The ‘secular’ settlement and Australian political thought

This paper challenges the tendency among contemporary historians and political scientists to read secularism and religion in Australian political history in binary terms. It is argued that this framework is anachronistic, creating a barrier to a proper appreciation of religion in Australian political history. In keeping with much British Enlightenment thinking, religion through much of Australia’s history was deemed to have great social utility and its promotion was of central secular significance. This understanding framed the education debates of the second half of the nineteenth century as well as the social welfare reforms and institution building around the Federation period. Such developments cast doubt on claims that secularism of an exclusionary kind is a key element of the now widely invoked category of the Australian settlement.     

The technical is political: settler colonialism and the Australian Indigenous policy system

Contemporary Australian Indigenous policy changes rapidly and regularly fails to deliver its stated aims. Additionally, political and social relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state remain complex and contested. This article draws on critical Indigenous theory, alongside the increasingly influential scholarly paradigm of settler colonialism, to draw these two elements together. It highlights the ongoing nature of colonial conflict, and the partisan nature of state institutions and processes. While policy is usually framed as a depoliticised, technical practice of public management for Indigenous wellbeing, I suggest that it also seeks to ‘domesticate’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, perform their dysfunction and demonstrate state legitimacy. This is especially the case in Australia, which has a long tradition of framing domestic welfare policy – rather than legal agreements – as the ‘solution’ to settler colonial conflict.     

Sir Otto Niemeyer,the bankrupt state and the federal system

One of the main myths about Australian political and economic history relates to the intervention in economic policy making in the 1930s by the Bank of England through the mission of Sir Otto Niemeyer. This article argues that Niemeyer's advice was not heeded. Rather, parallels between what he demanded and the Premiers’ Plan were largely confined to the level of rhetoric as part of a strategy to regain access to the London capital market. State expenditures were reduced gradually according to local political calculations and fiscal priorities, and not in step with the timetable set by the Bank of England. Far from weakening and dividing the Australian state, the federal separation of powers led to the gradual introduction of fiscal austerity, as state governments had little option but to maintain their role in complementing capital accumulation and facilitating social legitimation.     

Sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state: Québec and Canadian federalism

ABSTRACT. This article examines the relationship between sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state through the case of Québec in Canada. It argues that social policy presents mobilisation and identity‐building potential for sub‐state nationalism, and that nationalist movements affect the structure of welfare states. Nationalism and the welfare state revolve around the notion of solidarity. Because they often involve transfers of money between citizens, social programmes raise the issue of the specific community whose members should exhibit social and economic solidarity. From this perspective, nationalist movements are likely to seek the congruence between the ‘national community’ (as conceptualised by their leaders) and the ‘social community’ (the community where redistributive mechanisms should operate). Moreover, the political discourse of social policy lends itself well to national identity‐building because it is typically underpinned by collective values and principles. Finally, pressures stemming from sub‐state nationalism tend to reshape the policy agenda at both the state and the sub‐state level while favouring the asymmetrical decentralisation of the welfare state.     

Weathering the Storm: Social Policy and the Great Recession

This review discusses recent challenges to the welfare state arising from the Great Recession (GR). The GR was a significant event for social policy analysts, as it tested the responsiveness of welfare systems in the midst of a recent trend toward austerity politics in advanced economies. Social policy changes were part of the toolkit advanced democracies used to respond to the GR, and the welfare state mitigated the consequences of the GR. However, a stark limitation of the social safety net in the United States was the failure to assist immigrant households. The nexus of immigration and social policy is likely to be a significant controversy as we consider the meaning of social citizenship.     

Measuring Complex State Policies: Pitfalls and Considerations,with an Application to Race and Welfare Policy

Welfare policy is multidimensional because of the political compromises, competing goals, and federalist structure underpinning it. This complexity has hindered measurement and, therefore, the comparability of research on race and welfare policy. This paper describes a measurement strategy that is transparent, replicable, and attuned to matching the assumptions of statistical models to the policy process. We demonstrate that this strategy leads to more nuanced conclusions regarding the relationship between minority caseloads and the flexibility of state welfare policies. The strategy and recommendations are adaptable to research agendas that scholars bring to the comparative study of welfare in the U.S. states, countries, or other units—and to other complex policies enacted in federal systems.     

