States and Welfare States: Government for the People 9781447367383

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Paul Spicker

States And Welfare States Government for the People

STATES AND WELFARE STATES Government for the people Paul Spicker

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 374 6645 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Paul Spicker 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-6736-9 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-6737-6 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-6738-3 ePdf The right of Paul Spicker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Nicky Boroweic Front cover image: iStock/PhanuwatNandee Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents About the author 1

v

Introduction: the state, and what it has become Some misconceptions The growth of ‘positive welfare’ The contemporary state Developing the argument

1 3 5 8 12

PART I On government 2 Government 17 Legitimate authority 20 Governance 23 3

Public policy Economic policy Social policy: public and social welfare services Policies for society The limits of policy

30 30 35 37 39

4

The state and civil society The sectors of civil society Welfare pluralism

43 47 51

5

Global public policy Relations between states The state and non-citizens Direct intervention abroad International issues International governance

54 55 58 59 61 62

PART II Salus populi suprema lex: the welfare of the people is the highest law 6

The scope of legitimate action Liberalism: the enabling state Social democracy: principled change Communitarian conservatism Neoliberalism: the case for less government Reconciling different positions

7 Welfare Welfare as a matter for individuals iii

69 72 74 76 78 81 83 83

States and Welfare States

The sum of individual welfares Social understandings of welfare: needs, poverty and deprivation The collective good Social welfare policies

86 88 91 92

8

Which people? Including the excluded Residual and institutional provision The development of social policy

9

The commitment to welfare 113 Solidarity 115 Citizenship 118 Democracy 120 Extending welfare provision 124

10

Disputed principles 127 Equality 128 Redistribution 131 Social justice 134 The welfare state 138

11

The duties of a government Positive welfare Overcoming the constraints The responsibilities of government

Index of subjects Index of names

97 102 105 109

143 146 148 150 152 155

iv

About the author Paul Spicker is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His research includes studies of poverty, need, disadvantage and service delivery; he has worked as a consultant for a range of agencies in social welfare provision. His books include: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Stigma and social welfare (Croom Helm, 1984) Principles of social welfare (Routledge, 1988) Social housing and the social services (Longmans, 1989) Poverty and social security: concepts and principles (Routledge, 1993) Planning for the needs of people with dementia (with D S G, Avebury, 1997) Social protection: a bilingual glossary (co-editor with J-P Révauger, MissionRecherche, 1998) Social policy in a changing society (with Maurice Mullard, Routledge, 1998) The welfare state: a general theory (Sage, 2000) Liberty, equality and fraternity (Policy Press, 2006) Policy analysis for practice (Policy Press, 2006) Poverty: an international glossary (co-editor with Sonia Alvarez Leguizamon and David Gordon, Zed, 2007) The idea of poverty (Policy Press, 2007) The origins of modern welfare (Peter Lang, 2010) How social security works (Policy Press, 2011) Reclaiming individualism (Policy Press, 2013) Social policy: theory and practice (Policy Press, 2014) Arguments for welfare (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) What’s wrong with social security benefits? (Policy Press, 2017) Thinking collectively (Policy Press, 2019) The poverty of nations (Policy Press, 2020) How to fix the welfare state (Policy Press, 2022)

A range of his published work is available on open access at http://spicker.uk

v

1

Introduction: the state, and what it has become

Summary The state is often represented – or misrepresented – as if its role was defined by the use of physical force. For most of us, however, the state refers as much to a set of administrative processes, and to the services that its institutions provide, as it does to any of the other activities associated with government. The state routinely interacts with people in their daily lives. It manages the social infrastructure. It delivers benefits and services, typically including health care, education and cash benefits. Some states do this more effectively and more comprehensively than others, but even those which fall short in some respects can at least say that it is part of what they do, and what they are meant to do.

States and welfare states is a work of normative political theory, applied to social policy. It discusses the role and responsibilities of contemporary governments. The central questions of political theory have mainly been understood to be either the question of political obligation – the responsibility that people have towards their government – or the question of who benefits, which focuses attention on the ways that government can be used to serve particular interests. This book addresses a different set of questions. What responsibilities do governments have towards their populations? What ought they to do, and what not? How can they do things better? Government is both a set of institutions and a process. As a set of institutions, the government consists of the agencies and the officials who make and set policy: it is the government of a country that leads in developing the legislative framework and administers the policy-making process. As a process, government refers to the political direction of these institutions. The ‘state’ might refer either to those institutions which are part of the apparatus of government – primarily its legislative and executive functions – or to the country that is being governed; but ‘the state’ is also a shorthand for referring to the system as a whole, and that is how the term will be used in this book. The other term most used here, ‘welfare state’, is evocative, but richly ambiguous. It can be taken variously to refer to the provision of services by the state, to societies where welfare is provided, and 1

States and Welfare States

to an ideal model where welfare is provided more extensively. I will return to those ideas in due course, but for the purposes of the argument I will begin with the first of these, and qualify the position as I go on. When political theorists have considered the question of a government’s duties in the past, it has often been treated as an exchange between the rulers and the ruled; the rulers gain power, the ruled get order. For Locke, governments undertook to protect life, liberty and property;1 for Adam Smith, the ‘first duty of the sovereign’ was ‘that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies’;2 and for contemporary neoliberals, the primary role of a government is taken to be the maintenance of social order.3 Other theorists – notably Hobbes,4 Rousseau5 and Rawls6 – have drawn on the metaphor of a social contract to establish a process or set of rules, through which government will reflect the wishes and interests of the governed. There is, however, another current running through some of these discussions. This is the ancient principle, salus populi suprema lex: ‘the welfare of the people is the highest law’. Thomas Hobbes is widely thought of as an advocate for absolute rule, making a case for citizens to give up any claim to rights in return for security. He also argued, however, that as part of the social contract, and respecting the demands of ‘natural law’, a sovereign ruler should be working for the good of the people.7 He put it this way: For the duty of a sovereign consisteth in the good government of the people … and governing to the profit of the subjects, is governing to the profit of the sovereign. … And these three: 1. the law over them that have sovereign power; 2. their duty; 3. their profit: are one and the same thing contained in this sentence, Salus populi suprema lex; by which must be understood, not the mere preservation of their lives, but generally their benefit and good. So that this is the general law for sovereigns: that they procure, to the uttermost of their endeavour, the good of the people.8

 J Locke, 1689, Two treatises of civil government, Book 2, London: Dent (1924).  A Smith, 1776, The wealth of nations, Book 5, ch 1. 3  R Nozick, 1974, Anarchy, state and utopia, New York: Basic Books. 4  T Hobbes, 1651, Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin (1968). 5  J-J Rousseau, 1762, Du contrat social, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion (1966). 6  J Rawls, 1971, A theory of justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 7   Hobbes, 1651. 8  T Hobbes, 1640, The elements of law, London: Simpkin & Marshall (1889), ch 9. 1 2

2

Introduction

The first part of this says that good government is in the interests of both the ruler and the people who are ruled. The second part declares that the test is whether a government improves people’s welfare – ‘their benefit and good’. The third part is that this advancement of welfare is a moral duty on governments. Hobbes developed his argument by considering what a ruler should actually do. He identified four ways in which sovereigns should advance the good of the people. There should be a ‘multitude’: a thriving population would increase in number. The next objective was the ‘commodity of living’, mainly liberty and wealth. ‘Peace amongst ourselves’ was intended to include justice, fair dealing, and the suppression of dissenting opinions. Lastly, there was ‘defence against foreign power’. I am not going to develop Hobbes’ specific prescriptions further – he was writing this just before the English civil war, and the demands of the 17th century are not the demands of the 21st – but it does point to the kinds of issue I want to address here. Abraham Lincoln presented government ‘for the people’ as a characteristic of democracy, but it is a moral duty on all governments, everywhere. States and welfare states is an attempt to understand what governments are supposed to be doing, and how they should do it.

Some misconceptions Many of the most influential sources which consider government and the state still reflect the views of a previous age, rather than the world as it is now. The role of the state has traditionally been seen as an exercise in power.9 Weber claimed that ‘Ultimately, one can define the modern state only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force.’10 Taken literally, that has two implications: first, that force is basic to what states do, and second that this is the ‘only’ thing that defines the state – there are no other common distinguishing factors. That is almost certainly not what Weber meant to say: he went on to write that ‘the use of physical force is neither the sole, nor even the most usual, method of administration of political organizations’.11 That being the case, it can hardly be said to define the situation, either. Weber described the state as ‘a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a

 G Sabine, 1920, The concept of the state as power, Philosophical Review, 29(4), pp 301–18.  M Weber, 1918, Politics as a vocation, in H H Gerth, C W Mills (eds), 1948, From Max Weber, London: RKP, pp 77–8. 11   M Weber, 1978, Economy and society, Berkeley: University of California Press, p 51. 9

10

3

States and Welfare States

given territory’.12 This is still widely cited as a definition of the state,13 but it is an exaggeration, and looked at coldly, it is just not true. States do use force, but they do not necessarily have or claim a monopoly of it. The constitution of the United States of America explicitly, and famously, reserves to its citizenry the right to use force as a defence against tyrannical government, and it did that long before Weber was alive. More generally, interpersonal violence, especially against women and children, has often been treated as a legitimate action by the head of a household, and it is still commonly treated as permissible – disgracefully, from the perspective of human rights. The most that can be said about the use of physical force is that states reserve the right to employ it, while generally claiming a complementary right to constrain the use of force by their citizens. However, states also routinely constrain their own use of force – that is the implication of the word ‘legitimate’. The representations of defence, security and armed force as the primary duties of governments are all part of the same paradigm: a view of the state as an exercise in armed power. There was a time, not that long ago, when many states in developing countries were dominated by their military leaders. As former colonies gained their independence, the activists for whom the acquisition of power had been central to their struggle often behaved subsequently as if maintaining armed power was all that mattered. There are still states where armed power plays an important role, and a small handful which are concerned with the exercise of power to the exclusion of nearly everything else. That, when it occurs, is a ground for criticism. The strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Natasha Lindstaedt comments, ‘is in repression and guerrilla war, not governing and providing services’.14 Nevertheless, the fledging government has almost immediately become embroiled in discussions about schooling;15 it is not open to the new government to say that education has nothing to do with them. Even fifty years ago, seizing power might have been enough, but the world has changed. Defence is only one function of many that governments engage in. It should be obvious that a country’s economy, living standards and institutions also need to be taken into consideration. Humboldt, writing in the mid19th  century, believed like many other writers of the time that the role of the state ought to be limited to security and defence. However, he acknowledged frankly that the trend was against him: contemporary states   Weber, 1918.   For example, C Pierson, 2011, The modern state, Abingdon: Routledge; S Orvis, C Drogus, 2021, Introducing comparative politics, New York: Sage, ch 2. 14   Cited in S Sandhu, 2021, Taliban’s strength is in repression, not governing and providing services, i newspaper, 1 September, p 9. 15  S  Glinski, R  Kumar, 2022, Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership divisions, The Guardian, 25 March. 12 13

4

Introduction

had become committed to ‘positive welfare’ – that is, action to improve the welfare of the people. He wrote: It has been from time to time disputed … whether the State should provide for the security only, or for the whole physical and moral well-being of the nation. The vigilant solicitude for the freedom of private life has in general led to the former proposition; while the idea that the State can bestow something more than mere security, and that the injurious limitation of liberty, although a possible, is not an essential, consequence of such a policy, has disposed many to the latter opinion. And this belief has undoubtedly prevailed, not only in political theory, but in actual practice.  … I am speaking here, then, of the entire efforts of the State to elevate the positive welfare of the nation; of its solicitude for the population of the country, and the subsistence of its inhabitants, whether manifested directly in such institutions as poor-laws, or indirectly, in the encouragement of agriculture, industry, and commerce; of all regulations relative to finance and currency, imports and exports, etc. (in so far as these have this positive welfare in view); finally, of all measures employed to remedy or prevent natural devastations, and, in short, of every political institution designed to preserve or augment the physical welfare of the nation.16 ‘Positive welfare’ is understood here as positive action to improve welfare – the term should not be confused with the relatively recent (and somewhat trivial) use of the same phrase to represent cheerier, more ‘positive’ interpretations of welfare and well-being.17 Welfare is ‘positive’ when government takes action to benefit people directly – not just safeguarding rights or security, not just creating a framework, but engaging actively in measures intended to serve the public. This has become a routine part of the agenda for modern governments; there are clear deficiencies in any government which fails to do it.

The growth of ‘positive welfare’ The character of the modern state was taking shape, and could be discerned, long before the creation of the contemporary ‘welfare states’ as we now understand the term. It would be difficult to identify any clear point in history at which governments undertook to promote ‘positive welfare’,  W von  Humboldt, 1854, The sphere and duties of government, Carmel, IN: Liberty Fund, pp  10, 21, https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/coulthard-the-sphere-and-duties-ofgovernment-1792-1854, last accessed 16 March 2022. 17  A Giddens, 1998, The third way, Cambridge: Polity, ch 4.

16

5

States and Welfare States

but it has been going on for centuries, and it is hard to disentangle that objective from anything else that governments do. Rosenvallon suggests that a recognition of the legitimacy of state action in the field of welfare follows straightforwardly from a view of the state as a protective organisation: a state which aims to protect its citizens from violence will aim to protect them economically and socially as well.18 That may sound idealistic, but it reflects a broad range of activities that governments have engaged with as contemporary states developed. The organisation of welfare delivery either preceded, or went hand in hand with, that development.19 Some religions had made prescriptions for the organisation of charitable relief – such as the collection of tzedakah advised in the Talmud,20 or zakat in Islam21 – but in 16th-century Europe, the Christian Church came to cede that responsibility to the secular authorities, reflecting the major upheaval of the Reformation. The earliest examples of a formal collective engagement with welfare services in the modern sense took place in the Low Countries, at that time part of the Spanish empire. The best documented of these systems is the scheme introduced in 1525 in the city of Ypres. Ypres instituted an extensive, formal system of support for the city’s poor, including provision for education, cash support, residential accommodation and free medical care. (Earlier schemes at Douai and Mons are less fully recorded.22 The authorities at Ypres took an evaluation report to the University of Paris at the Sorbonne, in order to fend off accusations of Lutheran heresy. They defended themselves in these terms: ‘The chief office of a Senate is not only to preserve the welfare of a commonwealth, but also to make it richer and better.’23) At around the same time, Luther and Zwingli established ordinances for the civic administration of charity in Leisnick and Zurich.24 In England, the example of Ypres, and the need to replace the role of the monasteries in distributing charity, led to the Tudor Poor Law of 1535.25 England was also the site of the first truly national scheme, the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1598, codified in 1601; that scheme was to last, in one form or another, for 350 years. These examples happened long before the industrial revolution and the emergence of the modern state. The principle of laissez-faire, which is the idea that the role of the government should deliberately be limited to  P Rosenvallon, 1981, La crise de l’État-providence, Paris: Seuil, pp 20–4.   See P Spicker (ed), 2010, The origins of modern welfare, Oxford: Peter Lang. 20   Talmud, n.d., Tractate Baba Bathra, 8. 21   A Tajmazinani (ed), 2021, Social policy in the Islamic world, London: Palgrave Macmillan. 22  J Nolf, 1915, La réforme de la bienfaisance publique à Ypres au XVIe siècle, Gand: van Ghoetem/ Universite de Gand. 23   City of Ypres, 1531, Forma subventionis pauperum, in Spicker, 2010, p 113. 24   F Salter (ed), 1926, Some early tracts on poor relief, London: Methuen. 25   G Elton, 1953, An early Tudor Poor Law, Economic History Review, 6(1), pp 55–67. 18 19

6

Introduction

a minimum, came somewhat later: there are some early antecedents, but laissez-faire could only make sense as a guide to action once states were powerful enough to do something beyond it. The doctrine took such a hold in the most developed economies that we may have come to think of it as a norm, or the starting point from which later policies have developed. That would be misleading. The leading advocates of laissez-faire, such as Herbert Spencer,26 were highly influential, but they were fighting a losing battle: in the course of the 19th century governments became incrementally more engaged with measures to support welfare. The work of Johann Bluntschli, a Swiss legal theorist writing in the 1870s, may now strike us as somewhat eccentric (he thought that the state was organic, and masculine), but he was able to recognise something about the emergent role of contemporary governments, a pattern of behaviour which has grown more prominent as time has gone on. He put it like this: 1. The modern State recognises the rights of man in every one. … 2. The modern State has become conscious of the limits of its power, and its rights. It considers itself essentially a legal and political community. … 3. Man has his rights as an individual, private law is sharply distinguished from public law, and is rather recognised than created by the State, rather protected than commanded. … 4. The sovereignty of the State is constitutionally limited. 5. The modern State is representative. … 6. Modern States are essentially national States. … 7. In the modern State different activities have different organs. … 8. Modern states recognise international law as a limit to their dominion.27 It is only the date of this text, written nearly 150 years ago and coming very soon after the formation of Germany, that might be surprising to a modern reader. I could speculate as to why so many subsequent writers failed to see the same patterns – they may have been distracted, not unreasonably, by the experience of global war, the impact of totalitarian governments, communism and its client states, or the resurgence of neoliberal economics – but the epoch of the state conceived as power28 has largely passed, and much of what has been written about government fails to relate to the institutions that have emerged.

 H Spencer, 1851, Social statics, London: John Chapman.   J Bluntschli, 1875, The theory of the state, Ontario: Batoche Books (2000), pp 58–9. 28  Sabine, 1920. 26 27

7

States and Welfare States

The contemporary state The state, for most of us, refers as much to a set of administrative processes, and to the services that its institutions provides, as it does to any of the other activities associated with government. My own work has mainly been done in policy analysis, examining how social policies work and what they achieve. The areas I have engaged with during my career – health and social care for older people, social security, managing public housing or anti-poverty policy – may seem specialised, but they are not exceptional. The state routinely interacts with people in their daily lives. The state employs people. It manages the social infrastructure. It delivers benefits and services, typically including health care, education, cash benefits and, where applicable, disaster relief. It creates ways and means to reduce poverty. Some states do all this more effectively and more comprehensively than others, but even those which fall short in some respects will usually claim that it is part of what they do, and what they are meant to do. That is true even among states which have little regard for democracy, individual freedom, or human rights. Most commentators are aware, from the work that has been done in comparative policy studies, of differences between countries. Every detailed account, looking at historical or social context, inevitably highlights those differences, and there is a minor cottage industry based on the classification of differences into régimes.29 In this book, I want to pay more attention to a phenomenon which is, to my mind, far more surprising than the differences: that government responsibility for social welfare services, even if it is done differently in different places, has become the norm. Readers who have come to this book with a primary interest in political thought might well have raised a sceptical eyebrow at my assertion in the previous paragraph that the activities of the state ‘typically’ include the provision of health care, education and cash support. That may not be how states are represented in the literature, but it is what they do in practice. Just about every government in the world spends something on education and health care. In relation to education, the average expenditure by government is 4.5 per cent of national income (GDP, or Gross Domestic Product).30 In relation to health care, average government spending is 5.9 per cent of GDP, rather more than half of all expenditure on health.31 There is considerable variation, and coverage can be patchy: less than half the global population has access to 29   Following G  Esping-Andersen, 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity; see, for example, M Powell, A Barrientos, 2011, An audit of the welfare modelling business, Social Policy and Administration, 45(1), pp 69–84. 30  World Bank, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS, last accessed 2 February 2021. 31   World Bank, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS, last accessed 2 February 2021.

8

Introduction

essential health services, and by 2030 there will still be 200 million children who do not get basic schooling.32 Nevertheless, states have come generally to accept that this is their responsibility, and they have been doing what they can to fill the gaps. Cash support is less comprehensively provided, but there has been rapid and extensive growth. The most common monetary benefits are pensions, which still only cover three-quarters of the global population. Most states now also provide social safety nets for poorer people below pension age, in the form of cash transfers. The International Labour Organization has charted the progressive extension of commitments to provide social security since 1900. Figure 1.1 shows the trend in striking terms. The policy areas referred to cover sickness, unemployment, old age, family or child benefits, maternity, invalidity, employment injuries and survivors’ benefits.33 By 1920, a handful of countries had accepted standards in several policy areas. By 1950, there was comprehensive provision in many richer countries, but only partial coverage in some and relatively little in the poorer countries. By 1980, the distinctions between north and south were clearer and stronger, with some marked exceptions – partial coverage in North America, but more extensive coverage in South America. By 2015, however, there was comprehensive coverage in most countries in the world, with the main exceptions reflecting partial coverage in sub-Saharan Africa. This may say more about how policies are made than it does about service delivery in practice; some states do not have the capacity to deliver what they promise.34 The Economist, while noting the development in many countries, points to a series of practical problems: the lack of information at governments’ command, over-reliance on technologies that people may not be able to access, and meagre resources.35 The widespread acceptance of common policies, however, is a demonstration of something quite remarkable: a growing acknowledgement among governments of all political colours and temperaments that this is the sort of thing they ought to be doing. A substantial majority of governments around the world – including many that are autocratic or authoritarian – have elected to pursue a policy of ‘positive welfare’ and to develop social welfare services. The process of adapting institutions to social protection and service delivery has shaped most people’s experience of the modern state. Governments increasingly see it as their responsibility to do things to help and support their populations. There has been a proliferation of new states in   United Nations, 2020, The Sustainable Development Goals report 2020, New York: United Nations. 33   ILO, 2017, World Social Protection Report 2017–19, Geneva: ILO, Figure 1.1, p 5. 34  ILO, 2017, p 4. 35   The Economist, 2022, Just keep us alive, 5 February, pp 54–6. 32

9

States and Welfare States Figure 1.1: Number of policy areas covered in social protection programmes anchored in national legislation, 1900–2015

Y ear: 1 900

Year: 1900

Y ear: 1 940

Year: 1940

Y ear: 1 960

Year: 1960

Y ear: 2000

Year: 2000 Scope of legal coverage Comprehensive scope (all policy areas)

Intermediate scope (5–6 po

Nearly comprehensive scope (7 policy areas)

Limited scope (1–4 policy ar

10

Introduction

900

Y ear: 1 920

Year: 1920

1900

40

Y ear: 1 950

1940

Year: 1950

960

Y ear: 1 980

1960

Year: 1980

000

Y ear: 201 5

2000

Year: 2015

all policy areas)

Intermediate scope (5–6 policy areas)

scope (7 policy areas)

Limited scope (1–4 policy areas)

Source: Copyright © International Labour Organization, 2017

11

No data

States and Welfare States

recent years. They are offering much more than defence: a range of practical services, economic management, and a promise of general prosperity.

Developing the argument The plan of the book is fairly straightforward. In Part I, I am looking to develop an understanding of the role of government and the state in the contemporary world. Chapter 2 considers the institutions of government and the ways in which governments can act; Chapters 3 and 4 consider the main fields of domestic policy; and Chapter 5 considers state action in relation to other states, and international organisations. Part II is mainly concerned with normative positions. Chapter 6 presents competing views about the responsibilities of government, Chapter 7 reviews different interpretations of welfare, and Chapter 8 the elusive question of who the people are, who such duties are owed to. Chapters 9 and 10 review the guiding principles that might be applied to welfare policy. The methodology that underpins the argument may be harder to explain. Comparative social policy has mainly been done in three ways, and this book does not follow any of them. The first approach is the classification of governments into normative categories or families, used both to describe patterns of governance and to evaluate them. There are many problems with this approach. The criteria are vague, the measures taken are often understood differently in the context where they are applied, the models are static while policy-making is dynamic, and there are many variations within systems to classify.36 The selection of criteria is crucial; so is the choice of services and actions which are used as the basis for the classification. Most generalisations break down when they are considered in detail.37 The second main set of methods relies on the use of multivariate analysis to identify trends and relationships. Here, again, there are problems. The variables are interdependent, and violations of the statistical assumptions are rife. More fundamentally, the assumptions which underlie this kind of deductive analysis are deeply flawed. The analysis commonly rests on a belief that there is a causal link between variables, which can be identified through a rigorous scientific procedure, and that this link, once established, will make it possible reliably to predict the outcomes of future policy. This is what economists do, when they claim that a relationship holds ‘when other things are equal’ – but other things never are. Conceptually, ‘bracketing   P Spicker, 1996, Normative comparisons of social security systems, in L Hantrais, S Mangen (eds) Cross-national research methods in the social sciences, London: Pinter; C Aspalter (ed), 2020, Ideal types in comparative social policy, London: Routledge. 37  H Bolderson, D Mabbett, 1995, Mongrels or thoroughbreds: a cross-national look at social security systems, European Journal of Political Research, 28(1), pp 119–39. 36

12

Introduction

off’’ information about politics and society in order to identify influences is inherently liable to lead to false trails; studies of implementation or service outcomes are always dependent on context.38 The best that this method can achieve is to identify common patterns which might serve as a guide to practical judgement.39 The third approach is historical and qualitative. Leisering discusses recent developments in social protection in terms of ‘the social question’. ‘Raising the “social question” means that a society recognises social issues in a generalized way as a key concern of society, to be addressed by the state, linked to a call for political remedies. The underlying assumption is that the state is responsible for individual welfare.’40 The social question, he argues, can be examined by considering the historical evolution of institutions and services; the social construction of state responsibility – what it involves, and who it is for; the political language or discourse used in justification; the framing of ideas in terms of general principles; and the transnational diffusion of ideas. In other work, Leisering puts great emphasis on ideational influences and global discourses.41 These factors can all help to explain the differences in national provision. The interpretations derived from a qualitative approach are usually defensible – they are based on specific evidence – and often sound. The depth and specificity of the analysis means, inevitably, that it highlights the differences between countries. This is amply demonstrated, for example, by the detailed case studies of China, Brazil, India and South Africa that are in Leisering’s 2021 book.42 Focusing on the differences tends to imply, if not that every state is distinctive, that the best that can be said about states is that some bear a ‘family resemblance’ to others.43 I have no qualms about the merit of this approach; the difficulty I have with it, simply put, is that it leads in the opposite direction from the course I want to follow. I cannot look at the development pictured in Figure 1.1 and suppose that the way to understand the movement it shows is to go more deeply into the differences between countries. The similarities between countries are strong and surprising enough to merit attention in their own right. I do not plan to argue that every state in the world is beneficent, or  P  Spicker, 2018, The real dependent variable problem: the limitations of quantitative analysis in comparative policy studies, Social Policy & Administration, 52(1), pp 216–28. 39  P Spicker, 2011, Generalisation and phronesis: rethinking the methodology of social policy, Journal of Social Policy, 40(1), pp 1–19. 40   L Leisering (ed), 2021, One hundred years of social protection, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 394–5. 41  L Leisering, 2018, The global rise of social cash transfers, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 42   Leisering, 2021. 43   For example, M  Bevir, R  Rhodes, 2010, The state as cultural practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 38

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States and Welfare States

even that most are. Poor people from around the world complain about abuse by those in authority; police are often seen as part of the problem.44 Common exclusions and failures relate to the situation of migrants, homeless people, indigenous minorities and people with disabilities. Nor am I claiming that any state acts perfectly in line with their stated values and international commitments. Human rights are said to guarantee an adequate standard of living, sufficient to cover food, housing and medical care;45 but there are grounds to criticise even the best governments about their failure to secure all such rights for everyone. The puzzle is not that governments fall short of the standard. It is that so many recognise the responsibilities they have in relation to positive welfare, and have taken steps to develop services which at least move in that direction. To understand this development, we need to take a different approach to comparative policy studies. The style of argument I employ in this book has more to do with normative theory than it does with the policy sciences. The primary purpose of theoretical writing is to clarify; it works through a process of description, analysis and evaluation. The aim of original theory is to interpret issues in a new way, and that is central to the purpose of this book. I aim to argue that states have a responsibility for the welfare of their citizens, but that principle is not new. I have already started, in this chapter, to challenge the view that the authority of states is rooted in the application of physical force, and I will be reviewing material which calls into question much of what has been written about the character of the modern state. I will go on to argue for a reconsideration of the classifications we use in comparative social policy, and for a distinctive view of the concept of the welfare state. The questions that I posed at the beginning of this chapter are normative rather than descriptive; but empirically speaking, there has been a remarkable confluence of ideas, approaches and methods. The originality of a work of theory is based on the selection, critical examination and synthesis of material from different sources, not the discovery of new facts. I have referred in general terms to facts and examples at several points in the argument, but everything I write is an interpretation: facts are rarely incontrovertible, and most of the facts that exist about government are indicative – pointers and signposts, rather than ‘hard’ evidence. They are more persuasive when they are backed up either by other evidence, or by reasoning. There is a common trend in political theory to abstraction, and sometimes to fantasy: arguments are built out of thought experiments, literary analogies and what Robert Goodin has called ‘crazy cases’.46 I do not use that kind of material in this book; I do not think I need to.  D Narayan, R Chambers, M Shah, P Petesch, 2000, Voices of the poor: crying out for change, Washington DC: World Bank/Oxford University Press, pp 162–6. 45   United Nations, 1948, Declaration of Human Rights, art 21. 46  R E Goodin, 1982, Political theory and public policy, Chicago: Chicago University Press. 44

14

PART I

On government

2

Government Summary Government is rule-bound: the conventions of sovereignty and the rule of law bind the government itself. These conventions make it possible to preserve central authority while delegating practical services. Government is commonly understood in terms of legislative, executive and judicial functions. There are overlaps between these elements, but beyond that there are further roles in governance and accountability, and the government acts as a policy-maker and provider in service delivery.

Historically, contemporary governments asserted their authority, not by stately procession through ordered stages of development, but rather the unsteady growth of legal, integrative, protective and regulatory measures – sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden. Given the huge variation in the range and scope of such activities, it is striking that such roles have come, in so many places, to take the form of recognisably similar principles and policies. The process begins, for contemporary governments, with a system of law. Legal rules define what is possible, and what is not. The primary task of a legislature is to establish laws, and there are measures to take before laws can be recognised and acted on. Hart points to a series of ‘secondary rules’, which are really rules about rules. In any system of law, there have to be rules of recognition, so that people will be able to recognise what is a law, and what is not; rules of change, by which it can be determined how a law can be introduced, amended or abolished; and rules of adjudication, by which it can be determined how the law applies in any particular case.1 This all falls under the general heading of ‘constitutional’ law. (There does not have to be a written constitution, though it helps to have one.) Below the level of constitutional law, there is administrative law, which defines the specific powers and duties of executive agencies. Treating law systematically does preclude making arbitrary decrees: something is not a law just because a leader says so. Weber referred to systems which depend on the personal authority of a leader as ‘patrimonialism’, and notes the aversion to bureaucracy and reliance on family connections that  H L A Hart, 2012, The concept of law, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1

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States and Welfare States

often goes with it.2 There are still a handful of countries run by rulers or ruling cliques, but they face the same dilemma as every other country; if every power depends on the ruler’s central fiat, the task becomes impossibly large, and if a system of laws leaves room for a government’s subordinates to be arbitrary, the central authority cannot count itself as being fully in control. This, Siedentop argues, is why the papacy of the 10th and 11th centuries needed the support of a system of canon law, which is where these principles developed.3 The same rationale guides governments today, working in a much more diverse and demanding environment; they cannot be administered adequately by the charismatic authority of an individual leader. The larger and more complex an organisation, a society or a country become, the more important it is to have an identifiable system of rules. Once there is some systematic general administration in place, a legislative process can be developed by which these rules can be made. Making rules is sometimes loosely identified with criminal law, but many (and possibly most) of the laws that matter most are not about that. Laws governing family relationships, contracts and transactions, property ownership, money, and debt, are fundamental. The relationships that are being governed are generally firmly established in society; the law and social relationships have often developed together. There have been circumstances where changes in the law prompt changes in the way that social norms are formed, as arguably has happened in relation to sexuality. It may fail to keep up with changes in society; women’s property rights, in most societies, have lagged well behind changing roles for women. And there are circumstances where changes in law are so out of step with society, that the law is disregarded: the Soviet Union’s attempt to redefine and reconstitute the family failed to command respect.4 Enforcement, as such, has a relatively limited place within these structures. Enforcement is mainly necessary when things have gone wrong. Methods of regulation, such as inspection, monitoring and statutory reporting, are mainly there to prevent breaches of the law from arising. One of the most persistent misunderstandings of government stems from a misplaced emphasis on coercion. Government actions may well be backed up with the threat that people can be made to do things; even if that power is not exercised, people will be aware that the option of coercion is open to a government if there is not willing cooperation. While that is true, it does not follow that a government’s role is mainly coercive. Some of the things which have been 2  M Weber, 1948, The sociology of charismatic authority, in H Gerth, C Mills (eds), From Max Weber, London: Routledge, pp 245–62. 3  L Siedentop, 2015, Inventing the individual, London: Penguin, ch 15. 4  B Glass, M Stolee, 1987, Family law in Soviet Russia 1917–45, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 40(4), pp 893–902.

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the subject of coercion are things that, left to themselves, with the resources to manage, people may well have been doing anyway. Voluntary collective action is widespread, and unemployment insurance grew in many European countries on the basis of mutual aid;5 the effect of state intervention was to extend the coverage to the least privileged workers, who would otherwise be left out. Aneurin Bevan commented, of services in the UK: That is always the process of legislation in this country. It starts off by voluntary effort, it starts off by empirical experiment, it starts by improvisation. It then establishes itself by merit, and ultimately at some stage or other the State steps in and makes what was started by voluntary action and experiment a universal service.6 Often, the rules instituted by government are shaped by, and reflect, longstanding social norms. For example, people have been marrying voluntarily, outwith the scope of state regulation, for centuries. What states have done is to offer a framework which regulates the relationship of the partners, clarifies rights and responsibilities, and codifies the situation for third parties (including the agencies of the state itself). Some forms of coercion are protective. The laws governing child abuse, contracts, the rights of employees, the protection of tenants from unlawful eviction, or restraints on food adulteration are examples. Some other kinds of government action are simply rules to make social interaction less problematic – road markings, traffic controls, standard weights and measures. Finally, many of the actions of government are not coercive at all: policies which rely on provision, subsidy, the government purchase of services, incentives or persuasion are done to shift the direction of social behaviour, not to impose conformity to a specified course of action. When all is said and done, the state does not necessarily need to coerce people to secure compliance. Benn and Peters argue: We should hesitate to call any organization a ‘state’ that did not provide for the institutionalized use of coercive power … [but] men in the main submit to authority; they do not have to be subjected to coercion or other forms of power. … Behind power … lies authority, and behind authority some conception of legitimacy or right.7 5  P Baldwin, 1990, The politics of social solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; J Clasen, E Viebrock, 2008, Voluntary unemployment insurance and trade union membership, Journal of Social Policy, 37(3), pp 433–52. 6  A Bevan, 1946, cited in National Health Service, 2019, The NHS long term plan, London: National Health Service, p 114. 7  S Benn, R Peters, 1959, Social principles and the democratic state, London: Allen & Unwin, pp 259, 260, 261.

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States and Welfare States

It is on legitimacy, rather than force, that the core of government activity depends.

Legitimate authority The principles that govern legal systems are rooted in two useful fictions, or myths. A ‘myth’ in social science is not necessarily a belief that is false. It is a belief that, regardless of whether it is true or false, changes the way that people behave.8 Some myths have profound consequences for the way that governance is constructed, and the way in which governments make rules. The conventions shape the pattern of those rules – identifying both the constraints on government and the areas in which governments can take action. The first of these myths is the concept of ‘sovereignty’. The ‘sovereign’, whoever or whatever that may be, is the source of legitimate authority, and all legal authority can be traced back to the sovereign as its source. The legal theorist John Austin argued that ‘Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set by a sovereign person, or sovereign body of persons, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is sovereign or supreme.’9 There are reasons to challenge that construction, which I will come to shortly, but that is not to deny its influence. Siedentop argues that the doctrine has gradually superseded other notions of authority, leaving the state at the heart of contemporary law.10 A sovereign government can make laws. It exercises authority formally within its legitimate sphere of influence. And after the sovereign has acted as the fount of authority, others may draw on that legitimate authority in their turn – for example, the laws passed by devolved administrations or local governments. The myth of sovereignty demands that the sovereign should appear to be making the rules; the body declaring something to be legal, often a court, will itself have been delegated to do so by way of sovereign authority. There is a simple, pragmatic reason for accepting such an arrangement. If more than one body creates the rules, it could be difficult to know what the applicable rules are, what they mean and what should be done if the rules seem to conflict. That difficulty should not be exaggerated, because that is just what happens in federal systems, and to some extent in international trade, where parties to a contract might be able specify a choice of legal systems by which problems are to be resolved. The test is whether the authority of such arrangements is accepted by other law-making bodies.

