Review Article: Social Rights and Social Contract—Political Theory and the New Welfare Politics

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 507-532

  White, Stuart ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84993725804     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0007123400000211     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. For a comprehensive account of the recent shift in ideas and policy in Britain and the United States, see Desmond King, In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in Britain and the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), especially pp. 219-86.
2. New Ambitions for Our Country: A New Contract for Welfare (London: HMSO, Cm 3805, 1998). See especially p. 80, which offers a summary list of the parallel duties of government and citizen in the welfare sphere. For a more general statement of the philosophical outlook apparently informing welfare policy, see Tony Blair, ‘The Rights We Enjoy, the Duties We Owe’, in Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), pp. 236-43.
3. On the concept of social citizenship, see T. H. Marshall, ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, in Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 1-85.
4. Centrally, in Marshall's words, ‘the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security’ and ‘the right …to live the life of a civilized being’ (see Marshall, ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, p. 11).
5. Desmond King and Mark Wickham-Jones, ‘From Clinton to Blair: The Democratic (Party) Origins of Welfare to Work’, Political Quarterly, 70 (1999), 62-74, specifically p. 72.
6. The notion of a liberal socialist tradition perhaps needs some explanation. In the British context, social democratic activists and policy-makers have drawn inspiration from both ‘social liberal’ thinkers such as Leonard Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson, and from ‘democratic socialist’ thinkers such as R. H. Tawney and Anthony Crosland. Though there are differences between these thinkers, there are important points of similarity, particularly as regards their underlying conceptions of distributive justice, and these similarities allow us to speak meaningfully of a ‘liberal socialist’ tradition which embraces them all. For a more detailed analysis of the interpenetration of liberal and socialist thinking in the British context, see Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 456-72. See also Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 72-95.
7. Leonard Hobhouse, Liberalism (London: Williams and Norgate, 1911), p. 76.
8. On the views of the New Liberals, see Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: A Study in the Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 195-244.
9. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, ‘Is Egalitarianism Passe? Homo Reciprocans and the Future of Egalitarian Politics’, Boston Review, 23 (December/January 1998/1999), 4-10.
10. As Bowles and Gintis put it (Boston Review, p. 8): ‘Strong reciprocity…allows groups to engage in common practices without resort to costly and often ineffective hierarchical authority, and thereby vastly increases the repertoire of social experiments capable of diffusing through cultural and genetic competition. The relevant traits may be transmitted genetically and proliferate under the influence of natural selection, or they may be transmitted culturally through learning from elders and age-mates and proliferate because successful groups tend to absorb failing groups or be emulated by them.’
11. See Bo Rothstein, Just Institutions Matter: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 136-43, 163-70.
12. David Ellwood, Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
13. Ellwood, Poor Support, pp. 87-8.
14. The earned income tax credit (EITC) provides a fiscal supplement to those with low earnings which, in contrast to conventional income-tested assistance, increases in size with hours worked, and amount earned, over lower earnings levels, before being phased out relatively slowly at higher levels of earnings. For further discussion and numerical illustration of the earned income tax credit (EITC), see Ellwood, Poor Support, pp. 114-16; Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood, Welfare Realities: From Rhetoric to Reform (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), especially pp. 148-51.
15. Expansion of the EITC has been at the centre of New Democrat thinking on social policy since the late 1980s. See, for example, Robert J. Shapiro, Work and Poverty: A Progressive View of the Minimum Wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit (Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute, 1989).
16. For an overview of the Labour government's policies in this area, see Carey Oppenheim, ‘Enabling Participation? Welfare Reform and the Labour Market’, in Stuart White, ed., New Labour: The Progressive Future? (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, forthcoming).
17. For an excellent overview of these developments, see Frank Vandenbroucke, Social Democracy, Globalization and Inequality (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1998).
18. Phelps proposes a subsidy per hour worked that varies inversely with the individual's wage rate. See Edmund Phelps, Rewarding Work: How to Restore Participation and Self-Support to Free Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), especially pp. 103-121.
19. See Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal (London: Vintage, 1994), pp. 264-5, and Anthony Atkinson, ‘The Case for a Participation Income’, Political Quarterly, 67 (1996), 67-70.
