Welfare and child support: Complements,not substitutes

In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare and child support as complements, was evaluated through an experimental design. This paper reports the key results of the experimental evaluation, using state administrative data to examine the effects on child support outcomes and governmental cost. We find that when custodial mothers keep all child support paid on their behalf, paternity establishment occurs more quickly, noncustodial fathers are more likely to pay support, and custodial families receive more support. These outcomes are achieved at no significant governmental cost. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Scandinavian Welfare State: The Institutions of Growth, Governance, and Reform. Review Article

In a review of five recent works on Scandinavian politics and public policy, it is shown that the basis for talking about a Scandinavian model is unfounded. Politics and policies diverge from country to country and within each country from sector to sector as a result of institutional variation. This variation is embedded in institutional history which accounts for strong national path dependency in public policies. However, the institutional set-up at a given point in time also provides political actors with incentives for change. Two of the works reviewed take up this lead as they argue for institutional reform, in one case to protect the welfare state against political erosion, in the other case to facilitate renewed economic growth and improved living standards. The review concludes by arguing for the positive prospects for systematic comparative analysis of Scandinavian politics, providing a mixture of institutional and political similarities combined with theoretically relevant variation.     

Welfare State Legitimacy: Ranking, Rating, Paying: The Popularity and Support for Norwegian Welfare Programmes in the Mid 1990s

Welfare programmes are targeted at different beneficiaries and grounded on a variety of principles: universalism, means testing, needs testing, targeting, income supplements and income maintenance, to mention some of the most important. The first question asked is: who supports programmes targeted at the different groups? The second question concerns whether the support varies when different techniques are used regarding measuring support for welfare state programmes – those programmes that are recommendable, those people want to spend their tax money on and the programmes where increased spending is followed by acceptance of a tax increase. Basically the results are similar across different measurement techniques. But if an interest group is identifiable – such as parents with young children – there is a distinct tendency for the interested party to be more supportive when money and budget restriction are involved compared with the pure recomendability of the programme. Interested parties also tend to support programmes that they are or will soon be using, most obviously seen in support for day care centres, which are supported largely by families with children below the age of 7 years, and for schools and education, supported largely by families with children above the age of 7 years. Where no distinct interest group – beyond the actual beneficiaries – is identifiable, normative positions such as ideology are the best predictor of support for welfare state programmes.     

Rural Adjustment Schemes: Juggling Politics,Welfare and Markets

The Commonwealth government has offered support to farmers in the form of structural or business adjustment‐type schemes since the Loan (Farmers Debt Adjustment) Acts of 1935–1971. Since 1971, a series of more comprehensive rural reconstruction/adjustment schemes with a range of objectives from debt alleviation to encouraging some exits from agricultural industries, has been in place. While having little direct impact on the structure of these industries, the various schemes have been politically important and an indicator of how core values relating to agricultural production and rural life have changed. A review of the schemes shows an increasing focus on improving farm productivity and sustainability, accompanied by a discourse emphasising the need to promote the ‘farm business’, rather than to protect the ‘family farm’. On the other hand, governments have also used these schemes to deliver ‘welfare’ outputs.     

The European Welfare State: Golden Achievements,Silver Prospects

For the welfare state the last 30 years have witnessed a turbulent transition from the ‘Golden Age’ of expansion to a ‘Silver Age’ of permanent austerity. This shift has been the result of external pressures and of internal transformations of domestic economies and social structures. Permanent austerity has entailed incisive institutional adaptations and has been accompanied by a ‘new politics’, centred on a plurality of ‘blame avoidance’ strategies on the side of parties and governments. The article summarises and discusses the main factual developments since the mid-1970s but it also surveys the main strands of academic debates on both the expansion and the crisis phases. The author argues that comparative welfare state research has been one of the liveliest fields of political economy – a field marked by important analytical and theoretical advances and by the accumulation of relevant and systematic empirical knowledge about a key institution of the European political landscape.     

Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare     

Local Government and Welfare Generosity: Municipality Spending on Social Welfare

Although it is difficult for local governments to give support for social welfare recipients top political priority, there are huge variations in the support recipients actually receive among Norwegian municipalities. However, local governments representing different party ideologies may prefer to support different dimensions of generosity. Some municipalities could have a liberal attitude to eligibility rules but be strict on time limits and the amount of money provided. Others may be generous regarding time limits or amounts received once one is accepted as a welfare client. Data from the mid 1990s indicate the variation in support is related to different generosity dimensions for different party groups. While the total number of clients seems unrelated to politics and basically correlates with local social problems, the duration and amount of support are related to the political composition of the municipality assembly. Devoid of any large variation, both time limits and the amount of support increase in accordance with socialist leanings, and the total budget used for social welfare support also increases with the proportion of women in the municipality assembly.     