 G Sorel, 1908, Réflexions sur la violence, Paris: Marcel Riviere.  J Austin, 1832, The province of jurisprudence determined, London: John Murray, pp xvii–xviii. 10  L Siedentop, 2000, Democracy in Europe, London: Penguin, ch 5. 8 9

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The myth of sovereignty is central, then, to rules of recognition: the ways in which we can recognise whether any rule has the status of law.11 Sovereignty has often been assumed to represent ‘supreme, unlimited and indivisible authority’.12 A sovereign government is supposed to have exclusive authority to set the rules for what is done in its territory,13 including the rules governing lesser organisations, all of which are subordinate.14 But states do not make all the rules – they only make some of them. Contracts, for example, are a way of making new, legally binding rules: the French Code Civil explains, as in Roman law, that ‘Agreements that are legally made take the form of law for those who have made them.’15 And there may be other systems of rules that might be applied – religious courts, independent arbitration, professional codes, and some universal aspects of international law, notably human rights.16 Ilgen explains: ‘Sovereignty is seldom monopolized by the state in even the oldest and most stable of nations. Rather it is regularly divided and shared among state and non-state actors at all levels of governance, depending on the issue or problem at hand.’17 Nor is sovereignty ‘final’ or ‘supreme’, because it may well be subject to other authority in turn. The US constitution divides authority between a range of actors. The authority of the UK Parliament is undivided, but governments in Parliament can be voted out, or corrected by the courts. In modern states, the courts usually have the power to review whether actions are legitimate. Barker writes that the sovereign has the ‘last word’.18 That has things back to front: the sovereign, as the source or fount of authority, generally aims to have the first word. Without prior authorisation, nothing else can be done. Many states share sovereignty internally – in federations, between member states and the federal government – or externally, which is the position of the member states of the European Union. Sovereign governments need, in general, to delegate; the authority of lesser bodies derives from the authority of the sovereign. It does happen however that on occasion,  Hart, 2012.  M  Loughlin, 2016, The erosion of sovereignty, Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, 45(2), pp 57–81. 13  Austin, 1832, pp xvii–xviii. 14  H  Kelsen, 1947, General theory of law and state, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p 100. 15  ‘Les conventions légalement formées tiennent lieu de loi à ceux qui les ont faites’, Code civil, 1804, Article 1134, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/ LEGIARTI000006436298/1804-02-17, last accessed 11 April 2021. 16  D  Levy, N  Sznaider, 2006, Sovereignty transformed, British Journal of Sociology, 57(4), pp 657–76. 17  T Ilgen, 2003, Reconfigured sovereignty, Aldershot: Ashgate, p 2. 18  E Barker, 1951, Principles of social and political theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 60. 11 12

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States and Welfare States

a sovereign authority will give a stamp of approval to a legal practice that is long established. Part of a government’s authority, arguably a major part, depends on the society where it is exercised. People make agreements and binding contracts with each other, and form associations, all the time. Often the role of government has simply been to regularise what happens anyway, and historically that regularisation has often come long after the practice is institutionalised. I think Oakeshott has it about right: Each of the communities which went to compose the states of early modern Europe had what may be called a ‘civil’ or ‘private’ law of its own … the Europe in which these states emerged was a mosaic of laws, jurisdictions and judicial procedures of the settlement of disputes about property and the transactions of everyday living. … The emergence of a state was, in one important respect, the legal integration of the inhabitants of its territory and the transformation, by recognition and destruction, of local law and local courts into the law and courts of a state … it has been an integration slow to be achieved and in some states never quite accomplished.19 It is not necessarily the case that sovereignty works by reacting to settled law; it may begin from that point, but after that it defines the rules of change and adjudication. The second set of conventions, which is widespread but arguably less universally accepted, is found in the ‘rule of law’. The rule of law refers to a general class of rules, necessary to ensure that government is both legitimate and capable of producing effects. There is not much point in having laws if no one can tell what the laws are or whether they need to comply with them. In any modern society, that calls for much more than a sovereign or an absolute monarch; it implies the need for a structure of delegation and agency and an explicit system of rules. There are countries where people in positions of authority consider that they are appointed to be in charge, and that they can do as they see fit. This behaviour is common enough in countries with a history of autocracy, but sovereignty does not mean that a government can do whatever it pleases. In so far as it is a claim to legitimate authority, it is difficult to argue that any unfettered and unrestricted authority can ever be considered fully legitimate – that position could only be held to if there are no other criteria by which legitimacy could be judged. Nor is it practical. Life is just too complicated for everything, from nursery education to death certification, to be directed from a single source. The formalisation of constitutional authority, accountability and governance has

 M Oakeshott, 1975, On human conduct, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p 187.

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Government

slowly been advancing; that reflects the complexity of the tasks undertaken by contemporary states. Underpinning these arguments is a recognition that government itself is subject to rules. The ‘rule of law’ is intended to describe the system by which this is held in check. The World Justice Project explains that the rule of law is based on principles of accountability, open government, stable, consistent laws and accessible, impartial adjudication. It consequently identifies eight key elements as the basis for its index: constraints on government powers, the absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.20 There is some room to doubt whether these things can be treated as additive, because failure in one can infect the others, but recognising the elements is a first step towards cementing the rule of law as a basic constraint on government action. The combination of sovereignty and the rule of law takes the form of a ‘golden thread’, running from the sovereign source of authority, and investing that authority in rules governing every subordinate agency or unit of government. In a state governed by the rule of law, every action has to have a basis of authority. It follows, in principle, that any action undertaken by delegated authority must be founded in a specific attribution of powers. In the UK, where there is no formal constitution, there is nevertheless a structure of law that can be termed ‘constitutional’; all authority derives from the legislature, and subordinate bodies have no power to act beyond the scope of their authority. In the constitution of the USA, the powers of federal government are delegated from the states, and enshrined in the constitution. The European Union has effectively the same arrangement, or a mirror of it; the powers of the EU are contained in the treaties, and the golden thread runs from the member states upward, and then, through directives and EU law, to the constituent parts.

Governance The state, Benn and Peters explain, is ‘not a “thing”, but a system of rules, procedures and roles’:21 in current parlance, a matter of governance. The idea of governance is mainly concerned with setting, administering and adjudicating rules of conduct. Once power and authority have been delegated, the apparently hierarchical character of sovereignty and legal authority starts to dissipate. This is most evident in the diffusion of authority across different levels of government: the powers of the state are invested in a wide range of authorities. In   World Justice Project, 2020, Rule of law index 2020, Washington, DC: World Justice Project.   Benn, Peters, 1959, p 253.

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States and Welfare States

most developed countries, there is not a single government; the work of government is layered across a range of different tiers of authority. In federal systems, such as the USA and Germany, powers are reserved to the lower tier; in devolved systems, powers are delegated from the sovereign authority to lesser authorities. Belgium has seven governments; the Swiss confederation has retained considerable power at the level of the commune. The contemporary term for this kind of arrangement is ‘multi-level governance’. I am not going, in this book, to discuss the division of labour between central and local government, which is strongly influenced by circumstances, history and pragmatic considerations about service delivery; but the division of power across different agencies and tiers of government, as Sabine argued a hundred years ago, calls into question the concept of the state as a unitary sovereign entity.22 The diffusion of authority does not stop with the practice of ‘government’ itself. The organs of the state often operate as autonomous or quasiautonomous agencies, and there is routinely some delegation of authority to subordinate organisations, such as policing, the armed forces and health authorities. Agencies of this sort are not independent, and they can be argued to derive their authority from a common source, but one branch of government may regulate the actions of another, and it is not inconceivable for disputes between executive branches – such as a regulator and a service provider – to be the subject of legal action, arbitrated by an independent judiciary that is itself also an organ of the state.23 The reasons for delegation are partly conventional, partly pragmatic – the centre cannot do everything – and partly a reflection of policy. Centralised authority lends itself to more uniform standards, protection against risks, and legal frameworks that are to be applied to everyone – for example, rules intended to equalise the terms of trade in a common market area; decentralisation is probably more appropriate where the intention is to encourage diverse responses, to provide personalised services, to conduct government in ways that are locally accountable and to recognise distinct political communities (such as constituent nations or indigenous peoples). Government is the work of many hands. That means, inevitably, that it is rule-bound. The model of ’ ‘patrimony’ or charismatic authority, responsive to the person (and personality) of a ‘leader’, is wildly inappropriate to the everyday demands of modern government – still less, to the exercise of

22  G Sabine, 1920, The concept of the state as power, Philosophical Review, 29(4), pp 301–18, p 312. 23  R  Pound, 1953, The rule of law and the modern social welfare state, Vanderbilt Law Review, 7(1), pp 1–34.

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delegated authority by people working in public administration.24 It does not work for large states, which call for diffused, shared systems of authority to manage their activities; it does not work for small ones, which have to negotiate a role with a range of actors, including multi-national corporations and international organisations. ‘Leadership’ has been taken to consist in many things: for example, the ability to motivate and influence people,25 the personal attributes and traits of a leader,26 the ability to direct change,27 a situation of authority,28 a relationship with subordinates or ‘followers’,29 or a set of roles within a team.30 What is most striking about those supposed characteristics is how tangential they are to the core tasks of governing a country nowadays – the development of law, strategy and policy, an understanding of the conventions of delegated authority, a responsiveness to conditions and circumstances, and the ability and willingness to fulfil the requirements of public accountability. Influenced by their neighbours, encouraged (and sometimes directed) by international organisations, governments around the world have been developing patterns of formal governance, strategy formation, delegation and accountability. Policy is not only made from the top down. Agencies may have a role in developing legislation: when there is a need for legislative authority to modify an agency’s role or powers, it is often the agency that will take the legislative initiative, looking for confirmatory approval from the legislature rather than direction.31 More generally, agencies usually make many of their own policies, within a general brief; others, possibly most, also make some rules of their own, to ensure that the use of discretion is not arbitrary. Discretion, Davis explains, is the term that is generally used to cover circumstances where pre-set rules do not seem to apply;32 discretion expands to fill any gaps that might appear in the specification of policy by higher authority. There are systems of professional or public service ethics, structures of accountability, and commonly accepted norms and expectations related to service delivery. The people who staff agencies and posts in a civil service will commonly adopt rules and codes of practice appropriate to their  P Spicker, 2012, Leadership: a perniciously vague concept, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 25(1), pp 34–47. 25  G Yukl, 2010, Leadership in organizations, Upper Saddle River: Pearson. 26  B Bass, 1990, Bass and Stogdill’s handbook of leadership, New York: Free Press. 27   For example, T Hafford, K Letchfield, K Leonard, N Begum, N Chick, 2008, Leadership and management in social care, London: SAGE. 28  K Grint, 2000, The arts of leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 29  S Baker, 2007, Followership, Journal of Leadership and Organisational Studies, 14(1), pp 50–60. 30  D Day, P Gronn, E Salas, 2004, Leadership capacity in teams, Leadership Quarterly, 15(6), pp 857–80. 31  J Heath, 2020, The machinery of government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 32  K Davis, 1966, Discretionary justice, Louisiana: Louisiana State University. 24

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role. In my own experience, in the United Kingdom, professional housing officers tend to emphasise principles of need and equity; social workers emphasise risk; education officers tend to emphasise universal rights; the police stress public order. The different positions cut across organisational cultures, which might be localised or specific to the administrative setting. They have been described as ‘service ideologies’: the shared ‘common sense’ of different professions reflects the circumstances of their roles.33 Whenever policy-makers leave room for discretion – the opportunity, or necessity, to make rules to fill the gaps – the delegated agencies have to do what makes sense to manage the tasks they have been given. The rules do not always keep pace with the range of circumstances that services have to deal with, and so we get ‘street level bureaucracy’, the possibility – or likelihood – that front-line workers will have to develop their own rules, guidance and understanding of practice to make their role workable.34 Agencies and professionals do not have a completely free hand in what they do – that would not be consistent with the rule of law. In the western democracies, there are highly developed systems of accountability. Some of that accountability is hierarchical: every officer, and every agency, has to be able to explain their actions to a higher authority. Some accountability is financial – typically a different hierarchical set of rules. Some is professional: officials in medicine, education or social work are accountable to their peers for their conduct. Some is judicial: there are many cases, especially in medicine, social work and policing, where officers may have to render an account of their actions to the courts. Heath argues for a concept of ‘popular’ accountability, where agencies become directly accountable to citizens and service users.35 And in a democracy, there is also democratic accountability. At the top of every governmental hierarchy, there is accountability to elected officials, or members of the legislature – and they, in turn, are accountable to the electorate. The methods which are characteristic of audit and accountability commonly include conventions relating to reporting, verification, transparency and preserving a record that can be traced back to the initial authorisation. The origins of these conventions are ancient, and they precede the existence of any modern state: contemporary states learned how to operate from the practice of the religious authorities and the voluntary sector. In the ninth century the Catholic Church was critical of the way in which some charitable trusts seemed to have departed from the intentions of

 G Smith, 1980, Social need: policy, practice and research, London: RKP.  M Lipsky, 1980, Street level bureaucracy, London: SAGE. 35  Heath, 2020, p 65. 33 34

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Government

their benefactors, and claimed a right to oversee the operation of charity.36 During the Reformation, the reformers excoriated the abuses in the Church, and argued that funds should be overseen by the civic authorities, in much the same terms as the Church had argued for control 700 years beforehand.37 Voluntary organisations nowadays routinely follow similar conventions; as regulation of the voluntary sector has increased, it is often the case that they have to manage their affairs on a strict interpretation of legitimate authority. These principles are not, in themselves, a sufficient guarantee of good governance, but ignoring them is a pretty certain way of ensuring that things are done badly. The central flaw they are designed to avoid is expressed as arbitrariness – government which is unreadable, unpredictable and, in its nature, almost impossible to comply with. The risk of arbitrariness is inherent in the exercise of centralised control. Whether or not they claim to have unlimited, supreme authority, governments inevitably have to delegate what authority they have to subordinates, and no government is capable of specifying everything. If there is no discretion, there is always potential for gridlock or inaction. Conversely, where there is discretion, there is the potential for inconsistency – and possibly of corruption. Corruption is best understood as an abuse of power. It is typically done by officials to gain a personal advantage – personal enrichment, a bribe, a benefit to friends or family, a return of favours – but sometimes done as an exercise of power over people who do not have it. Some governments have been fairly described as ‘kleptocracies’, where the members of the government have mainly been concerned to enrich themselves. More typically, however, corruption is part of daily interactions with state officials who are able – and sometimes expected – to supplement a meagre income by putting pressure on the people they come into contact with.38 It happens wherever officials are given the scope to do it.39 The ways that corruption is constructed, and the mechanisms that make corruption possible, are intimately related to the structure of delegation. This is the dark side of administrative discretion. In so far as corruption leads to the diversion of funds and resources, it is liable to subvert the purposes of public policy. Part of the process of countering corruption can be achieved by greater transparency, accountability and redress. Collier gives an example from Uganda: informing schools and the local press about the money that they ought to be receiving  J  Brodman, 2009, Charity and religion in medieval Europe, Washington,  DC: Catholic University of America Press. 37   See, for example, J L Vives, 1525, De subventione pauperum, in P Spicker (ed), 1990, The origins of modern welfare, Bern: Peter Lang. 38  R Greenhill, P Watt, 2005, Real aid, Johannesburg: Action Aid International, p 11. 39  W  Savedoff, R  Hussman, 2006, Why are health systems prone to corruption?, in Transparency International: Global corruption report 2006, London: Pluto Press. 36

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led to those schools receiving 90 per cent of the funds that were directed to them, instead of the previous 20 per cent.40 (That example supports a contention put forward by Amartya Sen, that the media, and particularly a free, critical press, play a major role in social development.41) Part, too, has been to streamline processes so that payments cannot be demanded; automation has made it more possible to register births or to obtain identity papers, and the widespread use of cell phones has helped to restrain abuses by the police. Klitgaard argues that corruption can actually serve an institutional function, and that the appropriate response might be to institutionalise it.42 Payments that are demanded for people to receive health care, for example, can only be waived for poorer people if there is a system that makes them open and explicit. Corruption might be a reflection of systemic failure, rather than the cause of it. Conventionally, the institutions of government are usually classified as legislative, executive or judicial. The legislative branch makes laws and rules; the executive branch, a term conflating elected governments and civil servants, forms policy and administers the system; the judicial branch arbitrates disputes in the event of uncertainty about the law. In practice, most governments combine policy-making with a degree of legislative power. The legislature has a representative role as well as a law-making one, and legislatures commonly engage to some degree in oversight and accountability. The judiciary has powers of adjudication and enforcement, but in constitutional states it also has a moderating power over law that in some countries might also be exercised by a president.43 Members of the judiciary on occasion may also participate in processes of accountability, such as judge-led public inquiries. The category of ‘executive’ functions has three elements. One is policy-making and direction, the province of what is commonly called ‘the government’. Governments do some of this themselves, but they also delegate policy-making functions to subordinate authorities and agencies. The agencies which implement policy may at times engage in making it, and sometimes the legislative process has to catch up with them.44 The second is the task of implementation and service delivery, which includes not only the functions that are commonly recognised as part of government – police, soldiers, tax inspectors – but many others, including, for example, teachers, social security officers, housing managers and refuse collectors. The third is one of the key institutional elements of government: the system of inspection, audit and accountability. These   P Collier, 2007, The bottom billion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 150.   A Sen, 2001, Development as freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 42   R Klitgaard, 1998, Controlling corruption, Berkeley: University of California Press. 43  J Bluntschli, 1875, The theory of the state, Ontario: Batoche Books (2000), p 408. 44  Heath, 2020, ch 1. 40 41

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structures have developed partly through a division of labour, partly through codes of governance, but also in response to the practical difficulties of managing government, steering the economy or delivering public services in any contemporary society.

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Public policy Summary This chapter examines three main areas of public policy, common to almost all governments: economic policy, social welfare services, and policies for society.

The idea of ‘policy’ might refer, among other things, to a statement of aspirations, specific proposals, a programme for action, or a field of action.1 In this context, I want only to outline some broad fields of action that governments most actively engage with, because that shapes how we think of ‘the state’.

Economic policy It is so much taken for granted nowadays that states should engage themselves in the operation of the economy that the core principle, whether a government should even have an economic policy, is hardly ever examined: what the literature focuses on, instead, is the question of what governments and states should do about it and how it should be done. At a national level, governments have a wide range of economic policy tools at their disposal. The major categories of economic policy are fiscal policy, focusing on taxation and government expenditure; monetary policy, focusing on the supply of money and interest rates; and international trade policy, determining the terms on which goods and services are exported and imported. Governments use the money they spend not just to buy goods or services, but to steer the economy, to redistribute resources, and to guide behaviour. They can use economic instruments to pursue social ends, for example, by promoting solidarity (understood as a process of recognising rights and imposing duties), deterring unhealthy conduct (taxing tobacco) or supporting activities on moral grounds (as they do in support for families, and the allowances made for religious organisations). They can alter economic behaviour through regulation (making laws or governing economic conduct), subsidy and incentives (altering the terms on which certain productive activities are paid for), and provision or purchase of goods  B Hogwood, L Gunn, 1984, Policy analysis for the real world, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1

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and services. They own substantial amounts of property, and they may well be involved more directly with economic production. The importance of direct state engagement in economic activities is often underestimated, partly because of a general distrust of state action, and partly because of an ideological presumption that if something is worth doing, it will happen regardless. The World Bank, supposedly founded to combat poverty in the developing world, has dismissed the possibility that governments might create employment: ‘it is not the role of governments to create jobs … as a general rule it is the private sector that creates jobs’.2 That bears little relationship to the things that governments actually do. Policing, teaching, road maintenance, the armed forces, refuse collectors and social workers are routinely created and financed by governments or by government agencies. Many supposedly private occupations are created or maintained indirectly through government activities, including criminal lawyers, transport workers and care workers. (In Britain and Europe, we could add other occupations to that list: the work of most doctors, farmers and academics would not be viable in its present form without state finance.) Mariana Mazzucato has argued that many of the leading industries in the modern economy occupy the place they hold because they were promoted, supported or developed by the actions of national governments.3 The main divide in economic policy separates those who hold that states should as far as possible confine themselves to establishing a framework in which an economy can thrive, and those who argue for more direct state actions and policies. Classical economics was concerned with the interaction between different economic actors – producers, consumers, financiers and the like. There are contemporary economists who consider that all economic relationships can be interpreted in this way; there is a spontaneous order that government is liable to interfere with. However, the heavy stress on individual interaction was not necessarily the way that classical economists mainly thought about the economy – Adam Smith’s book was, of course, about the ‘Wealth of Nations’, not just the behaviour of individuals. In the 19th century, the economics of David Ricardo and Alfred Marshall concerned themselves with aggregates, and through aggregates, the behaviour of ‘average’ individuals: on certain issues, notably on trade, that tipped over into a discussion of the relative position of nations. In the 20th century, the Keynesian revolution made it possible to think about economies in terms of the interests of a national economy as a whole, and that argued for a different approach to analysis. Keynesian macroeconomics developed a new vocabulary for understanding how the impact of trade, 2   World Bank, 2013, World development report 2013: jobs, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 21. 3  M Mazzucato, 2015, The entrepreneurial state, New York: Anthem Press.

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money and taxation affected the level of activity in an economy. The central variable in macroeconomic analysis is national income, or national product (the two terms are treated as equivalent). Factors such as imports, exports, taxation or government expenditure act to modify national income, and from that it becomes possible to analyse the influence of different factors on the prosperity of the whole economy. Keynes argued that key elements of the economy needed to be managed by the government for the public good. Unemployment was not just a personal, or even a social, catastrophe: it represented, for an economy, a massive waste of resources that could be put to better use.4 Governments could regulate the ebb and flow of economic production; the cycle of over- and underproduction of goods could be modulated to deliver constant, predictable development. They needed to regulate key macroeconomic variables, such as the level of investment: ‘The duty of ordering the current volume of investment’, he wrote, ‘cannot safely be left in private hands.’5 Keynesian analysis worked well for several countries – notably Britain and the USA. But those were, at the time, the most developed countries in the world; they were major powers, and trading nations. When the same prescriptions were tried in more dependent and underdeveloped nations, there were often problems – some, perhaps, attributable to poor governance, some to over-indebtedness, but sufficient to raise questions about whether Keynesian prescriptions could work in countries with less capacity and control. Later opposition to Keynesianism – especially monetarism, which focused on the money supply – was no less framed and understood in terms of national aggregates, and no less centred on the position of powerful countries. Even if Keynesian prescriptions were rejected, the foundational premise, thinking about an economy as a whole, was hard to avoid. (Some economists have distanced themselves from this, favouring a more individualistic, ‘neoclassical’ approach. ‘There is no such thing’, Hayek wrote to Friedman, ‘as the quantity of money’6 – and Hayek argued, accordingly, that the issue of currency should be taken out of the hands of governments altogether.7) Monetarism offered, not just different terms of analysis, but different priorities. In so far as it made prescriptions for policy, it focused partly on the money supply, and partly on public expenditure. Governments, the argument runs, are responsible for the money supply. When they spend money, the money supply is increased; an increased money supply leads to inflation, or devaluation of the currency, so governments have to balance 4  J M Keynes, 1936, The general theory of employment, interest and money, London: Macmillan, p 129. 5   Keynes, 1936, p 320. 6  F Hayek, cited in D Green, 1987, The New Right, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, p 148. 7   R Plant, 2009, The neo-liberal state, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 173.

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their expenditure, primarily through taxation. If they do not tax, they will have to borrow the difference. There is a great deal wrong with this analysis. Governments do not control the money supply; there are other ways to raise money besides taxation; they do not have to balance the books; and public expenditure is not the root of the current discontents. On the first point, no government has exclusive control over currency, though many have tried. The bulk of the money supply in modern economies is created, not in official currency, but in the balances operated by banks; and in governments where market ideology dominates, banks have been given considerable latitude to issue credit and debt. The crash of 2007–8 was the product of banking practice, not public expenditure. On the second point, governments do not necessarily have to borrow or raise tax to cover a deficit. Governments can raise money and resources in many ways: for example, contributions, charging, returns on investment, trading, taking a stake in development, nationalisation and sequestration. They could, if they wished, raise money by engaging in commercial activity and making a profit. The main reasons for not doing so are the (debatable) argument that private enterprise will do it better and the (no less debatable) argument that if the government is involved, this will suppress competition. Whether those propositions are actually true depends on context. There is a persuasive case to be made that the world’s most successful industries have depended heavily on the contribution of the governments where they were established.8 On the third, it is far from clear that governments ever have to balance their budgets. Governments are not like households, but even if they were, households in developed economies commonly finance their activities through debt – that is the main way that housing is paid for. Modern Monetary Theory argues that a sovereign government which issues its own currency can always use that currency to meet any commitments.9 That is an empty claim, because no government in the world economy altogether controls their own currency; but it is true enough that the government use of currency does not depend directly on governments pursuing ‘sound’ finance. For example, the US federal government has not balanced its budget in the course of the last 70 years. After the 2008 crash, many countries supported their banks through ‘quantitative easing’ – that is, by printing money. The big question for governments is whether or not people will accept their credit – for example, through the issue of bonds – as good.

 Mazzucato, 2015; Ha-Joon Chang, 2007, Bad Samaritans, London: Random House.   See, for example, S  Globerman, 2021, A primer on modern monetary theory, Vancouver: Fraser Institute. 8 9

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The fourth point was about the use of public expenditure. Overall, the weight given in economic arguments to the role of public spending is disproportionate. A substantial proportion of public ‘expenditure’ is not expenditure at all. It takes the form of transfer payments: money is moved from some people to other people. If, for example, money is allocated to old age pensions, it has not been ‘spent’; it has been passed to pensioners so that they can spend it. In economic terms, transfer payments are more or less neutral – there is the same amount of money in the economy after a transfer payment as there was before it. If there is a difference, it is because the people who receive the money may not use it in the same way as the people who would have it otherwise. People on low incomes tend to spend proportionately more on food, and less on savings – good for farmers and shopkeepers, less good for bankers and speculators. The salaries of people working in the public service are much like transfer payments, but there will normally be costs associated with the employment. The wages of a police officer, paid from tax, are transfers, but the costs of employing that officer, including for example, transport and equipment, are expenditure. In recent years, several governments have promoted ‘austerity’ in terms of a retrenchment of public activity.10 Some of the problems with this come out of the discussions of balanced budgets and the control of public expenditure, but two other issues are evident. One is the bias against government action, as opposed to other forms of collective action, notably the actions of business. Austerity has often been used as a euphemism for privatisation. If the effect of retrenchment is simply to transfer burdens from public to private, there is no necessary reduction in debt or in costs for the country where this is being done. The other issue concerns the macroeconomic implications of reducing public expenditure. Some economists have argued that public expenditure ‘crowds out’ private activity, and so that suppressing public spending leaves scope for economies to grow.11 That assumes that public expenditure is a drain on the economy, rather than a stimulus to it. If the Keynesians are right, the primary effect of reducing expenditure is to reduce the overall level of economic activity, and so to depress the economy. There are substantial differences in the positions that economists take, then, but there is little dissent from the principle that governments should engage with matters of economic policy, in the interests of the country as a whole. The idea that governments should stay away altogether from economic matters is still put by ‘libertarians’, zealots for free economic markets;12 but even among the advocates of that position, there is a   B Greve (ed), 2021, Handbook on Austerity, Populism and the Welfare State, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 11  R Bacon, W Eltis, 1978, Britain’s economic problem, London: Macmillan. 12   For example, M Rothbard, 1978, For a new liberty, Auburn: von Mises Institute. 10

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widespread acceptance that states need to develop the conditions through which markets can flourish.13 No one seriously argues that governments should pay no attention to the economy.

Social policy: public and social welfare services Social welfare is sometimes identified with economic factors, such as GDP per capita, and sometimes with well-being in general terms – I will come back to those issues in Part II. Services for social welfare, by contrast, are rather more specific. There are public services, such as policing, justice, roads, parks, sanitation and drainage; and social services, such as education, health care, social security, social housing, child protection and social care. The distinction between public and social services is not critical – many writers in social policy have followed Richard Titmuss, in arguing that social services should be understood in the same terms as public services.14 The central principle to raise here is about the engagement of government, in providing or securing the provision of a range of services that benefit the population, either collectively or individually. Public services are unlike commercial goods or services, in three main ways. First, the rationale for the services is based, not on commercial criteria, but on whether or not they achieve the aims of public policy. To take a simple example, the point of providing a public refuse collection is to ensure that rubbish is collected and disposed of: it is a matter of safety, convenience and public health. By contrast, the central objective of a commercial firm working in refuse disposal is to provide a service in exchange for a fee; the test is whether that can be done for a reasonable rate of return, not whether all rubbish is collected. Putting that in the simplest terms, businesses have a choice about what they do and who they serve; public services do not.15 Second, the people who pay for public services are not necessarily those who receive them. Education in schools, roads and policing are generally financed by public spending. Even if services are provided on the basis of insurance contributions – a common arrangement in health care – it ought to be understood that insurance is based on pooled risks, so that people do not pay individually for the service they receive. Public services are inherently redistributive.

  For example, F Hayek, 1976, Law, legislation and liberty vol. 2: the mirage of social justice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 14  R Titmuss, 1968, Commitment to welfare, London: Allen & Unwin, p 129. 15  G  Boyne, 2003, What is public service improvement?, Public Administration, 81(2), pp 211–27; P Spicker, 2009, The nature of a public service, International Journal of Public Administration, 32(11), pp 970–91. 13

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The third point follows from the second. If payment is divorced from the receipt of services, any contractual relationship has to lie elsewhere. In commercial transactions, the normal pattern of service is a reciprocal contract: A pays B, and B provides services to A. In public services, the people who are paying do it in the interests of third parties: A pays B for the benefit of C. Public services are generally operated as a trust, and the mechanisms of trusts are commonplace – in the voluntary sector, in charities, in non-profits, and of course in the actions of government. Public services are not necessarily run by governments. Throughout the developed world, essential services might equally be run by autonomous agencies, charities, non-profits and mutual aid. The rationale for organising collective provision is strong16 – strong enough to mean, in practice, that people who have the resources will usually, where there is no government provision, find ways to cooperate, pool risks through insurance or arrange protection by other means. Most countries have, in practice, mixed systems – services which have some elements that are government based, some which are private, some which are voluntary or independent. Many governments have adopted a stance which is sometimes called ‘corporatist’: either they form partnerships to set a common agenda, or co-opt independent agencies into following their lead.17 Some services are ‘institutional’, where provision by the state is normalised for particular services – for example, in state pensions. And some are universal – provided generally, and ‘decommodified’, which means they are distributed without reference to market criteria.18 Schools, policing, parks and libraries are examples – but the principle applies, evidently, only to specific services, and the range of services which is offered differs in different countries. The services which are most often provided by government, and so the services which are most strongly identified with government, are education and health. There is considerable variation between countries, but as I explained in Chapter 1, there is no government that does not spend some money on education or health care, and those roles have been expanding. Around the world, 90  per cent of school-age children are enrolled in primary school;19 62 per cent of the world’s population is covered to some extent by universal health care provision, though that falls to 52 per cent when financial gaps are taken into account.20 Social security is not quite so universal, but it is catching up: 45% of the world’s population is covered by

  See P Spicker, 2017, Arguments for welfare, London: Rowman & Littlefield.  G Esping-Andersen, 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Brighton: Polity. 18  C Offe, 1984, Contradictions of the welfare state, London: Hutchinson, p 16. 19  UNICEF, 2021, data.unicef.org, last accessed 2 February 2021. 20  ILO, 2017, World social protection report 2017–19, Geneva: ILO, p 367. 16 17

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one or more social security benefits.21 ‘Beware’, The Economist warns, ‘of cheery statistics’. Social protection schemes tend to be ‘paltry and narrowly targeted’. They point to the example of Uganda, where cash payments are being made twice-yearly rather than monthly, and, in the absence of a national identification scheme, registration might be haphazard and occasionally corrupt.22 Figures based on whole populations disguise the extent to which governments are extending such provision. Governments commonly make only partial provision: for example, 63  per cent of governments make provision for cash benefits for children, but only 35 per cent of children are actually covered.23 They may extend coverage to some groups in the population and not others – we cannot tell, from knowing what governments will do for older people or children, what they will do for unemployment or disability.24 Globally, benefits for older people are much more extensive than benefits for people of working age, and 68 per cent of all older people worldwide are covered. This is also subject to the more general reservation, that governments may lack the capacity to deliver what they hope or intend to deliver.

Policies for society When people talk colloquially about ‘social policy’, they often think immediately, not of social welfare services, but of ways in which government policies affect social relationships – for example, marriage, the family, the world of work, gender, sexuality and race. Policies for society, or ‘societal’ policy, have a broader focus than social welfare policies: they are concerned with the ways that governments might change or steer relationships between people. A major part of this focus concerns issues that many people would consider ‘private’: what they do with their bodies, and what happens in their closest, most intimate relationships. The idea of privacy implies that people are entitled to have a reserved space that others cannot interfere with. The body, however, is not simply ‘private’. The things we do with our bodies – things such as eating, washing, dressing, going to bed – are highly socialised: the way we do them has to be learned as children. There is a presumption that adults know what to do and how to do it, but often there are regulations to make sure they do, just in case; for example, there is legal provision in the UK for elderly people who cannot look after themselves   ILO, 2017, p xxx.   The Economist, 2022, Just keep us alive, 5 February, pp 54–6. 23  ILO, 2017, pp 15, xxx. 24  H Bolderson, D Mabbett, 1995, Mongrels or thoroughbreds: a cross-national look at social security systems, European Journal of Political Research, 28(1), pp 119–39. 21 22

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to be removed from their house25 (the rule is rarely used, but it’s there). In the regulation of other interpersonal relationships, issues that were once thought of as private, such as child protection and domestic violence, are increasingly thought of as public. The French historian Michel Foucault argued that societies are shot through with relationships of power determining and constraining people’s use of their bodies, an idea he termed ‘bio-power’.26 This runs all the way through people’s lives, from the care of babies through to the privacy and freedom of adults. So, there are laws relating to birth and reproduction, sexuality, marriage and death. Birth, death – and indeed, one’s existence as a citizen – have to be registered and recorded. In some countries, this is done only inconsistently: in India, The Economist reports, some States record less than half of all births and deaths.27 Elsewhere, the World Bank has been celebrating measures to extend the scope of identity papers as a key measure to protect the interests of poor children.28 Marriage is increasingly formalised through state records, because it protects the interests of both partners in relation to property rights, pensions and inheritance; the trend to registering same-sex marriages has the same advantages, and the additional benefit of affirming, securing and normalising such relationships. Different sexualities have often been the subject of stigmatisation, punishment and sanctions, rather than formal ordering, but this has been changing, often at pace, and it is now increasingly seen as a matter of human rights. These examples have in common that they apply, in principle if not in practice, to all citizens; the role of government is interpreted as setting a framework and basic standards. However, in a field of activity where the bulk of what is done is personal and arguably private, the government can hardly be said to direct or control the range of relationships that are being governed. In that context, it is interesting to note an argument that has been made about child protection. Following the example of Sweden, a growing number of countries – currently about 50 – have made it a criminal offence for parents to hit their children. Part of the rationale for this is moral. Part is pragmatic: no one really expects that no parent will hit a child because the law says so, any more than no one expects that no adult will hit another adult. Criminalisation removes the defence that ‘it was only a light smack’ or that ‘I didn’t mean to hit her so hard’. Another part of the rationale, however, is that establishing a higher minimum standard will ‘shift the curve’   National Assistance Act 1948, s 47; Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007, s 15.  M Foucault, 1976, Histoire de la sexualité: la volonté de savoir, Paris: Gallimard, pp 123–7. 27   The Economist, 2021, Getting off lightly, 13 March, p 51. 28  S Melhem, M Harbitz, 2018, Identification as a centrepiece for development: what can other countries learn from Peru?, World Bank Voices, https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/ identification-centerpiece-development-what-can-other-countries-learn-peru, last accessed 16 March 2022. 25

26

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– not just changing the minimum standard, but shifting the moral reference points for what is considered acceptable conduct.29 Economic policy often employs incentives, marginal adjustments to influence aggregate behaviour. The aspiration here is subtly different: shifting the curve is intended not just to alter marginal decisions, but to guide conduct across a society. The examples I have considered up to this point are largely interpersonal. Beyond that, social relationships are typically structured: some groups are advantaged, others disadvantaged. That is often evident in economic relationships – the differences between rich and poor, and between classes of people in different economic positions. It applies just as much, and possibly more so, to structured differences based on caste, gender and race. Traditional Marxists have long argued that these divisions are also ultimately reducible to economic relations,30 but that is naive. These forms of structural inequality are deep-rooted, and not reversible through changes in fortune in the way that economic differences may be. When governments have attempted to redress the balance between groups, these inequalities have often proved resistant to change. Typically, equal opportunities have been pursued in several ways: propaganda, intended to promote and persuade; redress for individuals, which has to be taken in the form of legal action; guidance or directions about the practice of public and private organisations, in the form of mainstreaming, impact assessments, performance indicators (such as tests of admission and retention of minority groups); and leadership, seeking to change the balance of employment through the actions of leaders and role models. There is room for scepticism about the potential of this kind of fine-tuning to bring about fundamental structural change, but that does not mean that governments are not doing anything. The largest impact that governments have had comes through more general social policies: legal rights; education in schools and universities, which offer the principal route to opportunities and social mobility; and measures against poverty and ill-health, because those can be a major handicap in realising opportunities.

The limits of policy The language of ‘government failure’ has been used, mainly by neoliberals, as a way to challenge the legitimacy of government action. I will return to the principles of neoliberalism in Chapter 6, but in this context the argument is based largely on the supposed superiority of market-based policies and solutions. The advocates of free markets complain that political processes interfere with the operation of the market, that the actions of government are not economically efficient, or that government policy  M Sheppard, 1982, Perceptions of child abuse, Norwich: University of East Anglia.  F Engels, 1878, Anti-Dühring, London: Lawrence & Wishart, (1934), p. 121.

29 30

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will distort the outcomes that the market would otherwise deliver.31 Those three objections are true enough, but not very relevant to the role of government. For the first, governments routinely seek to affect the operation of markets in particular fields: they offer subsidies and incentives to promote particular kinds of economic production, or justify action in order to support consumers, in areas such as bread, food, fuel, housing or public transport. The fact is that states, everywhere, are engaged in economic activity. The ‘free market’ that is supposedly being disrupted is imaginary; if the test is that the state is not to be involved, Ha-Joon Chang argues, there is no such thing.32 For the second, it is true that the actions of governments are not generally economically efficient, because economic efficiency is a very narrow criterion, and governments are likely to have other objectives, such as more extensive coverage of a broader population. In relation to the third objection, government actions will not produce the same outcomes as the market, because they are trying to bring about different outcomes. The neoliberal objection seems to me to be a complaint that governments do things differently from commercial arrangements, to which the obvious answer is: yes, that’s the point. But there are rather more serious circumstances in which governments fail, and governments need to be aware of their limitations. One source of failure lies in the objectives of government policies. Government is a balancing act at the best of times, and often governments are trying to do several things at once. Governments may reasonably attempt, at one and the same time, to follow codes relating to legitimacy, accountability and probity or correct behaviour; to reduce waste and minimise costs; to take steps to ensure that policies are robust and secure; and to ensure that specific policy aims are met.33 Those values may be in conflict with each other. Effectiveness may be compromised by economy, costs by correct procedure, economy by future-proofing. Next, there are failures of implementation. Some failures might be attributed to lack of capacity, or lack of resources. The United Nations comments, about the faltering attempts to pursue Sustainable Development Goals, that there is not enough data to judge attempts to achieve gender equality, where only four countries in every ten have data available; there are ‘huge’ gaps relating to sustainability and climate action, and the data that are

31   For example, C Wolf, 1978, A theory of non-market failure, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation; J Le Grand, 1992, The theory of government failure, British Journal of Political Science, 21(4), pp  423–42; C  Winston, 2006, Government failure versus market failure, Washington,  DC: Brookings Institute. 32   Ha-Joon Chang, 2011, 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism, London: Penguin, p 1. 33  C Hood, 1991, A public management for all seasons?, Public Administration, 69(1), pp 3–19.