Symbolic Racism,Institutional Bias,and Welfare Drug Testing Legislation: Racial Biases Matter

Since the devolution of welfare policymaking to the states after the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, there has been contentious debate about drug testing welfare applicants. Beyond elite rhetoric and debate points about the implications of welfare drug testing, extant research remains limited insofar as providing theoretical understanding about what factors influence state proposal of legislation requiring welfare applicants to submit to drug tests. I develop and test expectations that derive from research on welfare attitudes, social construction theory, and policy design—specifically, hypotheses that the proportion of blacks on state temporary assistance for needy families caseloads, as well as state‐aggregate levels of symbolic racism, significantly influence state proposal of drug testing legislation. My multilevel analysis of every state proposal of welfare drug testing legislation from 2008 to 2014 yields strong evidence in support of these hypotheses and paints a more complete picture of the influence of racial attitudes on state welfare policymaking. Specifically, while much research finds evidence of institutional racial biases in the implementation of welfare policy, the evidence presented herein shows that these biases, as well as public biases, influence policymaking at the proposal stage. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of recent significant electoral gains made by Republicans in state legislatures.     

Whither the Developmental State in South Korea? Balancing Welfare and Neoliberalism

Abstract

Scholars of political economy have been debating the role of the Korean state in the economic development of the country, as the characteristics of a developmental state, a neoliberal state and/or a welfare state have appeared simultaneously in the various governments’ policies since the 1990s. This paper argues that although the nature, degree and extent of government intervention has varied from administration to administration, the basic stance of a developmental state has been retained while neoliberal and welfare policies have been used concurrently to further economic and social development. This coexistence of contradictory approaches reflecting alternative market economic systems was the product of a combination of government policies that has for the past 20 years provided the Korean government with the ability to deploy flexible policy mixes in response to changes in the political and economic environment and to maximise the outcomes of developmental policies.     

The battle for the family: Family policy in Australian electoral politics in the 1980s

This paper is a preliminary look at the recent emergence of the family as a major theme of Australian electoral politics. It shows that while both the Liberal and Labor Parties are attempting to make political capital out of the family, there are significant differences in their approach. While the Labor Party has been more inclined to accept diversity in the form of the family and the need to support primary carers, the Coalition has given priority to ‘strengthening the traditional family’ and its role as an alternative to welfare state provision. The paper deconstructs campaign material from recent federal and State elections in terms of message and intended audience. It notes the dangers of political discourse based on manipulation of highly charged symbols such as the family, the flag and the nation.

The second half of the paper analyses some of the implications of using the family as a focus for social policy. It examines the contradictions between social policy based on the treatment of the family as an undifferentiated unit and policy which recognises the importance of interfamily and intrafamily inequalities. It looks at issues raised by family policy as a focus for redistribution and provision of services on the one hand, and as a means of reducing public expenditure and reinforcing dependence on male family heads on the other. The stress on the importance of the family is rarely accompanied by a comparable dedication to assessing the role of unpaid caring work in the economy or to achieving equal opportunity for workers with family responsibilities.     

在"一个国家"和"多元文化主义"的激荡中成长--从公民社会模式看澳大利亚华人的参政空间

九十年代后期澳大利亚华人参政形式发生了结构性转变,由原来的相对散漫而少有华人参政,转变成为华人主动集会结社投身政治.本文认为,这种转变是在特定的历史时空,由华人社群与澳洲主流社会的变化互相激荡而产生的.本文利用公民社会理论来建构一个看待移民社会政治参与的参考架构,用海外华人的视角来审视澳洲华人发展史,讨论九十年代后期澳洲极端派反移民势力的兴起,以及对华人社会的影响.笔者认为,澳洲华人社会这个转变提供了一个华人参政的良好典范,即以少数族裔身份在公民社会中参与政治活动,从而改变主流社会的思维.     

