Citizen Rights

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the assertion that “all animals are equal but
some animals are more equal than others” signals the breakdown of any
semblance of a fair society. We have probably all experienced it: a situation
where someone who was better connected, more influential, or in a position of
power could advance far beyond the position or actions of the common person.
On a typical day, this happens in travel, restaurant seating, the selection of a
church pew, and the line at the grocery store.
It should not, however, happen in our public services. As citizens, we all have
rights, and we all have the same rights. That is the beauty of the United States’s
democratic government structure, and perhaps one of the most cherished
aspects of it. Economic and social diversity aside, when we interact with the
government, we expect to receive the same treatment, whether we are a
Rockefeller or a plumber. The reality is that this balance of citizen rights is
difficult to achieve, because in many cases, those wielding power and influence
attempt to trump equity.
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OBJECTIVES
To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to:
1. Identify common public values in the constructs of the welfare state and the
middle class and assess the universality of these public values across local,
regional, and global boundaries.
2. Analyze and explain your views on whether a welfare state is appropriate and
whether it can add public values in a diverse society.
3. Examine the role of trust in public values and public perception of the welfare
state.
4. Evaluate the role of the middle class in creating public value in society.
5. Examine the role of trust in public values and public perception of the middle
class.
6. Demonstrate effective academic writing.
[u04s1] Unit 4 Study 1
Studies
Readings
Use DPA8412 Global and Diverse Societies to complete the following:
• In the Kivisto and Faist text, Citizenship: Discourse, Theory, and Transnational
Prospects, read Chapter 3, “Erosion,” pages 49–74.
Research
Complete the following research in preparation for this unit’s discussions:
• Use the Capella library, the Internet, and other resources available to you to
locate at least three peer-reviewed articles on the middle class. The articles
should have a major focus on comparing and contrasting the middle class of the
United States with that of other countries. You will use these resources in The
Middle Class discussion later in this unit.
• Using peer-reviewed sources, find definitions for the terms citizen rights, welfare
state, and exclusionism. You will need your findings for The Welfare State
discussion later in this unit.
[u04a1] Unit 4 Assignment 1
Global Issue – Selection (Phase 1)
In this preliminary paper, you will identify a global issue or problem that has
global, multicultural, and diversity ramifications, and can be addressed through
public administration. This issue should require analysis of cultural values and
their impact on decision making and communications, as well as public
engagement and participation.
Your choice should be driven by the various sources of information that you have
engaged with thus far in the course. You should cite sources of information you
located through the Global Issue Resources multimedia piece (AGOA, U.S. State
Department, GAO, and United Nations) and from course readings and other
multimedia presentations. In addition, you may supplement this material with
peer-reviewed sources from the Capella library or other peer-reviewed sources
online or in print.
You will explain the issue and detail the rationale for your selection based on the
literature you have examined thus far. This section will include analysis of key
elements of the issue and how it is impacted by dynamics of public engagement
and participation. This is considered Phase 1 in the development of your course
project.
Your assignment should follow this organizational arrangement and structure:
10.Introduction.
11.Background.
12.Rationale for your selection, based on and drawn from the literature.
13.References.
The paper should also meet the following requirements:
• Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract
from the overall message.
• APA formatting: Reference citations are formatted according to APA (sixth
edition) style.
• Number of resources: Minimum of five resources found through Global Issue
Resources and other sources as appropriate.
• Length of paper: 2–3 typed, double-spaced pages, plus a list of references.
• Font and font size: Times, 12 point.
Be sure to submit your completed assignment to Turnitin; be aware that it may
take longer than 24 hours to get the report back.
Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide
feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing
information.
Resources
[u04d1] Unit 4 Discussion 1
The Welfare State
It could be argued that the concept of citizen rights has become extended over
the years to incorporate a sense of entitlement that sometimes runs counter to
the self-sufficiency upon which the United States was founded. The theoretical
foundation for this concept overlaps with the welfare state and exclusionism in
modern society.
Using the resources you located in this unit’s study, explain the terms citizen
rights, welfare state, and exclusionism. How do the definitions in the sources you
located compare to the definitions found in your text? Analyze the differences
and similarities. Use this analysis to inform an explanation of your own views on
whether or not a welfare state is appropriate and whether or not it can add
public value in today’s diverse society.
Response Guidelines
Read your peers’ posts and respond to at least one (please choose a post that has
fewer responses than the rest). Assess your peer’s analysis and compare how he
or she applied the definitions with your own analysis and application. How might
the differences between your viewpoint and that of your peer affect the way you
make decisions in a professional setting?
Resources
• Discussion Participation Scoring Guide.
[u04d2] Unit 4 Discussion 2
The Middle Class
The United States has a robust and vocal middle class, but this is not the case in
all countries. In some places, few people live between the socioeconomic
extremes of wealth and poverty.
Explain the role of the middle class in society and any universal public values that
became evident in your analysis of the middle class. Is a robust middle class
necessary? Is it healthy? What are its prospects in the future global society? In
answering these questions, reference the peer-reviewed sources you found in
this unit’s study. You can also refer to examples drawn from the primary source
material you encountered in the Global Issue Resources interactive.
Response Guidelines
Read your peers’ posts and respond to at least one (please choose a post that has
fewer responses than the rest). How does your peer’s perspective about the
middle class compare with your own? Answer the following questions if they are
relevant:
• Does your peer’s writing contain any assumptions or faulty logic that should be
questioned?
• Is it incomplete in any way?
• Can you expand upon the ideas presented or suggest variations?
• What points are made particularly well?

3 Erosion

Citizenship in the modern nation-state confers an identity on individuals by binding them to and defining them as members of a political commu- nity. It thus constitutes a mode of belonging that involves casting one’s lot with a collectivity, defined from the perspective of individuals as a willing- ness to engage with others in a joint or shared enterprise, while from the perspective of the community it is defined in terms of a set of expectations that its members will be prepared to act on in concert with others (Taylor 2002). In other words, citizenship defines a set of obligations on the part of the community’s members. However, depending on one’s theoretical perspective, the nature and range of those obligations will change. Likewise, citizenship brings with it a set of expectations regarding rights accruing to all individuals by virtue of them being members of a polity (Twine 1994).

Thus, citizenship means more than simply being the holder of a pass- port. A passport is one of the manifest signs of nationality (Torpey 2000). Although nationality and citizenship have been intimately related in the era of modern citizenship, they need to be analytically distinguished. Nationality means full membership in a state and the corresponding tie to that state’s legal system, and with it the individual’s subjection to state power. The interstate function of nationality is to clearly define a people within a delineated territory and to protect citizens of the state against the outside, at times hostile, world (Tilly 1985; Béland 2005). The domestic function of nationality is to define the rights and duties of members. According to the principle of domainereservée (exclusive competence), each state decides within the limits of sovereign self-determination which criteria it requires for access to nationality. One general condition for membership is that nationals have some kind of close ties to the respective state – a genuine link.

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rights deemed warranted. Liberalism is typically seen as concerned with maximizing individual rights, while republicanism is often depicted as offering a more restricted understanding of the rights due to citizens.

It is out of this discourse on rights and obligations that one line of con- temporary discourse on citizenship emerges, a discourse that involves what we refer to as the “erosion of citizenship.” Actually, as will become evident in this chapter, it is more correct to refer in the plural – to discourses rather than to a singular discourse. Those who claim to see a decline in the effi- cacy and salience of citizenship inevitably address issues concerned with the rights of citizens and with the obligations of citizens – though, as will become evident, many analysts focus primarily or entirely on either rights or duties, and not on both.