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available can be infrequently collected.34 If governments don’t know what they are doing, they may well end up doing something else. Sometimes the tasks to be undertaken fall beyond the administrative capacity of the state. The International Labour Organization comments, about the social security policies it advocates, that ‘the extension of effective coverage has significantly lagged behind that of legal coverage, due to problems in implementation and enforcement, a lack of policy coordination, and weak institutional capacities for the effective delivery of benefits and services’.35 Further obstacles to implementation are created by the people who are supposed to implement the policy. There may be a formal system which requires further decisions to be taken at different stages, such as the consent of different levels of government, or the division of labour between government, governmental agencies and quasi-independent organisations at ‘arm’s length’ from the state; these are sometimes termed ‘veto points’. There may be informal obstacles, such as the reluctance of the people or agents who are delegated the task. The lengthy subtitle of Pressman and Wildavsky’s book on Implementation speaks volumes: ‘how great expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland; or, why it’s amazing that federal programs work at all  …’.36 Whatever governments want to do, whatever they might like to happen, it is far from certain that they will have the means to do it. Then there are failures of outcome – something that can happen because the policy is misconceived, but equally because most economic and social policy can only take effect in a swirling cauldron of external influences. Reducing crime, cutting unemployment, or improving educational attainment are difficult subjects, and the success or failure of policies is heavily disputed; often policy approaches owe more to theoretical nostrums than they do to evidence. There is a strong lobby for randomised control trials in economics and social policy; the principle behind them is that they make it possible to compare different outcomes, while holding steady or ‘controlling’ the influence of external variables.37 It works for medical procedures, because human bodies are much the same in different countries. The problem with extending this approach to social issues, Pawson and Tilley object, is that those external variables may refer to precisely the things we most want to know about – what is the influence of the society, the culture, the impact of other policies and institutions, the setting and the economic background where the policy is operating.38   United Nations, 2020, The Sustainable Development Goals report 2020, New York: United Nations, p 4. 35  ILO, 2017, World social protection report 2017–19, Geneva: International Labour Organization, p 4. 36  J Pressman, A Wildavsky, 1992, Implementation, Berkeley: University of California Press. 37   For example, A Banerji, E Duflo, 2011, Poor economics, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 38  R Pawson, N Tilley, 1997, Realistic evaluation, London: SAGE. 34

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Governments are limited in their powers, because that reflects the world they operate in. There have been ‘totalitarian’ régimes, which claimed to do and oversee everything, but the exercise is impossible. Governments make rules, but they do not make them as they please. They have to operate in an environment of established social relationships, which they can influence but not ignore. They have to deal with many different actors and stakeholders. They are constrained by their own rules and practices. They are constrained because policies have to pass through different levels of government or go out to agencies. They cannot simply command something to happen, and expect that it will.

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4

The state and civil society Summary Other areas of policy, such as transport, environmental policy or cultural policies, are fragmented and reliant on the role of non-governmental actors. Pluralism, the interaction of many actors with different priorities, is the norm. Although governments have a wide variety of tools they can use and options they can take, the complexity of the process they are engaged in, the constraints that governments work under and the reliance on civil society make the outcomes uncertain. Governments have to recognise the role of others and adapt their responses accordingly.

In a range of other policy areas, the role of the state is less clearly defined, and arguably less central, than it is in economic or social policy. In fields such as transport, culture or environmental policy, government can regulate, subsidise and engage directly in the field in its own right, but its direct involvement may be marginal: the main actors are typically independent, sometimes communal, sometimes commercial. If we ask what it means to have a ‘policy’ in these fields, governments will offer not a comprehensive set of services, nor a general acceptance of responsibility for whatever happens, but a suite of measures intended to contribute, to encourage certain types of behaviour, to show the way or even simply to establish the government as an actor in the field. In relation to transport policy, governments have been most likely to focus on the infrastructure – road, rail and airports – but direct engagement or control over in the transport facilities that use the infrastructure has been piecemeal, with very different approaches in different places. In the case of cultural policy, it would be an unusual government which took no part in sponsoring some cultural activity – it is part of basic education, and it is often seen as a way of forging a national identity – but equally, it would be an unusual government which sought in contemporary society to play the dominant role in art, music and the performing arts, as the Soviet Union once did. In the field of environmental policy, most governments are not fully, or even mainly, responsible for energy production or consumption; that depends on the infrastructure, the pattern of consumption and supply, and indeed the equipment used by everyone in their populations.

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The degree to which public policy depends on non-governmental actors argues for a shift in focus, and a different kind of role for government. ‘Civil society’ refers to the range of independent associations formed outwith the scope of the state. (This is a wider classification than is sometimes found in the literature, where ‘civil society’ refers only to non-economic actors.1) The term can also be taken to refer to informal relationships, such as families and local communities, and to an ‘informal’ economic sector, where people are not regularly employed, salaried or otherwise integrated into the formal structures of a modern economy. In this chapter, however, I want to focus on the relationship between the state and other formal social arrangements, because it is critical for understanding the role of government in practice. Across a wide range of activity, governments cannot implement effective policies without engaging a range of civil associations – private, voluntary, mutualist or otherwise independent of government. The associations of civil society are often conceived, or misconceived, as a collection of individuals. Karl Popper, for example, wrote that ‘the “behaviour” and the “actions” of collectives, such as states of social groups, must be reduced to the behaviour and actions of human individuals … we should never be satisfied with an explanation in terms of so-called “collectives”’.2 So British Petroleum, Apple, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, waqfs, the National Trust or the Catholic Church are nothing but bunches of people who happen to be doing similar things, in the same way as the people on a bus or the readers of a newspaper are doing similar things. One wonders how anyone who thinks this way has been able to make any sense of the world around them. Formal social groups – groups such as businesses, religious organisations, schools, energy suppliers, and government – are part of everyday life, almost everywhere. They have clearly defined social roles. People who work with and for them work according to the rules and formal processes of the group, not as individuals. Collective organisations can be persons in law – incorporated organisations can make contracts, they can buy and sell goods, they can be defamed – and they can make decisions. The decisions of collective organisations are not the decisions of individuals; they are made or at least authorised through formal processes, which is how we can tell they are the decisions of the organisation. There have to be rules of recognition and rules of change. In that, collective organisations are like governments – but perhaps I should really say that governments are like other collective organisations. In historical perspective, the structure of collective organisations, and the practice of corporate decision making, existed long before the modern state.   See F Powell, 2007, The politics of civil society, Bristol: Policy Press.  K Popper, 1945, The open society and its enemies, vol 2, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp 87, 91. 1 2

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The literature on ‘welfare states’ seems at times to assume that the state is the centre of everything – the very term, ‘welfare state’, feeds that misconception. In the European welfare states, the state rarely has an exclusive role; still less do the states of developing countries, which commonly have to depend on the contribution of international non-governmental organisations. In general terms, the provision of welfare depends not just on the state, but on a mix of activity from different sectors – voluntary, mutual and private. The ‘voluntary’ sector consists of a wide range of non-commercial agencies, including charities, non-profits, communal organisations and social enterprise. Mutualism, which is sometimes identified with voluntary and sometimes with commercial activity, has a range of activities where people cooperate or become members of organisation which share help, support, finance and risks. Many insurance companies and building societies began as mutual non-profit organisations. The ‘private’ sector generally refers to business or independent commercial operations, some of which is individual, but most of which is corporate. The first major qualification to make about the idea of the ‘welfare state’, then, is that it may refer in general to a system of social welfare; it may not be directly about ‘the state’ at all. The engagement of government generally takes place, for practical purposes, in the context of an existing range of organisations. The longstanding association of government with welfare provision may well lead to the impression that welfare provision begins with state action. In almost every case, however, the organisation of welfare provision began, not with the state, but with civil society – religious organisations, institutional charities, hospitals or the development of mutual aid societies such as the guilds.3 That was true even in the 16th century, when the sort of dilemma that administrators had to consider was how to reconcile their actions with the systems established by will trusts and religious organisations.4 By the time most governments started to engage with social services, many civil associations were already firmly established. Governments had to determine whether to ignore such systems, whether to accept them and build around them, or whether to replace them altogether. It is in this context that the powers of governments have to be understood. States can use coercion, and sometimes use force, to achieve their ends; but they can also exert authority, or aim to influence people.5 If power might be, as Russell has it, ‘the production of intended effects’6 – not every 3   See, for example, J Brodman, 2009, Charity and religion in medieval Europe, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 4   For example, J-L Vives, 1525, De subventione pauperum, Book 2, Ch 2, in P Spicker (ed), 1990, The origins of modern welfare, Bern: Peter Lang. 5   S Lukes, 2005, Power: a radical view, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 21–2. 6  B Russell, 1960, Power, London: Unwin.

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effect is intended – there are many ways for governments to achieve their objectives without the use of coercion or force. Some methods aim to discourage variation, mainly regulation and economic disincentives. Others might be persuasive, such as incentives, education and promotion; some are facilitative, such as planning, commissioning or subsidising services; and some are cooperative, such as bargaining and ‘partnership’ with nongovernment actors. In fields where governments propose to engage in service provision relating to economic or social welfare, they generally have to decide how their work will relate to the work of existing institutions. A decision simply to ignore independent or commercial provision might be made because governments want to assert their role politically, because the contribution made by independents is thought to be too marginal to be taken into consideration, or because there is no perceived conflict. For example, commercial and mutualist pensions schemes commonly exist side by side with state pension schemes, without much sense of any conflict between them: money from different sources is ‘fungible’, or easily mixed, and there is no problem about two or more systems existing side by side. Governments may decide to supplement the existing provision – possibly enhancing existing provision, possibly extending coverage. In France, the government chose to supplement existing provision for occupational pensions, initially by introducing a régime général for people who were not covered by other occupational arrangements, and subsequently through the extension of means-tested support. Alternatively, governments may seek to supplant existing provision. That might be fuelled by a determination to make provision uniform and national: in the United Kingdom, the government opted to take over the role of the mutualist friendly societies in supporting people’s health and pensions. It could happen, too, because there is something in the pattern of existing provision – based, for example, in religious affiliation or reliance on trades unions – that the government disapproves of. (The converse has happened in other cases: some governments disapprove of state action, and have sought to transfer functions to non-state organisations.) Even in cases where provision is entrusted to private or charitable operators, it has been common for government to assume a supervisory role. They may seek to act as an adjudicator or umpire between civil associations, for example, as between employers and trades unions; they may regulate the behaviour of those organisations, both in relation to their own members and to third parties.7 They may seek to co-opt civil associations to complement

7   S Benn, R Peters, 1959, Social principles and the democratic state, London: Allen & Unwin, ch 13.

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government policy, the characteristic model of ‘corporatism’.8 This could be seen as a pluralist approach, bringing together the contribution of many actors; but there are also those who see corporatism as a hierarchical, centrally directed model, where independent agencies are licensed and effectively coopted by the state.9 Some governments like to present themselves in that light: they work with ‘social partners’ to direct the flow of benefits and services for the population. There is some ground for scepticism about this, because it seems to assume the primacy of state direction in fields where many of the principal actors and competences are beyond the state’s direct control. However, it does prompt a question for government to consider: how can it best coordinate its efforts with other organisations? That question is not straightforward, and it takes something important for granted: that the process of coordination or integration is the responsibility of government. That may exaggerate the importance of government, because in practice governments may be rather less influential than other social actors. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been encouraging governments, especially in developing countries, to understand and work within these limitations, and to form plans together with the actors of civil society to identify and realise common objectives.

The sectors of civil society Different sectors of civil society operate in different ways, and on different criteria, both from other sectors and from government. The first of the sectors is the voluntary sector. The voluntary sector is deeply embedded in many societies. Its role may have been eclipsed in recent years by the private sector, but the engagement of religious organisations and charities has generally been done before the emergence of the modern state or of much commercial enterprise in service fields. For example, the work of religious organisations was central in many countries to the foundation of facilities for education or health care, and they still have considerable influence in those fields; challenging their role can be seen as a challenge to the religion. Governments may like to think of the work of the voluntary sector as complementary or supplementary to state action, but the role of voluntary organisations may be much more extensive than that. The sheer diversity of voluntary activity also has to be taken into consideration: the voluntary sector does things that governments do not conceive as being part of their role – some contentious (such as therapeutic support for people engaged   M Harrison, 1984, Corporatism and the welfare state, Aldershot: Gower.   P Schmitter, 1979, Still the century of corporatism?, in P Schmitter, G Lehmbruch (eds), Trends towards corporatist intermediation, Beverly Hills: SAGE. 8 9

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in illegal activity such as drug abuse), some light-hearted (providing entertainment), some beyond the direct authority of government (such as participation in religious services) and others where government may not have thought that the activity could reasonably be part of their role (for example, voluntary organisations dealing with befriending or bereavement). Some governments have sought to co-opt voluntary agencies into the process of provision. Some fund voluntary organisations; some treat them like commercial organisations, and ask them to bid competitively for projects and resources. The scope of voluntary action is rarely comprehensive. The activity tends to be concentrated geographically in places that are convenient to volunteers rather than distributed where it is needed most. The activities are selected (and often funded) according to the preferences, and means, of the volunteers; it often happens that more support is available for animals than for people with mental illnesses. It is difficult to guarantee minimum standards. However, voluntary organisations can be a major resource. In the UK, lifeboats are run by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, manned by volunteers, and paid for by charity, without government subvention. In Poland, there are more than 450,000 voluntary fire-fighters. And it can reasonably be argued that there is something of value in the process of volunteering – building social capital, community engagement, developing solidarity – which governments may well wish to foster. Turning to mutual aid, the issues are rather different. Mutual aid societies exist to benefit their members, who pool resources and sometimes labour in order to help each other. The sector is large. Banks and insurance companies often have mutualist origins. The Ghent system of unemployment insurance linked it with the work of the trades unions, and though there have been modifications over time this has been the main form of assistance in Denmark and Sweden.10 In France the mutuals offer a substantial supplement to health insurance, including more generous sickness benefits and the remainder of costs not otherwise covered by the national scheme. Health insurance in Israel used to be largely the responsibility of the Histadrut, the organisation of trades unions. (There are six insurance funds now, because the government wanted to inject some competition into the process.) Despite its evident importance, mutual aid is often side-lined in discussions of welfare provision: it tends to be categorised as a voluntary activity, or as a commercial one. It is different from voluntary activity in that it is mainly self-interested – people join mutual aid societies for the benefits they offer. It is different from commercial activity because it is mainly not for profit, and because there is an element of redistribution in the process: people in

 J  Clasen, E  Viebrock, 2008, Voluntary unemployment insurance and trade union membership, Journal of Social Policy, 37(3), pp 433–52.

10

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mutual societies pool their resources, and risks, in order to draw out benefits later. This approach is sometimes identified with the principle of ‘solidarity’. It is possible to see many government-based activities – such as the provision of a health service, a state pension or unemployment assistance – as a form of mutual aid; they are delivered to citizens by means of pooled resources. From the point of view of the citizen, it can be difficult to see the difference between a state-based service and one that is organised nationally by independent organisations. Many governments have been attracted to the concept of mutual aid, particularly in the form of social insurance; the model of insurance offers both a sense of solidarity and support, and a practical means of paying for it. Pooling risks and paying in common for benefits or services often offers economies of scale and, because there is a constant flow of money in and out, the option of adjusting for inflation. It presents difficulties, however, because there will always be some people who are effectively unable to contribute, and so who will be excluded. Mutual aid leaves gaps, and governments will generally be expected to fill them. The third main sector is ‘private’, or commercially based. The ‘private sector’ covers a vast range of different kinds of non-state activity. The term is sometimes used loosely to refer to any sort of independent activity, but for my purposes it makes sense to focus on the idea of ‘business’. Businesses do not have a common method of operation. Nor – despite the assumptions made in some economics textbooks – do they have a common rationality. Some businesses focus on profit, as the theory suggests; some on shareholder value; some on long-term growth; some on security and stability. What they do have in common, in most cases, are some constraints: the constraints imposed by law, by competition with other providers, and the demands of purchasers. It can be argued that private firms benefit the population in two main ways: first, because they produce goods and services that people want to buy, and second, in so far as the welfare of the population depends on a higher national income, the activities of businesses increase that income. That falls somewhat short of an agenda for welfare. More persuasively, perhaps, the private sector can be said to contribute to welfare by doing things directly for the population. It matters what sort of goods and services they are producing or selling. Private firms can provide essential goods, such as food, fuel, clothing and shelter; they can provide services for individual or social welfare, such as hairdressing, personal transport, counselling or legal advice. If governments want to enhance welfare, it seems to follow that they can do it to some degree by supporting businesses. Businesses are important, not just for the revenue they attract, but for the ways in which they integrate people into the economy. They provide jobs, incomes and (arguably) a degree of security. Many employers, as part of that, also make provision for ‘occupational welfare’, in areas such as health care and pensions. It has 49

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become common for governments to work through businesses: to require businesses to do some part of the work of administering government, such as the levying of taxation; to use businesses as a conduit for welfare support, as they do in rules governing occupational pensions; or to regulate businesses so that they act in conformity with public policy, for example, relating to equalities. Some firms provide services to government; the procurement of goods and services to government is routinely sourced in the private sector; and government may form partnerships with businesses in order to deliver major projects, such as roads, transport facilities and urban development. Where governments rely more on the services of the private sector, they do not simply withdraw from engagement; they have to regulate it. ‘Freer markets’, Benish and Levi-Faur write, ‘mean more rules’.11 That has led, in some countries, to regulations to protect the situation of people who would otherwise be left out or unable to obtain essential services such as electricity, water or housing costs.12 Some tasks will almost always be done by the state – for example, legislation, policing, and courts of law – even if this happens side by side with alternative or complementary structures, such as religious law and courts, or mediation services. (Humboldt, inconsistently for a liberal, supposes that the duty for adjudication is wholly transferred to the state, and that only the state can offer redress for wrongs.13 The norm in liberal legal systems, on the contrary, is that parties are asked to come to terms beforehand if possible, leaving only unresolved disputes for courts to adjudicate.) In economic policy, by contrast, production by the state tends to be the exception. No one really expects governments never to buy goods or services from the private sector. If a government wants to buy desks or computers for its offices, it will buy them from a supplier; it is not going to start manufacturing the equipment itself. The same may apply to cleaning services. Subcontracting the private sector to undertake the functions of government, however, is a different matter; the process of subcontracting ‘services for child protection’ or prisons is not, and cannot be, a private agreement between two contracting parties. That is not just because they involve third parties; they are also a delegation of the power to restrain people or to deprive them of liberty. The discretion of private services in

 A Benish, D Levi-Faur, 2020, The expansion of regulation in welfare governance, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 691(1), pp 17–29. 12  H Haber, 2020, The political economy of regulating for welfare: regulation preventing loss of access to basic services in the UK, Sweden, the EU and Israel, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 691(1), pp 50–67. 13   W von Humboldt, 1854, The sphere and duties of government, Carmel: Liberty Fund, p 147. 11

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such cases has necessarily to be held to a minimum – which is difficult, given the extent and the character of the activity. Li and Yang identify four modes of contractual relation between the state and private firms. The modes are market-based, which allocates responsibilities through open competition; hierarchical, where the contractors accept direction from the government; professional, where the work is guided by professional norms and subject to professional evaluation; and relational, based on established relationships and personal connections14 (a process which is vulnerable to patronage, clientelism and corruption). A directly hierarchical model is unusual in western democracies – it is not very practical – but wherever public policy is at stake, wherever services are operated in trust, the contracts that are issued are governed by the criteria of the public services. It is not open to independent contractors to vary, or to compromise, the objectives, even if at times they are given some latitude in their achievement of performance standards. When governments commission functions from the private sector, the nature of the activity has to be capable of being specified in terms which are compatible with the objectives of the public service. The public authorities have to account for their actions; so do the contractors. Once a private provider undertakes to provide a service for reasons of public policy, it becomes subject to the structures, mechanisms of accountability, and exposure to the public criticism, associated with public service.

Welfare pluralism Some commentators express reservations about the involvement of the private sector in the provision of welfare, simply on the basis that the private sector works by making a profit. Private firms may claim that they are able to run things more cheaply because they are more efficient. That is conceivable, but questionable on two grounds. The superficial objection is that, if it were true that cutting waste was a matter of expertise, government could run its services more efficiently, too; there are substantial political pressures to hold back expenditure, and if government was to run the same operation itself, at the same costs, it would be able to use the extra money for the public good. (It is not necessarily true that the private sector holds prices down. The experience of privatised pensions in Latin America has been that they have delivered lower benefits and reduced coverage for a higher administrative cost.15)

 W Li, B Yang, 2020, Politics, markets and modes of contract governance, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 691(1), pp 121–37. 15  ILO, 2017, World social protection report 2017–19, Geneva: ILO, pp 95–7. 14

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The deeper objection is that ‘efficient’ production is routinely achieved in ways that are inconsistent with the purposes of public services. The standard criterion for the delivery of public services is not economic efficiency, but cost-effectiveness: achieving the objectives of public policy at the minimum cost. Efficiency looks initially similar, but it depends on a very different test: that goods or services are produced at the lowest possible unit cost. The difference between efficiency and cost-effectiveness can be stark. Take, for example, a mail service. From the point of view of government and civil society, an effective service needs to be comprehensive. People in more remote or isolated areas cost more to serve. Private delivery firms can most effectively maximise their return by limiting the sphere of their operation. They can shift the burden of costs onto the sender, by differential pricing; they can shift it to the recipient, for example, by requiring the recipient to come to where the mail is held rather than the mail going to the person; or they can deny service. Any of those arrangements would be more ‘efficient’ in the economic sense, because they will reduce the average costs of each item of mail actually delivered – but they would also imply a worse service. Then consider the outcomes for a publicly funded health service. Private insurance routinely chooses who it will serve: it avoids people in locations that are difficult to serve, with more expensive conditions, or in demographic groups that are liable to present more problems. That leaves major gaps in coverage, which is why almost no developed country has a purely private health service – even the United States, the bastion of private health care, commonly treats psychiatric patients at the expense of State governments. There is a general principle at work here. Public services work to fulfil the objectives of policy. Private providers will balance those objectives against their other priorities; they are constrained to achieve lower unit costs by market competition, the desire to maximise profits, and culture and practice. If governments seem to be less efficient than private enterprise, it is generally because they are trying to do something different. The principle of ‘welfare pluralism’ is based on an acceptance that multiple actors are engaged in promoting well-being. A major part of the rationale for that position is practical – that is how things are – but there is also a moral argument. The state must not claim to do everything: people throughout a society need to be able to give as well as to receive.16 The different systems coexist, but they do different things, even if they do them within similar contexts. Solidaristic arrangements – both voluntary and mutual aid – can exclude people as well as include them; voluntary provision tends to be partial, while mutual aid depends on membership, and that is intrinsically exclusive. Private provision is both partial and exclusive. Providers make 16  R Titmuss, 1970, The gift relationship, Harmondsworth: Penguin; W Robson, 1976, Welfare state and welfare society, London: Allen & Unwin.

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choices about what they are going to produce, or what services they will deliver. I should also refer, in this context, to the ‘informal sector’ in welfare provision, which has a meaning quite distinct from the ‘informal sector’ of a developing economy. The bulk of care for older people is provided, not by any formal agency, but by family members – spouses and adult children. In the UK, a book by Michael Bayley demonstrated to the government that, despite the widespread belief that government had taken responsibility for personal care for people with severe disabilities, most in practice was being delivered by families, and the contribution of formal social services was at best marginal.17 Bayley argued that the social services had to accept that their role was limited, and the task they faced was at best to complement or supplement existing patterns of care. From this there emerged the idea of a ‘care package’, consisting of selected, individuated responses from a wide range of different providers.18 In all these cases, however, the state, as the provider of last resort, is left to make up the difference. This cannot be done without a degree of uncertainty and risk; the other sectors make their own decisions about quantities and coverage, and the state services have to deal with any outstanding variations and fluctuations in demand. The residual role of the state depends on the hole that is left after other services have been delivered. The gaps typically include people who cannot afford to pay, who have to be provided for with cash or by direct services; people who have needs that are difficult or hard to respond to; and, more generally, to situations where there are the greatest difficulties, and the private sector cannot reasonably accept that risk for the return they are receiving. If public services deal mainly with a residuum, that residuum is likely to be dispersed and difficult to deal with. That tends to make residual public services expensive, and there is always the potential for things to go wrong.

 M Bayley, 1972, Mental handicap and community care, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.  R Griffiths, 1988, Community care: agenda for action, London: HMSO.

17 18

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5

Global public policy Summary The responsibilities of states extend beyond their own borders and citizens. This chapter considers responsibilities to non-citizens, direct intervention abroad and the relations between states. Models of states as independent and sovereign sit uncomfortably with developing standards of international governance.

The institutions and policies I have been considering so far have been conceived as social or national issues, and responded to in national terms. Many of the issues which governments are dealing with, however, are not exclusively national: they cannot be limited to one country, either in their causes or their effects.1 For present purposes, it should be possible to identify four main classes of international action. First, there are the relationships of states to other states. This covers topics such as economic cooperation, competition or the management of hostilities. Second, there is the relationship of the state to people from elsewhere, mainly those who are living within a state’s territory. Examples include the position of refugees, economic migration, and the treatment of foreign criminals. Third, there are global issues – issues that go beyond the capacity of any state to resolve: environmental issues, some global health issues and the regulation of international trade – which require states to work with other states. There are some other economic issues that are so wide-ranging as to be seen as global: the conduct of multi-national corporations, and the management of international credit and debt. Fourth, there is the operation of international organisations, which have come to occupy a major role in the regulation of national governance. Before I discuss the issues further, it is worth thinking about some of the things they have in common. Every state is seen as responsible for what happens within a distinct territory. The territorial nature of a state, Pierson argues, defines its authority both internally, within its own borders, and externally, in relation to other states.2 Stilz goes further, identifying some other distinctively territorial powers: rights to territorial jurisdiction (which will affect more people than a state’s own citizens), non-intervention, the   See, for example, N Yeates (ed), 2014, Understanding global social policy, Bristol: Policy Press.  C Pierson, 2011, The modern state, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 9–11 and ch 6.

1 2

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control of borders, and rights over resources within that territory. The state, she argues, effectively claims a right of occupancy to the land it governs, analogous to the ownership of property.3 However, the identity of the state with its territory is imperfect. Some states have jurisdictions in more than one territory; some will adjudicate disputes which are not located in that territory; and some claim authority over citizens who live beyond the state’s borders, for example relating to taxation or military service. In international relations, governments are often seen, and present themselves, as if they were individuals. They make treaties, which are contracts with other states; they may on occasion cooperate with other nations for mutual benefit, and in some cases they may even act altruistically. States are assumed to follow the path that serves their national interests. Politicians who would baulk at seeing internal affairs as being in any sense unitary or monolithic, are unflinching in their ability to view international negotiations in just those terms. The core of that model is an ancient idea of sovereignty, in a somewhat cruder form than the idea I reviewed in Chapter 2. ‘At bottom’, Michel Foucault commented, ‘despite the differences in epoch and aims, the representation of power is still haunted by the monarchy. In political thought and analysis, one has still not cut off the head of the king.’4 This is nowhere more true than in international relations. A sovereign government is generally treated as if it were one person, who has the right to speak and act for the whole country. There are exceptions to that principle – some European governments will put international relationships, such as a potential trade deal, to a public vote – but not many. For the most part, the conventions are so embedded that they are taken for granted. The standard practice is that the leaders of governments are treated like the monarchs of old – literally so, because these conventions stretch back at least to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War. The same conventions are routinely extended to many governments which have only the most marginal claim to legitimacy.

Relations between states The relationships between states are the subject matter of international relations, and that is a vast field in its own right. States are legitimately able to make agreements, form blocs with, or defend themselves from the actions of other states. The interactions between governments are guided by a complex, somewhat foggy, system of rules. We refer to those rules as ‘international law’, but with only a few exceptions, which I will take  A Stilz, 2019, Territorial sovereignty, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  M Foucault, 1976, Histoire de la sexualité: la volonté de savoir, Paris: Gallimard, p 117.

3 4

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into account shortly, international law is made, not by the exercise of an internationally constituted legal authority, but on the basis that states have bound themselves, by treaties or legal authorisation within their own legal systems, to observe common rules.5 The primary source of authority remains with each participating state. Treating sovereign governments as individual actors may make some sense for discussions of war and peace – we can understand what is meant when we read that one country has invaded another – but it is somewhat oversimplified as a representation of the relations between different countries, which cannot be reduced to role of the state alone. International trade is an example. I argued before that in economic policy, a country can be treated as a unit of interest, and at the level of the state, two or more states can set the framework for economic interaction. Governments agree the terms on which trade from within their countries will take place. However, this is not the whole picture. Trade happens when people from different countries make exchanges; governments can influence the process, and in some cases make exchanges in their own right, but trade is not in general the action of one government considered in relation to another. There is fairly wide agreement that trade is a good thing – both sides gain from it. This view is supported by the theory of ‘comparative advantage’, developed in the 19th  century by David Ricardo. Adam Smith had attributed the wealth of nations to the growth of a division of labour; Ricardo extended that principle across borders. Simply put, it shows that countries which specialise and trade their excess goods will both do better than if they attempted to be self-sufficient. This is the doctrine that has fuelled the development of the global economy. However, there are flaws in the argument for free trade. Often there is an imbalance between countries, and the imbalance can be reinforced by trade. When the European Union created the ‘common market’, it was anticipated that industries in some countries would suffer in competition with others. The European treaties arranged for a ‘regional fund’ and a ‘social fund’ to moderate the economic loss that would certainly follow. If the process is left to itself, there will be some gains, but there is little to staunch the damage. The main kinds of obstacle to trade are usually classified as tariffs – taxes on imported goods and services, and ‘non-tariff barriers’, when there are rules that prevent foreigners from participating in the process of commercial exchange. This is the basis of ‘protection’ (not to be confused with social protection, elsewhere in this book); what is being protected are national economies, and sometimes ‘infant’ or less developed industrial sectors. Ha-Joon Chang argues that Korea’s remarkable economic development was built through this

 P Butchard, 2020, Principles of international law, London: House of Commons Library.

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kind of protection, coupled with judicious use of state aid and subsidies – a common factor in successful economic development.6 The structure of international law may seem to have only a tangential relationship to the main issues considered in this book, but that is because most of the ways in which international law affects people’s welfare are indirect – they are filtered through a complex series of rules, policies and constraints on governments that shape what is possible for their peoples. The exceptions are limited but important. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been set up to regulate and facilitate the process of trade. Countries can still, in principle, set up systems that obstruct trade, but that is difficult to do. There are reservations to make about the WTO process – developing countries clearly trade at a disadvantage, and they cannot in many cases get equal access for their goods in western markets7 – but international trade is considered fundamental to prosperity, and that has led to general (if sometimes reluctant) acceptance of the WTO regime. Overall, then, the implication of a global framework sets the terms on which nations can participate in the world economy, and inevitably that must affect the economy and the welfare of nations. That remains true even if the system seems at times to be skewed against the interests of less favoured nations. There are other direct effects of ‘international law’: crimes against humanity can be prosecuted anywhere, and often those charged have had the authority of a government for their actions, which is why they cannot be arraigned in their own country. In the cases of Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council asserted its authority over the nominally sovereign states involved in genocide, and subjected persons responsible to international criminal tribunals. More commonly, however, the application of international rules has been voluntary; international law consists largely of agreements made between states as contracting parties. The International Criminal Court is mainly voluntary in form – there are currently 123 States Parties, less than two-thirds of the potential membership. Other international organisations such as the International Labour Organization and the United Nations, seek to persuade member countries to adopt conventions on detailed issues, such as the rights of children or people with disabilities. Many members do not choose to sign up. Looking, for example, at the ILO Convention on Minimum Standards in Social Security, set up nearly 70 years ago, there are still only 59 ratifications, and most of those are selective in

  Ha-Joon Chang, 2007, Bad Samaritans, London: Random House.  K Watkins, 2002, Rigged rules and double standards, Oxford: Oxfam International.

6 7

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what they agree to.8 That remains true despite the widespread growth of extensive systems for social protection. As the earlier evidence cited from the ILO indicates, many governments could reasonably claim to meet the standards the ILO has set; they just do not want to be bound by them.

The state and non-citizens Governments are generally seen as being responsible for their own citizens. That responsibility sometimes extends beyond the territorial boundaries of the state: several countries arrange representation and taxation for their expatriates. At the same time, non-citizens who are physically present in the territory for which a state has authority will also normally be subject to its laws. Non-citizens may have duties: for example, they may well be expected to pay tax. Some countries, historically, have pressed non-citizens into military service: the conscription of Irish citizens by the UK9 was perhaps based in a reluctance to recognise Irish independence, but the USA used to base the conscription of residents on their presence, not their nationality. The state may well have obligations to these non-citizens. This is implicit in the idea of human rights – rights that all human beings should be able to rely on wherever they may be. That covers, among many other things, rights to personal security, to a fair trial if arrested, rights against torture and degrading treatment. The extradition of people charged with criminal activity in other countries is generally governed by international treaty, but it should be subject to assurances about the compatibility of the requesting system’s compatibility with human rights. Human rights also imply rights of refuge: people who flee from war or persecution can seek asylum, and stateless people – those who have no citizenship anywhere – can establish themselves in the country where they happen to be. ‘Everyone has a right to a nationality.’10 There are two things to say about that. The first is that it is far from being an equal right: the citizenship of a failed state, such as Syria or Somalia, does not offer the equivalent of citizenship of Sweden or Switzerland, and we do people no favours by pretending that it does. The second is that in circumstances where states cannot provide for their people, the rights of citizenship may be small consolation. The right to refuge does not extend to people who flee starvation. 8  ILO, 2021, Ratifications of C102 – Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102), https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11300:0::N O:11300:P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:312247:NO, last accessed 16 March 2022. 9  M  Rynne, 1942, The conscription of Irish nationals in Britain, https://www.difp.ie/ volume-7/1942/-the-conscription-of-irish-nationals-in-britain--a-resume-of-events/3624/#section-documentpage, last accessed 16 March 2022. 10   United Nations, 1948, Declaration of Human Rights, art 15.

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A further set of obligations relates to the rights of lawful migrants and residents who are not citizens. Rights to remain in a country are not equivalent to rights of citizenship. Some non-citizens may be able to work, others may not be. In some countries, immigrants are kept in limbo for extended periods of time; their entitlements to benefits may be limited, regardless of taxation or contributions paid; their continued presence may be subject to the condition of good behaviour. These restrictions are common and extensive, but it is perhaps worth pointing out the anomalies in the situation of the USA – a country founded on liberal immigration. Part of this is evident in the treatment of the ‘dreamers’ – hundreds of thousands of people whose presence is not in conformity with legal immigration. They are counted as members of the population for the purposes of allocating political representation; their undocumented children are necessarily included in educational provision; but they do not have the recourse that is afforded to citizens for abuse of rights.

Direct intervention abroad There are other relationships with foreign nationals, which might be seen as relating to individuals, but might equally be seen as an example of relationships between states. International aid or direct investment can come from a range of sources; emergency assistance and disaster relief can similarly be governmental or non-governmental; but ‘Official Development Assistance’ (ODA) has its source in national governments. About two-thirds of ODA goes from government to government; the other third is channelled through non-governmental organisations and international organisations. It is possible to understand this as a form of assistance between governments, but it could also be seen as a transfer from the government of one country to the citizens of another. The dividing lines are not clear, and are often muddied by a confusion of purposes: at times it can be difficult to distinguish emergency humanitarian assistance from military intervention.11 It seems appropriate here briefly to pause and reflect about the role of the state in these circumstances. The central theme of this book is an examination of what responsibilities states have, and why; but why should any of it extend to foreigners abroad? Part of the motivation for supporting foreigners in their own countries is straightforward. Some of the things that states do for people in other countries, such as tied aid, military and technical assistance, do more for the state’s own citizens than they do for people apparently being helped. Action Aid has complained that much of what passes for international development funding is actually ‘phantom

 R Riddell, 2007, Does foreign aid really work?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 19.

11

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aid’, not really intended to benefit foreign nationals directly.12 There is, nevertheless, some aid which clearly does benefit foreigners, implying that some responsibility has been accepted. Perhaps the governments are being charitable or solidaristic; perhaps they think they need to make reparations; perhaps it simply mirrors the behaviour of their own populations, some of whom are often prepared to support humane causes wherever they may be. None of those speculations really explains why granting aid is so widely done by developed economies. The United Nations has asked countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to give 0.7 per cent of their national income to ODA, and while hardly any meet that standard, most do something. I am tempted to interpret this in terms of a very ancient principle. Marshall Sahlins argues, from a wealth of information about apparently primitive societies, that ‘negative reciprocity’, a pattern of grudging support, is almost universal, and essential to social cohesion, because without it, rich and poor would have no contact with each other.13 So it is, it seems, with the behaviour of contemporary states. From a rather different perspective, I should perhaps also refer, however briefly, to something rather more negative: the institutional use of coercion or violence against people who are not within a state’s territory, and living in other countries. This is usually seen as the action of one state against another, but it may also be construed as a form of action against people who are not otherwise subject to a state’s rule. Most states consider that they have the right to use force in certain circumstances against people in their own territory, regardless of nationality; some, by extension, behave as if they have legitimate authority to use force in other states’ territories. In some cases that is because they hold they have a ‘responsibility to protect’ people in other places.14 That responsibility takes three main forms: seeking to prevent internal conflicts within states, reacting to breaches of moral duties with coercive action or military intervention, and participating in the rebuilding of a state after such intervention.15 The principle has been endorsed by the United Nations, based on three ‘pillars’: the responsibility of each state to protect their people, the responsibility of other governments to help them, and the responsibility of the international community to intervene if necessary.16 The doctrine has been misapplied in some places,  R Greenhill, P Watt, 2005, Real aid, Johannesburg: Action Aid International.  M Sahlins, 1974, Stone age economics, London: Tavistock. 14   United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, 2021, Responsibility to protect, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibilityto-protect.shtml, last accessed 16 March 2022. 15   International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001, The responsibility to protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. 16   I Šimonović, 2016, The responsibility to protect, United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/ genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml, last accessed 16 March 2022. 12 13

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and arguably the international community has recently distanced itself from it. The principle may not survive the war in Ukraine that began in 2022. However, that does not invalidate the moral argument. The main other reason for using violence on people abroad, outside time of war, arises because some governments hold that foreign nationals should be answerable to them, regardless of where they may be. The USA provides one of the most noteworthy examples, because unlike some other governments which behave in the same way, it admits it openly. It has used violence against foreign nationals in a range of countries: it has arrested or killed non-subjects abroad (such as Noriega in Panama or Bin-Laden in Pakistan), detained foreign nationals without rights in Guantanamo, invaded other territories (Grenada and Afghanistan), and bombed countries that were not part of US wars. Ironically, a constitution that was supposed to restrain the powers of potentially tyrannical governments, and reserved the right to declare war to the legislature, made no allowance for the protection of people who might be subject to the actions of government but were not its citizens or within its territory.