From D.C. to Little Rock: Welfare Reform at Mid-term

Following an active period of state welfare reforms, passageof the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programin 1996 gave states great flexibility, set up block-grant financing,and imposed work-related mandates. Under TANF, states increasedtheir work expectations for recipients; improved work incentives;and provided more work supports, such as child care and transportationassistance. Caseloads have dropped sharply, and most formerrecipients are finding work. Caseload declines in most stateshave resulted in substantial funding being available for newand expanded services, including supports for working poor familiesand early-childhood and after-school programs. Most states havebeen slower to develop these programs, but the pace is increasingas policymakers become more secure about TANF's flexibilityand the magnitude of the caseload changes.     

Book Reviews: Corporate Welfare, Taxpayer Subsidies, and Home Field Advantages

Books reviewed:
Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit
Jerold J. Duquette, Regulating the National Pastime: Baseball and Antitrust .
James Quirk and Rodney Fort, Hard Ball: The Abuse of Power in Pro Team Sports .
Wilbur C. Rich, editor, The Economics and Politics of Sports Facilities .
Mark S. Rosentraub, Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who's Paying for It.
Jay Weiner, Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles .     

Public Opinion Polls,Voter Turnout,and Welfare: An Experimental Study

We experimentally study the impact of public opinion poll releases on voter turnout and welfare in a participation game. We find higher overall turnout rates when polls inform the electorate about the levels of support for the candidates than when polls are prohibited. Distinguishing between allied and floating voters, our data show that this increase in turnout is entirely due to floating voters. When polls indicate equal levels of support for the candidates, turnout is high and welfare is low (compared to the situation without polls). In contrast, when polls reveal more unequal levels of support, turnout is lower with than without this information, while the effect of polls on welfare is nonnegative. Finally, many of our results are well predicted by quantal response (logit) equilibrium.     

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom?At least for Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no.Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysisof welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officialsand the bureaucracy have responded in a fashion consistent withthe state's political and administrative culture: cautiouslyand incrementally. First, Kansas' welfare reform policy hasbeen driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators,supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistanceto their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective ofwelfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly fromits typical "middle" position relative to other states' policies.Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primarystrategies: decentralized management authority; new links withother agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newlyintegrated approach to frontline welfare case-management.     

Welfare policymaking and intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender in U.S. state legislatures

Welfare policy in the American states has been shaped profoundly by race, ethnicity, and representation. Does gender matter as well? Focusing on state welfare reform in the mid‐1990s, we test hypotheses derived from two alternative approaches to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking. An additive approach, which assumes gender and race/ethnicity are distinct and independent, suggests that female state legislators—regardless of race/ethnicity—will mitigate the more restrictive and punitive aspects of welfare reform, much like their African American and Latino counterparts do. In contrast, an intersectional approach, which highlights the overlapping and interdependent nature of gender and race/ethnicity, suggests that legislative women of color will have the strongest countervailing effect on state welfare reform—stronger than that of other women or men of color. Our empirical analyses suggest an intersectional approach yields a more accurate understanding of gender, race/ethnicity, and welfare politics in the states.     

Welfare Dualism in Two Scandinavian Welfare States: Public Opinion and Party Politics

Recent research on the legitimacy of the welfare state has pointed to a potential negative impact of immigration. While much of this research has been concerned with a possible weakening of the general support for economic redistribution, this article analyses popular support for the introduction of a two-tier (dualist) welfare system, and focuses on the interplay between public opinion and party competition. It uses survey data from Denmark and Norway: two similar welfare states where elite politics on migration and welfare dualism has been markedly different over the last decade. It finds that the level and structure of popular support for welfare dualism are fairly similar in the two countries, but that attitudes toward dualism have a stronger impact on left–right voting in Denmark where the politics of welfare dualism has been actively advocated by the populist right party and pursued by a right-wing coalition government.     

Counter-Reform in the American Welfare State: Ideas,Institutions, and Progressive Taxation

The Nixon/Ford years were a pivotal period when severe fiscal problems emerged whose resolutions constrained the ambit of social policy afterward. A shared diagnosis of economic challenges produced divergent effects in the electoral fortunes of the major political parties and set the stage for an upward redistribution of wealth. Horizontal equity became synonymous with overall tax equity. This article examines how economic ideas acquire political traction.     

Globalisation,Legitimacy, and Pacification: The Emergence of a Global Welfare Regime

The globalisation-induced rollback of social expenditures, and the concomitant increase in inequality and unemployment in developed as well as developing countries, are leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the national capitalist state and the capitalist system as whole. It is argued that the global capitalist class will attempt to offset this crisis of legitimacy through the development of a "global welfare regime" to perform the functions that the nation-state is increasingly unable to fulfil, namely, those of pacifying populations through the handing out of material and symbolic rewards. This article will formulate a working definition of legitimacy, show that this legitimacy is being threatened by globalisation, and then present empirical support for this hypothesis of a crisis of legitimacy. Finally, it will analyse in detail the policies of the international governmental organisations that are predicted to constitute a global welfare regime, showing that they are moving to shore up the faltering stability of unregulated global capitalism.