In terms of rights, a lively debate is underway about the assault on social citizenship brought about by the rise of neoliberal political regimes since the 1970s. Appropriately, this particular debate is usually framed in terms of T. H. Marshall’s (1964) paradigm of the evolution of citizenship. It is to his famous thesis that we first turn, followed by a discussion of a select number of seminal contemporary scholars’ efforts to account for what they see as the erosion of the type of citizen that Marshall had seen as a product of the modern welfare state.

Not a particularly conspicuous feature of Marshall’s thesis, but there nonetheless, is a view of the citizen in contemporary liberal democracies as essentially passive (Turner 2001). This touches on the obligation side of the coin. The citizen in modern democracies has a right to participate in political decision making. Does the citizen also have an obligation to do so? Generally, and often without reflecting on Marshall, a number of contemporary theorists have raised concerns about what they perceive to be the steady decline of involvement in public life by ordinary people. This particular topic has been of major concern to those scholars interested in the fate of civil society. We turn later in the chapter to some of the key exponents of this type of concern, concluding with an attempt to draw conclusions about the pessimistic claims of the erosion thesis.

H. MARSHALL AND THE EXPANSION OF CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS
H. Marshall’s (1964 [1950]) seminal essay “Citizenship and Social Class” is generally viewed as marking the beginning of contemporary theo- retical developments on citizenship. There are two reasons for this assess- ment. First, it addressed a heretofore relatively neglected topic in social theory. Second, it did so by offering in broad strokes a breezy account of the development of citizenship over three centuries that spoke at the same

52 PETER KIVISTO AND THOMAS FAIST

time to the immediate concerns of its readers. That it continues to inform discussions of citizenship more than a half-century later is testimony to the elegance and perspicuity of Marshall’s formulation.

At the same time, the essay is very much a product of its place (Britain: indeed, much has been written about the “Englishness” of Marshall’s views [see, for example, Rees 1996: 14–18]) and time (the immediate period after World War II). Marshall’s own political views have been variously described as liberal or social democratic. Which of these two characterizations is more appropriate need not concern us here. What is relevant in terms of placing Marshall into context is that he presented his essay – first given as the Alfred Marshall Lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1949) – at precisely the moment when Clement Attlee’s Labour government was in the midst of enacting its vision of the welfare state. His thinking on citi- zenship took shape at the same time that the National Health Service was being created, the red-brick universities were expanding higher education opportunities, pensions and welfare provision offered something resem- bling cradle to grave protections, and at the same time as the government was beginning to nationalize basic industries.

Those on the reformist left viewed such developments as necessary to control the power of an unbridled capitalism and to contain the inequalities that it generated. The thinking of those most involved in forging a state role for social provision were often deeply influenced by the Fabian Society, even if they did not view themselves as parliamentary socialists. This was certainly the case for government bureaucrat and LSE Director William Beveridge, whose 1941 report to Parliament laid out a blueprint for a version of the welfare state. Rather than being an activist in the Labour Party, he was attached to the Liberal Party (Harris 1998).

Marshall, referring to the economist Alfred Marshall, for whom the lecture he was delivering was named, begins by noting that in his prede- cessor’s work there is a latent thesis that treats citizenship as being predi- cated on the idea that, “there is a kind of basic human equality associated with the concept of full membership of [sic] a community” (Marshall 1964: 70). At the same time, there is recognition that a capitalist economy pro- duces structured inequalities that are made manifest in the social class system. Thus, the individual is at the same time considered to be the equal of all others in the society qua citizen, but unequal in terms of social class location. T. H. Marshall takes this tension between equality of political status and inequality of economic condition as the starting point of his analysis of the postwar state of Britain. Unlike those Marxists who see the equality of citizenship as a sham (as evident in the pejorative term “bour- geois democracy”), an indication of an inherent contradiction in the capi- talist order that needs to be overcome via a revolutionary transformation to socialism, Marshall the reformist views it as a characteristic feature of

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modern industrial societies. His task is to indicate how the formal rights of the citizen can be consistent with class-based inequalities, writing that, “I shall suggest that our society today assumes that the two are still com- patible, so much so that citizenship has itself become, in certain respects, the architect of legitimate social inequality” (Marshall 1964: 70).

Three facets of modern citizenship

The core contention of Marshall’s thesis is that citizenship in modern societies has developed in a manner that reveals three facets or component parts, which he describes as civil, political, and social. These parts are distinct not only analytically, as something akin to what Weber meant by ideal types, but also historically, with each revealing a distinctive historical trajectory that spans three centuries. It is worth quoting Marshall at length to understand how he distinguished the three:

The civil element is composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom – liberty of person, freedom of speech, thought, and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts, and the right to justice. The last is of a different order from the others, because it is the right to defend and assert all one’s rights on terms of equality with others and by due process of law. This shows that the institutions most directly associated with civil rights are the courts of justice. By the political element I mean the right to participate in the exercise of political power, as a member of a body invested with political authority or as an elector of the members of such a body. The corresponding institutions are parliament and councils of local government. By the social element I mean the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to standards pre- vailing in the society. The institutions most closely associated with it are the educational system and the social services. (Marshall 1964: 71–2)

Marshall contends that in premodern conceptions of citizenship, these three elements were inseparable, in contrast to the modern version. The reason he offers for this difference is that whereas in the past key social institutions were relatively undifferentiated, in the modern world they operate in relatively autonomous spheres. It is for this reason that in the above quotation he identifies the institutional spheres relevant to each element. In his estimation, it is not “doing too much violence to historical accuracy” to contend that over a three-century period, an historical sequencing of the development of each element occurred: the emergence of civil rights occurred chiefly in the eighteenth century, political rights in the nineteenth, and social rights in the twentieth (Marshall 1964: 74).

54 PETER KIVISTO AND THOMAS FAIST

One of the curious features of his discussion is the general lack of atten- tion to issues of agency. On the whole, he does not address the matter of who pushed for the promotion of these various rights at particular histori- cal moments and who resisted. Thus, although there is a recognition that the main problem about nineteenth-century political rights was that they were not universally granted, there is no discussion of the role that the ascendant bourgeois class played both in the expansion of political rights and in its efforts to curtail the expansion of rights they possessed to the disenfranchised working class. Likewise, the role of an organized working class – in, for example, the Chartist movement discussed in the preceding chapter – is overlooked. Missing also, as several commentators have argued, is an appreciation of struggle and contestation (Giddens 1982; Barbalet 1988; Turner 2001). One could argue that this leaves the impression that the social forces at play amounted to something like functionalism’s system requisites. However, what is clear is that for Marshall state action is of paramount importance, with the pressures of various constituencies impinging on the state being of only secondary importance to his thesis. In short, there is something of a teleological character to the thesis. There is also a unilateral character that, while perhaps reflecting in broad con- tours the British case, does not necessarily reflect the situation in other nations. Germany in the nineteenth century, for example, saw the introduc- tion of social rights in order to stave off the demands for political rights by the working class.