International issues There are some problems which governments are incapable of resolving, usually because they do not occur only within a single territory, and cannot be responded to as if they do. Some are resolvable through international action. An issue which ought to be resolvable is the situation of multinational corporations, which have been able to avoid regulation by shifting parts of their activity, and often their income streams, into other jurisdictions. This is made possible because states are effectively in competition with each other to host economic activity and to levy taxes: one state can offer subsidies, another tax reliefs. The European Union has been taking steps to remove these differences, but the process has already taken decades: there are well-established tax havens, the rules are not infrequently broken, and there is some gaming of the system. Many of the more difficult issues come under the general heading of ‘the environment’; they include concerns with pollution, biodiversity and climate change. These are all problems without borders, even if some are more localised than others, and the central argument for considering them in global terms is that it is only through international cooperation that they can be addressed. It is probably true to say that these cannot be dealt with at a local, territorial level. However, in a model where every state has regard for its own interests, it soon becomes clear that a bare handful of states are critical to the prospects of successful global regulation: the USA, because of its outlandish levels of consumption; China, because of its sheer size; and, in relation to biodiversity and global warming, Brazil, because 61

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of its stewardship of the Amazon. For other countries, the arguments for restraining actions locally look a lot like the arguments that are made for individual virtue: that a country can set other countries an example; that a problem can be eradicated by individual countries acting one at a time; that every person in a country bears a moral responsibility for the country’s contribution and must do their bit; that a tiny contribution to reducing a global problem is better than none at all. These arguments are, frankly, weak, in much the same way and for the same reasons that they are weak when applied to individual human beings. A collective perspective produces much stronger arguments, based on mutual responsibility, collective action and the application of morality not to self-interest but the interests of others. International collaboration, on the model of the Paris Accords, requires every country to commit to an agreed course of action; and states that behave as self-interested, rational individualistic actors may well find it difficult or unreasonable to comply. The Paris Accords were signed by 196 countries. More than five years later, after a series of climate change conferences, it is still difficult to see how an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions will actually work. The problems resulting from carbon emissions – like the problems of pollution, deforestation and energy consumption – are not in general created by governments; they stem from the cumulative actions of many people, both individual and corporate, with material interests in the process. The poorer the country is, the less capacity governments have to regulate that activity. A besetting problem of taking international action is that it is often seen – rightly – as a fetter on the development of poorer countries, while preserving the advantages and privileges of richer ones. Some countries will fail to achieve the aim; some will pay it lip service, but do less than required; some will cheat. The power of governments is not necessarily enhanced by forging international pacts; it may be diminished, becoming more remote from the people affected.

International governance Despite the limitations, it is not beyond reason to think that there may be some scope for the development of international criteria for governance. It seems clear, for example, that international organisations have played a major part in influencing or persuading governments to engage in universal, compulsory education,17 but it is difficult to attribute this influence to any one organisation, or even to one set of actors. Other developments may  D Niemann, D Krogmann, K Martens, 2022, Between economics and education: how international organizations changed the view on education, in F Nullmeier, D Gonzales de Reufels, H Obinger (eds), International impacts on social policy, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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have been initiated by one organisation but have been incorporated in the guidance of others. Essential health care packages, for example, appear to have been sponsored at first by the World Bank18 and only subsequently adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO). Three trends are worth noting. The first is the development of common approaches to policy. In some circumstances, such as the work of the WHO or the ILO, international agencies have attempted to persuade governments to follow their guidance. The WHO has mainly favoured technical advice and assistance with resources for health; its role has been hampered by piecemeal funding, conflicting advice from other international bodies and some internal conflict.19 The ILO has emphasised the adoption of common standards; it has had the relative advantage of a recognition that many of the issues it deals with are recognised as global in the context of a globalised economic system.20 International standards have also been established in the form of human rights: rights that are subject to judicial scrutiny, either within state legal systems, or through the developing network of international courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The second trend is the creation of transnational treaty organisations. The European Union has aspirations for its member states to be part of an ‘ever closer Union’. Its structure is based on the standard models of a federal system – the EU tries not to use the ‘f ’ word, but it meets nearly all the criteria.21 Residual powers are held by the member states; the member states retain their own constitutions; the centre is not independent, but operates directly on the people; and citizens are subject to two legislatures.22 It claims ‘exclusive competence’ in a range of fields, it issues its own laws, and those laws may have direct effect on EU citizens. The third trend has been the adoption of practices to guide governments to act in accordance with the international standards of governance. Hameiri and Jones give examples, including the regulation of money laundering, maritime security and the governance of ports;23 these work by delegating implementation and enforcement to local states. More   World Bank, 1993, World development report 1993: investing in health, Washington, DC: World Bank. 19  C Clift, 2013, The role of the World Health Organization in the international system, London: Chatham House. 20  A Posthuma, A Rossi, 2017, Coordinated governance in global value chains, New Political Economy, 22(2), pp 186–202. 21  K Wheare, 1946, Federal government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 22   See P Spicker, 1996, Social policy in a federal Europe, Social Policy and Administration, 30(4), pp 293–304. 23  S  Hameiri, L  Jones, 2016, Global governance as state transformation, Political Studies, 64(4), pp 793–810. 18

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interesting, however, has been the creation of mechanisms for ‘metagovernance’ – systems of governance that create the structures and practices through which future governance will be undertaken. The governance of plans for poverty and economic development have been the models. The international organisations started out by trying to impose rather specific and demanding economic objectives. The ‘Washington Consensus’, which dominated the policy of international organisations for more than twenty years, emphasised economic stabilisation, institutional reform and policies to promote economic markets. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pressed countries to hold to offer strict spending limits, privatisation, deregulation and the removal of tariff barriers to trade.24 This had mixed results: ‘structural adjustment’ of the economies of developing countries often caused substantial hardship for little economic gain. (The Washington Consensus was an informal label, rather than a formal policy. When a formal policy was agreed later at Monterrey, it qualified the general free-market stance in two important respects: the acknowledgement of a role of government in relation to health and education.25) Subsequently, a different type of process was introduced, asking countries to take ownership of policy, to plan economic development explicitly, to consult with stakeholders. About 70 countries were required to submit Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). The central focus of these papers has not been about poverty, but economic development: and so, under the name of responding to poverty, countries have forming plans to enhance industrial production, secure banking systems and extend share ownership. The system of reporting requires governments to render an account of their actions. PRSPs were intended to create the space for public discussion - improving information, setting targets and negotiating about plans with donors and with civil society.26 The primary tests applied by the IMF and World Bank evaluators were not whether they achieved their aims; the test was whether the governments were explicit about what had been done, and how things could be improved. The PRSPs were not, then – despite the name – mainly about poverty reduction; they were about governance. And they meant that developing countries were engaged in the same kind of process routinely expected of US government or EU member states.  C Gore, 2000, The rise and fall of the Washington Consensus as a paradigm for developing countries, World Development, 28(5), pp 789–804; J Williamson, 2004, A short history of the Washington Consensus, https://policydialogue.org/files/publications/papers/Ch_2.pdf, last accessed 16 March 2022. 25   United Nations, 2003, Monterrey Consensus on financing for development, New York: United Nations. 26   World Bank Operations Evaluation Department; IMF Independent Evaluation Office, 2005, The Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative, Washington, DC: IMF/World Bank, p 87. 24

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Many western governments moved during the 1990s and 2000s to using ‘performance indicators’, or specific measures of outcomes or process. This approach was inspired by the theory of ‘management by objectives’, which suggested that management would be most effective if it was simply given targets and allowed to get on with them in whatever way seemed best. There is some reason to be sceptical. International organisations in some cases have used the latitude given by management by objectives, not to remove constraints on governments, but to impose the kind of economic doctrines that blighted structural adjustment in the 1980s. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were introduced on the same principle. They were widely seen as being successful, but part of that may have been the outcome of the Poverty Reduction Strategies rather than target setting. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have replaced the MDGs, take the principle further: there are more tests, more indicators and a broader set of objectives. The Economist was critical: ‘a set of 169 commandments means, in practice, no priorities at all’.27 It may never be possible to assess whether the SDGs have succeeded. What the SDGs offer is, nevertheless, something of value: a set of aspirations, and indicators by which progress can be judged. Much of what had been achieved since 2015 has been blighted by the pandemic of 2020: ‘there is no doubt’, a UN report comments, ‘that the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to its very core’.28 It is still possible to see in the development of international practice, notably in the PRSPs, a set of international norms for governance, now embedded in the practice of many governments around the world. Those norms include the adoption of explicit strategies, engagement of a range of social partners in the formation of policy, and a degree of transparency about progress. This has had a more general effect on the operational practice of many poorer countries; it has set the bar for more effective policy-making in complex societies.

  The Economist, 2015, The 169 commandments, 26 March, https://www.economist.com/ leaders/2015/03/26/the-169-commandments, last accessed 16 March 2022. 28   United Nations, 2020, The Sustainable Development Goals report 2020, New York: United Nations, p 3. 27

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PART II

Salus populi suprema lex: the welfare of the people is the highest law

6

The scope of legitimate action Summary Any adequate account of the state should be able to determine what a government is legitimately able to do, and this chapter considers four different views which offer answers to that. Liberalism saw the duty of the state as being to enhance the rights and freedoms of individuals; collective action could be taken by consent. Social democrats use the state as an instrument to make principled change. Communitarian conservatives stress particular duties rather than general rights, working with the grain of the social order. Neoliberals advocate laissez-faire and free markets; the legitimate role of the state is consequently limited.

The picture of government activity that I have outlined is at some remove from the political theory I cited at the beginning of this book. Government is rule-bound: the same processes by which governments set the rules – the conventions of sovereignty and the rule of law – also bind the institutions of government. Governments are not in control. They are expected to deal with complex, multi-faceted issues. Although they have a wide variety of tools they can summon and options they can take, the complexity of the process they are engaged in, the constraints that governments work under and the reliance on civil society make the outcomes uncertain. And governments are not the only actors in the field. They have to recognise the role of others, and other governments, and adapt their responses accordingly. In this second part, I want to explore the norms and values that might influence government provision for welfare. There are two key dimensions to consider: the scope of a government’s powers, and the duties it owes to its citizens. In relation to the power of governments, the main moral questions relate to the extent to which governments can legitimately act to bring about intended effects, and the moral constraints that they are bound to accept. In normative terms, the most important distinctions lie between those who argue that governments are only able to do those things which they are specifically empowered to do, and those which hold that government ought legitimately to be able to do whatever is appropriate in the circumstances. The first of those positions has been discussed in terms of constitutionalism, and the best known example is the constitution of the United States of 69

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America. That constitution does not, perhaps, restrain government to the extent it might seem to do on a literal reading, but in principle the federal government is able to do only what the constitution permits. That is why, for example, President Bush seemed uncertain of his ability to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina; it is why the rollout of programmes that serve the population in distinct states has required ‘waivers’ before the federal government could act; and it is why the USA has been, relative to most European states, a laggard in the introduction of welfare programmes for its citizens. People opposed to action by the federal government have not always been able to prevent it, but the constraints are substantial. Constitutionalism can be identified, historically, with the growth of individual rights;1 the emphasis it has subsequently been given in neoliberal thought reflects the influence of American thinkers.2 If the intention of a constitution is to prevent governments from abusing their powers, a basic law could plausibly be seen as a way to do it. However, a constitution is not sufficient to safeguard people from the excesses of their governments. Some notable tyrannies have had constitutions – for example, the 1936 constitution for the Soviet Union, which ‘drew a veil of liberal phrases and promises over the guillotine in the background’.3 It is no less true that effective restraints depend more on the rule of law than they do on a formal constitution. The main alternative to constitutionalism is instrumentalist. Government can be seen as a device or tool, which can legitimately be used in any way that is consistent with the rule of law. Edmund Burke, politician and conservative philosopher, wrote that ‘government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants’.4 If governments think it right and appropriate to do something for the benefit of the people – a garden festival, a celebration of culture, a sporting contest, a health service – that is something they have the power to do. If the instrumentalist position was only about the powers of government, it would be open to abuse – but the same objection can be laid at the door of states with formal constitutions. The restraints that matter, both for constitutionalism and for instrumental government, are defined by the rule of law, and those restraints do not preclude the possibility that a government may have to take action in ways that are otherwise unprecedented. A discussion of the duties of governments is often framed by any assumptions that commentators may have made about the powers of government: those powers determine whether government can, or cannot, legitimately act in this field. The question remains, what they are supposed  D Grimm, 2016, Constitutionalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  R Turner, 2008, Neo-liberal ideology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ch 7. 3  I Deutscher, 1966, Stalin, Harmondsworth: Pelican, pp 377–8. 4  E  Burke, 1790, Reflections on the revolution in France, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston(1959), p 71. 1 2

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to do with the power that has been vested in them. Some ideas about the duties of government are rooted in the idea that governments have intrinsic obligations to their people – rights, freedoms and duties stemming from general principles, that will shape and constrain what the government can do. Others consider that governments have to act morally for the public benefit. That position that can be interpreted in many different ways: it may lead some governments to promote value positions such as religious affiliation, and others to engage in actions that may favour some of their people at the expense of others. Most of the rest of this book is devoted to the principles that guide those decisions, but it may be helpful to begin with some summary arguments. The discussion of conflicting viewpoints has commonly been done from the perspective of different ideologies. An ideology, in this context, is a system of interconnected concepts, values and beliefs, that act as a guide to action. I have discussed ideologies of government in other writing, but some relate very poorly to the questions I set out to answer at the start of this book: what responsibility do governments have towards their populations? What ought they to do, and what not? If the answer to the first question is ‘none’ – the position of those, such as the Italian fascists,5 who thought that the state has no limits and no obligations, and the only obligations that could matter were the duties that citizens owed the state – further discussion is pointless. If it is that the state is illegitimate and probably superfluous, which is the position, in different ways, both of libertarianism 6 and of anarchism,7 there is little or nothing that states ought to do that could not be done some other way. And if the position is that the state is not interested in such questions – for example, the contentions in Marxism that the state is an organ of class oppression,8 an executive for the interests of a privileged class,9 or a forum for social conflict10 – then there are no criteria by which we can judge whether any particular policy is legitimate, though we can probably infer that it is not. I have referred briefly to Marxist and libertarian positions in the text that follows, but I do not plan to discuss these doctrines to any extent. It seems to me that if we cannot tell, from a stated value position, what governments might legitimately do in relation to the environment, cultural policy, transport, infrastructure planning, health care or social security benefits, then that position falls short as a guide to the role of government in the contemporary world. This chapter focuses instead on  G Carocci, 1972, Italian fascism, Harmondsworth: Pelican.  M Rothbard, 1978, For a new liberty, Auburn: von Mises Institute. 7  R Sylvan, 1993, Anarchism, in R Goodin, P Pettit (eds), A companion to contemporary political philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. 8  V I Lenin, 1918, The state and revolution, Moscow: Progress Publishers (1969), pp 8–9, 16–17. 9  R Miliband, 1969, The state in capitalist society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 10  N Poulantzas, 1978, State, power, socialism, London: NLB. 5 6

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four approaches, represented in the two central rows of Table 6.1, which at least attempt to provide an answer to those questions. Table 6.1: The exercise of legitimate responsibility The legitimate scope of government action Minimal or nugatory

Guiding principles Individualist

Collective

Libertarianism: the minimal state

Anarchism: the state is illegitimate

Constrained

Neoliberalism: less government

Communitarian conservatism

Flexible/proactive

Liberalism: the enabling state

Social democracy: principled change

Marxism: the state is irredeemably compromised

Unlimited

Fascism

Liberalism: the enabling state A range of views have sought to use the powers of government to take actions that will serve the public and do things on moral grounds – because they are right, or good, or just. This is typical of many views from the ‘left of centre’, including socialism, social democracy and liberalism. All of those doctrines are likely to be described in the USA, somewhat indiscriminately, as ‘liberal’. Liberal thought has, however, made a much more direct contribution to understanding the role of the modern state. In the 17th and 18th centuries, liberal individualism emerged as a radical critique of the established social order. In the 20th century, it represented some of the key opposition to collectivist oppression under fascism or communism. Liberal individualism, and the assertion of the rights of each and every person, is at the root of ideas like human rights. It asserts the value of each and every person, emphasising such ideas as dignity and respect. During the 19th century, liberalism became strongly associated with the idea of ‘laissez-faire’, or minimal intervention. Neoliberalism, which I will come to shortly, has revived that principle. The kind of liberalism favoured by J S Mill and social reformers was rather different. It was founded in the belief that the state could positively enhance the capacities of individuals, for example, through education, personal security and decent living conditions. In terms of the role of the state, liberalism offered a range of options. First, liberalism encouraged a sense of government action as a means of enhancing and developing the potential and rights of individuals. It sought to enhance people’s freedom and independence, by offering social measures that gave them greater autonomy. In the UK, it was a Liberal government 72

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that introduced primary education, old age pensions and health insurance. Lloyd George, Beveridge and Churchill were prominent liberals of the time. Second, liberalism acknowledged that states could pursue collective action by consent. If a government proposes action that was not part of its regular activity – for example, by supporting musical education, giving public health advice or encouraging people to plant trees – liberalism has no objection. Mill commented: ‘When a government provides means of fulfilling a certain end, leaving individuals free to avail themselves of different means if in their opinion preferable, there is no infringement of liberty, no irksome or degrading restraint.’11 This principle has been stretched to some degree, with the later expansion of provisions such as pensions and health insurance. When people are given the opportunity to join schemes for social protection, they are likely to do so, and social security and health care have developed in many countries to cover the working population on a voluntary basis.12 The third strand of liberalism is potentially more contentious. The individual, Mill wrote, cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These may be good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.13 The first part of that is widely cited, but the second part is liable to be forgotten. Liberal states may not force compliance, but remonstration, entreaty and persuasion are fair game.14 Liberal governments should always, in principle, opt for the least intrusive option to achieve their aims in others ways: bargaining, persuasion, encouragement, facilitation, creating incentives and ‘nudging’ – which has also been described as a form of ‘liberal paternalism’.15 De Jasay complains that Mill ‘had no doctrine of restraint upon the state’.16 That is not really true – the limits of state action are found where the rights of individuals begin. But it is true that liberals have been  J S Mill, 1848, The principles of political economy, Book 5, ch 11.  P Baldwin, 1990, The politics of social solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13  J S Mill, 1859, On Liberty, in M Warnock (ed.) Utilitarianism, Collins, Glasgow (1962), p 135. 14   See P Spicker, 1990, Social work and self-determination, British Journal of Social Work, 20(3), pp 221–36. 15  R Thaler, C Sunstein, 2008, Nudge, New Haven: Yale University Press. 16   A de Jasay, 1985, The state, Oxford: Blackwell, p 89. 11 12

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prepared to accept a much broader range of action than contemporary neoliberals would consider legitimate.

Social democracy: principled change Socialism combined a reaction against the failings of contemporary societies, such as poverty and inequality, with a positive desire to promote cooperation and improve social welfare.17 Socialism is often lumped together with Marxism, a position which suits both Marxists, who like to think that communism was the only true, ‘scientific’ and valid form of socialism, and conservatives who want to dismiss the arguments. Socialism, however, refers to a much wider range of possibilities, being at one and the same time a system of principles, a range of political movements such as representation of the interests of workers or campaigns for social improvement, and a cluster of methods and approaches that depend on mutual aid and collective action. Anthony Crosland, reviewing the field, argued: ‘Socialism is not an exact descriptive term, connoting a particular social structure, past, present or even immanent in some sage’s mind. … It simply describes a set of values, or aspirations, which socialists wish to see embodied in the organisation of society.’18 The view that government should be guided by moral principles is sometimes identified with ‘idealism’. Offer points to several key elements of the idealist tradition in social policy, and some of the points are particularly relevant to the question of what governments should be doing.19 Idealism argued for a moral rather than a purely scientific approach to policy. It saw society and the economy as a whole, and aimed to pursue policies that would lead to the development of social and economic welfare. It treated the task of government as a whole project, not as the piecemeal management of one problem after another. And it sought to advance those principles through the state. Historically, idealism was associated with some fairly abstruse philosophy, but in this context it is not necessary to engage with that. The central point is simple: things do not have to be the way they are, and we can make them better. The concept of idealism, however, lumps together two rather different approaches to moral action: utopianism, and principled change. Utopianism is the pursuit of a model or vision of how things should be; utopians have a final objective in mind. Robert Owen, for example, wanted a society in which the classes would live and work together in harmony;20 William  C A R Crosland, 1956, The future of socialism, London: Jonathan Cape, p 103.  Crosland, 1956, p 216. 19  J Offer, 2003, Idealism versus non-idealism, Voluntas, 14(2), pp 227–40. 20  R Owen, 1813, A new view of society, London: Dent, (1927). 17 18

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Morris hoped that everyone would be able to find pleasure in nature, and enjoy the benefits of rural life.21 Marxism, for all its bluster and rejection of the terms, was idealist and utopian in much the same sense: Marx, Engels and Lenin claimed the state would ‘wither away’ in a classless society.22 Most socialists are not utopian. They are ‘progressive’, arguing for continual, incremental improvement. Tawney, for example, saw equality as a direction of movement, rather than a final goal. What matters to the health of society is the objective towards which its face is set, and to suggest that it is immaterial in which direction it moves, because, whatever the direction, the goal must always elude it, is not scientific, but irrational. It is like using the impossibility of absolute cleanliness as a pretext for rolling in a manure heap …23 The object of politics is always to make things better than they were, guided by moral principles such as fairness, cooperation, mutual responsibility and rights. This was the position of a wide range of socialist movements, such as Fabianism, Christian Socialism, the Methodist social creed, solidarism24 and the socialist parties of Europe.25 (Marxists were generally dismissive of attempts to improve society through moral action; Marx himself sneered at such ideas as ‘equal right’ and ‘fair distribution’ as ‘obsolete verbal rubbish’.26 About a hundred years ago, a little after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, European socialist and communist parties went their separate ways. Despite the contempt of Marxists for moral arguments – or perhaps, for just that reason – it was social democracy, not Marxism, that came to represent the socialist mainstream in Europe.) The principles of socialism begin with the famous slogan of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. Liberty is concerned with the capacity to act; equality, with the removal of disadvantage and distribution of resources; and fraternity, usually rendered nowadays as ‘solidarity’, with interdependence, mutual responsibility and mutual aid.27 The range of values  W  Morris, 1890, News from nowhere, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261, last accessed 16 March 2022. 22  K  Marx, 1875, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Moscow: Progress Publishers (1970); F Engels, 1884, The origin of the family, private property and the state, in K Marx, F Engels, Selected works, London: Lawrence & Wishart (1968) p 579; Lenin, 1918. 23  R H Tawney, 1931, Equality, London: Unwin Books, pp 48–9. 24  See M  Kohn, 2016, The critique of possessive individualism, Political Theory, 44(5), pp 603–28. 25   See, for example, Party of European Socialists, 2020, About us, https://www.pes.eu/en/ about-us/, last accessed 16 March 2022. 26  Marx, 1875, p 99. 27  P Spicker, 2006, Liberty, equality, fraternity, Bristol: Policy Press. 21

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associated with socialism has progressively extended: commonly now it also takes in citizenship, human rights and democracy.28 Other socialists extend the list to include environmentalism, cosmopolitanism (the idea that everyone in the world is part of the same community) or internationalism (promoting international cooperation) – all have been part of socialist discourse for most of its history, but none is held consistently. Almost all of the concepts referred to here are taken to be social, in the sense that they deal with social relationships, and have to be modified and interpreted within the context of the society where they are applied. The main exception to this lies in the idea of human rights; unlike the idea of citizenship, which is confined to a particular society, human rights are genuinely universal – they apply to everyone, regardless of social circumstances. What all these concepts have in common is a sense that life can be better, and the test of whether or not it is actually better is a moral one. The way things are is not the way that they have to be. There are principles which can be applied to society as a whole, and the role of government is to bring about change in the right direction.

Communitarian conservatism The central principle of communitarianism is not, as one might suppose, that the interest of the community is paramount. It is that people live with other people, and their relationships with other people give shape and meaning to their lives. As part of our social relationships, we have obligations to other people, as they have obligations to us. MacIntyre explains: … we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits these roles.29 Some of these relationships are part of family life – the obligations I have to my mother are not necessarily the same as the ones you have to yours. Some are relatively distant – energy supplies or smart phones generally depend on contractual relationships with a range of remote organisations. The character of these relational obligations is sometimes referred to as ‘particularist’, as opposed to the universal values I have just considered: at 28   For example, Swedish Social Democratic Party, 2007, Our principles and values, http:// www.chrissmithonline.co.uk/files/swedish-sd-party-our-ideology-300810.pdf, last accessed 16 March 2022. 29  A MacIntyre, 1981, After virtue: a study in moral theory, London: Duckworth, pp 204–5.

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other times they are described as ‘communitarian’. They are specific to particular people and particular relationships. Property rights are usually particular. The rights that people have under contracts are a class of particular right – rights for specific people, in specific circumstances – and those rights are important; in many countries, the provision of health care and social security have been built around them, rather than through universal entitlement. This kind of relationship could be discussed in terms of ‘legal rights’, but that does not fully capture the sense of what is actually going on – a combination of interaction, norms, expectations and social position. The Catholic Church has identified the process with the idea of ‘solidarity’,30 a term which rose to prominence in the 1830s and 1840s,31 and in the European Union that term has become a common way of referring to the constellations of rights, obligations and moral commitment that people recognise in such arrangements. If the argument for communitarianism was only about how people live together, it would be compatible with many socialist and collectivist principles. The emphasis on duty and obligation casts it in a different light. Communitarian conservatism begins either by emphasising the functional advantages of solidarity and duty – things are the way they are because they work for people – or by accepting the importance of the moral obligations that we have to each other, as part of living in society. Universalist ideas, such as human rights and citizenship, imply duties and responsibilities for everyone. Particularist ideas, by contrast, argue that rights and duties are different, depending on the roles that each person fills. Social obligations are highly differentiated. That implies a degree of inequality, which conservatives consider both inevitable and desirable. The duties that we have are structured: we have a stronger sense of solidarity with the people we are closer to. The structured pattern of obligations has been interpreted, in Catholic social teaching, in terms of ‘subsidiarity’. The papal encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, argues: just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and to commit to the community at large what private enterprise and endeavour can accomplish, so it is likewise unjust and a gravely harmful disturbance of right order to turn over to a greater society of higher rank functions and services which can be performed by lesser bodies on a lower plane. For a social undertaking of any sort, by its very nature, ought to aid the members of the body social, but never to destroy and absorb them.32   Pope John Paul II, 1987, Sollicitudo rei socialis, Vatican: Catholic Church.  P Leroux, 1840, De l’humanité, Paris: Perrotin; H Renaud, 1845, Solidarité. 32   Pope Pius XI, 1931, Quadragesimo Anno, Actae Apostolicae Sedis, 23, p 203. 30 31

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This does not preclude the possibility of higher authority – the Catholic Church would scarcely be able to endorse it if it did. It does imply, however, a preference for family and community. An alternative communitarian model is the Dutch idea of ‘sphere sovereignty’. This argues that there are spheres of life – for example, work, family, religious practice and public affairs – and that different rules apply in the different spheres.33 The powers and duties of the state have to be appropriate to the sphere where they are exercised. In both these models, government is expected to act morally, but the morality of conservative communitarianism is different from the high principles of socialism. The role of government is to work with the grain: to accept the values of a community, to strengthen the sense of community and reinforce those values. Government ceases to be legitimate when it goes beyond those limits. Edmund Burke, who I previously cited for his pragmatic instrumentalism, was sceptical about the claims of government to know what people ought to have. If governments over-reach themselves, the problem rests not in the legitimacy of government in general, but with what some governments try to do with their powers. His most withering criticisms of the French revolution were focused on its lack of respect for existing social norms and conventions. ‘If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executive power are its creatures.’34 Governments do what they have to do, but governance makes no sense if it is conceived as something distinct from the social arrangements it is supposed to be shaping. Any government has to act within the limits and constraints of the world as it is.

Neoliberalism: the case for less government Neoliberalism leads in quite a different direction from the liberal idea of an enabling state. The ‘New Right’, so-called, has sought to argue that states are not to be trusted; that nothing done collectively can be done as well as it would be when left to individuals; and that markets are the best and fairest method of distribution available to us. This position has been profoundly influential in economic and social policy. There are well-established lobby groups – the Cato Institute in the USA, the Institute of Economic Affairs in the UK – which have been making neoliberal arguments for much of the last sixty years. There is nothing new about ‘neo’-liberalism.  A  Kuyper, 1899, Calvinism, Amsterdam: Hőveker and Wormser; P  Marshall, 1985, Dooyeweerd’s empirical theory of rights, in C  T  McIntire (ed), The legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd, Lanham: University Press of America. 34  Burke, 1790, p 70. 33

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The neoliberal view of society and the state brings together a range of ways of thinking, but three are central. The first is a belief that property rights are a fundamental aspect of personal freedom. This might reasonably be identified with a position that Macpherson called ‘possessive individualism’.35 The possession of property is seen as the direct consequence of the independent, free action of individuals. Any attempt to alter the distribution of property is considered to compromise personal freedom. This argument is based, not just on a peculiar understanding of property, but on a special construction of freedom. Possessive individualists, such as Hayek36 and Friedman,37 have viewed freedom in a strictly ‘negative’ sense; freedom consists in actions which are not constrained by others.38 If freedom is a guarantee of noninterference, that implies no interference with the property that a person holds. Once someone has acquired property legitimately, no one can take it away without interfering with the owner’s freedom. Taxation is theft,39 or coercion, or possibly forced labour.40 The communitarian objection to this is strong. Rights to property are highly conventional, and the production of value is determined through interdependent social actions. People are not purely ‘individual’; what they are able to do depends on other people. The second key proposition is that markets are the most effective way to realise people’s aspirations and desires. In a free economic market, individuals produce, interact, exchange and transfer their rights, in conjunction with other individuals. If the initial distribution is legitimate, so are the distributive consequences. The market, it is argued, is the best way to protect freedom and property rights; but it is also the best way to arrange for the production, allocation and distribution of goods and services. Markets, Milton Friedman argues, offer people continual choices, whereas electoral systems offer choices only occasionally, and force people to compromise their preferences in ways that markets don’t.41 Friedman tends to think of markets as if they operated in the way that economic theory suggests; Hayek, more subtly, argues that they represent a complex, conventional, but spontaneously generated order.42 In either case, the guiding principle is laissez-faire; as far as possible, governments should keep out. This leads to the third major plank of the neoliberal case: a mistrust of government, and a belief that it must be restricted. Former US President  C  B  Macpherson, 1964, The political theory of possessive individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 36  F Hayek, 1948, Individualism and economic order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 37  M Friedman, R Friedman, 1981, Free to choose, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 38  F Hayek, 1960, The constitution of liberty, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp 12–13. 39  M Rothbard, 1978, For a new liberty, Auburn: von Mises Institute. 40  R Nozick, 1974, Anarchy, state and utopia, New York: Basic Books, p 169. 41  M Friedman, 1962, Capitalism and freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 42  Hayek, 1948. 35

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Ronald Reagan, one of the iconic figures in neoliberal politics, famously commented: ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.’43 That statement could be taken in several ways. Is it saying that government makes things worse? That accepting government help creates new problems? That inviting government in is dangerous? The first of those sentiments is often expressed by pro-market neoliberals, who hold that government always does things worse than the private sector would.44 The second reflects an argument made, for example, by Herbert Spencer, who held that the situations that government intervened in were too complex to be meddled with.45 The third interpretation is that government action necessarily depends on governments claiming powers they should not be trusted to wield. The US electorate has always been wary of ‘big government’, and Reagan’s quip appeals to that sentiment. Hayek objected, as Spencer and Humboldt had objected, to any expansion of government functions. Governments may start off with good intentions, but it is a slippery slope. Regardless of the apparent benefits of government action, every such action adds to the power of the state, at the ultimate cost of individual liberty.46 Those good intentions are, of course, what governments might be tempted to do if they are remotely responsive to the needs or wishes of their populations. Finer saw Hayek’s argument, not as a defence of liberty, but as an assault on democracy.47 To make the case for keeping government out, it is not enough to show that governments sometimes use their powers badly – the answer to that is that they should use them better, which would point to the importance of safeguards and a guiding philosophy rather than denying governments all power to respond. The advocates of laissez-faire need to demonstrate that the powers are wrong in principle. This leads to one of two positions. Neoliberals might argue for a state which does only the essential minimum – ‘limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts and so on’.48 That is the case made by Humboldt in the 1850s,49 and in the 1970s by Nozick, in a key text of libertarianism: ‘The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified. Any state more extensive violates people’s rights.’50 Nozick’s argument hangs on  R  Reagan, 1986, https://www.reaganfoundation.org/ronald-reagan/reagan-quotesspeeches/news-conference-1/, last accessed 16 March 2022. 44   For example, Friedman, 1962. 45  H Spencer, 1851, Social statics, London: John Chapman, ch 1. 46   W von Humboldt, 1854, The sphere and duties of government, Carmel: Liberty Fund; F Hayek, 1944, The road to serfdom, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 47  H Finer, 1946, cited in Turner, 2008, p 67. 48  Nozick, 1974, p 9. 49  Humboldt, 1854. 50  Nozick, 1974, p 149. 43

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acceptance of the propositions that rights to property are central, and that no other rights or duties are relevant to the discussion. Both propositions are highly disputable. The alternative position, one which better represents the neoliberal view than the libertarian extreme, is not a minimal state, but a state that confines itself to a specific, limited set of legitimate rules. The German ‘ordoliberals’ argued for a government strong enough to protect citizens both from the abuse of power by government, and from the conduct of private competitors.51 Hayek, in the same vein, recognised that if people wanted a free-market society, the structures of government would have to be changed – that such a society could only be developed through active intervention.52 Markets would need to be regulated by, for example, a structure of private law, laws concerning market competition and monetary policy. Neoliberals, just as much as social democrats, are treating government as an instrument, intended to shape society in the direction that the advocates of these positions think appropriate.53

Reconciling different positions The reservations expressed here about state action fall into three main categories. The moral objections are the most difficult to reconcile: neoliberals believe that state action is intrinsically coercive and intrusive, liberals and communitarians think it by and large reflects what people do when they are free to choose, and socialists see it as a moral imperative. The second set of objections is practical: the belief that some things, possibly many, are done better if the state is not involved. This argument takes two main forms. One is the general claim by neoliberals that markets arrange the production and distribution of goods in a way that is inherently superior to any conceivable central direction. The other main argument is made by communitarians, who have often held that other traditional methods of collective action – religion, charity, communal action and families – are both effective and morally superior. The third set of objections is pragmatic. Many ostensibly democratic governments are flawed at best: they have restrictions on political opposition, on the choices that are open to voters, on the press and broadcast media. Other governments are more openly authoritarian, suppressing a wide range of actions they see as threatening their own interests. Even in governments of this stamp, however, it is usually

 Turner, 2008, pp 82–4.  F Hayek, 1976, Law, legislation and liberty vol. 2: the mirage of social justice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 53  R Plant, 2009, The neo-liberal state, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 13. 51 52

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possible to detect some claim to legitimacy and public support through economic and social policy.54 Nevertheless, the four positions have more in common than is evident at first sight. All, in their different ways, accept that state action is necessary, and that states have to provide a regulatory framework if people are to live together harmoniously. All accept a degree of coercion, and the principle that this can enhance people’s options in practice. Unsurprisingly, then, virtually all states do take a range of actions that improve welfare and enhance people’s capacity to make choices: education and health care are examples. When it comes down to cases, there are often fewer differences about policy than the passionate advocacy of different ideologies would suggest. None of them rejects the idea that people ought to have an income to spend for themselves – many free-marketeers support that.55 Any of them could be reconciled with governments spending money on roads, parks or policing, though some possessive individualists would still object. Concern about climate change cuts across the ideological spectrum. There may be some conservative communitarians who could find an argument against women having property rights, but there would not be much dissent about empowering women this way from any of the four perspectives I have discussed. Governments are being encouraged to act, in each case, in accordance with a set of principles. Any argument should really be about which measures are legitimate, and which are not. The normative positions I have outlined here are not, then, exclusive or self-contained. Much formal writing about moral conduct tends implicitly to be universalist, in the sense that it can be taken to apply to everyone. Moral principles that relate either to general rules, or to the consequences of our actions, offer approaches that can be adapted to every circumstance: obey the commandments, promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, act as if you were following a universal law. However, much of our moral conduct in practice is communitarian: most of us, nearly all of us, grow up in a social environment where we have special (or particular) obligations to family, friends and the people we are close to – that is how we know they are close. If there is a tension, in real life we hardly notice it.

 F Eibl, 2020, Social dictatorships, Oxford: Oxford University Press.   For example, Hayek, 1976, p 87.

54 55

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Welfare Summary Competing interpretations of welfare may be based on individual decisions, needs, the avoidance of poverty or deprivation, the sum of individual welfares, common ground or ‘collective consequentialism’, and the ‘common good’ or good of society. However, the areas provided for as ‘social welfare’ are conventional and often miss important elements of people’s well-being. Every system of welfare leaves gaps.

‘Welfare’ or well-being is often translated into a specific set of issues, such as health or command over resources, because that is a practical way of pinning it down. It is, however, a vague, elusive concept. Welfare might be material; it might be subjective; it might be socially defined, or otherwise external to the person.

Welfare as a matter for individuals There are many approaches to understanding people’s individual interests, and all have their weaknesses. Some definitions are subjective, based on people’s happiness or subjective well-being; that might be identified by asking people, looking for ‘inter-subjective’ tests that are shared between people socially, or perhaps by looking at some indicator of contentment, such as health. There are definitions based on what people want, or perhaps what they choose: what people choose, the economists’ proxy for ‘utility’, might be based not on personal preferences, but on established patterns of behaviour. There are normative tests, based on some kind of external standard. There are comparative standards, which consider only people’s circumstances by comparison with the things that other people have. And there are consequentialist understandings, which focus on the outcomes that follow from an action. There is always, Robeyns argues, an ‘irreducible plurality’ of issues.1 Hayek argued that people have to be allowed to judge their well-being for themselves. He put it this way:

 I Robeyns, 2017, Wellbeing, freedom and social justice, Oxford: Open Book Publishers, p 124.

