Major Themes in Industrialised Societies: Welfare States

 

We shall examine the nature of the welfare state and its changes and reforms.

 

a) The welfare state ensures that basic needs are meet. ‘Needs’ are not straightforward, but socially constructed, historically specific and contested.

b) The Beveridge Report 1942 aimed to tackle major social problems (the ‘five giants’): want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. It was motivated to re-construct a new social order, rather than meeting the needs for individual quality of life. The basic minimum income aimed to enhance a sense of collective belonging. Overall, the report was based on expert advice and a paternalistic model of the state.

c) Experts and professionals determined the nature of basic needs. For example, under the newly established National Health Service, doctors had powers to allocate resources, and social workers had the responsibility to assess needs and care for patients.

d) The post-war welfare state provided universal provision (not means-tested) free at the point of use, or highly subsidised.

But the welfare state was also bureaucratic in that decisions of welfare and needs were made by officials, professionals and experts. Also, it was patriarchal in that the welfare benefits assumed the model of a working man, who could provide a ‘family wage’ to keep his wife as home-maker. The welfare state aimed to exclude women from the labour market.

Inevitably, tensions emerged:

i) demands on the welfare state exceeded the limited resources to fund them;

ii) social groups (such as women’s social movements) began to challenge the powers of professionals; and

iii) the economy changed making new demands on the workforce – the feminisation of the labour force.

e) Needs became politicised as a result of the inadequacies of the welfare state. There were three attacks on the welfare system:

i) the persistence of inequality: welfare benefits tended to go to the better off. The middle classes were the primary beneficiary of the free health care and the education system; they were also able to voice their demands more effectively than the working class.

ii) scepticism about professional knowledge: the public, feminists and social movements questioned the professional power, authority and scientific objectivity. Professionals were seen as a self-serving elite, as well as the servants of the coercive state. The public demanded reforms.

iii) the new right critique: the new right accused the welfare state of being wasteful and inefficient, poverty was only relative (absolute poverty had been tackled), the welfare state generated a culture of dependency, and it was unaffordable since taxes were too high.

f) In the light of these criticisms, governments have tried to re-construct and reform the welfare state:

i) a greater role for market forces; e.g., internal markets, the purchaser-provider split, the emergence of consumerism in education (parental choice) and hospitals (patient’s charter).

ii) a greater emphasis on ‘workfare’ benefits to make work more attractive; this also aimed to counter the dependency culture.

iii) reducing needs; e.g., claims of abuse of the welfare system, such as dole scroungers, bogus asylum-seekers and irresponsible single parents, and the provision of private pensions.

iv) the rise of rationing; increasingly decisions are more explicit and open to reveal how the welfare system cannot satisfy the demands and rationing is required.

In short, there has been a greater focus on individual responsibility; also, needs of individual service user are mediated through the market – not by state bureaucrats and public sector professionals.