether the public discussion portends a heightened policy focus on the ‘five Cs’: co‐production, co‐design, corporate social responsibility, collective impact, and Lamy's creative coalitions.