1

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The presumption that each man knows his interests best … is neither plausible nor necessary for the individualist’s conclusions. The true basis of his argument is that nobody can know who knows best and that the only way by which we can find out is through a social process in which everybody is allowed to try and see what he can do.2 Liberty, in the sense of the absence of interference with individual actions, is both a precondition for individuals to be able to exercise choice, and a form of welfare in its own right. Early in the 17th century, Selden proposed an amendment of the formula, that the welfare of the people is the highest law: ‘Salus populi suprema lex, et libertas popula summa salus populi’:3 the welfare of the people is the highest law and the liberty of the people is the greatest welfare of the people. Spinoza came to a similar view, by a rather more idiosyncratic route: ‘the ends of every social organization and commonwealth are … security and comfort’. Government, then, should ‘free every man from fear, so that he may live in all possible security … the true aim of government is liberty’.4 Even if the outcomes of liberty are uncertain, the argument can be made that the best way to know what is good for people is to ensure that they have the right to choose it.5 This approach has the potential to resolve some dilemmas, cutting through the knotty problems of definition and what to value, but it leads to others in its turn. If people all make judgements individually, it is not obvious that the sum of all of those judgements will be better than the alternatives. For one thing, people are not always right about what is in their own interests, and even if they are, they may have to compromise their judgements to take other factors into account. It follows that when the sum of judgements is put together, the aggregate outcome will always be ‘sub-optimal’, or less than the best, from the point of view of the people who have made their choice. This has to be the case. (I am saying here the opposite of the received wisdom in analytical welfare economics, which assumes that the behaviour of the average person is rational, that differences cancel each other out, and so that on average people choose perfectly. Believe that if you want to: I do not think that you can have rational utility-maximisation, individual choice and an average of aggregate behaviour at the same time.) For another thing, people are quite capable of making individual decisions that benefit themselves, but which lead to other people suffering. This is often reduced in economic analysis to a discussion of ‘externalities’ such as pollution, but  F Hayek, 1948, Individualism and economic order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p 15.   Cited E Sandoz (ed), 1993, The roots of liberty, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, p 155. 4  B  Spinoza, 1663, Tractatus Logico-Politicus, in R  Elwes (ed), 1891, The chief works of Benedict de Spinoza, London: George Bell and Sons, pp 47, 259. 5  M Friedman, R Friedman, 1981, Free to choose, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 2 3

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it goes well beyond that. The model of the market is inherently conflictual. Rules about property ownership and land use lead directly to the exclusion of those who do not have the same rights – that is what ownership is for. Business competition is the clearest case where conflict occurs: putting one’s rival out of business may well be beneficial in general terms, but it is liable to be damaging to some people in specific instances. A further problem with leaving the issue to individual judgement is particularly serious, but many commentators are not aware of it. Dworkin, for example, writes that ‘A just distribution is one that well-informed people create for themselves by individual choices.’6 For him, the primary issue requiring resolution is the lack of an equitable distribution of resources, that might make it possible for people to exercise those choices. That is not the only problem by any means. In the context of health care, the situations that ‘well-informed people create for themselves’ could be disastrous. Let us imagine that a serious illness is in circulation in the general population. (This should not be too difficult to imagine: at the time when I am writing this, that is just what is happening.) For ease of calculation, let us further imagine that only one person in ten is likely to catch the disease, and that one person in 50 who does catch it will die as a result. From the point of view of the individual, the risk of catching the disease is minor, and the risk of dying from it is small – one in 500. Why, then, should there be any social restriction? The answer lies in ‘the law of large numbers’. These ‘odds’ are not random outcomes that come up one at a time, like tossing a coin: they are a statistical assessment of what happens when the number of cases is large. One in 500 may well be an acceptable risk for an individual. For a city of a million people, however, it is not a gamble or a speculation; it is an estimate, and the larger the number, the more confident one can be in the estimate. Something in the region of 100,000 people in that city will catch the disease, and 2000 will die. That is what the ‘odds’ mean. The figures for actual risk from COVID-19 are subject to enormous variation by location and in different time periods, but as I write this passage (in February 2022) the UK has experienced 161,000 deaths, or 2300 for each million inhabitants; the USA has had 960,000 deaths, or 2900 per million; Brazil has suffered 640,000 or 3000 per million; and France has had 140,000 deaths, 2100 per million.7 Those counts are all worse than the notional figures I opened with, but they illustrate the general principle: the sum of individual decisions can look very different from the perspective of a government responsible for a large number of people.

 R Dworkin, 2002, Sovereign virtue, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p 313.  Worldometer, 2022, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/, last accessed 20 February 2022. 6 7

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There has been a blizzard of arguments from the press, vehement comments on social media, and some protest demonstrations, all taking an individualist view. The core of their objection is that the risk of death for any individual is relatively small, that hospitality businesses should remain open and that individuals should be allowed to choose whether they should expose themselves to possible infection. Lord Sumption, formerly a justice of the UK Supreme Court, has described the measures to restrict the spread of the disease as ‘the most significant interference with personal freedom in the history of our country … a monument of collective hysteria and governmental folly’.8 He thinks that individuals should be left to make their own decisions. The problem with that position is that reasonable individual judgements can add up to intolerable social consequences – and have done so. Governments have to pick up the pieces afterwards.

The sum of individual welfares The welfare of the population is commonly understood, in economic thought, as the sum of individual welfares. The simplest, and most widely used, test has been national income or Gross Domestic Product – subject to technicalities, those two terms mean more or less the same thing. There are a few problems with using national income as the starting point, and in saying that I am not mainly concerned with issues of definition or measurement. The first issue is that some of the things we want to encourage are disregarded, while others that we do not want to encourage are included. GDP does not include many of the things that most affect people’s quality of life – for example, the uncounted value of people caring for others. Conversely, if a child quits school at 12 to work in a sweatshop, that represents an increase in GDP. Second, economic activity is not always done in the public interest. GDP includes ‘bads’ – for example, profits and expenditure resulting from drug dealing – as well as ‘anti-bads’, such as the cost of policing and prisons to deal with the problems.9 And third, going more deeply, supporting GDP calls for constant growth. Growth (or shrinkage) is important for the economy both in its own right – higher growth implies a higher national income – and because of what it says about the state of the economy. Part of the productive process is about ‘primary production’, producing the things that are needed for further production to take place. If the economy is not growing, primary production must  J  Sumption, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/oct/27/covid-measureswill-be-seen-as-monument-of-collective-hysteria-and-folly-says-ex-judge, last accessed 16 March 2022. 9  N Hicks, P Streeten, 1979, Indicators of development: the search for a basic needs yardstick, World Development, 7(6), pp 567–80. 8

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slow. There is no point of balance, at which everything is held in perfect stability. The process of adjustment and accommodation to changes in demand for production is at the root of economic cycles, but the issue is more fundamental. The engine of the economy has to have growth, or it will falter. There is no middle way. Using GDP as the test passes over the question of how the product, and the income, are distributed. It is possible to argue that poor people tend, overall, to gain proportionately from growth,10 but that conclusion is based on averages: there are always winners and losers. Welfare economics generally applies the test of ‘Pareto efficiency’. People are better off when at least one person is better off, and no one is worse off. The principle is widely accepted, but it is muddle-headed. If one person is only slightly better off, we can probably live with the test. If, however, the same person, or a few people, are massively better off, it generally means that other people are worse off. The ability of some people to pay more means, in conditions of scarcity, that the people who do not gain will be less able to pay for the same item. If some people can buy all the land, the people who are left will be forced to rent, or will have nowhere to live. Further, because prices are relative to each other, there is what economists call a ‘general equilibrium effect’: the prices change. If some people bid up the price, everyone has to pay more. Research in the Philippines found that when benefits were paid only to some, those people ate better; but the people who did not get the benefits had to pay more, and that meant that they could not afford the food they had before.11 There is a general principle at work here. Economic inequality matters, and no test is adequate if it ignores that. Cost–Benefit Analysis is widely used to assess whether or not the sum of all benefits is greater than the sum of all costs. The implicit argument in this process is that winners should be able to compensate the losers – this is the ‘Kaldor-Hicks criterion’. It can happen that the people who gain can compensate, or failing that support financially, the people who have not gained. This would depend on a process of redistribution. Arguably that happens to some degree in most high-income countries, where poorer people get benefits and services that a paid for by people who are richer than they are. However, winners aren’t necessarily required to compensate losers – and beyond that, working out just who has gained and who has lost is never easy.

 D Dollar, A Kraay, 2000, Growth is good for the poor, Washington DC: World Bank, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/19679, last accessed 16 March 2022. 11  D Filmer, J Friedman, E Kandpal, J Onishi, 2018, General equilibrium effects of targeted cash transfers, Washington, DC: World Bank Group. 10

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Social understandings of welfare: needs, poverty and deprivation The criteria for well-being are often described in terms of people’s ‘needs’. That term is contested and ambiguous. A need might refer to something that is lacking; it can be a relative concept, marking something that other people have; and it might well describe a relationship between problem and response. Human beings have some common needs: physical needs for food, water, clothing, shelter and fuel; personal needs such as the needs for communication, companionship and affection. The form that needs take depend on what is available in the society where they are experienced: Sen distinguishes ‘capabilities’, the things that people need to do, from ‘commodities’, the things that they need to do them. ‘Transport’ or ‘keeping warm’ are capabilities: bicycles, cars, boats and buses might be commodities to achieve the capability of transport, while gas, electricity, log fires and protective clothing are commodities that might make it possible to keep warm.12 Human needs, Gough argues, are universal – everyone has them; plural – they cannot be aggregated into a single account; satiable, in the sense that they can be met completely; and non-substitutable, because satisfying one need does not remove another.13 But human beings are social animals, and inevitably even the most basic considerations are likely to have a social element: people ‘need’ family ties, affiliation and interaction, emotional connections and support. I am not going to put together a full account of social needs, as others have done,14 because such a list could never be complete. Human needs will take different forms in different contexts. Needs can refer to the problems people may have, the responses that might be made, and often a set of claims that are made for service. The first of those is a long list; the second is longer still, and constantly shifting; the third the product of a series of negotiations, which are always subject to revision. ‘Needs’ generally present, in their nature, a claim for support – often, implicitly, a claim made against government. Governments that aim to respond to these claims have to resolve a complex relationship between problems and patterns of deprivation, on one hand, with a range of services and possible responses on the other. Some states have tried to do this by responding to specific needs through specific provision: some subsidise bread, some sanitary products, and Scotland, where I live, makes specific  A Sen, 1999, Commodities and capabilities, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  I Gough, 2019, Universal basic services, Political Quarterly, 90(3), pp 534–42, pp 535–6. 14   For example, I Doyal, I Gough, 1991, A theory of human need, Basingstoke: Macmillan; M Nussbaum, 2006, Poverty and human functioning, in D Grusky, R Kanbur (eds), Poverty and inequality, Stanford: Stanford University Press. 12 13

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legal provision for people who need help with their teeth being brushed to be assessed and receive the service. If we look more closely at how this sort of thing actually operates, however, we see that what is being done at the level of government is unlikely to be done quite as neatly as this implies. It makes little sense to think of someone’s need for medical care as an absolute; the type and character of the care will depend on what is available and what professionals think is appropriate. Cash assistance is also widely used, because cash is flexible, and can be applied for many purposes. Governments provide a framework and a set of mechanisms through which essential services can be delivered – schooling and medical care are obvious examples of that. The ways that we identify well-being, and the tests that we might apply – subjective well-being, material resources, physical health – are all open to challenge. It is much easier to identify what makes for a lack of well-being – that is, what makes people’s lives worse. There are specific conditions which imply a lack of well-being, such as ill-health, but the most general term for a lack of welfare is ‘poverty’. Poverty is a complex concept, used in many different ways, but commonly it refers to material deprivation, disadvantaged economic circumstances and impaired social relationships.15 The first of these dimensions, material deprivation, has been assessed by a range of different tests – people’s needs, their capabilities, the commodities they have access to. Economic circumstances are commonly reduced to a discussion of income, but equally they can refer to opportunity and economic mobility. Social relationships have been the focus of a range of multi-dimensional measures, covering issues such as exclusion, isolation, dependency and participation in political processes. In other work, I have made a case for understanding poverty as a relational concept, rather than a static, decisively identifiable state of being.16 The things that poor people around the world typically complain of are not the lack of goods or income as such, but concerns about personal security, health, powerlessness, disadvantaged communities – and abuse by those in authority.17 Some of the tests used to determine whether people are in poverty are normative: they refer to a fixed level of income (such as the World Bank’s $2 a day), nutritional standards based on calorific intake, or possession of assets (such as shelter with a roof and a floor). Several alternative approaches have been tried. One option is to use a comparative standard: find out either what other people experience, and see whether the situation of poor people is better or worse than the comparator. This is what Peter Townsend did

  See P Spicker, 2007, The idea of poverty, Bristol: Policy Press.   P Spicker, 2020, The poverty of nations, Bristol: Policy Press. 17  D Narayan, R Chambers, M Shah, P Petesch, 2000, Voices of the poor: crying out for change, Washington DC: World Bank/Oxford University Press. 15 16

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in Poverty in the United Kingdom.18 A second option is behavioural: look to see what people actually choose to have, and then use that information to form a standard against which people can be compared. This is Jonathan Bradshaw’s approach to ‘budget standards’.19 A third option offers a different approach to normative standards: look to see what people in the same society think is essential, and judge whether or not people have those things. This is central to ‘consensual’ standards of poverty.20 The standards identified tend to be very different in different societies. In the UK, people have to have family celebrations; in Benin, they need bedding; in Vietnam, people need a cow or a buffalo.21 What governments have been chosen to do about this has mainly been focused on poverty in the first sense: that is, poverty as material deprivation. Material deprivation can be responded to either by providing the material goods and services that people lack – goods such as housing and health care – or by ensuring that people have ways of obtaining material resources, by improving incomes and economic opportunities. Part of this is achieved by economic development, but development can generate problems of its own, including inequality, exclusion and the disruption of social networks. Part has been done through social protection. Social protection is an obvious way to improve incomes, as well as a way of maintaining connections with the economy. Around the world there has been a substantial extension of cash transfers, sometimes conditional on taking measures relating to health and education. The World Bank notes: ‘77% and 42% of countries have unconditional and conditional cash transfers, respectively. 78% of countries provide school feeding programs. Public works and various fee waivers are also quite widespread, with 58% and 56% of countries having them, respectively’.22 In relation to the other dimensions of poverty, economic and social, the measures taken have been somewhat less sure-footed. Poor people need to be integrated into the structures of a formal economy, but often the experience of poorer people in those structures is often one of marginality, precarious labour and insecure incomes. International organisations have  P Townsend, 1979, Poverty in the United Kingdom, Harmondsworth: Penguin.  J Bradshaw, D Mitchell, J Morgan, 1987, Evaluating adequacy: the potential of budget standards, Journal of Social Policy, 16(2), pp 165–81. 20   For example, J Mack, S Lansley, 2015, Breadline Britain, London: Oneworld; P Saunders, 2011, Down and out: poverty and exclusion in Australia, Bristol: Policy Press; B  Halleröd, D Larsson, D Gordon, V Ritakaillio, 2006, Relative deprivation: a comparative analysis of Britain, Finland and Sweden, Journal of European Social Policy, 16(4), pp 328–45. 21  R Davies, W Smith, 1998, The basic necessities survey, Hanoi: Action Aid. 22  World Bank, 2017, Closing the gap, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/ handle/10986/26655/114866-WP-PUBLIC-10-5-2017-10-41-8-ClosingtheGapBrochure. pdf, last accessed 16 March 2022. 18 19

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emphasised the advantages of a ‘flexible’ labour market, which generally means one which favours businesses; workers have limited tenure and few established rights. One of the principal ways in which the position of poorer people has been enhanced has been not economic, but political: an emphasis on community organisation, political participation and engagement in decision-making processes.23

The collective good The ‘social question’, Heclo argues, may well first have been conceived in terms of the protection of workers or the response to poverty, but it has become a problem of ‘reconciling our individual and social welfare’24 – an attempt to further both the common good, and to further the interests of individuals within a socially beneficial framework. The ideological positions I reviewed in Chapter 6 can all be seen as ways to approach that question. If individual welfare takes an absolute priority, it can be difficult to situate that welfare within any sense of a collective good:25 what is good for some people is not necessarily good for others. However, there are other, less intrinsically conflictual, conceptions of the common good. Parfit proposes a ‘collective consequentialism’, where what we should seek to promote is a situation where every single person benefits.26 This could be based on universalising the preferences of individuals, but more plausibly it is based in common ground – the interests that everyone shares. A good example is found in the idea of ‘social goods’, things which are accessible to all, without excluding people – roads, parks, clean air. (Accessible to all, does not, of course, actually mean used by all; individual benefit is a poor guide to collective action.) There are some circumstances where, in theory at least, everyone wins – the ‘rising tide’ that supposedly lifts all boats. That happens to some degree in developed economies, which are built on divisions of labour: people can all gain more by specialising and trading than they can if they have to do everything for themselves. However, there will be losers as well as winners. Governments have generally seen their role as being to make their countries more prosperous, and that translates easily into the promotion of economic development. As economies develop, life changes: people can gain higher incomes and more material goods, but lose security. When people migrate  J Drèze, A Sen, 1989, Hunger and public action, Oxford: Clarendon Press; A Sen, 2001, Development as freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 24  H Heclo, 1996, The social question, in K McFate, R Lawson, W J Wilson (eds), Poverty, inequality and the future of social policy, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 25  K Arrow, 1967, Values and collective decision making, in E Phelps (ed), Economic justice, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 26  D Parfit, 1986, Reasons and persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 31–2. 23

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from agricultural communities to cities, the communities that are losing people sometimes suffer. Many of the arguments against economic and social development are rooted in a sentimental view of what has been lost, all too inclined to overlook relationships and constraints that are oppressive. The people who move away might think of it as a liberation – but equally, they might be exploited. Economic development is liable to be controversial – there is always going to be a down-side. That undermines the idea that there can ever be a genuinely ‘common’ good. The core problem with this approach, like those discussed before it, is that it still tries to justify the common good from the perspective of individuals. There is a broader, communal sense of the common good. MacIntyre argues, from a communitarian perspective, that the idea of the common good is intrinsically rooted in a sense of community, and has to be learned through engagement with that community.27 Some things that happen can be seen as being good for a society, above and beyond what that means for individuals. Countries typically need to be defended – neoliberal writers often cite Adam Smith’s identification of this as the ‘first duty’ of government. Societies need to reproduce themselves. There has to be a workforce in the future; children have to be educated. There is a powerful communitarian argument for stewardship, protecting the interests of future generations. There are few governments which would not acknowledge the value of those objectives; it has long been a major failing of economic theory that it has not been able to take account of them.

Social welfare policies The discussion of welfare provision has often, in recent years, been interpreted in terms of social protection. The idea of social protection was used at first mainly to focus on social security,28 and usually taken to include health insurance, but as time has gone on, some have taken its scope to cover a wider range of social policies. The International Labour Organization, while it focuses on social security rights and labour market issues, explains that social protection covers ‘the set of policies and programmes designed to reduce and prevent poverty and vulnerability throughout the life cycle’.29 The Asian Development Bank treats social protection as including ‘microand area-based schemes to address vulnerability at the community level, including microinsurance, agricultural insurance, social funds and programs to manage natural disasters’; and programmes of child protection relating not   A MacIntyre, 1999, Dependent rational animals, Chicago: Open Court, ch 11.   For example, I  Ortiz, 2007, Social policy, New York: United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs. 29  ILO, 2017, World social protection report 2017–19, Geneva: ILO, p xxix. 27 28

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only to financial assistance but programmes relating to child development, schooling, delinquency and street children.30 For the World Bank, social protection seems to include ‘universal access to essential social services in the areas of health, water and sanitation, education, food security, housing, and others defined by national priorities’.31 Taking the term literally, ‘social protection’ has two elements. One is that social protection is protective. That typically includes ‘safety nets’, provision in circumstances where people are unable to make provision for themselves through their own or their family’s resources, and social insurance, which is used to maintain income, to provide funding for services, and in some cases (notably in health care) to provide services directly. It might reasonably be extended to include such issues as disaster relief or immunisation. The other element is that it is social – that is, it is collective in its nature. Social protection can be taken to come either from a common pool (as in insurance or mutual aid funds) or from government. It might be done by the distribution of resources directly to individuals – that is the usual pattern of cash assistance – but equally it might be done by decommodification, taking distribution out of the market. That is commonly done for education, less frequently for health care, and much less frequently for water supplies. There is much about the agenda for welfare that is conventional, and priorities can be hard to explain rationally. Until very recently, social security was underdeveloped in most countries. There has been a transformation. ‘In the last two decades’, Minouche Shafik observes, ‘we have gone from 72 countries having some forms of welfare provision to 149 countries in 2017.’32 But if the case for cash support is economically or morally compelling now, why was it not compelling thirty years ago, when people were poorer and more children were dying? If the motivation for policy is a genuine desire to improve the welfare of the population, why is this not evident in housing policy? It can be much more difficult to explain why something does not happen, than why it does. Housing, by any reasonable test, is a core issue for welfare. It is a need in itself; people need shelter and the personal security that housing provides. It is a major element in the delivery of other services, including water, sanitation, and energy. It facilitates essential activities such as personal hygiene, food preparation and communications. There are alternatives to managing these in one’s own home, but the alternatives are generally more difficult to live with. Poor housing is a key aspect of poverty: if people are to have assets and resources, many of those assets   Asian Development Bank, 2003, Social protection, https://www.adb.org/documents/socialprotection-strategy, last accessed 16 March 2022. 31   World Bank, 2012, Resilience, equity and opportunity, Washington DC: World Bank, p 12. 32  M Shafik, 2017, Beveridge 2.0: sustainable societies and the welfare state, London: LSE. 30

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will be based in their accommodation. And housing is central to people’s participation in society, shaping how they can live, where they can or earn, and what their relationship is to the people around them. UN-Habitat, an agency of the United Nations, has argued in forthright terms for a ‘right to adequate housing’, based on security of tenure, the availability of facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitable dwellings, accessibility, location and compatibility with one’s culture.33 States, they argue, ‘must, at a minimum, show that they are making every possible effort, within available resources, to better protect and promote this right’. They have duties to respect people’s living arrangements, protect them from interference by third parties, and to ‘fulfil’ the right through an appropriate framework of law, resources and administration.34 There are some common factors in housing policy that seem to point to an expanding role for governments: the need for decent living conditions, the interconnections with other policies, and the mobilisation of political support. For more than a century, these factors all played a major role in British social policy; concern about poverty led to a focus on public health, public health to slum clearance, and slum clearance to public housing. Local authorities in Britain provided, at their peak, six million homes, at the time about a third of the housing stock. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, a radical neoliberal government was able to transfer ownership rights or the management of the homes that had been provided to private ownership or control.35 The same houses are still there, for the most part; it is the role of government, and the perception of that role, that has changed. However, the British experience cannot easily be extended to other countries. In the European Union, a group of relatively high-income countries, expenditure on housing currently accounts for only 0.6  per cent of GDP36 – less than a tenth of expenditure on health care. Typically in developed economies, housing has been produced and distributed through economic markets rather than through government organisation and production – despite the many failures of markets, and indeed the inapplicability of market theory to much of what happens in practice. The peculiarities of housing markets lie in such issues as the specificity of location, the structure of rights, the dependence on credit, the volatility of

 UN-Habitat, 2014, The right to adequate housing, Geneva: United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, p 4. 34  UN-Habitat, 2014, pp 30, 33. 35  I Cole, R Furbey, 1994, The eclipse of council housing, London: Routledge. 36  Eurostat, 2021, Government expenditure on housing and community amenities, https:// ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Government, last accessed 29 March 2021. 33

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prices and the all too visible mismatch between occupancy and need.37 For large numbers of people, the market distribution of housing does not work. In some emerging economies, policies have been developed that attempt to rectify housing problems or to steer the formal market, but these policies tend to be focused on finance and often fail to touch the most disadvantaged.38 The World Bank’s policy for developing countries was based on the view that the task was to enable markets to work: ‘housing sector performance’, they claimed, ‘is fundamentally shaped by market forces’.39 That view is, at best, misguided; housing for people on low incomes depends, in many cities in developing countries, on informal settlements, beyond the reach of formal markets or financial institutions. However, this differs in different countries: housing also depends on land use, and rights to land typically depend on a pre-existing structure of property rights. In some places, land and property is already claimed, and rents must be paid. In others, poor people find space only as squatters, an arrangement that is so common that it has to be thought of as a norm.40 There are negative factors that may present obstacles to the development of housing policy: they include the reconciliation of landed interests, the planning of human settlements, the management of the physical process of construction and reconstruction. Housing, however, is not signally difficult to supply in practical terms. The problem is that the perceived effectiveness of government expenditure is much less evident than is the case for health services or education. Providing accommodation for one family will typically benefit only that family for an extended period of time – often, decades. Hospitals and schools have a much broader reach. It is understandable, then, that welfare policies have focused more on things which can be delivered more rapidly and reach more people – cash support is the obvious example. That, coupled with the strong ideological preference for market-based responses, has guided governments to focusing on welfare in other forms. None of this inspires confidence in the idea that states will, in due course, commit themselves to comprehensive welfare provision. The example of housing policy points in a different direction. There are countries where social housing has been provided on a collective basis,41 but in many places,  J Barlow, S Duncan, 1994, Success and failure in housing provision, Oxford: Pergamon, ch 1.  P Wakeley, 2014, Urban public housing strategies in developing countries, London: Development Planning Unit. 39   World Bank, 1993, Housing: enabling markets to work, Washington, DC: World Bank. 40  J Perlman, 1992, The myth of marginality, Berkeley: University of California Press; Wakeley, 2014. 41  J Hoekstra, 2013, Housing and the welfare state, European Network for Housing Research conference paper, http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:900c0043-b86a-411b-b4a7-ae83dd0af9a7, last accessed 16 March 2022. 37 38

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it hasn’t happened. Housing, of course, is only an example. The same kind of argument could be made about social care, water supplies, energy, transport and much else. Well-being depends on many things – physical needs, personal needs, the realisation of capabilities, participation in society, and more – and governments have to make choices about what they can do. Any generalised discussion has to take account of a simple, inconvenient truth: every system of welfare leaves gaps.

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Which people? Summary Some claims to act for ‘the people’ are addressed to society as a whole, or the nation; some relate only to some of the people. The primary distinction between systems of welfare falls between limited partial provision or clientelism; solidarity, which seeks to include many, but may exclude others; and institutional welfare, which attempts to offer rights to everyone, or at least to every citizen. In this context, the traditional distinction between residual and institutional welfare is not always helpful; both aim, in their different ways, to ensure protection for everyone, and states seeking to make general provision use the methods of both. The pattern of development, however, tends to be uneven, and generalised explanations for development are always incomplete.

In the discussion so far, I have not yet engaged with one of the central problems inherent in the idea that governments are responsible for the welfare of the people. Who are ‘the people’ we are talking about? The people who live within a state’s territory are commonly identified as a ‘society’ – indeed, for some commentators, a ‘society’ is just a shorthand for the people who live under the rule of one government. Barker treats the ‘national society or community’ as pretty much the same thing as the people who are governed within a particular state.1 A society is much more than that. Everyone, or nearly everyone, is born into a family; most of us are born into some kind of community, where several people come repeatedly into contact with each other, have relationships to each other, recognise each other as belonging to distinct social groups. The connections we have with other people are partly generated through interaction – coming into contact with other people – but interaction alone is too thin a concept to account for much of what happens in daily life. People in families live together, they do things together, and they have obligations towards each other. People who work together are typically in some sort of economic relationship, and that relationship means that people and organisations can reasonably make claims about each other’s actions. That does not make a society into a coherent, collective whole. It is a network of other networks:

 E Barker, 1929, Reflections on government, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p xv.

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a mesh of intertwined relationships where different kinds of interaction and mutual responsibility mesh to define people’s roles, obligations and identities. It is possible to think of government and state as something external to society, battened on to the social structure. Many writers have taken that view; it is implicit in the term, ‘intervention’. Governments are often said to intervene in a range of fields in society and the economy, as if these were actions that somehow went beyond normal expectations.2 This hardly applies to other types of state action such as schools, policing, sanitation or the registration of births and deaths. It might make sense to talk about ‘intervention’ when a policy is new, but it does not make much sense to carry on thinking about government as an external force when children routinely go to primary school or people use a government-issued currency – that is, cash – to buy food. The role of government is pervasive and general. The state does not ‘intervene’ in society or the economy; it is an integral part of both. However, the relationship of a state to a society is sometimes tenuous. Some governments are remote from the societies they govern; some preside over diverse national or regional governments with different sets of laws. Governments can reasonably be understood as being charged with authority over a group of people who may or may not have other social relationships which link them, but who are definable as a group principally by the common fact of being subject to a specific political and legal regime. As citizens or subjects, they have a common status – a set of rights and duties. They are linked by the laws they are subject to, the taxes they pay and the responsibility their government has towards them. This is the basis of a ‘polity’, a unit of political organisation. It is sometimes assumed that the polity must be the same thing as ‘the nation’: people who together represent a society and a political community, drawn together because they are residents of the same territory. ‘The State’, Barker wrote, ‘as a rule, is national in its scope … just as Society also is national: in other words, most States are what we call “national States”.’3 The idea of the ‘nation state’, a state which represents people with a common history and culture, is very common. Many states play up to this: their claim to stand for a national identity, and to promote a national interest, becomes a central part of a justificatory narrative. ‘In the European tradition’, Jordan argues, ‘the state was a cohesive force, purposefully unifying society, and its legitimacy was derived from this, rather than from the implicit or explicit consent of individual citizens.’4 However, some nations occupy territory  L von  Mises, 1929, A critique of interventionism, Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996 3  E Barker, 1951, Principles of social and political theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 3. 4  B Jordan, 1985, The state, Oxford: Blackwell, p 107. 2

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across more than one state; and many if not most states encompass people from several nations. Almost all states, even those which impose common languages and education, preside over people from a mix of different cultures. ‘No European state’, Oakeshott comments, ‘has ever come within measurable distance of being a “nation state”.’5 If states can be said to represent ‘nations’, it is true only in a very weak sense of the term. The ‘nation’ tends to be used, as ‘society’ is used, as an easy way to refer to the people who are the subjects of a particular state. That can be useful: ‘methodological nationalism’ makes it possible to compare and contrast the way that different states operate, treating them as distinct units of policy formation, specific to a given population.6 States can be said to respond to ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ as the members of a political community, both individually (in terms of laws, rights and provision for individual circumstances) and collectively, in so far as governments recognise and provide for common interests and the collective good I discussed in Chapter 7. The term ‘political community’ does not however imply any commonality, beyond the status of subject or citizen. Like a society, a political community is a network of networks – there will usually be many sub-groups and communities, such as a business community, religious communities, and local civic communities. Even in autocratic regimes, there will generally be interest groups who can exercise a degree of political influence.7 Some of the claims that governments make to act ‘for the people’ are questionable; some are bogus. Populism is an approach to politics which represents the process of government as a conflict between the virtuous people and a corrupt elite.8 There are some populist governments, and many populist politicians – Chantal Mouffe argues that the pattern of argument is inherent in the structures of democracy.9 However, the truth or falsity of their stance bears little obvious relationship to the obligations that states have in the promotion of welfare. When governments present themselves as being there to protect ‘the people’, they might not mean any people in particular, and they might mean only some of the people. Gal identifies clientelism as one of the key characteristics of state provision in Mediterranean countries.10 Clientelist governments typically advance the interests of a favoured group,  M Oakeshott, 1975, On human conduct, Oxford: Clarendon Press p 188.  P Spicker, 2020, The poverty of nations: a relational perspective, Bristol: Policy Press. 7   See, for example, F Eibl, 2020, Social dictatorships, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8  C  Mudde, 2004, The populist zeitgeist, Government and Opposition, 39(4), pp  541–63; E Laclau, 2005, Populism: what’s in a name?, in F Panizza (ed), Populism and the mirror of democracy, London: Verso. 9  C  Mouffe, 2005, The end of ‘politics’ and the challenge of right-wing populism, in Panniza, 2005. 10  J Gal, 2010, Is there an extended family of Mediterranean welfare states?, Journal of European Social Policy, 20(4), pp 283–300. 5 6

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such as a tribe, a religious grouping, the military, the middle classes, or government employees. (The last one in that list is almost a tautology – offering employment to supporters is often used to extend patronage.) Welfare may be used to support a political constituency, often representing minority interests. Clientelism is found whenever governments offer a favoured relationship to selected people.11 This is distinct in principle from elitist interpretations of government. A substantial literature has been devoted to explaining the role of elite groups in society.12 It may or may not be true that elites exercise disproportionate power, but it is not obviously relevant to the provision of welfare: a power elite or ruling class are probably able to make their own arrangements, and so are not the same people who stand to benefit most directly from state pensions, medical insurance, primary education or the offer of employment by the state. The process by which client groups come to benefit from services is not a reliable indicator of power or influence. It is more typically a return of favours for support, and the people who benefit – for example, members of a tribe or residents of a favoured region – may have very little real power. Eibl discusses the phenomenon of autocratic systems of welfare provision in the Middle East and North Africa, where authoritarian regimes have adopted a range of different approaches to provision. The underlying principle, he suggests, lies in the construction of an ‘authoritarian support coalition’ – the people who authoritarian rulers consider to be their constituency.13 Welfare provision may be used as a way of securing that support. At one and the same time, states may be hostile to other sections of their population, persecuting some groups, attempting to extirpate cultural differences, even making war on people they otherwise claim to be responsible for. And that startling contrast clarifies one of the most perplexing features of contemporary states: that so many, even those which represent themselves as patrimonial or are otherwise repressive, have come to provide public services and social protection. The provision of welfare can only become fully secure if it ceases to be partial, and clientelism is partial in its nature. Wood and Gough argue that a process of ‘de-clientelization’ is central to the foundation of secure, rightsbased welfare.14 The core problem with describing social policy measures  T  Hilgers, 2011, Clientelism and conceptual stretching, Theory and Society, 40(5), pp 567–588. 12   For example, C Wright Mills, 1956, The power élite, New York: Oxford University Press; T Bottomore, 1966, Elites and society, Harmondsworth: Penguin; S Keller, 1963, Beyond the ruling class, New York: Random House; J Lee, 1963, Social leaders and public persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 13  F Eibl, 2020, Social dictatorships, Oxford: Oxford University Press p 7. 14  G Wood, I Gough, 2006, A comparative welfare regime approach to global social policy, World Development, 34(10), pp 1696–712. 11

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as ‘clientelist’, however, is that any partial provision might be dismissed in the same terms. The accusation that governments are ‘buying off’ people by supporting them could be levelled at any narrowly conceived, fledgling scheme – and, indeed, at any popular democracy. The truth is that many schemes for social protection, around the world, help some people and fail to help others. Schemes in the Middle East often fail to get resources to people on the lowest incomes.15 India’s schemes work best for people in the formal economy, and access to the new initiatives is often seen as vulnerable to influence.16 China’s schemes favour urban groups above rural ones.17 Partial, incomplete provision is a normal aspect of the development and growth of welfare systems. The other side of partial provision is exclusion, and it is not unusual to see critiques which demonstrate that large groups are disadvantaged in the process – that is consistent with the definition of in-groups and out-groups that underlies welfare provision in repressive governments. The rationale for a limited, partial service is not necessarily malign. The service that is being provided might not be the sort of thing that can be generalised – it does not follow, because a government agency provides a rapid transport system or a musical concert in its main city, that the same service must be duplicated locally for every citizen to experience. It might be true that a state does not have the administrative capacity to deliver services everywhere: that can lead, for example, to a government providing services in towns, that are not provided in rural areas. It may be that the government has opted for a practical compromise, such as ‘indicator targeting’ for groups which are broadly seen as being more vulnerable than others,18 developing placebased policies to promote economic development,19 or delivering services to areas where more people are believed to be poor. Some governments have tried to concentrate on the fields where they can have the greatest effect with inadequate resources: the priorities applied in Essential Health Care Packages20 have tended to focus on maternity and child health, rather than the conditions of older people or people with disabilities, simply because those circumstances are more complex and more difficult to treat. Policies are usually ‘targeted’ in some sense: when governments decide, for example,  R Jawad, 2020, The Middle East and North Africa, in N Ellison, T Haux (eds), Handbook on society and social policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, ch 20. 16  K Nakray, 2020, India, in Ellison and Haux, 2020, ch 17. 17  A He, Z Li, G Huang, 2020, China, in Ellison and Haux, 2020, ch 18. 18   World Bank, 1990, World development report 1990, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19  G Duranton, A Venables, 2018, Place-based policies for development, Washington, DC: World Bank, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/547051523985957209/Place-basedpolicies-for-development, last accessed 16 March 2022. 20   World Bank, 1993, World development report 1993: investing in health, Washington, DC: World Bank. 15

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to promote a particular form of energy production, to build a road, to vaccinate people, or to help people buy a house, they generally have an idea about who they think will be affected, and who will benefit from the measure. To govern is to choose, and that might well mean that the government has to make unpalatable choices about who they cannot serve, as well as who they can. There may be a general demand for consistency in the operations of government – that the standards applied to one group should be the same as the standards applied to others. This is not true of every policy. Many governments will cater for specific preferences, and the inconsistency inherent in paying for celebrations, sports or cultural activities will be ignored, or tolerated, or apparently justified by the claim that there are other general benefits for the rest of the population. However, inconsistency can be baffling and troubling, a source of dissent, and hard to defend. Selective benefits, which are supposed to pick out people who are in the greatest need, are bedevilled by inappropriate exclusions and failures of take-up: a recent report on social protection strategies in low- and middle-income countries found a range from 44  per cent of people wrongly excluded in Brazil to 97  per cent in Rwanda.21 The evaluations of proxy means tests, which are supposed to pick out poor people in poor areas without checking their individual circumstances, have found people praying for divine intervention in the hope of selection, because they could not make sense of the process in any other way.22 People who are not being helped by a policy or service will often be aware that others are getting what they don’t. And it often happens that people who are formally excluded will present demands regardless, in the hope that their case might be considered.

Including the excluded Even if governments are responsible for their subjects or citizens, there are limits to how far that responsibility extends. Citizenship can be exclusive as well as inclusive: many countries have different rules for nationals and non-nationals. The treatment of migrants poses particular issues. In many countries, social protection is constructed as a form of mutual aid. For example, people pay for their pensions through contributions during their working lives; people who have done military service are offered protections 21  S Kidd, G Nycander, A Tran, M Cretney, 2020, The social contract and the role of universal social security in building trust in government, Uppsala: ACT (Sweden) and Development Pathways, p 18. 22   Australian Aid, 2011, Targeting the poorest: an assessment of the proxy means test methodology, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/ targeting-poorest.pdf, last accessed 18 March 2022.