Class abatement

In Marshall’s account, the advent of social citizenship is coincident with the rise of the welfare state. Social citizenship furthers the process of social integration already advanced by civil and political rights, but it does some- thing else insofar as it goes beyond the provision of the formal equality of the citizen to promote equality outside of the political realm. Whereas the other two forms of citizenship did not challenge competitive capitalism, social citizenship does so by promoting policies aimed at “class abate- ment.” Although Marshall backs away from his earlier claim “that in the twentieth century citizenship and the capitalist class system have been at war,” he does see citizenship as containing the capacity to modify the class structure and counteract some of the most deleterious consequences of inequality (Marshall 1964: 96).

However, class abatement does not mean the end to social classes or to inequality. In terms of classes, it means that class distinctions are no longer as salient today as they were in the past. Here Marshall is clearly speaking about British society’s rigid class structure and its concomitant intense

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class-consciousness. The goal of the welfare state is “not a classless society, but one in which class differences are legitimate in terms of social justice” (Marshall 1964: 106). In terms of inequality, it means that the inequalities predicated on the privilege of background will be reduced, but in their place a new – and legitimate – type of inequality will emerge based on merit. The goal is not equality of outcomes, but rather equality of oppor- tunity. He singles out for consideration the role of the educational system in providing equal opportunities for all in their pursuit of occupational success.

The inevitable outcome is the reproduction of a hierarchical world of work, and in this way it can be said, “citizenship operates as an instrument of social stratification” (Marshall 1964: 110). However, to the extent that the welfare state performs its function well, that stratification will be based on differences regarding the individual’s personal attributes and achieve- ments and not on her class origins.

In judging whether or not it does perform well, Marshall points to three key indicators. The first is the extent to which it manages to compress both ends of the income distribution scale. In other words, the welfare state seeks to reduce the levels of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. The second task is one of social integration. This is achieved to the extent that citizens experience a shared worldview based on a common sense of national iden- tity. The third, predicated on the first two, entails “the enrichment of the universal status of citizenship” vis-à-vis other aspects of personal iden- tity (Marshall 1964: 116). While Marshall clearly had in mind citizenship trumping class identity, this enrichment can also be seen as elevating the status of citizenship over other markers of identity such as gender and race. Like most of his academic generation, Marshall was, to put it charitably, insensitive to the issue of gender. Regarding race, the migration of people of color from former British colonies had not really taken off (the year before his lecture, passengers on the Empire Windrush that arrived at Tilbury Docks included nearly 500 Jamaicans, symbolically signaling the beginning of a multicultural Britain). Later in his life Marshall addressed the issue of immigration, but only in passing, framed by a social class per- spective and the issue of social service provision (Marshall 1975: 210; see also Rees 1996: 17).

Such provision was predicated on the expansion of rights, in particular the expansion of the rights associated with social citizenship. With this expansion has come a shifting balance between rights and duties. While the former have grown and are clearly perceived to be the proper fruits of citizenship, the latter are not simply limited, but also somewhat imprecise. Citizens in Britain had a duty to pay taxes, to attend school, and to perform military service (conscription has since been eliminated as one of the duties associated with citizenship). However, these are compulsory, and thus do

56 PETER KIVISTO AND THOMAS FAIST

not require “an act of will” or a “keen sentiment of loyalty” (Marshall 1964: 117). There is a duty to work, but this duty’s relationship to improv- ing the commonweal tends to be ambiguous. Marshall (1964: 117) writes that: “The other duties are vague, and are included in the general obliga- tion to live the life of a good citizen, giving service as one can to promote the welfare of the community. But the community is so large that the obligation appears remote and unreal.” Although in times of crisis it is possible to appeal to “the Dunkirk spirit,” Marshall assumes that in normal times the ordinary citizen of the modern welfare state will be rela- tively passive. This is clearly evident in the current terrorist threat posed by Islamic jihadists. If in the short-term aftermaths of the attacks of 9/11 in New York City and 7/7 in London such a spirit could be detected, in both instances it was short-lived.

More than a half-century after Marshall published his lecture, a veri- table cottage industry of commentary on it has developed (particularly insightful examples include Turner 1986; Barbalet 1988; Roche 1992; and Bulmer and Rees 1996). We make no effort here to explore the full range of responses, both favorable and critical, to his thesis. Suffice it to say that part of the staying power of the essay is due to its literary suppleness, which allows for multiple fruitful readings that open up a variety of angles of vision on a host of issues related to modern citizenship in liberal democracies.

Our interest here is to look at two discourses that arose in the latter part of the twentieth century. They address, in various ways, not the expansion but the erosion of citizenship. One discourse can be read as a challenge to Marshall’s assumption that the welfare state once in place could be seen as a fixed and durable part of the sociopolitical landscape. Critics from both the left and the right have questioned this assumption, and with it the idea that the state was to be the guarantor of social rights. This is a discourse about the erosion of rights. The second discourse can be seen as building on Marshall’s thesis rather than directly challenging it. It focuses on the duties and obligations of citizens rather than on rights. Whereas Marshall took the passivity of citizens as a relatively unproblem- atic given, this discourse raises concerns about the future of democracy in situations where citizens withdraw from public life into the realm of the private. We take up the first topic in this chapter and turn to the second in the following chapter.

CRITIQUES OF THE WELFARE STATE

All of the liberal democracies are welfare states, with public policies in place that are intended, to use Marshall’s words, to promote “class abatement.”

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In such regimes, the state assumes a role that it had not played in the earlier laissez-faire stage of capitalist development. It ought to be construed, as its advocates clearly saw it, as an alternative not only to laissez-faire but also to a socialist alternative. Welfare states can be appropriately viewed, not simply as a challenge to the inequalities generated by capitalism, but as a bulwark of capitalism.

Marshall is correct in stating both that the origins of the welfare state can be seen in the nineteenth century and that its real blossoming occurred in the twentieth. Thus, to take the case of the United States, the birth of the welfare state, as Theda Skocpol (1992) has convincingly illustrated, can be located in the aftermath of the Civil War, when federal legislation was passed that provided pensions for soldiers and their widows and orphans. However, this did not serve as a basis for a permanent welfare state, for as the recipients of this program died off, as was intended, there was a built-in sunset provision. In fact, it was not until the world crisis of capitalism that occurred during the Great Depression that the political will to create the architecture for what was seen as a permanent welfare state was erected – replete with unemployment benefits, pensions in the form of Social Security, public housing, legislation that enhanced the position of organized labor, and so forth.

In the case of Britain, there were early initiatives in the late nineteenth century and again after World War I that can be seen as representing the birth of the welfare state, but, as in the USA, it was in response to the twin crises of the Depression and World War II that a welfare state was created in an effort to combat what Beveridge’s Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942) referred to as the Five Giants: Want, Disease, Igno- rance, Squalor, and Idleness. Germany differed from the Anglo-American experience only insofar as it developed a more comprehensive welfare state in the nineteenth century. It did so under Bismarck’s direction after the 1871 unification of the nation, arising out of concern about the growing influence of socialism and with an explicit effort to stave it off.

Not surprisingly, given the different political coalitions that served to shape various liberal democratic nations’ respective welfare systems, there is considerable variation in both form and content. Some are more egalitar- ian than others. Some are more comprehensive than others. Some elicit wider levels of public support than others. Some place a premium on uni- versal entitlement programs while others place greater emphasis on tar- geted, or means-tested, programs (Korpi 1983; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). Some welfare states have historically relied on mixed economies consisting of a combination of privately owned and nationalized industries, while others have not. These differences are reflected in GostaEsping-Anderson’s (1990) “distinct regime theory,” which distinguishes traditional, liberal, and social democratic welfare state models.

