Task

Critically review the current Coalition government’s approach to welfare reform taking
account of past and present welfare ideologies and assessing its strengths and weakness from
the standpoint of ONE of the ideologies discussed in Block 2 (e.g. Marxism, Feminism, Anti-
disabilism, and so on).

Guidelines

1. Your review is to be based on the document provided which relates to the current
government’s approach to welfare. You will be informed which document you are to
review in the first week of November. This will give you 6 weeks to complete the
task.

2. The overall word length of your review is 1500 words. It must address all of the
following issues and questions.

(i) Firstly, you must include an introduction where you provide an overview
of the themes you will be discussing in the assignment.
(ii) How does the approach outlined in the document typify the Coalition
government’s blending of welfare ideologies? Here you need to specifically
consider the ideologies behind the current government’s approach to welfare
and how it relates to the document.
(iii) In what ways does the current government’s approach to welfare relate to
past welfare ideologies which include Elizabethan Poor Law, Victorian Poor
Law, Social Liberalism and the foundations of the Beveridge welfare state?
(iv) How does the current government’s approach, and its ideological
underpinnings, relate to New Right and New Labour approaches on poverty,
welfare, and unemployment?
(v) From the standpoint of one of the ideological perspectives discussed in
Block 2 of the unit (e.g. Marxism, Feminism, Anti-Disabilism, and so on),
critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current government’s
approach.
(vi) Finally, you must include a conclusion where you draw the threads of the
discussion together.
 3. You should aim to give points (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) equal weighting.
That is, parts (ii) to (v) should be roughly the same number of words (aim for around
300 words for each of these sections).
4. You are expected to use a minimum of eight academic/peer-reviewed
sources to support your discussion. Only one of the eight sources required to pass can
be notes from a lecture. The eight does not include the document you are reviewing
(although this should obviously be included in your list of sources). Note: eight is the
minimum required to pass; you are encouraged to carry out wider reading.
5. You must use the Harvard referencing system to identify the source of
all the information used in your assignment. The Harvard system you must use is
outlined in the referencing guidelines towards the end of this handbook.
6. No more than 5 –10% of the assignment should be in the form of
quotations.
7. Word process, double space and number the pages. You must also
include a word count.
8. Proofread and edit your work before handing it in and/or ask a trusted
person to read it through for you.

ESSENTIAL BOOKS:
Fraser, D. (2009) The evolution of the British Welfare state: a history of social policy since
the industrial Revolution, 4th edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Mcmillan

e-books
Annesley,C, Gains, F. & Rummery, K. (eds.)(2007) Women and New Labour, Bristol: policy
PRESS

Powell, M. (ED.) (2008) Modernising the welfare state: the Blair legacy, Bristol: Policy Press

JOURNALS:
Critical social policy
International journal of social welfare
Social policy review
Journal of comparative social welfare.
 Literature Review

Throughout the post-World War II era, the welfare state is probably one of the most intensely

studied topics by social scientists. Competing theories were put forth, followed by empirical

studies, quantitative or qualitative, comparative or historical, to describe and explain the ever-

evolving - or sometimes devolving - institutions and politics s of social welfare. For the most

part, however, the locus of the welfare state research was fixed in “the West,” that is, Western

Europe, North America, and the Antipodes, at least up until the early 1990s. Among so many

cross-national studies, countries outside the west have been rarely mentioned with the

exception of Japan until the very recent trend of studying social welfare in lesser-developed

countries (LDCs) finally emerged.

This is hardly a surprise when one considers the conventional assumptions of the welfare

state: First, it should be within the boundary of capitalist economy; the central planning

socialist system is excluded by definition, regardless of its level and efficiency of welfare

provision. Second, the political system should adopt a western-style democracy and plurality

of political parties, the lack of which disqualified state corporatist arrangements. Third,

because of their economic “backwardness,” many underdeveloped countries were simply

unable to provide basic necessities of welfare for all citizens as a social right. Put another

way, “The welfare state rests, first and foremost, on the availability of some form of

reallocable economic surplus.” (Quadagno 1987: 111) Therefore, the welfare state was

conceived as a feat of “rich democracies” (Wilensky 2002: 211), which happened to be

located predominantly in the West. The “Eurocentrism” of welfare state theories Esping-

Andersen (1997) readily admitted was probably inevitable in this sense for much of the last

century.

While each had become more elaborate and expansive over time, the welfare state literature

and the economic development literature did not overlap quite as much as one might have
expected. One possible reason might be that the areas of research in each field are implicitly

divided by the axis that cuts across two different worlds, be they labeled as North and South,

the First and the Third World, core and periphery, or developed and developing.