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on that account; workers are protected in the event of industrial injuries. Sometimes the element of reciprocity is implicit: support for children, expectant mothers, or older people can be justified in terms of generalised reciprocity or the hope of a future return. People who come from outside the community, however, have not contributed in the same way, and the extent to which they will be considered to be covered by existing arrangements is uncertain.23 Bill Jordan argues that this pattern of exclusion is a direct corollary of the logic of collective action.24 (The exclusion of migrants has more recently been conflated with xenophobic attitudes, under the fashionable soubriquet of ‘welfare chauvinism’.25 I do not think the term is helpful. Reciprocity and xenophobia are distinct discourses, often expressed through different structures, and there may be no immediate connection between them.) People are ‘excluded’ when they cannot get access to the same kinds of support that others can. They can be left out, shut out or pushed out. They are left out when they are not able to be part of the same systems as other people – because, for example, they live in the wrong place, because they have not been able to contribute, because they are too young, because their disability is not the sort that governments have provide for. They can be shut out because they are not part of the population that the provision is supposed to help – most obviously, migrants who do not have the rights of full citizens, though in some cases that is extended to citizens who are, or have been, resident abroad. And they can be pushed out, in the sense that they are considered to merit rejection, perhaps explicitly (as it is in the withdrawal of rights to prisoners) and perhaps because of stigma or prejudice, especially (but not exclusively) to people from different ethnic groups, different cultures and different physical appearance. Because so many expressions of prejudice are commonplace and trivial, it is easy to underestimate their significance; but left to their own, prejudices breed and grow. Genocides, including recent genocides in Rwanda, Serbia and Myanmar, have begun by denying ethnic groups rights, then escalating that into intimidation, violence and systemic murder. While there is some suggestion that ethnic and cultural diversity is associated with more exclusion, the empirical evidence is mixed and inconclusive.26 It might plausibly be argued that countries which have more diverse migrant populations – Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia  A Morissens, D Sainsbury, 2005, Migrants’ social rights, ethnicity and welfare regimes, Journal of Social Policy, 34(4), pp 637–60. 24  B Jordan, 1996, A theory of poverty and social exclusion, Cambridge: Polity. 25  R Careja, E Harris, 2022, Thirty years of welfare chauvinism research, Journal of European Social Policy, 32(2), pp 212-224 26  R Ford, 2016, Who should we help?, Political Studies, 64(3), pp 630–50. 23

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– have less of a generalised sense of solidarity than countries closer to a single culture, such as Sweden, Norway or Finland. However, the point is debatable. There are so many other influences on the development of policy that it becomes difficult to distinguish to what extent the sometimes fraught discourse on immigration actually shapes the design of systems of social protection. On one hand, governments, and nationalist movements within states, often use social policy to help forge a sense of a national identity, and that might lead them to be inclusive.27 On the other, that same sense of identity can have the effect of excluding people who are not part of the nation. All existing welfare states, Banting and Kymlicka argue, rely on a principle of ‘bounded solidarity’ – the idea that moral responsibility to others largely stops at territorial borders. They attribute those boundaries to membership of a specific polity: ‘bounded solidarity seems inextricably linked to an ethic of shared social membership, and in the contemporary world of nationstates, nationhood is the default boundary of social membership’.28 But social policy does not necessarily work that way. Systems of social protection are diverse: many institutional arrangements, such as pensions, social insurance and schooling, depend on a patchwork of public, private and voluntary provision. The boundaries are encountered at many levels within these systems. The demand for inclusion may be given extra force by the common situation of people who are subject to the rules of a specific polity; but it is commonplace that there will be people who are within the border, citizens who are part of the common polity, who may nevertheless be excluded. Where states have made arrangements to include every citizen, that is not, in most cases, a restriction of solidarity; it is an extension of it. The case for inclusion is fundamentally a moral one. Part of that case is universalist, drawing on concepts of citizenship and human rights. The UN sees inclusion as a promise that noone should be left behind.29 Every human being has value, something worthy of protection and respect in its own regard. From that, other principles follow: both safeguards to protect people from the negation of their dignity, and positive action to ensure that they are able to realise their value as people. However, there is, as I noted previously, a potential conflict between citizenship and universal values: citizenship is potentially exclusive. The other part of inclusion reflects the communitarian perspective, coming from the idea of solidarity. We have mutual obligations to each other, expressed through a complex and  D Béland, A Lecours, Nationalism and social policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  K Banting, W Kymlicka (eds), 2017, The strains of commitment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 6, 23. 29   United Nations, 2016, Leaving no one behind, https://unsdg.un.org/2030-agenda/universalvalues/leave-no-one-behind, last accessed 16 March 2022. 27 28

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overlapping set of solidaristic social networks. The principle of inclusion offers the prospect not only of supporting each other, but doing it on a reciprocal basis, bringing people into the fold. It is a moral position that binds and protects people in society, but it also binds and protects those who might be excluded. There are three main routes to inclusion. The first is about extending solidarity. The process of inclusion or ‘insertion’ consists of progressively expanding the scope of those networks, drawing people who are ‘marginal’ or ‘excluded’ into the social framework. Solidaristic networks are likely to be exclusive as well as inclusive – they define ‘out groups’ as well as ‘in groups’. In its nature, the process of extension or generalisation is uncertain ever to be complete. The model consequently claims less for government than universal approaches do, but it shares the sense that government is going to guide the process, and ultimately to take responsibility for ensuring that people who are excluded will be included. The second is based on ‘integration’, a set of social processes intended to build solidarity by enabling people to develop the kinds of social relationship on which solidarity and inclusion are typically based. ‘By and large’, Boulding writes, ‘it is an objective of social policy to build the identity of a person around some community with which he is associated.’30 The emphasis typically falls on work, education and language – but any of those might equally be seen as imposing a dominant culture on minorities. In multi-ethnic societies, inclusion may reasonably take the form of promoting and valuing minority cultures. Third, there are universal processes, where services are set up intended to be available for everyone. The way to achieve universal inclusion is first to ensure that everyone has the right to belong to a society – that everyone must be a citizen of somewhere. Once that principle is established, rights and judicial redress can be used to promote social inclusion.

Residual and institutional provision Even if the intention of policy is to secure provision comprehensively, residual and institutional provision offer different answers to the question, which people should be helped? Governments in almost every society have come to recognise that they have at least a residual responsibility: that government is the provider of last resort. (That view is associated with democracy, but it remains true even in societies which are not democratic in the western sense.) Residual welfare is based on the provision of a safety net, for people who cannot be helped by other sources. This is not, on the  K Boulding, 1973, The boundaries of social ‘policy’, in W D Birrell, P A R Hillyard, A S Murie, D J D Roche (eds), Social administration, Harmondsworth: Penguin, p 192.

30

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face of the matter, exclusive. The central assumption behind this is that there is generally a range of help available in society, and that most people will be able to manage from their own resources, their family’s resources or from the voluntary services that are available in local communities. The bulk of provision can be left to private, mutual and voluntary provision, and the state will be required only to fill in the gaps that remain. Hayek argued that services needed to be minimal, because otherwise they would impinge on the rights and liberties of other people, and dissuade people from making provision for themselves;31 but there still needed to be a minimum income.32 (It is noteworthy that he does not argue that services might be intermittent and partial, as market provision can be, or that the state has no responsibility to provide a safety net, as Herbert Spencer would have argued.33) Some neoliberals take the argument for minimal services further, arguing that all people really need is the money to pay for services, rather than the services themselves. Seldon, for example, argues that governments should not be providing education – that, in his view, is a matter of parental choice, once the funds are made available.34 Seldon’s reliance on the private market is misplaced – markets must, and will, be selective about what they provide, and who they provide it for – but this is not a challenge to the principle of a residual safety net; it is, rather, a comment on how that safety net can best be provided. The rationale for residual welfare relies on the argument that everyone can be included, even if the coverage specifically offered by government services is patchy or limited. In that sense, residual welfare has already taken a step towards less intermittent, more universal provision. However, residual welfare is considered to have some intrinsic flaws – and to some extent, it has been tainted by its association with minimal provision. The first objection to residual welfare is that it is mean-spirited and divisive. A long history of miserly, often punitive state action, coupled with contemporary arguments for minimal services, has led to it being associated with the idea that welfare is being treated as a ‘public burden’. The second is that it overestimates the extent to which non-state actors can manage the issues. Poverty in developed economies is not an occasional hiccough, that can be sorted through selective, judicious management; it is common and widespread. Only government has the scope and range to respond fully. Third, a residual approach undermines the scope for adequate public provision. Every system is mixed to some degree, but the smaller the role for the public sector,  F Hayek, 1944, The road to serfdom, London: Routledge.  C Guest, 1997, Hayek on government: two views or one?, History of Economics Review, 26(1), pp 60–1. 33   See, for example, H Spencer, 1884, The man versus the state, https://oll.libertyfund.org/ title/mack-the-man-versus-the-state-with-six-essays-on-government-society-and-freedomlf-ed, last accessed 16 March 2022. 34  A Seldon, 1977, Charge!, London: Temple Smith. 31 32

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the more difficult that role becomes; dealing with a residuum leaves the state only with the most serious problems, and responding to isolated cases implies higher average costs than more general provision. One reason for expanding state provision, counter-intuitive though it may be, is that it can help to bring down the average cost. The International Labour Organization has been seeking to persuade as many countries as it can to adopt a ‘social protection floor’, a set of minimum standards to provide essential health care and basic income security.35 It is tempting to read that as a call for a residual minimum – that is not the only way to ensure security – but many states, arguably most, have found that a residual position is difficult to sustain. Targeting is always imperfect: some people will be left out who should be included, while others will be served who should not be. There will inevitably be inequities at the borderlines – when some people narrowly miss out on entitlement, and others in very similar circumstances receive it. The boundaries are difficult to maintain: politically, there is always pressure to extend the service. This happened in France, when completion of the insurance scheme through the régime général had failed to extend provision to millions of people; or in the USA, when Medicare and Medicaid still left large numbers of people uninsured, prompting the Affordable Care Act. The main alternative to residual welfare is universalist, not necessarily in the sense that benefits and services are universally provided (though some will be), but in its aspiration to cover everyone. In an institutional model of welfare, welfare services are delivered as a right. This approach is often presented as an ideal type, associated with the idea of the ‘welfare state’, but the pattern is recognisable in the actions of many states that could not be considered to fit that model. The trend, internationally, has been towards more comprehensive coverage of the population. The ILO reports: During recent years, many countries have significantly extended social protection coverage, reinforced their social protection systems and established effective social protection floors. Many countries have achieved universal or near-universal coverage in different areas through a combination of non-contributory and contributory schemes and programmes. For example, universal or near-universal coverage in oldage pensions with at least a basic level of protection has been achieved by more than 20 countries and territories in all regions, including, among others  … Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cabo Verde, China, Georgia, Kosovo, Lesotho, Maldives, Mongolia, Namibia, Nepal,   International Labour Organization, 2012, Social protection floor, https://www.ilo.org/ secsoc/areas-of-work/policy-development-and-applied-research/social-protection-floor/ lang--en/index.htm, last accessed 16 March 2022.

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South Africa, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine and Zanzibar. … The positive impact of the progressive extension of social security coverage on the well-being of the population has been well documented in multiple countries  … and has contributed, in conjunction with economic, labour market and employment policies, to fostering economic and social development and inclusive growth.36 Opposition to institutional welfare is diverse, and often indiscriminately critical – for those who are opposed to social welfare provision as a general principle, the easiest way to argue the case is to demand less of it. Some of the critics are convinced that commercial private provision is intrinsically superior, because it offers choice to consumers. (The obvious counterargument to that is that private provision offers choices to producers, and those choices may exclude people.) They argue that provision by the state is intrinsically inferior, because it is monopolistic and inefficient. (State provision works to different criteria from private markets, and needs to be judged by different tests.) Some complain that institutional welfare has been captured by its producers; others that it has been captured by the middle classes, who benefit disproportionately. (If institutional welfare was being run by and for specific interest groups, retrenchment in the name of austerity would have affected them more than the poor and the disadvantaged, and this is not evidently the case.) Some complain that more extensive government provision has made the population dependent, demanding and idle. (Economic dependency reflects the level of economic activity, and economic activity and labour market participation are higher in countries with more institutional welfare.) And some believe that economies would be stronger if they were not held back by the costs of social provision. (The countries that are most usually described as ‘welfare states’ are generally richer than countries which make minimal provision. That might be, of course, because richer countries can choose how to spend their money.) Providing services as of right, however, is not the same thing as providing services comprehensively in every circumstance. Within institutional systems, only some welfare services will be generally provided, while others will be residual. There is a powerful case, for example, for compulsory universal education, as an institutional service: without it, some children will be excluded. There is an equally compelling argument for residual child protection: most children are protected by their families, but some are put in danger by the general rule, and in those circumstances action may have to be taken from beyond the family. It makes very little sense to suggest that education might as well be residual, or that child protection might be  ILO, 2017, World social protection report 2017–19, Geneva: International Labour Organization, p 7.

36

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institutional; the appropriate approach depends on the work that has to done. Those two examples come from opposite ends of a broad spectrum. For many other forms of state action, the position is less clear cut, and different states are likely to have a range of different types of provision, not just between different classes of activity, but within them. There is no evident contradiction in having, at one and the same time, an economic policy designed to bring about full employment (an institutional approach), a benefit system that supports the income of unemployed people (part institutional, part residual) and special provisions focused on employability for people without a settled way of life (purely residual). The problems kick in when policy-makers are fixated on one particular type of response to the exclusion of all the others.

The development of social policy Once a government has started to make provision – even partial provision – there will be pressure to extend the role. Some of the pressure for development is political: the comments of press and media, the expectations of voters if there is an electoral process, and even, in authoritarian regimes, the desire to appear legitimate, all encourage governments to expand their role in welfare provision. There are ‘advocacy coalitions’, where advocates reinforce each other’s positions, and ‘policy streams’, where coalitions of interest come to share the terms over which specific ideas are discussed, even if they argue for different positions.37 Some part of the pressure comes from a developing sense of entitlement: it is difficult, once pensions have been granted, or schools have been built, to take them away.38 And part is generated by the operation of the provision in itself: in the course of the English Poor Law, the administrators discovered that they could not provide for poverty and unemployment without also providing for ill-health, and once they had provided for ill-health, the demands for extended services increasingly came from people who were not poor.39 Many governments have found these pressures difficult to resist. However, any explanation of this type can only apply to services after measures have been taken, and a service has been established. Seeking to explain how different countries answer ‘the social question’, Leisering asks us to consider industrialisation, institutions, interests, ideas and international organisations. At that level of detail, it is hard to discern consistent, common patterns.40 Even within countries, successive  P John, 1998, Analyzing public policy, London: Pinter.  Eibl, 2020, p 10. 39  S Finer, 1952, The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, London: Methuen; B Abel-Smith, 1964, The hospitals 1800–1948, London: Heinemann. 40   L Leisering (ed), 2021, One hundred years of social protection, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 37 38

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governments often have different approaches to similar problems: different emphases on centralisation, the role of the private sector, the commodification of services, the level of reliance on taxation or contributions, the role of trades unions, and so on. Catherine Jones distinguishes a range of factors that may influence the development of welfare provision. Internal influences – social, economic, geographical and institutional – can affect the shape and structure of provision. External influences, such as ideological, religious and cultural factors, and the actions of other states, including military and economic actions, may also have an impact.41 And then there are ‘black swans’, countries which seem to have gone their own way by their own lights.42 These factors are not mutually exclusive – they can reinforce each other – but it must be true that the more individual and distinctive the explanation, the less it can be attributed to common mechanisms. However, the tendency to adopt certain sorts of policy, for some people and not others, does call for some explanation. There have been attempts to chart the development of policy through common social trends – a tendency to ‘convergence’. Common pressures, the argument runs, lead to common policies: for example, an ageing population forces governments to spend more on pensions and health.43 That is a plausible link, but if it were true, surely countries with younger populations should spend more on education and maternal health? It seems to be more true that countries which are richer have more people surviving to old age; they also have more welfare services because they have the resources to spend. There are related problems in attempting to see the choices made by states as ‘functional’, or suited to a state’s purposes. If, for example, a government really wants to know where its people are, it would make a lot of sense for them to have a formal geographical address – but many less developed countries do not. Addresses are invaluable for public administration, service delivery, and trade. (There has been a remarkable trend recently for people in sub-Saharan Africa to use the Global Positioning System on cell phones for want of a conventional postal address.44) Conversely, if we look towards the areas where similar policies do appear to be developing, it is hard to see them in functionalist terms. I referred in Chapter 1 to the growing acceptance of standards governing social security. It is hard to see any specifically functional reason why so many governments should have chosen to provide employment injury benefits or survivors’ benefits, but still do not provide medical goods or funeral expenses; the selection is based on ancient compromises and conventions, not on their  C Jones, 1986, Patterns of social policy, London: Tavistock.  F Castles, 2010, Black swans and elephants on the move, Journal of European Social Policy, 20(2), pp 92–101. 43  H Wilensky, 1975, The welfare state and equality, Berkeley: University of California Press. 44  S Radelet, 2010, Emerging Africa?, Baltimore: Centre for Global Development. 41 42

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relative utility. Governments do not do some things that could plausibly be said to be functional, but do others which do not seem to be. The literature of political science has identified a long series of potential causes or influences on the processes that lead governments to develop social policies. Those influences are better understood as the correlates of expanding services, because the direction of influence can be far from clear. Some of the influences are economic – becoming wealthier is a reason for expansion in itself. Some are institutional, reflecting what a government is capable of: that depends, for example, on fiscal capacity, the availability of private services and the previous development of government services. Some are political, such as the democratic process, the role of political parties, the influence of labour unions and social movements. The growth of democratic governance may have had an influence, because that has increased pressure on governments to serve the needs of the electorate – but that may be circular, because the pressure for more democracy may have been fuelled by the demand for better services. There are ideological reasons, too: cash-based support may seem to be compatible with ideologies of the market. That points to the influence, too, of social values, including the acceptance of welfare rights and norms or the solidarity that stems from an homogeneous culture.45 Conditional cash transfers, which had been shown to be successful in Mexico and Brazil, were consistent with the ‘remoralization’ of welfare in developed countries, and were sometimes seen as a magic bullet to resolve social problems.46 Some influences are international. There has clearly been diffusion and policy transfer, reflecting cultural influences, advocacy by international organisations and shared ideas.47 States imitate each other, and these benefits services are part of a package that many governments have accepted, knowing that they will be compared to neighbouring states which are doing something similar. The issues under review are framed within the policies of diverse countries; all of these things might be true at the same time. It becomes impossible to specify, with any certainty, the influence that any one or two elements in this primal soup might have. There is a general tendency for policy development to be uneven. It frequently happens that there is a ‘punctuated equilibrium’, where, often after a long period, ideas and policies may be adopted all at once.48 That model was initially used to explain the pattern of policy development in contemporary politics in complex states. If it is surprising to see the same  T Dorlach, 2021, The causes of welfare state expansion in democratic middle-income countries, Social Policy and Administration, 55(5), pp 767–83. 46  J  Peck, N  Theodore, 2014, On the global frontier of post-welfare policy-making, in P Sandermann (ed), The end of welfare as we know it?, Opladen: Barbara Budrich. 47   See F Nullmeier, D Gonzales de Reufels, H Obinger (eds), 2022, International impacts on social policy, London: Palgrave Macmillan. 48  P Sabatier (ed), 1999, Theories of the policy process, Boulder: Westview. 45

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theory applied to many states in many places, rather than the resolution of conflicting pressures within a single state, it is only because we tend to think of different polities as if they were single, self-determining individuals, rather than a complex mish-mash of different influences. Baumgartner and his colleagues argue that ‘stick-slip dynamics’ are a common feature of many political processes, particularly when they are relying on many institutions to deal with multiple issues. The statistical assumptions underlying their argument are questionable,49 but it is difficult to gainsay their conclusion: policy formation is marked by ‘a status quo bias, inability to make moderate adjustment, and occasional dramatic “catch-up” adjustments’.50 Policy routinely develops in fits and starts, and at times, in policy development, the dam seems to burst. The explanations for policy development are always incomplete. Given the diversity of polities, the number of actors, and the wide range of possibilities for action, it is not possible to identify any dominant influence or generative mechanism that can explain the development of welfare services. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable degree of consensus about the basic principle, that this kind of activity falls within the proper sphere of government. Governments are no more likely to consider that they have no business in providing health care cover or education than they are to think that they have no role in economic policy. Ultimately, the consensus is moral. It marks a general acceptance that this is the sort of thing that governments are meant to do. If we hope to understand the process by which commitments are made, we need to examine the principles that make this true.

  See E Limpert, W Stahel, M Abbt, 2001, Log-normal distributions across the sciences, BioScience, 51(5), pp 341–52. 50  F Baumgartner, C Breunig, C Green-Pedersen, B Jones, P Mortensen, M Nuytemans, S Waldgrave, 2009, Punctuated equilibrium in comparative perspective, American Journal of Political Science, 53(3), pp 603–20. 49

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The commitment to welfare Summary Normative explanations offer a rationale for the growth of welfare provision, in a way that empirical descriptions of influences alone cannot. Common guiding principles are solidarity, citizenship and democracy. The extension of social policy is commonly characterised by a movement from particular rights to extended solidarity, and ultimately to more comprehensive provision. It is not necessarily the objective of a government to support everyone, but partial coverage is difficult to defend, and once a general duty has been accepted, partial provision has generally given way to a progressively broadening extension of responsibility.

The commitment of states to welfare can be seen as a direct corollary of their claim to sovereign authority. ‘State sovereignty’, an international commission argued, ‘implies responsibility’. Thinking of sovereignty as responsibility … has a threefold significance. First, it implies that the state authorities are responsible for the functions of protecting the safety and lives of citizens and promotion of their welfare. Secondly, it suggests that the national political authorities are responsible to the citizens internally and to the international community.  … And thirdly, it means that the agents of state are responsible for their actions; that is to say, they are accountable for their acts of commission and omission.1 This is a defensible moral position, but too many states have bent or broken moral codes in the past for references to moral obligations to be altogether compelling or convincing. Some actions might perhaps be interpreted as an act of self-interest by governments. ‘Well organised states and wise princes’, Machiavelli tells us, ‘have always taken great pains not to make the nobles despair, and to satisfy the people and keep them content’.2 Clientelism, and support of the   International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001, The responsibility to protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, pp xi, 13. 2  N Machiavelli, 1532, The prince, Harmondsworth: Penguin,1961 p 105. 1

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powerful, can partly explain an initial acceptance of responsibility: some governments direct services mainly to people who they expect to support them. The operation of democracy offers another partial explanation: accountability to an electorate can be seen as a mechanism that requires governments to be responsive to their citizenry. Both of these might be interpreted in terms of the pursuit of self-interest by the rulers, and in that respect they may seem to be similar motivations. The material difference between them lies in how many citizens are included. It should be acknowledged, however, that in the contemporary world, the services that governments render to their people have gone some way beyond the self-interest of governments. Governments do not come to office with a blank sheet and an open agenda; they take over the role of their predecessors, along with the institutions and mechanisms which make that role possible. And they incur obligations towards their people simply because they are the government. Many of those obligations are particular – the result of specific undertakings made in return for some kind of contribution or service. One of the intriguing aspects of the growth of state actions relating to welfare has been the extent to which those actions are based on a formal acceptance of contractual obligations. Pensions are often based in particular rights – they are provided as a personal entitlement – typically based on contribution and work record. Particular rights of this kind have tended historically to be rather more generous than general rights to pensions have been. In political theory, the idea of the ‘social contract’ is usually treated either as an explanatory myth, or as part of the search for legitimacy. But governments do, in practice, make contracts with many of their people, in the sense that they undertake to deliver particular services in return for specific types of action, including financial contributions, military service, or public employment. The clearest example of this is the case of social insurance, where citizens establish their rights to benefits and services through their contributions. Some have complained, of the Bismarckian system of insurance, that it has proved difficult to change or to adapt – giving the impression, Palier suggests, of a ‘frozen landscape’.3 That, in many ways, is the point of it. The German insurance funds survived world wars, economic crisis and the Nazis.4 In the USA, Franklin Roosevelt explained: ‘We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician 3  B Palier, 2006, The politics of reforms in Bismarckian welfare systems, Revue française des affaires sociales, 1(5), pp 47–72. 4  E  Rosenhaft, 1994, The historical development of German social policy, in J  Clasen, R Freeman (eds) Social policy in Germany, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

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can ever scrap my social security program.’5 The movement has not been all in one direction – many governments have altered the terms on which pensions or unemployment benefits are delivered – but the sense of contract and contribution have been used to establish enduring commitments. In the case of Five Pensioners v Peru, five former civil servants took their government to court when the government decided to cut their pensions. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights did not think it was able in this context to comment about the violation of their right to social security – ostensibly the point at issue – but it did declare that this was a violation of their property rights.6 The central lesson to draw from this, I think, is that governments can, and do, bind themselves morally and legally in their relationships with their populations, or at least with some of them.

Solidarity If the responsibilities of government were expressed entirely in the form of specific obligations towards specific institutions, the result might be expected to look a lot like clientelism: a partial, patchy set of provisions that favours some while excluding others. The trends I have been considering go some way beyond those limitations: partial in some respects, but more extensive in others. Some of the states which have been engaged in this extension have come to discuss the issues in the language of ‘solidarity’. The concept of ‘solidarity’ has often been misunderstood and dismissed, in English-speaking countries, as a unitary relationship, where people show solidarity mainly by standing together or agreeing with others. Banting and Kymlicka identify solidarity with consociation and tolerance (‘civic’ solidarity) or with a principled consensus (‘democratic’ solidarity). Solidarity, in their view, ‘consists in attitudes and motivations’.7 In Catholic social teaching, in French social policy, and now in the discourse of the European Union, ‘solidarity’ means something very different. Solidarity consists of networks of mutual responsibility, duty and mutual aid. The family is a model of solidarity: in a family, every person has moral relationships both to other people, and to the family as a whole. Most people belong to many networks – families, neighbourhoods, religious affiliations, communities, nations and political communities. The networks overlap and interlock, and that is what makes up a society.   US Social Security Agency, 2005, Luther Gulick Memorandum, https://www.ssa.gov/ history/Gulick.html, last accessed 16 March 2022. 6   Cited in T Melish, 2008, The Inter American Court on Human Rights, in M Langford (ed), Social rights jurisprudence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 387, 398–400. 7  K Banting, W Kymlicka (eds), 2017, The strains of commitment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 3–4. 5

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French social policy built on the virtues of the concept: its influence grew from the 1830s, developing into a political movement, ‘solidarism’.8 The Code de sécurité sociale announces, in its first article, that ‘the organisation of social security is founded on the principle of national solidarity’.9 The system of social insurance was justified, not in terms of a ‘welfare state’, but as an extension of solidarity;10 and the development of provisions for those excluded was equally about ‘generalising’ solidarity. When the European Commission was forming its first social policies, it tried to avoid direct reference to poverty – the British government objected – and it opted instead to build on the French model of inclusion.11 The great advantage of that model, from the point of view of the European Union, was that it could be presented as a general principle, without requiring a uniform response: every piecemeal development, at national or European level, could safely be described as an attempt to extend solidarity.12 (The Commission’s enthusiasm for social policy waned subsequently.) Solidarity has at times been represented as a universalist principle, supposed to apply to everyone in society.13 However, the model of solidarity I have just outlined is not at heart universalist; it is defined as much by the people it does not include as by the people it does. The borders are ill-defined, because as people are seen to be less well integrated, they might be termed ‘marginal’ – only partially included – or excluded. Solidarity comes with communitarianism’s dangers as well as its strengths. It has the potential to be exclusive as well as inclusive; it can lock people, especially women, into oppressive power relationships; it can reinforce inequalities. But it can also offer security, protection from vulnerability and personal support; and it is widely believed to strengthen a society, improving social cohesion and the sense of mutual responsibility. The idea of solidarity is powerful, but despite its political influence it has rarely been applied in comparative analysis. Its boundaries are dynamic and indeterminate, and that does not lend itself to the sort of statistical analysis which dominates the field. Comparative social policy has been built on two other categories which seem to explain the progressive, but partial, extension of solidarity. The first of these is the ‘industrial achievement/performance’ 8  L Bourgeois, 1897, Solidarité, Paris: Armand Colin; and see M Kohn, 2016, The critique of possessive individualism, Political Theory, 44(5), pp 603–28. 9   République de France, 2021, Code de securité sociale, Art L111-1, https://www.legifrance. gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000042223830/, last accessed 16 March 2022. 10  P Laroque, 1985, Interview in Le Monde, 29–30 September 1985, in F Chatagner, 1993, La protection sociale, Paris: Le Monde-Editions 11  S Tiemann, 1993, Opinion on social exclusion, OJ 93/C 352/13. 12   For example, Commission of the European Communities, 1993, Green Paper: European Social Policy, Options for the Union, COM(93) 551 final. 13  D Robinson, 1972, Solidaristic wage policy in Sweden, Paris: OECD.

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model suggested by Richard Titmuss.14 The object of policy is taken to be the advancement of the interests of the economy, as advocated in the German ‘social market economy’. There is clearly a case to argue that health and education offer support to economic development; unemployment insurance supports the labour market; and pensions might, at a stretch, be considered in a similar light, because they regulate the workforce. However, it is rather difficult to apply this principle beyond those limits, explaining why such systems should be concerned with support for disability, social inclusion, or some of the other issues (such as provision for bereavement, or long-term care) that have been negotiated under ostensibly economybased welfare systems.15 This has led to a modified approach, exemplified by Esping-Andersen’s focus on ‘corporatist’ regimes:16 a model in which the priorities of the state, engaged with industry and labour, are formed so as to favour economic development. That analysis is consistent with the Marxist emphasis on the dominance of capital, and the role of the labour movement as a motor of change. There are, I think, three key problems with this conceptualisation. It gives prominence to the designs of government, which often came late to the issues; government is only one of many actors in civil society. It overlooks the extent to which service patterns are formed through voluntary and religious organisations, mutual and collective action; these are not necessarily, or even principally, the province of labour movements. And it still over-emphasises the relevance of economic influences in social policy overall. The concept of solidarity, by contrast with either of these models, embraces welfare pluralism and the role of civil society. Corporate welfare may favour one type of supportive network, but it is not the only type; it might coexist with systems that provide for people on other grounds, such as tribal affiliation, urban residence or religion. The range and complexity of solidaristic networks do much to explain the diversity of sources of support, and sometimes the privileged access afforded to particular groups. The central application of the model has been in France, but the general approach makes better sense of patchwork systems than Esping-Andersen’s categories do. I think it better fits, too, the complex pattern of provision in the USA, where welfare provision depends heavily on particular entitlements, occupational welfare, the contribution of the States and a pattern of ‘decentralised social altruism’.17 When it comes to countries with less developed systems, and even the ‘rudimentary’ provision  R Titmuss, 1974, Social policy, London: Allen & Unwin.  P Baldwin, 1990, The politics of social solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16  G Esping-Andersen, 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity. 17  G Klass, 1985, Explaining America and the welfare state, British Journal of Political Science, 15(4), pp 427–50. 14 15

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made in southern Europe,18 the main distinction falls not between liberal or corporatist models, but between limited, partial provision on one hand, and solidarity on the other.

Citizenship The main people for whom governments are responsible are their citizens; citizenship implies membership of a community, with the rights and obligations that go with membership. As a normative idea, as opposed to being a legal construct, citizenship has been taken to imply a certain commonality of status and interest, and a degree of uniformity in that status. For Marshall, citizenship was ‘a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All those who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed’.19 For Rawls, too, ‘citizens are equal at the highest level and in the most fundamental respects’.20 The main rationale behind the claim to equality between citizens comes back to the argument that governments need to act consistently in their interactions with the people they serve. ‘Secondclass citizenship’ – the idea that some people might have a lower status than others – is regarded with some concern. And yet it is often true, simply as a matter of fact, that many if not most states do make distinctions between the statuses awarded to different people: most obviously, in the differential statuses of citizens, migrants with permission to reside, migrants without permission to reside, the citizens of other countries and those who are stateless. Citizenship excludes as well as includes people. Being a citizen, rather than simply being a resident, generally confers more by way of rights than it does duties – resident non-citizens are liable to be subject to similar duties, such as a liability to pay tax. The rights of citizenship, Marshall argues, have come to include a range of social and economic advantages. Citizens hold a range of ‘general’ rights – rights which apply to everyone in the same circumstances. They include the rights to be treated equally to other citizens, to security and protection, and in many (but not all) countries, rights to a decent minimum income, to health care and to public services.21 It is the pattern of such rights, rather than the specific forms of support, that citizenship defines. Leisering argues that understanding the design of a social programme – for example, whether it is   See, for example, S Leibfried, 1991, Towards a European welfare state?, Bremen: Zentrum für Sozialpolitik; M Ferrera, 1996, The ‘Southern Model’ of welfare in social Europe, Journal of European Social Policy, 6(1), pp 17–37. 19  T Marshall, 1963, Sociology at the crossroads, London: Heinemann, p 87. 20  J Rawls, 2001, Justice as fairness: a restatement, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p 130. 21  T Marshall, 1981, The right to welfare, London: Heinemann. 18

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means-tested, or offers a guaranteed minimum, or is unconditional – cannot tell us what it offers by way of social citizenship. Citizenship might offer basic security, or support in old age, or protection: but that is expressed in different ways, through different programme designs.22 The language of rights has been dominated, in recent years, by a focus on human rights – rights which, by definition, are shared by every human being. Often, the discussion of human rights is framed in terms which seem to suggest that human rights are exhaustive, that anything which violates the dignity or well-being of a person is in some sense a breach of their human rights. That over-states the case. Dean argues, with some justification, that the rights of citizenship are much more important for social policy than the generic human rights promoted by international organisations.23 The rights I have just identified with citizenship, such as equal treatment, health care and the use of public services, are not extended to all human beings, or even to everyone who happens to be present within a defined territory. Because human rights apply to everyone, they represent, for every country, a minimum that they should not fall below, rather than an ideal of what a country might attain for its citizens. Of course there are countries which fall below the minimum standard – and many which fail to extend human rights beyond their own citizens, which rather misses the point. It is true that human rights have been linked with legal charters that offer a highly developed, conventional and contingent construction of universal values – issues such as rights to a fair trial, or a right to a family life, but they still refer to an essential minimum. The rights which citizens hold against governments are, or should be, much more extensive than that minimum. Human rights are an important safeguard for people in societies where there are fewer protections, but they offer less substantive protection than the rights of citizenship may do. In the context of a discussion about the role and responsibility of governments, considering the rights of citizens makes much more sense than a general discussion of human need or human rights. The risk of doing that, however, is that the range of rights that are recognised by governments may be unduly limited, and needs – or strong moral claims – may go unmet. Consider, for example, whether people are going without food. In most places, food is something that people buy commercially. If there is provision – there may not be – it will usually take the form of financial support to allow people to buy food, or special rules concerning how much people have to pay. Wherever income is inadequate, and even where it is set at a carefully calibrated minimum, there is potentially a problem when people have to pay for something else – clothing, or heating bills, or expenses  L Leisering, 2018, The global rise of social cash transfers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 6.  H Dean, 2007, Social policy and human rights, Social Policy and Society, 7(1), pp 1–12.

22

23

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for schooling, or whatever. Food, because it is bought more frequently, is often the item that is sacrificed when the resources have run out. And so, in several developed economies, we have seen the growth of voluntary and charitable ‘food banks’, there to plug the gap that is left by inadequate benefits.24 The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that in the least developed countries, 31 per cent of children show signs of stunting, the legacy of malnutrition – and in the highest income countries, 2.8 per cent of children are stunted.25 Both figures are shocking, in their different ways.

Democracy Solidarity, rights and citizenship are strongly identified with the principles of democracy. For some, democracy is an ideal, referred to such principles as the sovereignty of the people, the will of the majority or government by consent. For others, it is a set of institutional conventions, including (but not confined to) an elected government, a free press and the rule of law. And others still have argued that democracy is a process – government through deliberation, government by popular participation, or government that protects the rights of minorities. Democracy is often said, after Abraham Lincoln, to be ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’. There is nothing distinctive about ‘government of the people’ – and I have been making the case that a wide range of governments, including some that are decidedly not democratic, do things ‘for the people’. It is government ‘by the people’ that sets democracy apart. For Jordan, ‘The common good is actively created by citizens participating together in some shared process.’26 Democratic government allows people, severally or together, to influence the decisions that affect them. That might be understood in terms of participative engagement;27 democracy enables people to engage in the decisions that affect them. The right to vote is procedural, but it is not just procedural; it is about the ability to have a say, to hold governments accountable, and to assert the rights of citizenship. Rousseau thought it axiomatic that the will of the people would always support the common good,28 and there are reflections of that argument in much of the case for collective action.29  H  Lambie-Mumford, T  Silvasti (eds), 2020, The rise of food charity in Europe, Bristol: Policy Press. 25  UNICEF, 2020, The state of food security and nutrition in the world 2020, https://data.unicef. org/resources/sofi-2020/, last accessed 16 March 2022. 26  B Jordan, 1989, The common good, Oxford: Blackwell, p 85. 27  J Cohen, A Fung, 2004, Radical democracy, Swiss Political Science Review, 10(4), pp 23–34. 28  J-J Rousseau, 1762, Du contrat social, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion (1966). 29   For example, J Habermas, 1988, Popular sovereignty as procedure, in J Bohman, W Rehg (eds), 1997, Deliberative democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p 44. 24

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The process of voting, and the convention of majority voting, usually serves a rather different purpose: it is a system that makes governments accountable for their actions. Schumpeter represents democracy as consisting of a competition for the people’s vote.30 Madison argued for majority voting as a way of balancing conflicting interests: It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority – that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority on the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.31 This model is pluralist: if power is diffused across multiple actors, then no one group or elite can exercise power to dominate others. The process of majority voting ceases to be valid in circumstances where majorities form a consistent bloc of interest; the rights of the minorities have always to be respected. A country which oppresses its minorities is generally considered not to be democratic on that account, even if it has the form of a democratic government in other respects. The most obvious example of that principle would be the apparently democratic accession to power of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. That example points to another general principle: that legitimate accession to office is not sufficient to ensure the legitimate use of that office. Being elected is not enough. The ‘liberal democracies’ supplement the process of voting with other procedural safeguards: primarily the rights of individuals and minorities, the rule of law, and a free press, but potentially including process for transparency, accountability and time limits on key office holders. Much of the literature on democracy is concerned with the way it operates rather than the things that government does. Nevertheless, it is the prospect of positive welfare – the offer of prosperity and security – that makes democracy so attractive. It seems self-evident that a government which genuinely considers itself accountable to the people – however that is understood – will also seek to advance the interests of those people, because that is how political support can be won, and power can be maintained. To 30  J Schumpeter, 1967, Two concepts of democracy, in A Quinton (ed), Political philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 31   The Federalist Papers, 1788, New York: New American Library,(1961) 51, p 311.