58 PETER KIVISTO AND THOMAS FAIST

Yet despite these differences, “class abatement” occurs to the extent that it does by a reliance on two types of income redistribution: progressive taxation policies and the provision of access to education, healthcare, pen- sions, unemployment compensation, and the like. The latter represent, in Marshall’s language, “social rights,” goods and services to which, as a citizen, one is entitled. Social rights are thicker or thinner depending on the nation. The free cradle-to-grave health coverage and free university education to qualified students in the Scandinavian countries are examples of thicker social rights, while the heavy reliance on private sector insurance and high tuition charges in American universities are the product of a society that has on offer a considerably thinner version of social rights.

Critics of the welfare state can be found across the political spectrum. Those in the center, who endorse in a fundamental sense the idea of a welfare state, fault it in terms of specific performance measures and perhaps the levels or types of benefits provided, but do not challenge the appropri- ateness of such a system. However, critiques emanate from both the left and the right that call into question not only the efficacy, but also the legitimacy of the welfare state. We turn briefly to an examination of these two critiques, one of which has had profound political consequences during the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

The critique from the left

From the left, whether speaking in the post-Soviet era of the dwindling number of proponents of orthodox revolutionary Marxism or of the more significant number of democratic socialist theorists, there is general con- sensus that, in the words of one prominent spokesperson for the latter position, Claus Offe (1984: 147):

The welfare state has served as the major peace formula of advanced capital- ist democracies for the period following the Second World War. . . . [It] seeks to balance the asymmetrical power between labor and capital, and thus to overcome the condition of disruptive struggle and contradictions that was the most prominent feature of the pre-welfare state, or liberal, capitalism. In sum, the welfare state has been celebrated throughout the post-war period as the political solution to societal contradictions.

If that description defined the welfare state’s functional significance, it also framed the nature of the critique, which at its most basic tends to contain four elements: (1) it is bureaucratically cumbersome and ineffectual in redressing market-generated inequalities; (2) it is administratively repres- sive and undemocratic, reducing people to the status of dependent clients;

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(3) it encourages passivity on the part of citizens; and (4) it serves to legiti- mize the existing state of affairs by fostering an ideology that glosses the persistence of capitalist exploitation.

Offe’s critique and related ones by theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and James O’Connor are actually more sophisticated than these four points would indicate, for what they contend is that there are inherent contradictions between a capitalist economy and the welfare state that cannot be overcome or reconciled. The result is that the welfare state con- fronts persistent crisis tendencies. O’Connor (2003) focused on the fiscal crisis of the state, while Habermas (1975) concentrated on motivational and legitimation crises. Offe (1984, 1985) builds on both to offer a more comprehensive account of the contradictions of the welfare state.

His argument is that for the welfare state to function in its regulatory capacity, as a promoter of accumulation (through, for example, infrastruc- ture development and maintenance), and in the delivery of services, it requires fiscal inputs (in the form of taxes) from the economic system and mass loyalty on the part of the citizenry (Offe 1984: 52–61). Out of this complex, contradictions arise that take economic, political, and ideological form. At the economic level, the problematic nature of the relationship between the capitalist economy and the state is contained in the reality that the latter both facilitates capital accumulation when it invests in the promotion of economic development, but it simultaneously retards accu- mulation insofar as it siphons off capital to make possible social service delivery. The viability of the state’s ability to operate a welfare bureaucracy depends on a robust economy that provides favorable incentives to invest- ment. Yet in various capacities as regulator (e.g., setting minimum wage policies, establishing the rules of the game for collective bargaining, man- dating workplace health and safety standards, and protecting the environ- ment) it can create disincentives to investment. It can also be seen as an impediment to capitalist growth insofar as it withdraws larger and larger segments of the workforce from the market economy and puts them into public sector employment, working in social service agencies, healthcare, education, transportation, and the like (Offe 1984: 125–9).

As political pressures for the expansion of the rights associated with social citizenship intensify, the tendency in the advanced welfare states is for them to expand to meet those demands. The right (see below) is not alone in noting that the expansion of entitlements can result in motiva- tional problems that have a direct impact on the economy. If people can rely on government payments as an income source, a disinclination to accept dirty, dangerous, and low-paying work can result. If people come to expect that they are entitled to relatively generous government-funded pension schemes and health benefits, they will be more inclined to retire from work as early as possible. As people live longer in these societies, this

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increasingly means that those who have withdrawn their labor from the market may reasonably expect to live for three or four decades as a retiree. Pension schemes were not formulated with an understanding that people might spend nearly as much or even more of their adult lives outside of the labor market as inside it. These and similar entitlements have placed increasingly heavy financial burdens on the state (and, it should be noted, on those corporations that provide substantial pension plans to retirees). Should the state seek to meet that burden by increasing revenues, it can result in undermining investment, thus generating an economic crisis. On the other hand, if the state’s response is to cut benefits, public dissatisfac- tion with such measures can produce a legitimation crisis.

However, these entitlements do not tell the full story of the crisis tenden- cies of the welfare state. The rise of the “new” social movements in the 1960s, sometimes depicted as postmaterialist – anti-war, student, environ- mental, anti-nuclear, peace, feminist, and so forth – were directed at the state more than at the capitalist economy, challenging what Alain Touraine (1971) termed the “totally administered society”. One of these issues in particular added a new dimension to the fiscal problems of the welfare state: the environmental movement. By introducing onto the political agenda the argument that there were ecologically defined limits to eco- nomic growth, the environmental movement called on the state to reign in ecologically harmful capitalist development, to mandate that firms invest in technologies designed to protect the environment, to be directly involved in the clean-up of existing environmental hazards, and to be in various ways proactive in defense of the environment. To the extent that welfare states responded favorably to the demands of this movement, it exacerbated the conflict between state and economy.

What is clear from this analysis is that Offe and other democratic social- ists call attention to a significant lacuna in Marshall’s analysis, which involves his inattentiveness to the accumulation requisites of capitalism and the limitations that are thus imposed on the resource base and on the capacity of the welfare state to function with relative autonomy. It is useful to place this critique into historical context. Marshall’s thesis was pre- sented at the beginning of what turned out to be a quarter of a century that has been frequently characterized as the golden age of the historic compromise between capital and labor. It marked the period in the twen- tieth century when the industrial liberal democracies experienced unprec- edented growth and rising incomes. This was, as John Kenneth Galbraith (1955) described it, the era of “the affluent society.”

In contrast, the analyses of Offe, Habermas, O’Connor, and others took shape during an era of economic transformation that threatened the rela- tively smooth functioning of the welfare state. Rising unemployment, high inflation, declines in real income, the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum

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Exporting Countries) oil crisis, and the systematic campaign of deindus- trialization initiated by capitalist firms signaled that the liberal democra- cies had entered into a new era. Offe and Habermas during this time referred to the new epoch as the period of “late capitalism,” a term that is perhaps vested with a bit of wishful thinking insofar as it can be read as implying the final stage of capitalism’s fateful history. Offe’s (1985) subsequent characterization of the new stage of capitalist development as “disorganized capitalism” is a more accurate characterization, one that resonates with subsequent discussions of a post-Fordist economy (see also Lash and Urry 1987 on disorganized capitalism). Much of this transforma- tion hinges on the increasing mobility of capital. Its footlooseness has meant that in two ways it threatens the financial integrity of the welfare state: by searching for cheaper sources of labor in a global market and by using numerous strategies to avoid paying taxes, both legal and illegal (Sassen 1996).