20. See Ellwood, Poor Support, pp. 124-5.
21. See Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1992), especially pp. 136-48, and Robert M. Solow, ‘Lecture II: Guess Who Pays for Workfare’, in Amy Gutmann, ed., Work and Welfare (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially pp. 39-41. Kaus advocates guaranteed work, at wages below the minimum-wage level, as an alternative to welfare, rather than as a complement to time-limited welfare. Solow envisages direct job creation and/or employment subsidies to the private sector, accompanied by ongoing EITC-style welfare.
22. See, for example, Richard Layard, ‘The Prevention of Long-Term Unemployment’, in John Philpott, ed., Working for Full Employment (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 190-203. For an earlier variant on this proposal, see also Michael Rustin, ‘A Statutory Right to Work’, in Rustin, For a Pluralist Socialism (London: Verso, 1985), pp. 147-72. For criticism of the right to work idea, see also Jon Elster, ‘Is There (or Should There Be) a Right to Work?’ in Amy Gutmann, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 53-78, and J. Donald Moon, ‘The Moral Basis of the Democratic Welfare State’, in Gutmann, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State, pp. 27-52. For a good response to Elster's criticisms, see Richard Arneson, ‘Is Work Special? Justice and the Distribution of Employment’, American Political Science Review, 84 (1990), 1121-41.
23. Under the New Deal programme, introduced in January 1998, those aged 18-25 who have been unemployed for more than six months are given a period of counselling by an adviser in the Employment Service followed by the option of participating in one of a range of work or educational programmes, refusal being sanctioned with a cut in welfare benefits. Variants of the programme have been (or are to be) extended to other groups including single parents, those on disability benefit, and the older long-term unemployed. For a defence of the programme's essential rationale, see Richard Layard, What Labour Can Do (London: Warner, 1997), pp. 58-64.
24. Each citizen would receive, on maturity, an allocation of credits, the value of which would be linked to average earnings. In White's words: ‘Credits [could then] be drawn for a specific purpose-such as job search, retraining, or beginning a business-rather than for unemployment as such. They could not be drawn solely to create or supplement income, but would be tied to what one might call a labour market need-that is, the need to do something in relation to the labour market. For example, someone wishing to use credits for job search … might have to join a …job agency and draw up a professionally backed plan of job seeking.’ See Michael White, Against Unemployment (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1991), pp. 215-21, specifically pp. 215-16.
25. Haveman continues: ‘They could draw on this account at any time for approved purchases of education and medical care services … and an annual statement of the value of the account would be sent to each youth…. The account would earn interest, and to the extent that it was not drawn down prior to the normal age of retirement, it would be available to supplement other income sources at that time.’ See Robert Haveman, Starting Even: An Equal Opportunity Program to Combat the Nation's New Poverty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 168-71.
26. See Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999); and David Nissan and Julian Le Grand, A Capital Idea: Start-up Grants for Young People (London: Fabian Society, 2000), who propose a grant for all maturing adults financed from inheritance tax.
27. See Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice, pp. 141-7.
28. See, for example, the Commission on Social Justice's discussion of ‘social insurance for family responsibilities’ in Social Justice, pp. 240-3, centring on expanded benefits for those caring for disabled family members and ‘parental leave insurance’.
29. Leonard Hobhouse, The Labour Movement, 3rd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1912), pp. 16-17.
30. This claim needs some qualification in the British context. The report of the Commission on Social Justice does call for a revival of inheritance taxation, and a shift to an accessions tax, though the recommendation is not given much emphasis. See Social Justice, pp. 390-1. Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle also propose using the proceeds from a reformed inheritance tax to finance a programme of capital grants to newly married couples. See Mandelson and Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 128-9.
31. An interesting discussion of the welfare recipient's right to due process can be found in Justice William Brennan's opinion in the US Supreme Court case, Goldberg v. Kelly, decided in 1970. In this case the court decided by a 7-2 majority that a state law allowing administrators to terminate a welfare recipient's benefits subject but prior to a subsequent written appeal violated welfare recipients’ rights of due process under the US Constitution. Brennan, writing for the majority, argued that termination of benefits could not constitutionally occur until after the recipient's appeal had been heard, and that in making an appeal the recipient must have the right to a full oral hearing with counsel before an impartial adjudicator and with the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses. See Tony Lauro, ‘Fair Hearing: Legacy to the Poor’, in E. Joshua Rosenkranz and Bernard Schwartz, eds, Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence (New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 233-42.
