Retrenchment In The American Welfare State

This book offers a careful examination of the politics of social policy in an era of austerity and conservative governance. Focusing on the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Pierson provides a compelling explanation for the welfare state's durability and for the few occasions where each government was able to achieve significant cutbacks. The programmes of the modern welfare state - the 'policy legacies' of previous governments - generally proved resistant to reform. Hemmed in by the political supports that have developed around mature social programmes, conservative opponents of the welfare state were successful only when they were able to divide the supporters of social programmes, compensate those negatively affected, or hide what they were doing from potential critics. The book will appeal to those interested in the politics of neo-conservatism as well as those concerned about the development of the modern welfare state. It will attract readers in the fields of comparative politics, public policy, and political economy.

The consolidation of public finance has become the most prevalent topic in recent policy discourse in the US. However, the political debate about fiscal "belt-tightening" stretches back to the last decades of the past millennium, induced by deteriorating economic conditions which followed the first oil price shock in the early 1970s. Retrenchment in the American Welfare State investigates to what extent different welfare state programs in the US were affected by cutbacks during the Republican Reagan era, on the one hand, and during the Democratic Clinton era on the other, and to what extent these cutbacks reveal certain "patterns" of retrenchment, and how the measured discrepancies can best be explained. (Series: Studies in North American History, Politics and Society/ Studien zu Geschichte, Politik und Gesellschaft Nordamerikas - Vol. 30)

Covers the period from 1970 to 1988.

Throughout the world, politicians from all the main parties are cutting back on state welfare provision, encouraging people to use the private sector instead and developing increasingly stringent techniques for the surveillance of the poor. Almost all experts agree that we are likely to see further constraints on state welfare in the 21st Century. Gathering together the findings from up-to-date attitude surveys in Europe East and West, the US and Australasia, this revealing book shows that, contrary to the claims of many experts and policy-makers, the welfare state is still highly popular with the citizens of most countries. This evidence will add to controversy in an area of fundamental importance to public policy and to current social science debate.

Is large-scale immigration to Europe incompatible with the continent's generous and encompassing welfare states? Are Europeans willing to share welfare benefits with ethnically different and often less well-off immigrants? Or do they regard the newcomers as undeserving and their claim for welfare rights as unjustified? These questions are at the heart of what has to become known as the 'New Progressive Dilemma' debate — and the predominant answers given to them are rather pessimistic. Pointing to the experiences of the US, where a multi-racial society in combination with a longstanding history of immigration encounters very limited welfare provision, many Europeans fear that the continent's new immigrant-based heterogeneity may push it toward more American levels of redistribution. But are the conflictual US experiences really resembled in the European context? Immigration and Welfare State Retrenchment addresses this question by connecting the New Progressive Dilemma debate with comparative welfare state and party research in order to analyse the role ethnic diversity plays for welfare reforms in the US and Europe. Whereas the combination of racial patterns and party politics had and still has serious consequences for the US welfare system, the general message of the book is that these are not resembled in the Western European context. While many Europeans are very critical of immigration and willing to ban immigrants from welfare benefits, both the institutional design of European welfare programs and the economically divided anti-immigrant movement prevent immigration concerns from translating into actual retrenchment in the core areas of welfare.

In the 1980s and 1990s, social welfare programs had been cut back, and full employment policies had been abandoned in a number of countries. Indeed, the phrase "dismantling the welfare state" has been used to describe this trend. Well-recognized social welfare scholars and social scientists scrutinize the nature, extent, and consequences of changes in social welfare programs and labor markets in nine industrialized countries.

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