This results in welfare states being increasingly hard pressed to find the resources necessary to guarantee the provision of those entitlements associ- ated with the social rights of citizens. Unlike orthodox Marxism, which predicts that the welfare state is inevitably doomed by capitalism’s inherent contradictions (which are such that the system’s crisis tendencies will even- tually lead to its collapse, with the options being barbarism or socialism), the democratic socialist reaction is considerably less apocalyptic. Rejecting the idea that revolutionary struggle can lead into a classless radiant future, democratic socialism offers a reformist alternative, one that continues to rely on the role of state power in holding in check the power of capital- ism and in redressing the inequalities it generates. In this regard, it is in full agreement with Marshall. However, in the new economic order there is good reason for concern that social rights cannot be maintained at current levels, and thus the future spells the persistent threat of their constriction.

It is here that one can detect an implicit criticism of Marshall for his assumption that citizens in the welfare state are essentially passive. The interest in the new social movements by reformist socialists is a product of their understanding of the role of a mobilized citizenry in preserving and enhancing social rights – as well as civil and political rights. Touraine (1981) in particular has argued that these collective social actors, when they have a capacity to muster sufficient organizational, financial, and ideological resources and develop appropriate strategic decisions, have a transformative potential that allows for the possibility that they might change the course of social development that has been advanced by the dominant class.

As we turn to the critique of the welfare state from the right, it will become clear that it represents a far more radical and thoroughgoing

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challenge to the Marshallian conception of citizenship, calling into ques- tion the very notion of social rights. Yet at the outset it ought to be noted that there is at some level considerable agreement between left and right about the shortcomings and political pitfalls of the welfare state. Offe (1984: 149) saw this connection insofar as he agreed with the right’s argu- ment that the welfare state exacerbates rather than reduces social conflict by imposing disincentives to investment and stimulating the disincentive to work. Likewise, Esping-Anderson (1982: 8) concurs with the right’s claim that the welfare state undercuts motivation, investment, efficiency, and authority; it, in effect, “eats the very hand that feeds it.”

The critique from the right

From the conservative perspective, the welfare state is a reflection of a problem shared by all the advanced industrial liberal democracies. Samuel Huntington (1976) identified it as the “democratic distemper,” while Michel Crozier (1975) defined it similarly as the excess of democracy. Daniel Bell’s (1976) analysis of the “cultural contradictions of capitalism” located the problem in terms of a historical juncture where the “axial principles” of the economy and culture are at odds. While the former places an emphasis on rationality and something resembling a secular version of the Protestant work ethnic, the latter promotes self-realization and hedo- nism. NiklasLuhmann (1995) posed the problem in systems terms by arguing that in response to demands placed upon it, the state needs to say “no” far more often than it says “yes.” In different forms, what all of these theorists are getting at is the problematic character of the rising sense of entitlement on the part of citizens, who define their identities as citizens increasingly in terms of a set of comprehensive and expanding social rights. These expectations are deemed problematic because, simply put, the welfare state cannot in the long run deliver while at the same time main- taining an economic climate conducive to growth.

Not all of the figures cited above are opposed to the idea of social rights as an aspect of citizenship. Bell, for example, describes himself as a social- ist in economic matters, a political liberal, and a cultural conservative. His goal is to find a modus vivendi that relies on compromises designed to work to the benefit of all three sectors of society. However, a far more influential view – and one with real political consequences during the past quarter-century – is what has become known as neoliberalism, though earlier it was more typically called neoconservatism. Neoliberalism is an ideology that articulates as its goal the return to something approximating the liberal laissez-faire economy found during the rise of capitalist indus- trial societies in the nineteenth century.

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As Maurice Roche (1992: 71–89) has amply and admirably chronicled, this type of thinking comes in more and less radical positions, though for our purposes we need not be preoccupied with the variations, except to make the following point. As can be seen above, not only are social rights – or at least their scope and range – deemed to be problematic, but so is the expansion of political rights. As Keith Faulks (2000: 62) has pointed out, influential radical free market conservatives such as Friedrich von Hayek are suspicious of and only grudgingly accept democratic action, with Robert Nozick going even further by insisting, in Faulks’s words, that “any attempt to seek social justice through the practice of democratic citi- zenship is an infringement of civil rights.”

The key to understanding neoliberalism in general involves two inter- related claims. First, the welfare state is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Far from remedying inequality, it serves to perpetuate it in two ways: by fostering dependency and by dampening investment incen- tives, thereby serving as a brake on growth. This part of the argument dovetails with that of the left. This leads to the second claim, one not shared by the left, which amounts to a repudiation of the Keynesian eco- nomic policies that had accorded to the state a significant role in stimulat- ing the economy and protecting society from the full impact of both inflation and recession. The argument is that the dismantling (or at least the significant restriction in the size and influence) of the welfare state would free the market from both financial and regulatory constraints that impede growth.

If permitted to function without such constraints, growth would be such that all members of society would benefit. The wealthy would become wealthier, but this would not be a zero-sum game where it would occur at the expense of those in the middle or at the bottom of society, for the consequence of expanded opportunities for wealth creation would be a trickle-down effect whereby all benefit. Wealth creation replaces income redistribution. This perspective has appropriately been characterized as “market fundamentalism,” an economic version of the view that a rising tide raises all boats.

The regimes of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States represent the two most concerted attempts to implement a neoliberal agenda. While in both instances one could find vestiges of Social Darwinian thinking (ideologues George Gilder and Charles Murray, for example, were widely read and often cited by key figures within the Reagan administration), the central premise of market fundamentalism is that there was a solution to poverty, and it resided in the unfettered market rather than the welfare state. Operating within this framework, both governments sought to enact policies that were intended to rein in their respective welfare states. One part of their campaign

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involved tax cuts. The cuts were highly regressive, with the assumption being that benefits to the wealthy would stimulate rapid economic growth. They also cut into the financial capacity of the welfare state to deliver ser- vices. Linked to starving the welfare state were policy shifts that eliminated or cut benefit programs. Similarly, under the guise of regulatory relief, government-operated programs designed to promote workplace safety, a clean environment, and so forth were rolled back.

Such policies are an expression of a perspective that turns Marshall’s thesis on its head (Green 1999). Inequality, far from being a problem, is perceived to be beneficial to society and does not necessarily spell the impov- erishment of a segment of the population at the bottom or insecurity for those in the middle. The state, far from being capable of effecting class abatement, is depicted as the cause of endemic intergenerational poverty. The market, far from being incapable of creating wealth other than at the expense of some sectors of the society, is in fact the solution to the problems created by inequality, for the market not only causes inequality, but also the conditions by which inequality is no longer a genuine societal problem.

For market fundamentalists – and perhaps Nobel laureate Milton Friedman is the best example – the magic of the market is connected to a general antipathy to the state. For this reason, not only have neoliberals sought to roll back the welfare state, but they have also attempted to introduce the market into arenas of social life heretofore treated as func- tioning outside of the market (Savas 1999). This occurred under the guise of privatization. For example, plans were floated to shift police and fire services from the public sector to private companies that would bid on jobs competitively. While in only a small number of isolated cases did localities actually decide to contract out for these basic public services, it became far more common in the United States to turn prisons over to private for- profit companies, with the claim being made that such prisons would be more cost effective (Rosenau 2000).