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the extent that it runs against the interests of governments, it is less obvious why they should tie themselves to moral principles (such as the defence of liberty), to constitutional limits on their authority (such as a reluctance to engage in disaster relief) or even to a particular vision of the good society (the passion of neoliberal free marketeers for their arcane construction of ‘capitalism’). That should not, however, be surprising: government is a normative activity, and if people within governments choose to act morally, that is probably something to welcome. It is always possible to claim that these things, too, represent the will of the people, or measures that are ultimately to their benefit, but that can seem a bit of a stretch. To decipher such positions, it helps always to bear in mind that democracy, and indeed the whole practice of government, is based on a set of conventions. Those conventions, and the processes associated with them, are important in their own right. Hypocrisy, it has been said, is the homage that vice pays to virtue. So, for example, we find that authoritarian governments still choose to run elections, even if those elections are uncontested or rigged; that laws are still treated as the province of legislatures rather than governments, even if the legislature is a sham; or that the principle of majority voting continues to apply, even in governments which have no compunction about arresting the opposition leaders who might vote against them. The prevalence of welfare provision in autocratic regimes might be seen in the same light. Some autocratic governments may think it offers them the appearance of legitimacy – which, in fairness, it does: a government that serves its people is more legitimate because it does those things. Some use welfare to gain support from key groups, and disregard the rest. Some, possibly, seek their authority in terms of a Hobbesian bargain; they secure power by offering welfare and security to client interests. Others, such as the Chinese government, have grounds to claim that they are improving the lot of their people, even if they are not democratic. They see no contradiction between the suppression of minority cultures or human rights on one hand, and the development of public services on the other.32 There is a degree of normative idealism in many of the claims made for democracy. Democracy might be understood as ‘government by discussion’.33 Free expression and freedom of association are often seen as fundamental.34 And democracy is bound up with the rights of citizens.  BBC, 2021, Who are the Uighurs and why is China being accused of genocide?, https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22278037, last accessed 16 March 2022; Hu Min, 2021, Ten public welfare programs to improve people’s lives, SHINE, https://www.shine. cn/news/metro/2101253757/, last accessed 16 March 2022. 33  J  Cohen, 1997, Deliberation and democratic legitimacy, in R  Goodin, P  Pettit (eds), Contemporary political philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. 34  A Sen, 2001, Development as freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 32

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They include civil rights – equality before the law, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly – and political rights, including rights to free speech, the right to vote, and participation in politics. Economic and social rights have not been recognised as directly as elements of democracy, but Marshall argues that there has been a progressive movement towards their recognition,35 and they have become commonplace in democratic governments. Economic rights include free exchange, employment rights and the movement of labour and capital; social rights include rights to income support, health care or housing. This edges the understanding of democracy towards consideration of its substantive outcomes. The idea that government will be ‘for the people’ because it is ‘by the people’ is a central tenet of faith in democracy. Democracy is valued, not just because its procedures are valued, but because it makes it possible to achieve things which do not happen without those procedures. There is certainly an argument to make that better governance, and recognition of the concerns of poor communities, can improve the lot of those communities. Amartya Sen makes a simple, powerful claim: that there has never been a famine in a democracy.36 If the survival of a government is threatened by the prevalence of hunger, the government has an incentive to deal with the situation. … In democratic countries, even very poor ones, the survival of the ruling government would be threatened by famine, since elections are not easy to win after famines; nor is it easy to withstand criticism of opposition parties and newspapers. That is why famine does not occur in democratic countries.37 The precise terms of that claim are disputable – India has been experiencing a resurgence of hunger, and some starvation, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – but it captures a sentiment that is central to arguments for democratic government. Democracy has spread extensively in recent years; a flood of countries have adopted systems which appear to be democratic, even if they fall short in some respects. The crowds who have massed in demonstrations against dictators in the former Eastern bloc might be motivated by high ideals, or not; but not unreasonably, they have a perception that they, and the people around them, will benefit from a change of government. The issues at stake are not about process, or even institutions. The reason countries have been developing as democracies  T  Marshall, 1963, Citizenship and social class, in Sociology at the crossroads, London: Heinemann. 36   See J Drèze, A Sen, 1989, Hunger and public action, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 37  Sen, 2001. 35

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is not based in an abstract preference for voting, or even for deliberation. Democratic movements have been fuelled by the belief that democracy is the way to achieve prosperity – and, perhaps, the ‘commodity of living’ promised by Hobbes. A call for democracy has been taken to promise the delivery of substantive benefits to the population.

Extending welfare provision It is not difficult to find normative arguments that support the extension of social welfare provision.38 The policies I have been considering – provision for health, education and social protection – are compellingly beneficial. These policies alleviate poverty. They meet needs. They all enhance the position of the members of a society, who would suffer if they were not there. All are protective. Health care and education have external benefits, going beyond the people who receive them; public health protects nonrecipients from infection. Both health and education can be seen as serving the economy: the same argument has been made for the effect of social security.39 Both health and education can be seen as an investment in people. Both can also be justified in terms of stewardship, as a means of reproducing a society in the future. In relation to cash transfers, Leisering suggests that there has been a shift in the discourse, an increasing acceptance of the status of people as individuals, human rights and the importance of poverty.40 There are powerful practical arguments, too, for the development of welfare provision – both economic, because welfare serves and supports economic objectives, and pragmatic, because people will voluntarily enter arrangements for provision when they have the choice and resources to do so, and once that has happened, the job is already partly done. Normative explanations offer a rationale for the growth of welfare provision, in a way that purely empirical descriptions of influences cannot; they identify both the initial seeds of policy, and motives for subsequent development. The development of welfare is always uneven, but it can be taken to mark a progressive expansion of the commitment to welfare. The engagement of governments with welfare might reasonably be thought to begin, not with general rules, but with a patchwork of particular provision – some combination of clientelism, independent initiatives, mutual aid and partial government provision. As the scope and extent of provision increases, there is an incremental movement from partial provision to solidarity. Some solidaristic systems still demonstrate a primary emphasis on the particular.   See P Spicker, 2017, Arguments for welfare, London: Rowman & Littlefield.  J Richardson, 1960, Economic and financial aspects of social security, London: George Allen and Unwin, pp 215–18. 40  L Leisering, 2018, The global rise of social cash transfers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 7. 38 39

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Solidarity, as it develops, grows into the general rights of citizenship and institutional provision. Social welfare provision is almost always built on the foundations of the provision that came before it. As the extent of solidaristic provision increases, governments have commonly sought to find a role – to extend their scope further, to supplement it, to offer alternative systems, perhaps to control what is already happening. Some people will have prior rights and interests. The coexistence of different systems, apart from adding to complexity, may also mean that initial inequalities are carried forward, too. The position of women offers an illustration of the process. Women are much less likely than men to be able to establish initial particular rights – rights related to property and rights of succession; this has been markedly the case in the global South.41 As particularism develops into solidarity, women may still not be covered by benefits and services that are linked to participation in the formal economy. It is only when more universal principles are applied, such as provision for children or older people receiving care,42 that the previous exclusion of women really becomes apparent. The process by which women come to be dependent on social benefits has been called ‘the feminization of poverty’.43 That term suggests that the problem is growing, which is misleading, and hardly appropriate for a group that has been disproportionately at risk of poverty throughout the process. What has happened, rather, is that many of the disadvantages women face, previously concealed or ignored, have become more visible as more provision was made on the basis of citizenship rather than particular rights. The impression that the problems are growing reflects the development of systems of support which have made the underlying issues more prominent and salient. The unsteady growth of services, and the somewhat haphazard pattern of policy development, are consistent with this pattern of development. State provision, if it does not simply replace the preceding provision, is usually conceived either as additional to the preceding benefits and services, or an alternative to them. Some states stop at a narrowly defined citizenship; others have extended the field of rights to embrace values of liberty and democracy. However, as the emphases on health and education demonstrate, states around the world are not concerned solely and exclusively with particularism, or even with the development of solidarities. Developed systems generally offer some combination of solidarity with universal provision. This account departs from the conventional terms in which comparative social policy is usually discussed. When previous writers have looked at 41  S Razavi, S Staab, 2018, Rethinking social policy: a gender perspective from the developing world, in S Shaver (ed), Handbook on gender and social policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, ch 5. 42  V Esquivel, 2018, Care policies in the South, in Shaver, ch 13. 43  I Garfinkel, S McLanahan, 1988, The feminization of poverty, in D Tomaskovic-Devey (ed), Poverty and social welfare in the United States, Boulder: Westview Press.

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national approaches to social policy, they have been inclined to see the pattern of development as a progressive movement between ideal types – from residual to institutional welfare,44 from markets to decommodified services,45 from insecurity and informal structures to security and formal ones,46 possibly from liberal to social democratic regimes, and perhaps, beyond that, to some socialist ideal.47 Many subsequent studies have tried to build on these foundations, leading to the proliferation of further ideal types and normative categories.48 In my view, these accounts begin in the wrong place: none of these approaches is adequate to cover either the varied, and often partial, arrangements made in less developed countries, or for that matter the growth of solidaristic provision in much of Europe. The process of development begins, not with residual welfare or private markets, but with limited, particular relationships – clientelism and privileged access, frequently supplemented by mutual aid for those who have the resources to join such arrangements. As these networks expand, it becomes more possible to discuss systems in terms of solidarity: that is, a complex series of entitlements and supportive networks. Ultimately, a more comprehensive network of support for citizens – typically a mix of institutional and residual services – can be taken to provide the basis of a welfare state. This presents us with a ragged spectrum, rather than a classification of regimes or ideal types, running from particularism to solidarity, and solidarity to welfare states. However, provision is typically uneven; countries may locate themselves on different parts of the spectrum for different services.

 H Wilensky, C Lebeaux, 1958, Industrial society and social welfare, New York: Free Press; R Titmuss, 1974, Social policy, London: Allen & Unwin. 45  G Esping-Andersen, 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity. 46  I Gough, G Wood, 2004, Insecurity and welfare regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 47  R Mishra, 1981, Society and social policy, London: Macmillan. 48   C Aspalter (ed), 2020, Ideal types in comparative social policy, London: Routledge. 44

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Disputed principles Summary The principles that are most often disputed are equality, which is about the removal of disadvantage; purposive redistribution; social justice, which can refer to proportionate distribution but often simply means a desire for a good society; and the idea of the welfare state itself. All of these are directions of movement, rather than destinations.

The topics considered in this chapter are the issues over which different ideologies of government conflict most directly. The concepts of equality, social justice and the welfare state all imply that government and the state will act deliberately to bring about social and economic changes in society. Redistribution, also considered in this chapter, is included in so far as it is done purposively. For neoliberals, state activity in these areas is largely illegitimate: Nozick condemns the attempt to impose rules on society1 (or at least, rules that go beyond individualism, property, and defence), and Hayek dismisses the idea of social justice as a ‘mirage’.2 At the opposing pole, social democrats would argue there is a moral duty to make society fairer and better. There has been a tendency, in political debate, to represent these principles as ideals – models of what a society might look like. There are two profound objections to that approach. The first objection is made by Walzer, from a communitarian perspective: In a world of particular cultures, competing conceptions of the good, scarce resources, elusive and expansive needs, there isn’t going to be a single formula, universally applicable. There isn’t going to be a single universally approved path that carries us from a notion like, say, ‘fair shares’ to a comprehensive list of the goods to which that notion applies. Fair shares of what?3  R Nozick, 1974, Anarchy, state and utopia, New York: Basic Books.  F Hayek, 1976, Law, legislation and liberty, vol 2: the mirage of social justice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 3  M Walzer, 1984, Welfare, membership and need, in M Sandel (ed), Liberalism and its critics, Oxford: Blackwell, p 205. 1 2

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The second objection is a pragmatic one, made by Crosland. The process of reforming society has to begin somewhere, and the effect of any social action will be to change the conditions that are being addressed. It follows, he argued, that working to a model or blueprint is self-defeating. We can … describe the direction of advance, and even discern the landscape ahead; but the ultimate objective lies wrapped in uncertainty. This must be the case unless one subscribes to the vulgar fallacy that some ideal society can be said to exist, of which blueprints can be drawn  … in Western societies change is gradual and evolutionary, and not always either foreseeable or even under political control. It is therefore futile and dangerous to think in terms of an ideal society, the shape of which can already be descried, and which will be reached at some definite date in the future. Countries like Britain do not leap from one fully-fledged social system to another, but are, on the contrary, in a state of permanent transition.4

Equality Inequality refers, not to difference, but to disadvantage. Women are disadvantaged in relation to men; people with disabilities are disadvantaged relative to people who are able-bodied; some ethnic groups are disadvantaged relative to others. People on lower incomes are not different to people on higher incomes, but they are disadvantaged. Equality is not (as many critics suppose) a matter of eliminating differences; it is a process of countering disadvantage. Different schools of thought are liable to differ about what kind of disadvantage is most important, and so what most needs to be countered. There are several discrete positions. There is equality of persons – the view that no one should be advantaged or disadvantaged by birth. Equality of rights is based on the idea that everyone should be subject to the same rules. Equal citizenship is partly implied by the equality of rights, but beyond that it asserts that everyone should have the status of a citizen, implying membership of a polity and an entitlement to enjoy the benefits with which citizenship is associated. Equality in the conditions of life, or basic security, is linked with the argument that everyone needs a common foundation of resources and services, if they are to develop as human and social beings. And equality of welfare implies, not just that people should not be poor, but that inequalities in welfare – for example, the inequalities that come from unmet needs, bad health and lack of opportunity – should be diminished to the greatest degree possible. I should, perhaps, note that notwithstanding the  C A R Crosland, 1956, The future of socialism, London: Cape, p 216.

4

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repeated accusations from neoliberals that egalitarians are trying to impose a set pattern of distributive outcomes, only one of these concepts of equality (the fourth) does so to any degree, and that to a limited extent. The role of the state in respect of inequality is often controversial. Siedentop argues that a sense of equality, encompassing the sense of individuals and citizens as equals, is implicit in the modern conception of the constitutional state.5 I think that is disputable – the subordinate position of women in many countries testifies against it – but his central point is an important one: that every modern state has moved, over time, towards a basic sense of equality between citizens. Disagreements tend to relate to the scope of the equality that is being sought. For some, there may be a concern that suppressing disadvantage will violate other principles – values such as freedom or property rights. Part of the disagreement is about the importance attached to the disadvantage: many defenders of inequality are dismissive of the specific relevance of class, gender, race or poverty, rather than asserting that the disadvantage is legitimate. Part, implicit in possessive individualism, may relate to the defence of privilege: it is implicit in a process of removing disadvantage that those who are relatively advantaged will lose what others gain. The most complex position is that adopted by communitarians, because communitarianism does not prescribe moral rules that are divorced from their social context. However, the conservatism that is associated with that position is likely to accept a degree of inequality as a justifiable consequence of the differentiation of roles that every society depends on. The bulk of my arguments have been concerned with policies that have been applied by governments around the world, such as the commitments governments have made to economic management, health and education. When it comes to issues of equality, the scope for shared perspectives or approaches is much less certain. Human rights, being universal, imply a degree of equality, but their recognition and implementation are patchy. The principle of racial equality is widely accepted – apartheid is now considered a crime against humanity6 – but it would be difficult to argue that there is any country where there is no institutional racism. Gender equality has become more accepted than it has been in the past. The Gender Inequality Index, developed by the United Nations Development Programme, takes account of female health, education, political representation and participation in the

 L Siedentop, 2000, Democracy in Europe, London: Penguin, ch 5.   United Nations, 1976, International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocitycrimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20 Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf, last accessed 16 March 2022. 5 6

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labour market.7 Despite the considerable advances made in recent years, it would be difficult to argue that any government has achieved equality in all the fields of the index, let alone that the aspirations of equality are shared by governments further down the ranks. The subject of this chapter has then to be a consideration of a moral argument – the principles that ought to guide governments, rather than the ones that do. Inequalities may be pervasive, but there is a surprising level of acceptance of the principle of equality. I call it surprising, because for much of human history it would not have been true – it was long considered that different criteria should apply to the nobility, to the clergy, to women, or to people of different races. The last remaining régimes to take such a view, such as apartheid South Africa, are widely (and justly) regarded with contempt. But the political right wing nowadays, Rae comments, think the principle of equality should be applied in some cases, and not in others. They accept equality before the law – the premise that differences in race, gender or religion are not a good reason for treating people by different standards – but they reject the idea that this can extend to broader areas, such as needs or equal welfare. They are not so much anti-egalitarian as narrowly egalitarian.8 Hayek said as much, in terms: ‘We do not object to equality as such. It merely happens to be the case that a demand for equality is the professed motive of those who desire to impose upon society a preconceived pattern of distribution. It is this which is irreconcilable with freedom.’9 The principal advocates of greater equality quite explicitly reject the idea that they might be seeking a ‘preconceived pattern of distribution’,10 and that means that Hayek’s reservation has rather less force than he thinks it does. Equality in the distribution of resources is a principle, not a demand for a specific outcome. From the point of view of government, the consensus about equality is particularly relevant for practice. The underlying rationale for equality is simple: people should be treated consistently, by relevant criteria. Where there are differences in their treatment, those differences should be justifiable. At first sight, that may seem a rather weak principle, because some pernicious inequalities – the inequalities of caste, of ascribed status, of slavery, and racism – have been ‘justified’ in the eyes of the people who supported them. As time has gone on, however, the range of human difference and diversity

7   United Nations Development Programme, 2020, Gender inequality index, http://hdr.undp. org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii, last accessed 16 March 2022. 8  D Rae, 1981, Equalities, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 9   F Hayek, 1960, The constitution of liberty, London: Routledge, p 87. 10   For example, R H Tawney, 1931, Equality, London: Unwin Books, pp 48–9, 56; Crosland, 1956, p 216.

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of experience has come to make differences in treatment seem less and less justifiable: if we want to argue, for example, that people should be able to drive, make decisions about law or learn astrophysics, then it is hard to justify differentiation between them on the basis of their gender, sexuality, parentage or ability to lift heavy objects. If there are no relevant differences, disadvantage cannot be justified. The norm of consistency shapes the way that governments behave towards their citizens. It militates against laws and judgements that are arbitrary or unpredictable. It implies that governments will establish rules and principles, which will apply to themselves as well as others. It implies that there will be some way of adjudicating about rules, and enforcing them. That means inevitably that whether or not people happen to be in different situations, there may be some call to alter the way that things happen to be, and to do so in line with general principles. Consistency implies equality before the law – that does not mean that everyone will be dealt with in the same way, but that no one should suffer disadvantage inappropriately. It implies there are certain aspects of the political community in which no distinction will be made between citizens: for example, that every person should have a vote, and that no one should have more votes than others. More broadly, it means that where the state is interacting with people – in its administration, in its delivery of benefits and services – those people can expect to be treated as equals: discrimination and prejudice should play no part. That filters through to issues such as state education. Regardless of the marked differences in educational standards, it is widely accepted that children within the educational system should have opportunities to develop skills and to achieve basic standards. The underlying commitment to education as a condition of life remains true even within selective systems, and in systems where some children are relatively privileged. And, as the scope of state services has been extended, that extension has often been reinforced by a concern for more equal outcomes – for example, in health, in incomes, and ultimately in living conditions.

Redistribution Public services, and indeed almost any action undertaken by government which imposes a cost, are necessarily redistributive, in the sense that the people who benefit are not the people who pay. The process is at times oblique, because not all public finance can be neatly identified as coming from taxation or borrowing, but salaries, equipment and capital estate have to be sourced somehow. The redistribution undertaken by most states, however, goes some way beyond the management of public finances. A degree of purposive redistribution is implicit in the funding of health care, education and transfer payments such as pensions. 131

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Redistribution is commonly classified as being ‘vertical’ or ‘horizontal’. Vertical redistribution is made between people according to their income or resources: it is said to be ‘progressive’ if it goes from rich to poor, and ‘regressive’ if it goes from poor to rich. Horizontal redistribution goes between different categories of people – for example, from workers to pensioners, from people without children to people with children, from people who are healthy to people who are sick. Horizontal redistribution includes three kinds of redistribution which are not intrinsically egalitarian, even if they play some part in offering basic security. One is social insurance, which is based on the same principle as mutual aid: the redistribution is based on the pooling of risk. The second is redistribution across the lifecycle: pensions can be seen as a form of ‘deferred saving’, unemployment or sickness benefits as a form of ‘income smoothing’. Both mechanisms effectively transfer income from one part of a person’s life to another. The third mechanism is policy-based transfer: governments might, for example, transfer resources to married couples because they want to promote marriage, or transfer resources to public activities such as transport costs because they see this as a valid use of resources. If welfare can be improved by enhancing capabilities or responding to needs, governments can respond in two ways. One way is establishing basic services that make facilities and amenities available to people who would not have them otherwise. The other is to ensure that people have an income that can they can spend on meeting their needs. In either case, this implies some form of redistribution. The same is true of any arrangement, public or private, which pools people’s resources – for example, mutual insurance and health care funds. The neoliberal critique of redistribution has been based in the assumption that redistribution is fundamentally coercive. That is a fallacy. The evidence is, on the contrary, that the vast majority of people, if the mechanisms exist and they have the resources, choose to join mutual aid schemes without coercion. Where there is no state intervention, the scope of voluntary schemes tends to be limited to people who can afford the subscriptions. Governments have used compulsion either to extend provision to people who would otherwise be excluded (the pattern in France for pensions, or the USA for health insurance), or simply to regularise the finances (the main reason for the relatively recent introduction of compulsion in Scandinavian countries). In general, arguments about redistribution tend to focus on income rather than wealth. Income is a flow, wealth a stock; redistributing income allocates resources as a share of the flow, but redistributing wealth implies that richer people must accept a material loss of their property. (The same dynamic limits the scope of income redistribution to some extent; Crosland argued that income redistribution would only be politically possible in a growing economy, because in a static or shrinking economy a policy of redistribution 132

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would make richer people worse off.11) By contrast with income, very few countries have sought to redistribute wealth: those which have tried, such as the Soviet Union or Zimbabwe’s land reforms, generated conflict in the process. Redistributing income progressively is generally done by taxing higher incomes, and offering benefits to people on lower incomes. That is a more complex process than it sounds. It depends, obviously enough, on being able to identify who is on a higher income, and who is on a lower one. Both parts of that are difficult to do in practice. On higher incomes, people who own and control businesses are often able to present their income as the firm’s; to treat expenses as business expenses, reducing the apparent profits of the business; and to engage in creative accountancy, so that taxable profits are removed from the view of the authorities. On lower incomes, selectivity – the process of identifying who is, and who is not, eligible for benefits – is riddled with problems: people do not get benefits when they should, people sometimes do get benefits when they should not, and at the boundaries there is always a risk of inequity. It emerges, perhaps unexpectedly, that universal benefits and services sometimes do rather better at directing resources, because they do not leave people out. The case for providing services, rather than redistributing income, was made by Richard Tawney. He argued that a government should aim to use taxation ‘to make accessible to all, irrespective of their income, occupation or social position, the conditions of civilisation which, in the absence of such measures, can only be enjoyed by the rich’.12 This is not a redistribution of wealth as such, but it has a comparable effect. If resources are devoted to improving ‘the conditions of civilisation’, rather than minimum income, the effect is equivalent to making assets available to poorer people – and, to the extent that the same conditions are denied to larger parts of the population, to everyone. There is little controversy about this approach in relation to education; there is some variation in the provision of health care, but most western countries (bar the USA) have moved towards universal hospital care at least. This approach links the development of public services directly with the pursuit of equality. It is not necessarily the case, however, that the redistribution that takes place within welfare states is egalitarian. Some redistribution goes from one broad category of persons to another – for example, from workers to pensioners. Some redistribution is exclusive: I have noted cases where cash support fails to reach people on very low incomes. And some public services favour the better-off – provision for elite education, support for car owners and civil service pensions. By the  C A R Crosland, 1974, Socialism now, London: Jonathan Cape, p 74.  Tawney, 1931, p 122.

11 12

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same token, some public provision is hard to justify in terms of social justice: infrastructure developments often favour people and areas who are relatively advantaged. Julian Le Grand has argued that Tawney’s ‘strategy of equality’ is liable to be hijacked by the middle classes, potentially reinforcing rather than reducing inequality.13 Primary education tends to be favourable to people on lower incomes, typically because younger families have lower resources than older ones; but subsidies to higher education tend to favour richer families at the expense of poorer ones. In the UK, bus passes favour people on lower incomes; subsidies to trains tend to favour people on higher incomes. The defence of Tawney’s position is that examining the benefit to individuals is the wrong test: one has to look instead at the basic security provided when there are core benefits and minimum standards for all. Wilkinson and Pickett offer evidence that societies which are have more equal incomes have better living conditions, and better outcomes, than those which are less equal.14 There is more to the principle of redistribution than is captured by considering the distribution of income and wealth. I referred in passing to the position of people who are relatively privileged, who lose advantages as others are protected from disadvantage. Every defence of the weak against the strong is effectively a form of redistribution – a redistribution of power, and potentially a redistribution of freedoms. Protection from domestic violence, for example, diminishes the freedom of the perpetrator, and enhances the freedom of the victim. Enhancing the rights of pedestrians typically restricts the freedom of motorists. Educational attainment is potentially a benefit for everyone, but the advantages that come from superior educational attainment act not just to open doors for some, but to close them for others. The actions of government are rarely neutral between parties, and it is not obvious that they should be. Governments and legislatures make choices about what conduct is acceptable. Implicitly, as part of the same process, they are making decisions about who will gain and who will lose.

Social justice Social justice is not, any more than equality, a demand for a specific set of outcomes; the neoliberal critique15 attacks a straw man. It is, rather, the application of a principle, or set of principles, which can be approached in many ways. The idea of justice is directly linked with equality. If justice depends on treating people fairly, it has to begin by treating people consistently. Consistency is achieved, not by treating everyone in the   J Le Grand, 1982, The strategy of equality, London: Allen & Unwin.  R Wilkinson, K Pickett, 2009, The spirit level, London: Allen Lane. 15   For example, Hayek, 1976; and see R Plant, 2009, The neo-liberal state, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 4. 13 14

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same way, but by treating them according to consistent criteria. That does not mean that people will finish in the same place, but it does mean that irrelevant considerations should not be taken into account – and irrelevant considerations generally cover such issues as race, gender and privileges from birth. Aristotle explained that ‘the just … is a species of the proportionate’:16 distributive and corrective justice, in his view, were simply two applications of the core principle of proportionate action. There is, in the idea of justice, a presumption of equality, but that is defeasible: if differences are relevant, justice demands that people may be treated differently. (From a communitarian perspective, it may be considered fair to apply the standard of justice to citizens, but not to non-citizens. From a universalist perspective, that could be problematic.) Plato, by contrast with Aristotle, thought of the ‘just’ as if it meant what is good, proper or moral, depending on context. It is a principle of ‘human virtue’, governing the dealings between people.17 Rawls’ account of ‘justice as fairness’ looks Aristotelian at first blush, but Rawls slips – as many others have – into a Platonic understanding of justice, when he suggests that justice can be identified by determining what people will agree to.18 People may legitimately agree to do things because they are good, because they are morally right, or because it works for them. That is not necessarily the same as what is just, and what Rawls thinks people will agree to is a lot closer to the beliefs of an American liberal (such as himself) than it is to any general or universal sense of justice.19 The same fate meets many contemporary attempts to discuss justice: the term is irresistibly identified with the issues of the day, be they climate change, social work with families, mental illness, transport, digital technology, or participation in musical activity.20 Those issues are clearly important – they are all part of making people’s lives better – but one has to ask whether they are really about social justice. Whenever  Aristotle, c. 350 BCE, Nicomachean ethics, Book V (3), in J Barnes (ed), 1984, The complete works of Aristotle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p 1783. 17  Plato, c. 375 BCE, The republic, Book 1, in J Cooper (ed), 1997, Plato: complete works, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1.335, pp 980–1. 18  J Rawls, 1971, A theory of justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19  N Daniels (ed), 1989, Reading Rawls, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 20  United Nations, 2019, Climate justice, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ blog/2019/05/climate-justice/, last accessed 30 March 2022; J Nicolas, 2015, Why pretend social work is about justice? It’s not, The Guardian, 20 October; A Finn, 2017, Our approach to mental health isn’t working, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/ourapproach-mental-health-isn-t-working, last accessed 30 March 2022; K Martens, K Lucas, 2018, Perspectives on transport and social justice, in G Craig (ed), Handbook on social justice, Cheltenham: Elgar; Centre for Social Justice, 2017, Social justice in the digital age, London: Centre for Social Justice; T Cain, 2017, Music education and social justice, https://www. bera.ac.uk/blog/music-education-and-social-justice, last accessed 30 March 2022. 16

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extra principles are bundled in, we are no longer really talking about justice: we are talking about what makes a good society. And if social justice means everything, it means nothing in particular. The principle of justice is not always a compelling moral concept. In part, that may be because other issues matter just as much – as the long shopping lists attached to programmes for justice testify. In part, it may be because the criteria that are being applied are not criteria that we would all want to support. Miller looks at three extreme positions.21 Hume saw justice in terms of the protection of established rights: that is a conservative view, which deals rather harshly with people who have none. For Spencer, justice reflects people’s deserts or merits: that leads to a divided society, where the deserving do well and others do badly. Kropotkin, a leading anarchist, is the model for distribution based on need: but need, while egalitarian, is restrictive and difficult to assess. Contemporary arguments for social justice are likely to offer a mix of basic security and equality of opportunity. After stripping away the confounding factors, there are still very substantial issues that an emphasis on social justice could address. Material deprivation and economic inequality might appropriately be dealt with through the redistribution of resources, but some issues of inequality cannot be resolved in this way. Issues of ‘race’, caste and gender are as much part of the agenda of social justice as they are of equalities. This is only a partial list, because there are other forms of structural disadvantage, such as those relating to indigenous peoples and minority cultures. The disadvantages many groups experience often have economic implications, but they run much deeper. Fraser proposes a general category of groups requiring ‘recognition’ for their identity, rather than redistribution.22 There is much about these issues that is distinctive to the social contexts where they are found, but it can be argued plausibly that there are common issues, too. The first common issue is that they are socially embedded: they are reflected in socialisation, culture and institutional practice. I am writing this shortly after the emergence of the movement to show that ‘Black Lives Matter’. The prevalence of violence against people in certain racial groups, especially the violence of those in authority, is powerful evidence of racial disadvantage. There is little reason to hope that generic measures to suppress personal violence might be sufficient to remedy specific injustice. There may be legislation, rights, action relating to discrimination, and social education; all are worthy, but none have been sufficient to overcome the profound disadvantages they refer to. The second common issue is that the disadvantage that is being addressed is collective – or, in Rae’s terminology, that policies have to be ‘bloc D Miller, 1976, Social justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  N Fraser, 1995, From redistribution to recognition?, New Left Review, 212, pp 68–93.

21 22

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regarding’.23 Where there is individual equality, the collective group might be expected to show the same patterns of inequality that are found in the rest of society – an outcome that is difficult to achieve through government action, and, given that it implies acceptance of a pattern of inequality, may not even be politically or morally defensible in the contexts where it occurs. ‘Affirmative action’, or positive discrimination, has been most strongly advocated in the USA. It is generally an argument for tilting the balance in favour of people from disadvantaged groups, even if it works in favour of relatively advantaged individuals. There are currently arguments for compensation for historical wrongs – arguments that are not only collective, but collective across generations. This is harder to justify; there is no meaningful remedy for a world that has passed. (I say this as the descendant of four successive generations of immigrants and refugees. I could not in good conscience claim compensation for the fact that I exist.) The third issue is about process. A strategy taken to address social injustice has been to improve the representation of disadvantaged groups in the structures of political power and influence. The Gender Inequality Index considers the proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females.24 That might be taken to be an indicator of gender equality more generally, but the reason for focusing on political representation rests in the belief that access to the levers of power is crucial for improving the position of women more generally. That is also one of Dworkin’s main arguments in favour of affirmative action for African Americans – the (debatable) claim that people who are promoted through such a process will recognise and look after the interests of others in their group.25 Social justice is a far-reaching principle, and a large commitment for any government to make. It is not enough to pick a field or area, such as the distribution of income or educational opportunity, because other injustices will not only remain, but interfere with the area which is supposed to be changed. It is not enough to guarantee justice in the actions of the state, because substantial issues would remain in the society at large. And because injustices in society are so deeply embedded in the social structure – the inequalities of race, gender, the impediments and prejudices against disability or mental illness, or the stigma of poverty – it seems impossible that even a systematic structural policy could remove them. ‘The arc of the moral universe’, Martin Luther King told us, ‘is long, but it bends towards justice’. That belief is fired by faith and moral optimism, but any trend in that direction is far from inevitable. The progressive commitment of states around the world to health, education and the  D Rae, 1981, Equalities, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.   UN Development Programme, 2020. 25  R Dworkin, 1985, A matter of principle, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 23 24

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extension of cash support have direct implications for poverty and inequality. To that extent they can also be seen as part of a general movement towards social justice. They are just as likely, however, to be qualified and conditional in their impact – often favouring client groups, possibly reflecting extended patters of solidarity, perhaps extending to the citizens as a whole. In states where the dominant mode of distribution is clientelist, neither the process of distribution nor the outcomes should be expected to be either egalitarian or proportionate to designated criteria. (That says something, too, about the claims of populist governments with a clientelist base: any claim to be ‘for the people’ is liable to be vitiated by partial or exclusive patterns of service.) The progressive extension of solidarity can more legitimately be represented as part of a progression towards justice or equality, but there is a reservation to make: the development of diverse forms of solidarity through networks that depend on particular rights must, in their nature, act to favour some more than others. It may be ‘just’, but it is not going to be equal. Only universalism – the application of the same rules to everyone – can be expected to be fully compatible with principles of equality or justice. It can plausibly be argued that universalism is implicitly egalitarian, and beyond the principle, egalitarian in effect; but even so, a universalist commitment to the welfare of every citizen would not, in itself, amount to a full commitment to social justice. The problem with the idea of social justice is, perhaps, that at times its proponents expect too much. Ethical conduct is generally based on the sense that people should try to do what is right, even if at times they get it wrong. It makes more sense to consider justice as a principle – a guide to moral action, not an end state. The objective is not to eliminate every conceivable injustice at one blow, but to ensure that each step makes the situation more just than it was before.

The welfare state A pattern of extensive, inclusive provision is often thought of as a ‘welfare state’. The idea of the welfare state originated in Germany, where it was expressed as Wohlfahrstaat. The first English-speaking reference to the ‘welfare state’ occurs in a translation of the German, where the term was taken to mean ‘The idea that the State should not merely protect the persons and property of citizen, but should also endeavour to promote their welfare by some more positive action or interference on their behalf.’26 As I explained at the start of this book, the idea of the welfare state nowadays 26  G Cohn et al, 1894, citied in K Petersen, J Petersen, 2013, Confusion and divergence: Origins and meanings of the term ‘welfare state’ in Germany and Britain, 1840–1940, Journal of European Social Policy, 23(1), p 47.

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is used in three rather different senses, and two of those are descriptive rather than normative – a question of method rather than principle. In the first descriptive account, the ‘welfare state’ is taken to be nothing more than the provision of welfare services by the state. The second descriptive account refers to the constellation of services that are provided in developed economies, many of which are not provided by the state at all. This shift in the understanding of welfare states relates to the argument of Chapter 4. When we refer to the ‘welfare state’ in countries such as France, the Netherlands or Germany, we should not assume that it is government or the state that is making the provision; funding, organisation and management typically reflect complex corporate arrangements, in which government may claim to have a coordinating role, but is not necessarily directly involved. Both these examples fit Marshall’s view of the welfare state as ‘democraticwelfare-capitalism’: a hyphenated combination of three discrete approaches, which are taken to be mutually reinforcing.27 Thoenes, similarly, describes the welfare state as a form of society ‘characterised by a system of democratic government-sponsored welfare … concurrently with the maintenance of a capitalist system of production’.28 The references to ‘capitalism’ in these formulations are not very helpful. They were probably intended to distance the idea of the welfare state from the communist bloc, but the concept is over-extended: ‘capitalism’ is commonly taken to apply to every kind of productive or distributive arrangement in civil society, including commercial, corporate, mutualist and voluntary production. Esping-Andersen argues that the defining elements of the welfare state lie, not just in the rights that it grants, but in its relationship to markets and to other non-market provision.29 That is hard to gainsay, but it boils down to the statement that the welfare state is tied up with everything else, and that is not particularly informative. If we take ‘capitalist’ more specifically to mean ‘market-based’ and ‘profitseeking’, the statement is more intelligible, but difficult to defend as it stands. In every contemporary welfare state, some activities are ‘commodified’ and conducted in economic markets, and others are not; the welfare states are pluralistic, not simply market-based. The more interesting part of Thoenes’ definition lies in some words that I left out. He wrote that the welfare state is ‘placed on a new footing and offering a guarantee of collective social care to its citizens’. That is a normative test; it refers to the welfare state as an ideal. The state bears a responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. A welfare state offers a guarantee of standards, and ultimately it bears that responsibility whenever no one else does. In Chapter 8, I considered a range of circumstances where provision  T Marshall, 1981, The right to welfare, London: Heinemann.  P Thoenes, 1966, The elite in the welfare state, London: Faber, p 125. 29   G Esping-Andersen, 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity, pp 21–3. 27 28

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might not be complete, and some people might be excluded. In a welfare state, by contrast, there is a moral presumption of inclusion; no one should be left out. Leisering draws a distinction between a view of the state as a ‘collective agency which assumes a responsibility’ and a state which acts as merely as a provider of social services.30 The claim of the USA or Middle Eastern countries to have a ‘welfare state’31 is based on the view that what matters is whether the state provides something by way of welfare; that can seem inadequate to those who understand the term as implying a more general moral commitment. Asa Briggs, a historian, described the British welfare state as working in three ways: First by guaranteeing individuals and families a minimum income irrespective of the market value of their work, or their property. Second by narrowing the extent of insecurity by enabling individuals and families to meet certain ‘social contingencies’ (for example sickness, old age and unemployment) which lead otherwise to individual or family crisis, and third, by ensuring that all citizens without distinction of status or class are offered the best standards available in relation to a certain agreed range of social services.32 Briggs’ formulation reflects a view of the welfare state drawn from British experience, where these roles were not clearly distinguished. The reference to a ‘certain agreed range’ of services suggests that coverage might be partial, and its scope conventional. The ideal of the welfare state offers both general rules, and a principle of equality between citizens, ‘without distinctions of class or status’. That does not necessarily imply common standards for everyone: citizens are distinguished from non-citizens and non-residents, contributors from non-contributors, and people of working age from those from those who are younger or older. The welfare state was supposed to assert a general right to welfare – a position which identifies the welfare state firmly with an ‘institutional’ model of welfare. Briggs’ final point goes some way beyond that: the provision, not just of a guaranteed minimum, but the ‘best standards available’. That commitment was part of the foundation of the post-war welfare state in Britain, most notably in the creation of the National Health Service: if the service has  L Leisering, 2018, The global rise of social cash transfers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 41.   For example, D Béland, C Howard, K Morgan, 2014, The fragmented American welfare state, Oxford: Oxford University Press; F  Eibl, 2020, Social dictatorships, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 32  A Briggs, 1961, The welfare state in historical perspective, European Journal of Sociology, 2(2), pp 228–30. 30

31

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often fallen short of that, for example, in the failures of institutional care33 or the introduction of rationing,34 it does not mean that the aspiration was insincere. The issue is less a question of providing superior care than one of making best efforts to provide optimal services – an acknowledgement of a moral responsibility. Researchers in comparative social policy have tried to tie down the idea of the welfare state, by specifying its characteristics in the form of an ideal type.35 I have already argued that this is not the best way to characterise the general development of welfare provision, but the real problem comes when the ideal type is used as a way of distinguishing welfare states from the rest. ‘Analytical rigour’, Veit-Wilson argues, ‘requires a discriminating definition.’36 The exercise is futile. If we were to insist that no concept can be understood without a commonly agreed definition and method of measurement, we would never be able to say anything useful about a wide range of political ideas, including democracy, accountability, welfare pluralism or indeed most of the issues considered in this book. The surest thing we can say about any of these issues is that, on a given set of tests – usually ‘indicators’, or statistical pointers – one country may seem to be doing better than another. However, we will arrive at different conclusions whenever we examine different services or circumstances within the overall framework.37 Leisering points to the differences in the design and delivery of pensions, family allowances, conditional cash transfers and general household assistance.38 Different measures will offer different weight to those elements. (That is why some Australian writers objected to Esping-Andersen’s classification of their system as being similar to the USA; they felt he had passed over information that was important to them.39) More generally, if some supposed condition of ‘welfare-stateness’ is going to be measured, the measurement will have to set aside the benefits and services that a welfare state might have included in a different conception. The frequent exclusion of housing or social care is already telling; and it is easy to imagine that in  J Martin, 1986, Hospitals in trouble, Oxford: Martin Robertson.  T Halper, 1985, Life and death in a welfare state: end stage renal disease in the United Kingdom, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 63(1), 52–93. 35   C Aspalter (ed), 2020, Ideal types in comparative social policy, London: Routledge. 36   J Veit Wilson, 2000, States of welfare, Social Policy and Administration, 34(1), pp 1–25, p 5. 37  H  Bolderson, D  Mabbett, 1995, Mongrels or thoroughbreds: a cross-national look at social security systems, European Journal of Political Research, 28(1), pp 119–39; C Bambra, 2005, Cash versus services, Journal of Social Policy, 34(2), pp 195–213; and see M Powell, A Barrientos, 2011, An audit of the welfare modelling business, Social Policy and Administration, 45(1), pp 69–84. 38  Leisering, 2018, ch 4. 39  B Cass, J Freeland, 1994, Social security and full employment in Australia, in J Hills, J Ditch, H Glennerster (eds) Beveridge and social security, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 33 34

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the future, post-elementary education or internet access may also need to be taken into consideration. The ideal model of the welfare state may seem to imply a general, and possibly a comprehensive, response to people’s needs. That demands too much. It makes much better sense to think of the welfare state as the application of a set of principles – the provision of a relatively broad set of services, the aspiration to provide those services to the highest possible level, and a recognition of general rights to welfare. When we describe countries in northern and western Europe as ‘welfare states’, it carries a greater implication than the idea that the state happens to provide some social services. It says that those countries are engaged in the provision of a set of services as of right, and aim to make those services more inclusive over an extended period of time. This points us towards a different understanding of what is meant by the idea of the ‘welfare state’ – not so much a reconceptualisation of the term, as a different way of encapsulating what we already mean by it. The welfare state is a normative concept. What welfare states offer is a process, not a defined set of outcomes. This is a direction of movement, not a destination.