32. For an argument that work-tested welfare is unjust on such grounds, see Jonathan Wolff, ‘Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27 (1998), 97-122, specifically pp. 113-15.
33. For a good example of this exercise in the contemporary political theory literature, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson's argument for ‘fair workfare’ in their Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 273-306.
34. For an exposition of the type of egalitarianism I have in mind, see G. A. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics, 99 (1989), 914-44.
35. See Gerald Dworkin, ‘Paternalism’, in Richard Wasserstrom, ed., Morality and the Law (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1971), pp. 107-26. I should note that Dworkin has had some second thoughts about this theory of justifiable paternalism, but I shall not pursue and respond to these doubts here.
36. See Lawrence Mead, The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America (New York: Basic Books, 1992). See also Mead, Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (New York: The Free Press, 1987), and Mead, ed., The New Paternalism (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1997).
37. See Mead, The New Politics of Poverty, pp. 210-39. See also Lawrence Mead and Frank Field MP, From Welfare to Work (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1997). Field here expresses some reservations as to how far Mead's analysis is applicable to Britain.
38. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty, p. 19.
39. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty, p. 21.
40. The obvious rational choice explanation of non-work is that it is a response to low real wages amongst low-skilled workers-as wages for this group of workers fall other options such as welfare and crime become more attractive. At the beginning of Chapter 4 of The New Politics of Poverty Mead poses the question of whether non-work can be explained as a response to low wages. But the chapter goes on to address a quite different question: whether poverty is likely to result from low-paid employment. Even if, as Mead claims, the vast majority of those in low-paid work are thereby able to get incomes above the poverty line we cannot infer from this that low wages are not the main cause of non-work. The non-work decision depends on the return to work relative to the alternatives (welfare, crime), not on the return to work relative to a rather arbitrary official definition of the poverty line. For a comprehensive discussion of alternative explanations of non-work amongst the poor in the United States, see David Ellwood, ‘Understanding Dependency’, in Bane and Ellwood, Welfare Realities, pp. 67-123.
41. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty, p. 239.
42. On the exploitation objection to basic income, see especially Gijs van Donselaar, The Benefit of Another's Pains (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1997), especially pp. 104-65, and Stuart White, ‘Liberal Equality, Exploitation, and the Case for an Unconditional Basic Income’, Political Studies, 45 (1997), 312-26. For a review of the debate, see also Robert van der Veen, ‘Real Freedom versus Reciprocity: Competing Views on the Justice of Unconditional Basic Income’, Political Studies, 46 (1998), 140-63.
43. See Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
44. See Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwells, 1994), pp. 229-82. 57 See Van Parijs, Real Freedom, pp. 89-132. Van Parijs argues that some deductions from this fund will have to be made to compensate for unequal endowments of talent and handicaps, but he does not think the level of compensation will necessarily be such as to exhaust the fund or even jeopardize the payment of a sizeable basic income. For Van Parijs's treatment of this issue, see Real Freedom, pp. 58-88.
45. Dore envisages basic income being phased in for youths and carrying corresponding ‘duties of unpaid community service, duties which are compulsory and universal, though widely flexible in form.’ See Ronald Dore, Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 223.
46. Interestingly, Philippe Van Parijs also suggests a combination of this kind, though not as a way of responding to the exploitation objection. National service may be required, Van Parijs argues, to help cultivate the sense of ‘solidaristic patriotism’ that is necessary to build and maintain support for a highly redistributive basic income scheme. See Van Parijs, Real Freedom, p. 231.
47. Eco-socialist Andre Gorz advanced a radical version of this proposal in the 1980s. Gorz proposed guaranteeing each citizen a minimum income for life in return for an agreement to perform 20,000 hours of socially necessary public labour. See Andre Gorz, Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work (London: South End Press, 1985), especially theses 17-19, pp. 40-7.
48. See Robert Haveman, ‘Equity with Employment’, Boston Review, 22 (Summer 1997), 3-8.