The most significant instance of introducing the market into the public realm occurred in public education. Although the challenge to public schools began earlier, it intensified considerably with the passage of the “No Child Left Behind Act.” Why did inner-city schoolchildren perform so poorly on standardized tests and, based on other performance measures, “underachieve?” The neoliberal response to this question was to argue that the problem was that schools have no incentive to do well, and moreover that entrenched labor unions and burdensome educational bureaucracies compounded the inertia of the system. Dismissed from consideration is the possibility of inequitable funding of public education due to the over- reliance on local property taxes – or, in other words, that the cause of differential school performance might be predicated on class inequities. Thus, instead of revamping the funding of public education in order to

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overcome inequalities across communities by creating a truly level playing field, the solution put forth by neoliberals was to make schools compete for students, generally under plans that called for school choice. Thus, under voucher schemes students and their parents could shop around for the school of their preference.

Poorly performing schools would be forced to take measures to improve their educational services or, as with any business, they would have to shut their doors. Add into the mix the emergence of schools run by private companies, such as Chris Whittle’s Edison Schools, and the intrusion of the market into public education is complete. Especially significant about Whittle’s for-profit enterprise is the introduction of corporate advertising into school buildings, both in hallway posters and via Channel One, the television news programs his company produces, for it reinforces the notion that students and their parents are ultimately customers and that it is the job of schools to compete for their “market share.”

This is a telling illustration of the neoliberal challenge to the notion of the welfare state as guarantor of social rights, for it highlights the desire to collapse the role of citizen into that of consumer. Insofar as this occurs, an erosion of social citizenship results (Hoffman 2004: 79–96). While the United States, with the weakest welfare state of all the advanced industrial nations, and Britain, in the wake of Margaret Thatcher, have gone further than other states in enacting policies that erode social rights, the fiscal crises of all of the other advanced industrial nations have put pressure on states to initiate retrenchment plans that curb or curtail the benefits here- tofore guaranteed to citizens. Germany, for example, has been more resis- tant to this trend than some other major nations, but here, too, with the election of the Christian Democratic Angela Merkel, there is pressure to strengthen the market at the expense of the state.

If the idea of citizenship entails a view of the self as connected to a larger collectivity, such is not the case for the consumer, who from Adam Smith forward is depicted as a solitary individual seeking to obtain the highest quality goods and services at the lowest possible price. When the citizen is reduced to the role of consumer, she is no longer expected to take into account the well-being of the commonweal, being merely expected to behave in the marketplace in ways that are intended to enhance her posi- tion in it. Self-interest (or, as Ayn Rand would have it, the “virtue of self- ishness”) trumps actions motivated by the needs of the nation, the local community, or the disadvantaged.

One important conclusion that can be drawn from the neoliberal “experiment” points to the fallacy of Marshall’s optimistic conviction that, once in place, the three types of citizenship would become institutionalized and would not be subject to reversal. Clearly, this is not the case because social citizenship in numerous advanced industrial nations has – one can

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argue about just how far – been rolled back during the past two decades, while during the same period inequality has risen.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE MARKET OVER CITIZENSHIP?

Colin Crouch, Klaus Eder, and Damian Tambini (2001: 11) have argued that in recent years “the triumph of the market over citizenship has become the most important feature of social politics.” While this has been espe- cially evident in liberal regimes – in particular in the United States, begin- ning with the Reagan presidency and continuing through the first Bush and Clinton administrations to the second Bush presidency, and in the United Kingdom since the Thatcher years and continuing into the New Labour era of Tony Blair – it can be seen to a more limited extent in the social democratic regimes as well, though the latter have proven to have more resilience and resistance to the market than the former. The general thesis is that the trend during the latter part of the past century up to the present has been away from the social democratic model and toward what some have come to call the Anglo-American model.

The “enabling state”

This is clearly the case made by University of California social policy analyst Neil Gilbert (2004) in his study of the transformation of the welfare state. Gilbert begins by calling into question Esping-Anderson’s (1990) distinct regime theory, seeing the differences between existing welfare states as becoming less significant over time. This is because a shift has occurred as a result of neoliberalism whereby the logic of the social demo- cratic welfare model has eroded while that of the more market-oriented Anglo-American model is ascendant, not only in the nations that first nurtured it, but elsewhere in the developed world as well. Gilbert doesn’t note this, and it takes us beyond the scope of this book, but in fact, the market model has also expanded in significance in the developing world, due chiefly to the mandates imposed on poorer nations by such institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Gilbert (2004: 44) contrasts the social democratic model with the “enabling state” promoted by neoliberalism. The former is characterized by “an emphasis on universal access to publicly provided benefits that offer strong protection of labor as social rights of citizenship” [italics in the original]. The latter, instead, promotes a market-oriented approach to the provision of benefits, with a clear preference for the privatization of social service delivery. Instead of universal access, the emphasis is on selective

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targeting of service eligibility. Moreover, in place of generous benefits for nonwork – unemployment and disability insurance schemes, for instance – there is an emphasis on promoting work. Thus, Gilbert would agree with Anton Hemerijck’s (2001: 134) observation that, “In short, inactivity – paid nonwork – seems to have become a mainstay of the advanced European [read social democratic] welfare state.” It is precisely this approach that has been challenged by the enabling state’s framework.

This is nowhere more evident than in the Clinton administration’s endorsement of the enabling state approach with the policy shift from, as its sponsors posed it, welfare to workfare. Indeed, Gilbert (2004: 88) notes of the USA since the 1990s that “steering people back to work as soon as possible has become the guiding principle for the social protection of the unemployed.” This is predicated on a rearticulation of the relationship between rights and responsibilities, with the former being de-emphasized and the latter emphasized. Linked to this is the fact that less attention is devoted to income maintenance and more to promoting social inclusion via involvement in the workforce (Gilbert 2004: 61). The logic of this shift is captured by Hemerijck (2001: 135): “Not poverty per se but a sense of being socially redundant and economically irrelevant will provoke an emer- gent underclass of inactives to turn their back on the values and institutions of the mainstream society.”

The idea of the enabling state is to guard against long-term dependency on the part of those who are not part of the paid workforce. While an aspect of this exit from the market concerns the unemployed or underem- ployed poor and those who cannot participate in the labor force due to physical or mental health problems, a growing part of the population not involved in compensated work are retirees. One of the difficult demo- graphic realities that confront all of the advanced industrial nations con- cerns aging populations. Indeed, for a number of nations at or below zero population growth, immigration has proven to be the only viable alterna- tive to population decline, and with it economic constriction. It is not surprising that during the heyday of the post-World War II welfare state, the age at which workers retired declined appreciably. This was particu- larly evident among public sector employees – whose livelihoods relied most directly on an expansive welfare state – who were often able to retire after 20 years of service, meaning that retirement ages were often in the fifties. At the same time, life expectancies increased during this time, leading to a situation where many people actually lived more years as retirees than as wage or salaried workers. This has placed strains on public and private sector pension schemes as well as appreciably increasing health- care costs (Lowenstein 2005).