Thirty wasted years: Australian social security development, 1950–80, in comparative perspective∗

This article seeks to examine the reasons why Australia, in the postwar period of economic growth and social security expansion, so resolutely remained at the bottom of the international league table of welfare state development. Four possible explanations are located — programme inertia, economic resource growth, the age structure of the population and right‐wing political hegemony — and each is shown to have some impact on social security development. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the traditional dilemma for democratic socialist parties of combining reformist political goals with sufficient economic growth.     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

THE BUSINESS OF WELFARE

A common narrative in welfare state research is that Sweden exemplifies a specific model of welfare, ‘the Swedish model’, or ‘the Social democratic welfare regime’. From this perspective the emerging welfare state left little room for private initiatives – the stage was set for the development of an encompassing welfare state in the 1950s. In this article I argue that this, virtually hegemonic, perspective has hindered an analysis of how private insurance co-existed and thrived within the emerging Swedish welfare state. As an alternative approach to ‘modelling’ – the concept of welfare-formation is developed to analyse mutually sustaining practices of welfare. I show how the insurance business and its protagonists influenced the settings of public pension schemes in a way that underpinned their own interests. A close cooperation with the state apparatus was fundamental for creating a trustworthy insurance market and legitimizing the business claim of fulfilling a social mission. The business adaptability in the shifting landscape of social policy also influenced perceptions of security and welfare in general. Commercial ideals became an essential dimension of the welfare state. By exploring this marginalized history – the business of welfare – the study deepens our understanding of modern welfare societies.     

Prediction and its discontents: guidance for Australia from the debate over social science forecasting

The well-documented failure of many experts to predict many events of strategic importance—from 9/11 to the global financial crisis to the Arab Spring—has led to a fashionable belief amongst some academics and popular commentators that prediction is a ‘fool's errand’. Problems inherent in forecasting political events, such as cognitive biases, strategic interaction, complexity effects and various others, make this an attractive position. However, although a proper degree of humility is warranted about the ability to predict strategic events, this article argues that not making predictions at all is not an option. No genuinely workable policy advice could flow to Australian policy makers unless analysts are able, however roughly, to try to forecast the future. Moreover, with some hard, determined work, social scientists have recently produced work which promises to be able to foresee important events such as state failures and civil wars with reasonable accuracy. Experts should be encouraged to make, and should routinely be evaluated on, predictions about their area of expertise. Even failed predictions can be useful in pointing up gaps in knowledge and understanding which would otherwise have remained opaque.     

Authoritarian Neoliberalism,Radical Conservatism and Social Policy within the European Union: Croatia,Hungary and Poland

Exploring political and social policy developments in Croatia, Hungary and Poland, three EU member states, this article addresses the hegemonic position of authoritarianism, populism, conservatism and neoliberalism, albeit articulated differently in each state. All three countries are marked by modes of governmentality that combine heteronormative familialism, repatriarchialization, nationalism, ethnicized demographic renewal and anti-immigrant sentiments. In each, a kind of layered social divestment is occurring, delivering a radical new vision of social reproduction and fundamental differentiations in terms of access to social citizenship between those seen as ‘deserving’ of support and those who are not, who are increasingly subjected to disciplinary measures. Although the degree of welfare retrenchment varies across the cases, the radical nature of restructuring, breaking down traditional notions of left and right on welfare, is suggestive of longer-term restructurings not reliant on individual politicians or parties.     

Scientific Philanthropy and Welfare Politics of Solidarity

So far, studies of Swedish 20th-century social policy have emphasized the differences between the voluntary aid common around 1900 and the solidarity of welfare policy at mid-century. Means tests have been described as central instruments in the voluntary social work, while the welfare state was built on general principles of care. The question is, however, if the differences between the earlier and later forms of social policy can be characterized in such simple terms. A comparison has been made of departure points found in the social policies of the two periods. The results confirm that a significantly new way of thinking had taken shape in the years around the Second World War, but the study also shows that that the ideas concerning the welfare state contain threads that can be traced back to the scientific philanthropy of a few years earlier. The idea of social engineering was nothing new, and the idea that rights could be exchanged for duties had still not been deserted in the 1940s. In conclusion it can be said that the welfare state and the welfare politics of solidarity in several respects were built upon the principles of care that were formulated in about 1900.     