For the reasons mentioned above, theoretical and empirical studies on the welfare state

largely stuck with “rich democracies” in the developed world until fairly recently.

And yet there is a certain kind of homology between the two fields. The economic take-off

theory that puts forward a stage-wise economic development from “the traditional societies”

to the mature, “high mass-consumption” societies (Rostow 1960) shares the same kind of

unilinear conception of modernity with the so-called logic of industrialism thesis, a strong

version of convergence theory of the welfare state, which banks on a positive correlation

between GDP and social spending among the advanced capitalist economies.

Marxist and neo-Marxist critics point out the welfare state’s function of legitimation that

masks capitalist domination and facilitates capital accumulation, just as the advocates of

dependency theory claim that unequal, even exploitative relationships exist between

developed core and underdeveloped periphery of world economy.

Whereas both modernization/convergence theory and the Marxist critique allude to an

inherent structural logic of capitalist development in the emergence of the welfare state, the

“state-centered” approach emphasizes the state as a critical agency by arguing that the strong,

autonomous state played a leading role in successful economic developments of non-western

countries.

Apparently, the same theoretical undercurrents - structural-functionalism, Marxism, state-

centered theory - flow through both development and the welfare state literature, making it all

the more relevant to build a bridge between the two. As a matter of fact, linkages between the

structure and characteristics of political economy and those of social welfare are studied well

with respect to the rich, democratic, and predominantly western “varieties of capitalism”
(Hall and Soskice 2001). However, systematic research efforts are still rudimentary on LDCs,

where varieties of capitalism are presumably even greater due to their varying degrees of

economic development. While considerable amount of empirical research has been done

about the relationship between globalizing political economy and social spending in LDCs

(Garrett 2001; Kaufman and Segura-Ubiergo 2001; Rudra 2002; Wibbels 2006), they are

admittedly very limited in specifying institutional relationships between political economy

and social welfare (Rudra 2006: 6-7).

The UK is the country where the ideas of Lizst never stood a chance in the face of laissez

faire. The combination of the elitist nature of policymaking and the strong entrenchment of

individualistic assumptions within the society resulted in a lack of drastic action in the

welfare sphere on the part of the government even in times of persistent social needs in the

mid-19th century (Ashford, 1986; Polyani, 1944). Still today, self-reliance and individualism

is so entrenched in the mentality of the society that a large number of elderly needy still

refuse to accept means tested benefits.

Despite being a political and economic hegemon (Gilpin, 1987), the benefices from this

power were not translated into better social policies. Its vast international expansion implied a

policy of open trade benefiting those having strong interests abroad and the City, which was

not reversed even though it has resulted in a long period of decline.

The UK did not need to use welfare as a tool to support the creation of the state in ways

similar to Bismarck in Germany. This can be related to the fact that state formation was done

with ease compared with the continental countries because a strong state was not necessary to

create unity, as it was the case for states seeking to incorporate territories from the city-belt

(Rokkan, 1999). Thus, social policy was never strongly linked to the state even though

everyone acknowledged it had a role to play (Ashford, 1986: 76).

The role of the private sector in the field of pension never faded away to the point where it

became marginalized at the detriment of the state system like the other three cases analyzed.

Contrary to post-war reforms in the other three countries, Beveridge ended up instituting flat-

rate benefits that were too minimal leaving ample room for the private sector. Thus, once the

private sectors became highly entrenched, especially among white-collar workers, it was

extremely difficult to for any government to include them into a new state system. This sort

of action would have gone against the traditional politics of laissez-faire, and the Treasury

would have never accepted the costs for their integration.

Conclusion: An End to The Politics of Wimbledon?

The past ten years have resulted in controversy over the game of tennis, particularly at the

fast grass court of Wimbledon. New technology has transformed the game of tennis into a

game of serves. They are now so powerful that exchanges have been considered rare. Thus,

recent Wimbledon champions have all been great servers.

Pension politics in the UK shares many of the problems facing the game of tennis. The party

holding the reign of power can send powerful serve that are difficult to stop. However, once a

serve is lost, the other player gets to serve and can serve similar medicine. Key is to hold on

to his serve as long as possible if one wants to control the match.