Thus, in a variety of ways the enabling state has sought – with limited success – to encourage people to care for themselves with the expectation

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of less and less state provision both when out of the labor force during one’s “productive years,” as well as during retirement. For example, in the UK, people are encouraged to go beyond the National Health Service by purchasing private health insurance and using private hospitals that exist outside the NHS. In the USA, private retirement accounts – in particular what are referred to as 401K’s – are seen as representing a more important part of one’s retirement income, with Social Security constituting a mere supplement. This, of course, applies only to those with incomes high enough to actually save and invest a portion of income – thus excluding the poor. In addition, those state-provided provisions regarding such things as the age at which retirement benefits (such as Social Security in the USA), kick in have increased, thereby reducing the costs to the state associated with welfare provision.

This represents the two-pronged approach to welfare provision by the enabling state. First, it entails cutting back on benefits. One way of doing this is to avoid universal entitlement programs in favor of selective or needs-based criteria. This has always been the preferred modus operandi of the US welfare system. Gilbert argues that a common rationale for uni- versal entitlement programs that has been frequently advanced is that the means tests required for selective benefits lead to stigmatization. This was a key claim made by Richard Titmuss, an early exponent of the British welfare state. Gilbert (2004: 142) challenges this position, contending that there is little empirical evidence to support it. The second way of cutting back on benefits is by legislative decision to simply reduce the scope of state involvement in care.

It is not surprising that neoliberal policies aimed at cutting back on state involvement in insuring the welfare of the citizenry have simultaneously advanced ambitious tax-cutting initiatives. The two are interconnected for, without resources, the state is forced to reduce its scope of action. Thus, the calls for tax cuts, beginning in the Anglo-American world during the Reagan and Thatcher years, have persisted (if not intensified) since then, leading to states having fewer resources than they had earlier. Though varying in degree, similar strains can be felt by all of the advanced liberal democracies. Not all neoliberals would necessarily go as far as Grover Norquist, unvarnished ideologue and influential behind-the-scenes advisor to the Bush administration, and argue that the goal is to reduce the state to a size such that it could be drowned in a bathtub, but they differ from him only in degree.

In a BBC interview, Norquist (November 8, 2005) spoke about the move from welfare to workfare instituted during the Clinton era and subsequent reductions in the availability of state assistance during the Bush adminis- tration in terms of “liberating” people from welfare. This claim derives from the ideological idée fixe that welfare states encourage dependency,

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with people being reduced to clients rather than autonomous workers. What is interesting about this thesis is that it does not actually seek to make such people active and engaged citizens. Rather, it is intended to have them defined as autonomous workers who manage to economically provide for themselves and their families (Turner 2001). Such autonomy is not possible, it is argued, if government plays the role, as Margaret Thatcher was fond of disparaging it, of a “nanny state.”

Gilbert (2004: 182) summarizes what this implies when he writes that, “the protective blanket of the welfare state has become widely perceived as smothering the vigorous virtues – initiative, diligence, commitment, fair play, enthusiasm – in the name of charity, patience, kindness, and sym- pathy.” He does not go on to make the obvious point: namely, that what neoliberalism wants to advance are what have characteristically been viewed as masculine virtues – indeed, in some instances, the manly virtues of the privileged classes, sometimes learned on the playing fields of Eton or the secret societies of Ivy League universities – while simultaneously moving what are typically considered to be feminine virtues out of the public realm and (back) into the private sphere. Jane Addams can justifiably be seen as one of the principal intellectual architects of the twentieth- century welfare state. As she made clear in a 1907 essay on the “Utilization of Women in City Government,” women were particularly well suited to perform roles in administering the welfare state, since to do so amounted to extrapolating the caring skills honed in the private sphere into the public realm (Addams 1960). From this perspective, it is quite clear that neolib- eralism can be read as a reaction to the feminization of the state.

The second feature of the assault on the welfare state involved a critique of the capacity of government to deliver the benefits associated with social rights in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The presumed rationality of the private sector was trumpeted as an antidote to direct state provision. In this regard, neoliberalism is not, as some critics have argued, a throw- back to the Social Darwinism of a century earlier, which in its most pristine and muscular form expressed no interest in offering social rights either in general or in particular to those defined as most in need of various forms of social provision (Sumner 1925). In contrast, neoliberalism has aggres- sively promoted the privatization of functions formerly seen as falling under the bailiwick of the state. Gilbert (2004: 99) observes that, “By the 1990s, business schools around the country were training social entrepreneurs to apply commercial skills to the management of social welfare organizations.” Even such unlikely candidates for social service delivery as defense contrac- tor Lockheed Martin sought to capture a piece of the social service market. This is a new twist on the 1960s depiction of the warfare/welfare state.

Never did those critics consider that the two elements of the state would become fused the way they have in recent years. As such, handing over the

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provision of social services to the private sector was part of a larger agenda of privatization. In some nations, with Britain being a particularly telling example, it meant returning nationalized industries such as mines and railroads from state ownership to corporate ownership. It could also mean turning over what had historically been viewed as institutions appropri- ately located outside of the market, such as schools, to for-profit enter- prises. Public services such as trash collection, fire departments, and prisons were also subjected to privatization efforts. The assumption underlying these and related ventures is that services will be delivered more cost- effectively, thereby making possible lower public sector spending and thus lower tax rates.

There are many suspect economic assumptions involved in this effort to reduce the role of the state, not to mention the problems associated with the enhanced prospects of cronyism and corruption. At the very least, it is quite clear that there is no compelling empirical evidence to suggest that a shifting reliance on the private sector for delivering social services has proven to be a good economic decision from the perspective of the tax- paying public – not to mention the intentioned beneficiaries of various welfare programs.

For his part, Gilbert attempts to stake out a position somewhere between what Margaret Sommers (2001) refers to as neoliberalism’s “romancing the market” and “reviling the state,” and that stance from the left which views the morality of the market in totally negative terms, considering it as “red in tooth and claw” (Gilbert 2004: 183; see Schwartz 1999 for a cogent argument of the position that Gilbert seeks to dismiss). At the same time, he concludes that the enabling state has been remarkably successful in the United States, the focus of his study, and by implication in the rest of the Anglo-American world. He doesn’t focus on the social democratic regimes, but assumes that the enabling state has made inroads there, as well. Where the enabling state has taken root, he is quite clear about the consequences:

As it has evolved since the early 1990s, the enabling state generates no counterforce to the capitalist ethos, no larger sense of public purpose that might be served beyond increasing productivity, no clear ideal of public service, and dwindling support for the goals of social protection and secu- rity. In many respects, the course of the enabling state endorses antistatist attitudes, which lends weight to the movement toward a market-dominated society. (Gilbert 2004: 189)

The focus of Gilbert’s analysis is the state and not the citizen. This means that, although his work is concerned with the way that social pro- grams intended to promote equitable access to social rights function, he

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does not explicitly address the impact of recent neoliberal-inspired policy shifts on those to whom such policies have been directed. In particular, he fails to address the matter of the increased levels of inequality in neoliberal regimes.

Jeff Madrick (2003), in a critique of Gilbert’s position, suggests, perhaps somewhat unfairly, that it differs little from the policy positions of the Cato Institute, a libertarian conservative think-tank. However, he is quite correct when writing that, “Gilbert, for his part, utterly ignores the rising inequality of incomes that have accompanied the enabling state. It is no small irony that in America in particular, the leading ‘enabling state’ in the world, incomes and wealth have become much more unequal over the last thirty years” (Madrick 2003: 73). Although Gilbert refers on numer- ous occasions to Marshall, he never hints that in Marshall’s brief on behalf of the proper role of the state in effecting class abatement the state was committed to reducing existing levels of inequality (White and Donoghue 2003).