Standing in Line When Queues Are on the Decline: Services Satisfaction Following the Swedish Health Care Waiting Time Guarantee

Understanding mass public support for health systems and welfare polices is required in order to safeguard the legitimacy of democratic governance of the welfare state. If policies to meet dissatisfaction go unnoticed, the whole idea of responsive democracy is in vain. This paper focuses on the 2005 Swedish health care waiting-time guarantee, which resulted in drastically lower hospital waiting times in Västra Götaland County. Exploring questions of significant theoretical relevance in the literature about policy feedback effects, the paper investigates if the decrease in waiting times affected hospital service satisfaction and if this effect was moderated by policy proximity and visibility. Data from the West Sweden SOM survey are utilized, measuring hospital service satisfaction from 2004 to 2009. To disentangle the role of policy proximity, two indicators are used—user status and subjective health status. Furthermore, policy visibility is measured by an individual’s level of political interest. The results show that the decrease in waiting times resulted in a substantial increase in hospital service satisfaction. However, the increase was not more pronounced among groups with higher proximity and visibility. On the contrary, results indicate that the increase in hospital service satisfaction was stronger among those already in good health.     

The Dark Sides of Social Policy: From Neoliberalism to Resurgent Right-wing Populism

This Forum Debate explores the confluence of neoliberal, populist, conservative and reactionary influences on contemporary ideologies and practices of social policy, with a focus on the poorer peripheries of global capitalism. Several fundamental tensions are highlighted, which are largely overlooked by the social policy and development literatures. First, many recent social policy innovations have been discredited by their association with neoliberalism. The rising political Right has been much more successful than the Left at exploiting this discontent, despite simultaneously deepening many aspects of neoliberalism once in power. At the same time, right-wing movements have proactively used social policy as a political tool to fashion the social order along lines deemed amenable for their interests and ideologies, expressed along nationalist, racialized, ethnicized, nativist, religious, patriarchal or other lines, and to innovate practices of segregation, exclusion and subordination. While these synergies of neoliberal and right-wing populism are observed globally, they need to be carefully and differentially interpreted from the perspective of late industrializing (or late welfare state) peripheral countries. Nonetheless, common themes occurring across both centres and peripheries, as identified by the invited contributions to this Debate section, include exclusionary identity politics, hierarchical and subordinating inclusions, and patriarchal familialism. In this context, segregationism is an ominous possibility of post-neoliberal social policy.     

A trade balance: litigation and negotiation in the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement system

The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been widely accepted as representing the legalisation of world trading rules. However, it is important to reflect on the limits of this legalisation thesis in terms of the interface between international and domestic policy processes. By locating trading disputes in a political analysis of policy implementation, it is argued that it is difficult to establish conceptually how the WTO dispute settlement system could have authority separate from and above the conventional international politics of trade policy relations. Instead, the article argues that case outcomes should be expected to be largely the product of domestic political institutions and policy processes, and how these intersect with developments in the WTO dispute settlement system. Brief studies of the Australian government's dispute settlement strategy and two high-profile WTO disputes—the US upland cotton and European Union sugar cases—serve to suggest that the authority of international trade law is not as significant as assumed by the legalisation thesis. Rather, domestic politics and institutions have an important impact on the outcome of trade disputes.     

From expectations to aspirations: State modernisation,urban policy,and the existential politics of welfare in the UK

The form and character of the British welfare state is undergoing another round of reform. Welfare modernisation now focuses on the creation of ‘aspirational citizens’ in deprived areas or communities, individuals, and groups who will ‘better’ themselves and become more like an imagined social ‘mainstream’. Old-fashioned policies that promoted expectations of improvement have been replaced by this focus on encouraging new forms of self-reliant, aspirational citizenship. This paper interrogates the nature of this discursive shift. It argues that an existential politics, built around notions of aspiration, is being rolled-out across the British welfare state and that this has significant material and political implications. It begins by critically assessing the terms aspiration and expectation. It then draws on recent urban and spatial policy agendas to empirically explore the nature of this shift and its wider effects on urban societies, economies, and environments before concluding with a discussion of possible future research directions and agendas.