The only pension truce in British politics lasted from 1975 to 1979! Both Labour and

Conservatives have been serving new pension reforms on an on-going basis for most of the

post-world war period. The Conservatives were able to provide the private sector with an

important share of the responsibilities in ensuring provision for retirement, but this is not

because their plan was better. They were simply able to generate a tiebreaker by holding on

to their serve for 11 years after the introduction of the Social Security Act of 1986 (17 if ones

prefers the indexation of the basic pension on prices). In order to get back into the game, the

Labour party had to accept to play according to the rules established by the Conservatives.
Nonetheless, it added three new types of pension scheme complicating the pension field even

more.

In the UK, a political party faces relatively few constraints once in power and controls the

political agenda. First, it does not have to negotiate with other political parties unless there is

a coalition government, a rarity. The opposition can underlines the failures of a government,

but it cannot really alter policy choices especially when the outcome carries a lot of

uncertainties as in pensions. Second, the administrative capacities of the state are such that

the pension expertise has historically come from the outside (Heclo, 1974). This allows great

flexibility on the part of the government since it can chooses the experts closest to its policy

position. The individuals who ended up being actively involved in the formal policy process

when Fowler was Secretary of State were highly supporting the extension of private

provisions, the reduction in the size of SERPS, and personal pensions. For example, the CPS

was easily introduced into the policy process. The set up of the Inquiry into Provision for

Retirement also demonstrates the extent to which the bureaucracy can be disregarded. Fowler

appointed as Assistant Secretary an individual who had just arrived at the DHSS without any

difficulties. Worst, the DHSS Research Unit was not even consulted when Fowler elaborated

his Green Paper (Nesbitt, 1995: 68).

Third, social actors such as unions and employers can be more easily avoidable than their

French or Belgian counterparts. It is interesting to point out that both CBI and TUC were not

granted a seat within the Inquiry into Provision for Retirement. Nesbitt (1995) emphasised

that contacts between these two groups and the government became more informal in the

1980s, another indication of their weak institutionalization. These two groups were never

formally involved in the creation of policy, their participation tended to concentrate “upon

information exchanges and inquiries, and that participation less often includes policy
formation and implementation” (167). This type of institutionalization makes it easier for

politicians to discard them than the French or Belgian institutionalization.

Fourth, as in the case of re-introduction of workfare, the institutional legacy can play in

favour of interests seeking to retrench (King, 1995). The importance of the private sector

within the pension system greatly helped the Conservative to pursue its agenda.

Few policy constraints are notable, and apply to both parties. First, the Treasury continues to

play a dominant role in social policy by ensuring that public finance will not be committed to

large new expenditure. The resistance of the Treasury is far from being a new phenomenon

and is a good reason why the British state never accepted a large expansion of the public

pension system (Heclo, 1974). Second, as stated by Fawcett above, private companies are

now so involved in pension provision that they cannot be ignored, and can represent a

powerful source of opposition.

References

Anderson, Stephen. 1987. “The Elitist Origins of the Japanese Welfare State before 1945:
Bureaucrats, Military Officers, Social Interests and Politicians.” Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan, 4th Series 2:29.

Ashford, Douglas E. The Emergence of the Welfare States. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986
Birnbaum, Pierre. States and collective action: the European experience. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Garrett, Geoffrey. 2001. “Globalization and Government Spending around the World.”
Studies in Comparative International Development 35:21'.

Gilpin, Robert. The Political Economy of International Relations. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1987.
Hall, Peter A., and David Soskice. 2001. “An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism.” In
Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage,
edited by Peter A. Hall and David Soskice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heclo, Hugh. Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974.

Kaufman, Robert, and Alex Segura-Ubiergo. 2001. “Globalization, Domestic Politics, and
Social Spending in Latin America: A Time Series Cross-Section Analysis, 1973-
1997.” World Politics 53:35.

King, Desmond. Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare
Policy in the United States and Great Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995.

Nesbitt, S. British Pension Policy Making in the 1980s: The Rise and Fall of a Policy
Community. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995.

Quadagno, Jill. 1987. “Theories of the Welfare State.” Annual Review of Sociology 13:20.

Rokkan, Stein. “Mass Politics.” State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in
Europe. Ed. Peter Flora with Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999. 227-340.

Rostow, Walter W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rudra, Nita. 2002. “Globalization and the Decline of the Welfare State in Less-Developed
Countries.” International Organization 56:411-445.

Rudra, Nita. 2006. “Welfare States in Developing Countires: Unique or Universal?” in

International Political Economy Society Inaugural Conference. Princeton University:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Wibbels, Erik. 2006. “Dependency Revisited: International Markets, Business Cycles, and
Social Spending in the Developing World.” International Organization 60:36.

Wilensky, Harold L. 2002. Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and
Performance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.