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The duties of a government Summary Governments have a wide range of responsibilities, and a general duty to work for the benefit of their populations. Most countries in the world either accept that principle explicitly, or at least behave as if they accept it. However, the general duty is subject to some qualifications. Governments do not have either the authority or the capacity to do whatever they think fit. The good state is not a minimal one, but nor is it unfettered. Its role has to be negotiated with a range of actors, some of whom will be within the society they serve, some who may be beyond it. And because the powers that a government wields can be abused, they have to be subject to limits. That calls for a degree of accountability and the rule of law.

Salus populi suprema lex esto is a very old idea: ‘let the welfare of the people be the highest law’. The phrase in that form probably originates with Cicero. Hobbes and Locke dropped the last word, esto, so that the principle became salus populi suprema lex, that the welfare of the people is the highest law. (The Latin word ‘salus’ can mean safety, health or well-being: Hobbes and Locke both made it clear that they were referring to the general welfare.) The principle was at times presented, in 17th-century Britain, as a licence to bypass the civil law – whether that licence was for a sovereign,1 or the people rebelling against a sovereign.2 The welfare of the people could be taken as a way of legitimising anything that looks like a good idea. Locke also seems to treat the people’s welfare as a justification for overriding other inconvenient rules: Salus populi suprema lex is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he who sincerely follows it cannot dangerously err. … Whatsoever cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society and

 J Sommerville, 1996, English and European political ideas in the early seventeenth century: revisionism and the case of absolutism, Journal of British Studies, 35(2), pp 168–94, p 191. 2  E Vallance, 2009, The dangers of prudence: salus populi suprema lex, Robert Sanderson, and the ‘Case of the Liturgy’, Renaissance Studies, 23(4), pp 534–51, p 535. 1

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people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when done, justify itself.3 Although the argument of this book takes a somewhat less arbitrary interpretation of the ‘welfare of the people’ than Locke does, there could still be difficulties in taking the phrase too literally. The first problem lies in the ambiguity of just what is meant by ‘welfare’. Quite apart from the conflicting senses of the ‘public good’, commentators have often sought to argue that their favoured principle, whatever it may be – liberty, or justice, or health – represents such a strong moral principle that it virtually defines the public good in itself. The second difficulty arises from the role of government. I reviewed, at the beginning of Part II, some of the competing understandings of what governments can do legitimately. If a democratic government is elected to promote the welfare of the people, the case for action is strong; in so far as commentators begin with different moral positions, they could argue, in good conscience, that those positions will help them to identify what should be done, and what should not. By contrast, in a constitutional government which strictly defines the limits of government action, governments may be prevented from doing things even if they are agreed to be beneficial. Some governments, possibly most, find themselves engaged in a series of negotiations about what they can and cannot do in any situation. The process of government demands compromise. The UK Department for International Development, now sadly defunct, argued that the relationships between state and civil society needed to be understood in terms of interactions between state institutions and societal groups to negotiate how public authority is exercised and how it can be influenced by people. They are focused on issues such as defining the mutual rights and obligations of state and society, negotiating how public resources should be allocated and establishing different modes of representation and accountability.4 Governments have often set out with the optimism that they could do whatever needed to be done, only to find that they have to steer around other actors – among them foreign governments, multi-national corporations, international and national NGOs (that is, non-governmental organisations, and a wide range of interest groups.

 J Locke, 1689, Two treatises of civil government, Book 2, s. 157 London: Dent (1924).  DfID, 2010, Building peaceful states and societies, London: Department for International Development, p 15. 3 4

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Third, there is the question of who should be served. Conventionally, this has been understood in terms of the contrast between residual and institutional services, which are different strategies for ensuring well-being. However, the discussion in Chapter 8 suggests a different kind of distinction, one that comes before the rationale of residual or institutional services can even be considered. There are governments who will favour some parts of the population while disadvantaging others; there are conceptions of the public good that sacrifice the good of some people for the benefit of others; and the definition of the community might not extend to people who are citizens of other countries. The main distinction falls between limited partial provision, which is often clientelist; solidarity, which seeks to include most people through the development of networks of provision, but may exclude others; and the idea of the welfare state, which attempts to offer rights to everyone, or at least to every citizen. Fourth is the question: which service? It is not self-evident that health and education should be provided for, when water supplies or energy are not. The recent mushroom growth of cash benefits has been striking, and is difficult to explain rationally; partly, perhaps, because it seems to have won acceptance among policy-makers who favour market distribution, partly because others are doing it. Social protection in the form of cash, The Economist argues, tends to be favoured because it is relatively easy to distribute – and even then, there are practical obstacles which mean it is beyond the capacity of poorer countries to do it for the whole population.5 Ultimately, much of the development is attributable to convention and expectation, not to any disciplined analysis of priorities. The fifth question is whether salus populi could be said to be the ‘highest’ law, or in any sense ‘supreme’. There is an element of hyperbole here. There are good and sufficient reasons for doing things for the welfare of the people, but there are all kinds of reason why governments might want to do something else instead. There can be conflicts between the government’s perceptions of people’s interests, and their choices. Governments may think they should be doing, not what is good for people, but what is right. There are other principles – such as personal liberty or environmental sustainability – which may overrule the other claims of people collectively. If the rights of individuals, or human rights, are violated, there is a strong moral case for saying that those rights should trump the welfare of the people. The argument that governments should work for the welfare of their peoples is a statement of the way things ought to be, not how they are. There are bad governments, murderous rulers, and failed states. Corruption – diverting public resources for personal gain – is still widespread, and arguably the development of welfare increases the opportunity for corrupt   The Economist, 2022, Just keep us alive, 5 February, pp 54–6.

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politicians and officers to do that. Nevertheless, there are grounds for optimism. Over the course of the last thirty years, democratic governance has grown apace, poverty has fallen, infant mortality and life expectancy have greatly improved, and increasing numbers of states offer a degree of welfare provision for their citizens. The process has been set back by the recent pandemic, but the direction of travel is clear. In global terms, the outcomes are seen in human development (especially for women), better health and higher incomes.

Positive welfare I have largely focused, in this book, on things that states see as part of their role, and that they actually do: economic policy, social welfare services, and policies for society – along with a number of areas of activity that they play a part in, and for which they have to negotiate a role with non-state actors. That has led me to emphasise certain fields of activity, notably health, education and cash benefits, which have grown as part of the core activities of governments in every part of the world. At the same time, however, I have pointed to other fields of activity – such as housing policy, social care or water supplies – which are not consistently treated as a governmental responsibility, but for which a strong case could also be made. Beyond that, there are good arguments for the development of state activity in other fields, such as nutrition or energy supply, which have rarely commanded the same level of attention or been responded to with the same extensive provision that characterises other areas. The neoliberal position depends on the belief that rules which allow people to pursue their own welfare are more effective than anything governments can come up with. The discussion of the responsibilities of government may begin with procedural issues – that reflects the nature of government as a process and a set of institutions – but it rarely finishes there. The attempt to confine the role of government only to procedural rules falls flat; it is simply not possible to develop effective rules about personal security or economic processes without introducing practical institutional arrangements to enforce them.6 I think there is something else to be said about the neoliberal argument, and especially its libertarian variant: it misunderstands, and misrepresents, the role that governments have come to play. The argument, that defence and policing are central, has simply lost sight of what is happening all around us. The responsibilities of a state – any state, anywhere – include provision for health and education. (I cannot add ‘pensions’ to that agenda just yet, because there are some states which have misguidedly removed themselves from the responsibility of providing  R Plant, 2009, The neo-liberal state, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch 13.

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pensions, but come back in twenty years and we can review the situation.) Nozick invites us to think of the minimal state as an inspiring idea.7 To my mind, it is a proposal to make all our lives worse. Government is a major contributor to the quality of our lives, and we would all be poorer without it. That brings me round to the last of the questions raised at the outset of this book: how governments can do things better. In so far as the question is a normative one, much depends on the values and perspectives which inform it. The arguments for extending the scope of positive welfare – in the sense of the term used by Humboldt,8 and discussed in Chapter 1 – are powerful. Some are simply humanitarian: people have needs, and governments are among the bodies with the greatest capacity and potential to respond to them. Some are moral: the guidance offered by most major religions, and by the moral codes advocated by philosophers – utilitarians, Kantians and contractarians – all argue for charity and shared responsibility. Some are mutualist: the ideas of solidarity and mutual aid are soundly based in the understanding that people can achieve more through cooperative action than they can individually. Some are political – the approaches favoured by social democrats, liberals and communitarians all point to ways in which governments can legitimately act in support of economic and social relationships. And some of the arguments, though one would hardly know it from the blustering of free-market think-tanks, are economic: economic development increases human capabilities, and economic, social and human development go hand in hand.9 Development has its critics,10 but in so far as well-being can be secured through greater development, it should not be surprising that just about every functioning state claims to be doing it. It is not coincidence that richer countries generally have better social provision than poorer countries; that is much of the point of being richer. If, on the other hand, the issue is about what governments can do more effectively to improve welfare, there is not one set of answers, but many. The welfare state, I have argued, is a principle of action, rather than a model; the aim is, and will always be, gradually to extend and expand the range of activities being undertaken in order to make conditions – the ‘commodity of living’ – better. I cannot predict with any confidence the shape of future policy, or new directions that governments might take. There are of course some plausible contenders. The process of mass vaccination demanded in the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a more universal extension of health  R Nozick, 1974, Anarchy, state and utopia, New York: Basic Books.   W von Humboldt, 1854, The sphere and duties of government, Carmel: Liberty Fund. 9   See P Spicker, 2017, Arguments for welfare, London: Rowman & Littlefield. 10   For example, A Escobar, 1995, Encountering development, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 7 8

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care coverage; there has been a flurry of schemes to provide energy with low carbon emissions; China’s ‘belt and road’ project has prompted major infrastructure development in nearly 70 countries; and the Sustainable Development Goals mark a general commitment to improve welfare across a wide range of fields. At the same time, there are other issues screaming out to be addressed, but where initiatives are patchy and measures seem to be beyond the capacity of governments to manage. It is nearly fifty years since Henry Kissinger predicted the end of world hunger within a decade.11 Progress on land use and housing policy has been desultory. Nearly 900 million people still rely on open defecation.12 The extraordinary growth of social security is an illustration of how rapidly the role of the state might be adapted to meet needs. It is true enough that most contemporary governments depend heavily on precedent and imitation – expanding the extent of the things that they are already doing, or borrowing ideas from the things that other governments do. However, it is difficult even to guess what might be true in ten or twenty years’ time.

Overcoming the constraints Governments are severely constrained in what they can do. Some of those constraints reflect the limitations of government, and the rules they impose on themselves. Some reflect the position of government in relation to the society where they operate. Every government, without exception, assumes its role in the midst of a complex set of rules and relationships. When one comes to look at the position of specific countries, the situation can seem even more restrictive. Some countries are poor. That does not just mean that there are a lot of poor people there, though that will usually be true, too; it means that the country lacks the collective capacity and resources to avoid the consequences of poverty for its citizens. The infrastructure, the facilities and the services which a poor nation can draw on are not going to lend themselves to improving the position of their people. Nevertheless, in recent years there have been major improvements in the lives of many people in poor countries. A simple example gives a flavour of what is happening: the remarkable improvement in infant mortality. In the course of the last thirty years, infant mortality in the least developed   The Economist, 2009, How to feed the world, 21 November.   World Health Organization, 2015, Global Health Observatory, https://www.who.int/ data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/4823, last accessed 16 March 2022; but see J Clark, 2014, Why has Bangladesh had such success in improving sanitation, but not India?, British Medical Journal Opinon, 23  September, https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2014/09/23/ jocalyn-clark-why-has-bangladesh-had-such-success-in-improving-sanitation-but-notneighboring-india/, last accessed 16 March 2022.

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countries has fallen by more than half.13 Figures for infant mortality, like many other statistics concerned with poor countries, are imperfect – the best estimates have to be moderated by expert advisers – but they are still more reliable than many other indicators. They offer some insight, not only into the position of children, but into the health of their mothers, and probably of the other adults around them. There may be some critics who suppose that if more children survive, the world is going to be more overpopulated. The opposite is the case. Whether or not children survive is the single most important predictor of fertility – how many children each woman is likely to have. The contribution that governments have made is perhaps less straightforward. Part is attributable to improved health services, and greater priority devoted to maternal health. Part has been more general measures in public health: Bangladesh, one of the most successful governments in reducing infant mortality, has also largely eliminated open defecation. Part – an important part – has been the extension of female education: 80 per cent of girls in the least developed countries now receive primary education. That has a double effect on fertility: it means both that girls can receive information, and that they have opportunities for education or work which will lead to them delaying childbirth. Across the developing world, governments have been attempting to improve things for their populations. Much of the effort has gone into encouraging economic growth, which is a mixed blessing: it generally improves income, but it also changes social relationships, and there are losers as well as gainers. Two other forms of action have been notably beneficial. One is the growth of democratic practice and political engagement, which helps to empower people who are disadvantaged. The other, which may arguably be connected, is the growth of social protection, and in particular the increasing use of cash transfers, conditional or not, to improve the living conditions of the poorest people. Richer countries seem to have much better prospects of bringing about changes, but even in the best-resourced, most capable governments, there may be problems – not just the core problems considered so far, but a range of practical problems in implementation, administration and service delivery. There is commonly a sense of unease, and sometimes outrage, that poverty can persist in wealthy countries. Sometimes the anger is directed at the poor themselves: if they have failed to take advantage of the facilities that are there, it must be their fault.14 But provision for social security is littered with examples of poorly thought-out policies, displaying a series of common  UNICEF, 2021, State of the world’s children 2021, New York: UNICEF.  C Murray, 1984, Losing ground, New York: Basic Books; L Mead, 1986, Beyond entitlement, New York: Free Press. 13 14

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vices: a misunderstanding of the complexity of the circumstances that the policies were dealing with, processes that require more information than claimants can provide or administrators can handle, and complexity arising from the proliferation of rules and conditions that decision-makers impose. Information technology has not made the situation better – if anything, it has reinforced the misplaced over-confidence that blights policy-making in this field. Benefits that rely on income-testing face the general problem that it calls for information to be held about the composition and relationships of whole households, that incomes and entitlements fluctuate rapidly, that the factors shift and change in ways that neither the agency nor the claimants can control. There are simply too many moving parts. Developed economies, like the less developed ones, have often focused on economic growth as the panacea for the problems of poverty. The policies that have been more consistently effective in developed economies have often been the same as in developing countries – public health, social protection and political engagement – but the greater capacity of governments increases the range of options. One option is social inclusion – often interpreted as the inclusion of individuals, but just as likely to imply the inclusion of marginal or excluded communities. In developed societies, the norm is for people to be interdependent, and integration into social networks is essential. The other main option is to make services more universal – a process which implies that goods and services will be to some degree decommodified, and that the role of markets and private provision will be reduced. Universal education is widespread; the decommodification of key infrastructure, such as roads and water supplies, is well advanced; the principles of universal health care are widely accepted. The extension of such responsibilities has been an integral part of economic and social development, and more governments will follow.

The responsibilities of government I set out to answer three closely related questions at the beginning of this book. What responsibilities do governments have towards their populations? What ought they do, and what not? How can they do things better? I do not claim to have precise answers, but I think there is enough here to say something about each. First, governments have a wide range of responsibilities, and act in several fields in relation to the economy and society. In some cases, the responsibility of the government will be limited by the scope of their constitutional authority or convention, but it is misleading to think of the responsibilities of the state as being in some sense external or an interference with the natural order of either a society or an economy. State action is integral to contemporary life. 150

The duties of a government

Second, governments have a general moral duty to work for the benefit of their populations. Most countries in the world either accept that principle explicitly, or behave as if they accept it. However, the general duty is subject to some qualifications. Governments do not have either the authority or the capacity to do whatever they think fit. Their role has to be negotiated with a range of actors, some of whom will be within the society they serve, some who may be beyond it. The third question, how government might do things better, is both normative and practical. The good state is not a minimal one, but nor is it unfettered. A well-governed state is accountable, which means that its actions should be open to scrutiny. It is makes little sense to claim that there is any self-evident limit on the sphere of activity. A government – any government – should be responsive to changing circumstances and demands, which means it must itself be capable of change, and that its policies must be. And because the powers that a government wields can be abused, they have to be subject to limits, which calls for the rule of law. These conditions may not be sufficient, but they are necessary. There is no model of a perfect society here: promising everyone a future with peace, justice and enough to eat has proved to be one of the surest ways of finishing with the opposite. Edmund Burke rejected the possibility of change based on abstract principles, because real life was much too complex for such principles to be applied. There is no single policy, no simple formula, that will make government better. He argued, rather, for gradual, pragmatic change.15 From a different perspective, Crosland argued that we need to follow a guiding set of morals, trying to ensure that society became progressively more equal. However, every change we make would mean that we were dealing with different conditions from the ones we began with; it was impossible to make changes according to a long-term plan and hope to achieve the original vision. The actions of government are justified by what they do at each and every stage, not by a distant or remote Utopia.16 These approaches may seem to represent two polar opposites – conservative pragmatism on one hand, socialist universalism on the other – but there is little in practical politics that separates them. Both outline a method of progressive improvement, and either is consistent with principles of good governance and moral action. The way to make the world better is to make with every step taken something better than it was before, and to keep doing that.

 E  Burke, 1790, Reflections on the revolution in France, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, (1959) p 209. 16  C A Crosland, 1956, The future of socialism, London: Jonathan Cape, p 216. 15

151

Index of subjects A

D

accountability 22, 23, 25, 26–7, 28, 40, 51, 114, 121, 144 anarchism 71, 72

decommodification 36, 93, 150 defence 3, 4, 92, 127, 146 democracy 26, 51, 76, 80, 99, 105, 111, 114, 120–4, 146 developing countries 45, 47, 57, 64, 95, 147, 148- 9, 150 disaster relief 5, 8, 59, 122 discretion 25–6, 27, 50

B business 34–5, 45, 49–51, 52, 99, 133

C capitalism 36, 122, 139 cash benefits 6, 8, 9, 35, 36–7, 53, 57, 73, 77, 89, 90, 93, 95, 98, 108, 110, 111, 114–5, 124, 137–8, 145, 146, 148, 149 pensions 9, 34, 36, 38, 46, 49, 50, 51, 73, 102, 107, 109, 110, 114, 115, 132, 146, 147 child protection 38–9, 50, 92–93, 108 citizens 26, 38, 58, 63, 70, 81, 98, 102, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 129, 131, 135, 139, 140, 146, 148 citizenship 59, 76, 77, 102, 104, 107, 118–120, 125, 128 civil society 22, 43–53, 69, 78, 139, 144 clientelism 51, 100, 113–4, 115, 126, 138, 145 coercion 18, 19, 45–6, 60, 79, 82, 132 collective action 19, 34, 44, 73, 74, 91, 120 common good 51, 91, 92, 99, 120, 144, 145 communitarianism 72, 76–8, 82, 116, 129 comparative social policy 8, 12–4, 110, 116–117, 125–6, 141–2 consequentialism 82, 83 constitutional law 17, 22, 23, 25, 28, 69–70, 122, 129, 144, 150 convergence 110 corporatism 36, 47, 117 corruption 23, 27–8, 51, 145–146 courts of law 17, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 50, 63, 105 cultural policy 43, 71, 99, 102, 105, 122, 136

E economic development 56–7, 64, 86, 90, 91–92, 101, 117, 147 economic growth 86–87, 108, 132–133, 149–50 economic policy 30–5, 39, 41, 50, 109, 146 education 6, 8, 35, 36, 47, 64, 72, 73, 90, 99, 106, 108, 110, 124, 129, 131, 133, 146 effectiveness 40, 52 efficiency 39, 51, 52, 87 elites 100 employment 8, 31, 34, 101, 108, 109, 114 environmental policy 43, 61, 71 equality 75, 118, 123, 127, 128–34, 134, 136, 137, 140 exclusion 14, 85, 89, 90, 101, 102–105 see inclusion

F family policy 18, 19, 37, 108, 132 federalism 20, 21, 23, 24, 41, 63, 70 functionalism 77, 110, 111

G gender 40, 129–130, 137 see women, position of governance 20–9, 54, 62–5, 74, 78, 122, 123, 151

152

Index of subjects

K

government 15, 17–29, 42, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 78, 80, 81, 92, 94, 99, 147 executive agencies 7, 17, 24, 25, 26, 28 institutions 1, 7, 8, 24, 28, 121 powers 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 28, 29, 43, 69, 73, 78, 81, 121 responsibility for welfare 2, 5, 6, 8, 14, 49, 74, 97, 99, 105, 129, 130, 139, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148 role 2, 3, 7, 14, 19, 31, 32, 38, 44, 45, 46, 69, 72, 76, 78, 80, 98, 114, 121, 123, 127, 130, 137, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150 government failure 39–41

Keynesianism 31–3

L laissez-faire 6, 72, 79, 80 law 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 38, 44, 58, 63, 81, 82, 98, 99, 105, 121, 122, 123, 130, 131, 143 international law 7, 57 see rule of law leadership 24, 25 legitimacy 3–4, 19, 20–23, 39, 40, 55, 60, 69–82, 109, 114, 121, 122, 129, 143–144 liberalism 70, 72- 74 libertarianism 34, 71, 72 liberty 2, 3, 5, 35, 38, 50, 72, 73, 75, 79, 80, 81, 84, 86, 120, 122, 123, 129, 130, 134, 144, 145

H health care 8, 35, 36, 47, 49, 52, 71, 73, 77, 85, 90, 94, 109, 118, 123, 132, 133, 140, 146, 148, 150 housing policy 93–6, 146, 148 human rights 14, 21, 38, 58, 63, 72, 76, 77, 104, 115, 119, 122, 129, 145 hunger 119, 120, 123, 146, 148

M markets 39, 50, 57, 64, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 94, 95, 98, 106, 139, 150 Marxism 39, 71, 72, 75, 117 methodology 12–4 monetarism 32–4 multi-level governance 20, 24, 41, 42 multi-national corporations 61, 144 mutual aid 19, 36, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 74, 75, 102, 115, 132, 147

I idealism 74–5 implementation 28, 40, 41, 149 inclusion 104–5, 116, 140, 150 see exclusion individualism 44, 72–3, 79–80, 83–5, 86, 129 possessive individualism 79, 129 inequality 77, 87, 129, 130, 134, 136, 137 see equality; racial inequality; women, position of institutional welfare 36, 107–9 international aid 59, 60 international organisations 25, 54, 57, 59, 62, 64 international relations 54–65 international trade 20, 30, 31, 55, 56, 57, 64

N nation 24, 76, 89, 98, 99, 104, 115, 148 nation state 7, 55, 98–99 104 national income 32, 35, 49, 86 needs 52, 53, 80, 88- 89, 111, 119, 124, 127, 130, 132, 147, 148 neoliberalism 2, 39, 70, 72, 74, 78–81, 92, 94, 106, 122, 127, 129, 132, 146 non-citizens 58, 59, 60, 61, 103, 118, 135, 140, 145

P particular obligations 77, 82, 114 particularism 76–7, 82, 125–6 patrimonialism 17, 24, 100 people, the 2, 3, 77, 83, 97–102, 116, 120–4, 143, 145

J judiciary see courts of law

153

States and Welfare States socialism 72, 74–76, 151 society 18, 22, 37–39, 41, 44, 45, 52, 74–6, 77–8, 79–81, 88, 90, 92, 97–98, 99, 105, 115–116, 121, 124, 127–128136, 137, 139, 143, 144, 148, 150 see civil society solidarity 30, 48, 49, 73, 75, 77, 98, 104, 105, 115–8, 124–5, 145, 147, 150 bounded solidarity 102, 104 sovereignty 2, 7, 20–2, 23, 24, 33, 55, 56, 69, 120, 143 state intervention 19, 33, 80, 98, 132 state, the 3–12, 17–23, 24, 43, 52, 58, 120 territorial responsibilities 21, 22, 54, 58, 61, 98 subsidiarity 77 Sustainable Development Goals 40, 65

physical force 3, 4, 60, 80 see coercion political community 7, 24, 99, 115, 128, 131 positive welfare 5, 9–10, 146, 147 poverty 64, 89, 90, 93, 94, 109, 116, 124, 129, 146, 148, 149, 150 power 2, 3, 7, 23, 27, 38, 50, 55, 81, 114, 116, 134, 137 private sector 31, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 80, 110 see business property 2, 18, 38, 79, 81, 82, 85, 94, 95, 115, 127, 129, 132 public expenditure 8, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 60 public policy 28, 43, 134, 137, 146 public services 28, 29, 35, 36, 51, 52, 118, 122

R racial inequality 103, 128, 129, 130, 136 redistribution 34, 35, 48, 87, 131–134, 136 regulation 18, 27, 30, 38, 61, 63 residual welfare 53, 105–7, 109 rights 7, 18, 23, 26, 57, 59, 72, 77, 91, 94, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 114, 118, 119, 121, 122, 128, 129, 134, 136, 144, 145 particular rights 36, 77, 125 see human rights rule of law 22, 23, 24, 26, 22–7, 69, 70, 120, 151

T

S

V

salus populi suprema lex 2, 67, 84, 143–6 social contract 2, 114, 122 social democracy 72, 74–6 social justice 127, 134–138 social policy 8, 35–9, 41, 45, 74, 78, 94, 104, 105, 109–12, 115, 116, 146 policies for society 8, 37–9, 146 service delivery 25, 41, 52, 110, 131, 149 social protection 9–11, 36–7, 73, 90, 92–3, 100–101, 102, 104, 107, 124, 145 social security see cash benefits social welfare services 5, 6, 8, 35–7, 37, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 70, 92, 93, 100, 106, 108, 110, 122, 146

voluntary sector 26, 36, 45, 47 voting 26, 79, 111, 114, 121, 122, 124

targeting 37, 101,102, 107,133 taxation 30, 32, 33, 50, 58, 59, 79, 110, 133 transfer payments 34 transport policy 31, 34, 43, 49, 50, 71, 132

U universalism 76, 82, 104, 107, 116, 135, 138, 151 universality 19, 36, 62, 107, 133, 150 utopianism 74, 75, 128, 151

W welfare 35, 49, 82, 83–96, 124, 140, 144, 146, 147 well-being 83, 86, 89, 93, 128, 132 welfare chauvinism 103 welfare pluralism 45, 51–3, 106, 108, 139 welfare state 1, 5, 45, 107, 108, 116, 125, 126, 127, 138–142, 145, 147 women, position of 18, 82, 116, 128, 129, 130, 137, 146, 149 see gender

154

Index of names A Abbt M 112 Abel-Smith B 109 Aristotle 135 Arrow K 91 Asian Development Bank 93 Aspalter C 12, 126, 141 Austin J 20, 21 Australian Aid 102

B Bacon R 34 Baker S 25 Baldwin P 19, 73, 117 Bambra C 141 Banerji A 41 Banting K 104, 115 Barker E 21, 97 Barker E 98 Barlow J 95 Barrientos A 8, 141 Bass B 25 Baumgartner F 112 Bayley M 53 BBC 122 Begum N 25 Béland D 104, 140 Benish A 50 Benn S 19, 23 Bevan A 19 Beveridge W 73 Bevir, M 13 Bluntschli J 7, 28 Bolderson H 12, 37, 141 Bottomore T 100 Boulding K 105 Bourgeois L 116 Bradshaw J 90 Breunig C 112 Briggs A 140 Brodman J 27, 45

Burke E 70, 78, 151 Butchard P 56

Duncan S 95 Duranton G 101 Dworkin R 85, 137

C Cain T 135 Careja R 103 Carocci G 71 Cass B 141 Castles F 110 Centre for Social Justice 135 Chambers R 14, 89 Chick N 25 Churchill W 73 Cicero 143 Clark J 148 Clasen J 19, 48 Clift C 63 Cohen J 120, 122 Cohn G 138 Cole I 94 Collier P 28 Commission of the European Communities 116 Cretney M 102 Crosland C A R 74, 128, 130, 133, 151

D Daniels N 135 Davies R 90 Davis K 25 Day D 25 Dean H 119 Deutsche 70 Dollar D 87 Dorlach T 111 Doyle I 88 Drèze J 91, 123 Drogus C 4 Duflo E 41

155

E Economist 9, 37, 38, 65, 145, 148 Eibl F 82, 99, 100, 109 Eltis W 34 Elton, G 6 Engels F 75 Engels F 39 Escobar A 147 Esping-Andersen G 8, 36, 117, 126 Esquivel V 125 Eurostat 94

F Ferrara M 118 Filmer D 87 Finer H 80 Finer S 109 Finn A 135 Ford R 103 Foucault M 38, 55 Fraser N 136 Freeland J 141 Friedman J 87 Friedman M 32, 79, 80, 84 Friedman R 79, 84 Fung A 120 Furbey R 94

G Gal J 99 Garfinkel I 125 Giddens A 5 Glass B 18 Glinkski S 4 Globerman S 33 Gonzales de Reufels 111

States and Welfare States Goodin, R 14 Gordon D 90 Gore C 64 Gough I 88, 100, 126 Greenhill R 27, 60 Green-Pedersen C 112 Griffiths R 53 Grimm D 70 Grint K 25 Gronn P 25 Guest C 106 Gunn L 30

H Haber H 50 Habermas J 120 Hafford T 25 Ha-Joon Chang 33, 40, 57 Hallerod B 90 Halper T 141 Hameiri S 63 Harbitz M 38 Harris E 103 Hart H 17, 21 Hayek F 32, 35, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 106, 127, 134 He A 101 Heath J 25, 26, 28 Heclo H 91 Hicks N 86 Hilgers T 100 Hobbes T 2, 143 Hoekstra J 95 Hogwood B 30 Hood C 40 Howard C 140 Hu Min 122 Huang G 101 Humboldt W von 4, 5, 50, 80, 147 Hussman R 27

I Ilgen T 21 ILO (International Labour Organization) 9, 36, 37, 41, 51, 58, 92, 107, 108

IMF (International Monetary Fund) 64 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 60, 113

J Jasay A de 73 Jawad R 101 John P 109 Jones B 112 Jones C 110 Jones L 63 Jordan B 98, 103, 120

K Kandpal E 87 Keller S 100 Kelsen H 21 Keynes J M 32 Kidd S 102 Klass G 117 Klitgaard R 28 Kohn M 75, 116 Kraay A 87 Krogmann D 62 Kumar R 4 Kuyper A 78 Kymlicka W 104, 115

L Lambie-Mumford H 120 Lansley S 90 Laroque P 116 Larsson D 90 Le Grand J 40, 134 Lebeauz C 126 Lecours A 104 Lee J 100 Leibfried S 118 Leisering L 13, 109, 119, 124, 140, 141 Lenin V 71, 75 Leonard K 25 Lerous P 77 Letchfield K 25 Levi-Faur D 50

156

Levy D 21 Li W 51 Li Z 101 Limpert E 112 Lindstaedt N 4 Lipsky M 26 Lloyd-George D 73 Locke J 2, 143, 144 Loughlin M 21 Lucas F 135

M Mabbett D 12, 37, 141 Machiavelli N 113 MacIntyre A 76 Mack J 90 Macpherson C 79 Madison J 121 Marshall A 31 Marshall P 78 Marshall T 118, 123, 139 Martens K 135 Martens K 62 Martin J 141 Marx K 75 Mazzucato M 31, 33 McLanahan S 125 Mead L 149 Melhem S 38 Melish T 115 Miliband R 71 Mill J S 72, 73 Miller D 136 Mishra R 126 Mitchell D 90 Morgan J 90 Morgan K 140 Morissens A 103 Morris W 75 Mortenssen P 112 Mouffe C 99 Mudde C 99 Murray C 149

N Nakray K 101 Narayan D 14, 89

Index of names Nicolas J 135 Niemann D 62 Nolf, J 6 Nozick R 2, 79, 80 Nozick, R 80, 127, 147 Nullmeier F 111 Nussbaum M 88 Nuytemans M 112 Nycander G 102

O Oakeshott M 22, 99 Obinger H 111 Offe C 36 Offer J 74 Onishi J 87 Ortiz I 92 Orvis S 4 Owen R 74

Rawls J 2, 118, 135 Razavi S 125 Reagan R 80 Renaud H 77 République de France 116 Rhodes, R 13 Ricardo D 31, 56 Richardson J 124 Riddell R 59 Ritakaillio V 90 Robeyns I 83 Robinson D 116 Robson, W 52 Rosenhaft E 114 Rosenvallon P 5 Rossi A 63 Rothbard M 34, 71, 79 Rousseau J-J 2, 120 Russell B 45 Rynne M 58

P Palier B 114 Parfit D 91 Party of European Socialists 75 Pawson R 41 Peck J 111 Perlman J 95 Peters R 19, 23 Petesch P 14, 89 Pickett K 134 Pierson C 4, 54 Plant R 32, 81, 134, 146 Plato 135 Pope John Paul II 77 Pope Pius XI 77 Popper K 44 Posthuma A 63 Poulantzas N 71 Pound R 24 Powell F 44 Powell M 8, 141 Pressman J 41

R Radelet S 110 Rae D 130, 137

S Sabatier P 111 Sabine G 3, 7, 24 Sahlins M 60 Sainsbury D 103 Salas E 25 Salter, F 6 Sandoz E 84 Saunders P 90 Savedoff W 27 Schumpeter J 121 Seldon A 106 Sen A 28, 88, 91, 122, 123 Shafik M 93 Shah M 14, 89 Sheppard M 39 Siedentop L 18, 20, 129 Silvasti T 120 Smith A 2, 31, 56 Smith G 26 Smith W 90 Sommerville J 143 Sorel G 20 Spencer H 7, 80, 106 Spicker P 6, 13, 25, 36, 73, 75, 89, 99, 124, 147

157

Spinoza B 84 Staab S 125 Stahel W 112 Stilz A 55 Stolee M 18 Streeten P 86 Sumption J 86 Sunstein C 73 Swedish Social Democratic Party 76 Sylvan R 71 Sznaider N 21

T Tajmazinani A 6 Tawney R 75, 130, 133 Thaler R 73 Theodore N 111 Thoenes P 139 Tiemann S 116 Tilley N 41 Titmuss R 35, 52, 117, 126 Townsend P 90 Tran A 102 Turner R 70, 81

U UK Department for International Development 144 UN-Habitat 94 UNICEF (United Nations Childrens Fund) 36, 120, 149 United Nations 9, 14, 41, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 104, 129, 135 United Nations Development Programme 130, 137 US Social Security Agency 115

V Vallance E 143 Venables A 101

States and Welfare States Viewbrock E 19, 48 Vives J-L 27, 45 von Mises L 98

W Wakeley P 95 Waldgrave S 112 Walzer M 127 Watkins K 57 Watt P 27, 60

Weber M 3, 18 Wheare K 63 Wildavsky A 41 Wilensky H 110, 126 Wilkinson R 134 Winston C 40 Wolf C 40 Wood G 100, 126 World Bank 31, 38, 63, 64, 90, 93, 95, 101

158

World Health Organization 148 World Justice Project 23 Worldometer 85 Wright Mills C 100

Y Yang B 51 Yeates N 54 Yukl G 25

“Spicker has written a scholarly and engaging account of the largely neglected but important exploration of political theory to social policy, which will provide valuable reading for all students of social policy.” Martin Powell, University of Birmingham Most governments in the world – including many that are autocratic or authoritarian – have taken responsibility for social policy and elected to develop services in health, education and social security. This book explores the role of government and the state in the contemporary world and, considering a range of theories and evidence, discusses views about government responsibility for social welfare services. Applying political theory to social policy, this book seeks to address a set of key questions: what responsibilities do governments have towards their populations? What ought they do and what not? How can they do things better? Paul Spicker is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Robert Gordon University.

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