Social exclusion

In contrast, Ruth Lister (2004: 158–75) has made a case for linking poverty to human rights and in turn to citizenship. She notes at the outset of her discussion that neither the governments of the liberal democracies (with the exception, in principle if not in practice, of France) nor international institutions such as the World Bank have defined poverty per se as a human rights issue. However, poverty causes social exclusion: the lack of economic resources, combined with low levels of human capital and the sorts of social capital that would facilitate economic advancement, prevent the poor from achieving a genuine voice in the political arena. Lister (2004: 75) describes social exclusion as “a travelling concept” that originated in the work of Max Weber; but more recently social policy analysts in the nations of the European Union have embraced it. Although the term means slightly different things to different analysts in different geographical con- texts, the bottom-line shared understanding is that if categories of people are in fact victims of social exclusion, they are incapable of exercising their rights as citizens in the same way as those who are fully included into the polity.

This points to the inherent dilemma of citizenship in a society based on social inequalities – be they based on class, race, gender, sexual identity, religion, physical or mental disability, other ascribed feature of identity, or, as is typical, the intersection of two or more of these factors (Turner 1986; Dean 2003). Citizenship in capitalist societies constitutes a mode of identity that offers the promise of being equal in an unequal world. From

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the perspective of the far left, this points to the inherent contradictions in societies that are simultaneously capitalist and democratic, with the result being that citizenship must be at bedrock something of a sham. The logic of citizenship in such societies is to offer legitimacy to the existing state of affairs by an essentially passive mass of citizens.

From the perspective of the elitist right, the idea of being equal in an unequal society amounts to a convenient gloss on the reality that only a small sector of the population is sufficiently knowledgeable and capable to make political decisions wisely and effectively. The followers of political philosopher Leo Strauss, who include many of the key figures associated with the neoconservative wing of the administration of George W. Bush, do not believe that the people are genuinely capable of self-rule (Drury 1999). Rather, in contemporary societies the veneer of democratic self-rule constitutes one of the abiding myths of national identity and such myths need to be not only preserved, but used in an ongoing way in order to insure the tacit support of the people. This represents the significance of symbolic politics in such regimes (Edelman 1985). Such a view of politics is predicated on the idea that there is a wide gulf between the small group of elites who understand how to rule and the large majority of the popula- tion that does not possess such knowledge. One of the central features of this political philosophy is that it provides a rationale for governmental secrecy and dissimulation. The idea of educating the citizenry in order to prepare them for democratic self-rule is treated as misguided. The idea that ordinary people, as long as the vast majority of them live in relative comfort, will defer to rulers is assumed. To the extent that this perspective can be seen as constituting a fairly apt description of contemporary poli- tics, it suggests that the unspoken reality of citizenship is that there are in fact two categories of citizens: a small elite with what they see as an essen- tially republican view of citizenship and the large majority of what amounts to second-class citizens.

Of course, the position of Marshall (1964) and those countless theorists who succeeded him is one that has sought to offer an alternative to both of these views, which in their own distinctive ways denigrate citizenship. In contrast, the Marshallian tradition valorizes citizenship, and insofar as it does so can seriously consider the prospect of being equal in an unequal world. However, for this to be possible it requires a context characterized by genuine class abatement. Marshall’s own use of this term contained a certain imprecision, but it was clear that it meant two things. First, it meant that inequality would not be overcome entirely, but instead a legitimate, functional form of inequality would replace an illegitimate, dysfunctional form. Second, although Marshall did not develop this line of argument in any detail, if citizenship was actually going to make equals of people in their role as citizen it would have to insure policies of redistribution that

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prevented unacceptable levels of economic and social inequality to exist. In other words, the assumption underpinning Marshall’s thesis is that although inequality does not disappear, there is a level of inequality that is unacceptable because once a society moves beyond that level, the equal- ity of citizens as citizens is jeopardized. Marshall did not provide guidelines that specified what level of inequality was deemed acceptable and what unacceptable. This is also true of subsequent commentators.

However, there is a shared conviction within this tradition of thought that the balancing of levels of inequality during the immediate decades after World War II, the heyday of the welfare state in the liberal democra- cies, had a salutary impact on citizenship. On the other hand, in those nations that have experienced the most vigorous and successful assaults on the welfare state, inequality in recent decades has risen to an unacceptable level. Nowhere has the rise of inequality been more significant than that nation which has embraced neoliberalism most single-mindedly, the United States, which has increasingly become a “winner-take-all” society (Frank and Cook 1995). What has happened in the USA during the last quarter of the twentieth century is that, to put it simply, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle classes have experienced increased levels of insecurity.

By any measure, inequality has increased. On the one hand, as Godfrey Hodgson (2004: 90) puts it, “Wages, income, and wealth were all very unequal indeed, both by the standards of anything seen in America since the 1920s and by the standards of the other developed countries.” This is particularly evident with wealth, where “the top 10 percent” of the popula- tion owns “83 percent of all financial assets” (Hodgson 2004: 91). On the other hand, the USA has the highest poverty rate of all the advanced indus- trial societies, and given the fact that class and race powerfully intersect, this means that the poorest sectors of society, the “truly disadvantaged” (Wilson 1987), have experienced not only high rates of unemployment and underemployment, but also declining wage levels and few if any financial assets beyond their incomes. Given the lack of universal health coverage, a substantial portion of the poor live without health insurance. The poorest members of the black community often live in hyper-segregated neighbor- hoods (Massey 1996), living apart from the societal mainstream. Their housing is often substandard and the schools and public amenities in their neighborhoods are inferior to those found in more affluent locales.

The concern of contemporary Marshall-inspired thinkers is that the growing tide of inequality leads to increased levels of social exclusion for the most marginalized and poorest sectors of the society. At the same time, even the middle class finds itself confronting challenges produced by inequality and the related concentration of economic power. Thus, the role of money in politics has made it increasingly difficult for people of relatively

74 PETER KIVISTO AND THOMAS FAIST

modest means to run for office, particularly at the national level. In addi- tion, the concentration of media outlets in the hands of a few giant multi- national corporations has resulted in a reduction of the range of opinions being voiced and a similar reduction in efforts aimed at in-depth, critical reporting. Rather than being a vehicle for the education of the citizenry, the media – and this is especially the case for television – have increasingly blurred the distinction between news and entertainment.

It is not surprising that pessimistic proponents of Marshall’s view of citizenship have concluded that class abatement is threatened in neoliberal regimes and insofar as this is the case, it means that the poorest sectors of society experience increased levels of social exclusion. It is also not surpris- ing that the most pessimistic of these commentators have also voiced concern about the deleterious impact of the erosion of social rights on the middle classes. This harks back to a position advanced decades ago by Lipset (1963; see also Glassman et al. 1993), who argues – rooting his thesis in Aristotle – that a healthy and viable democratic society necessi- tates a large and comfortable middle class with considerable ability to shape the political agenda of a society. Such a society necessitates class abatement, which means that it is essential to reduce the percentage of people in the lower classes as much as possible, while also limiting both the size and the power of the wealthiest sectors. With this in mind, we turn to the recent concern voiced about the presumed withdrawal of citizens – especially the middle class – from involvement in the civic and political realms.

3 separate documents please

unit 4 assignment 1 2pg

discussion1 1pg

discussion2 1pg