Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T18:51:36.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideology and Public Policy: Antistatism in American Welfare State Transformation

Part of: JPH 30th Anniversary Most Cited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Jill Quadagno  and
Debra Street
Jill Quadagno
Affiliation:
Florida State University State University of New York—Buffalo
Debra Street
Affiliation:
Florida State University State University of New York—Buffalo
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Henry David Thoreau's influential essay “Civil Disobedience,” published in 1849, began with a ringing declaration of opposition to government: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—‘That government is best which governs not at all.’…the character of the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.” Thoreau's statement summarizes a central thesis in political theory, what has become a historical constant in the minds of researchers seeking to explain the development and parameters of the American welfare state. This thesis is that any power given to the government is subtracted from the liberty of the governed, a concept best captured by the term “antistatism.” Thus, Lipset contends that the United States is dominated by an encompassing liberal culture that honors private property, distrusts state authority, and holds individual rights sacred. Similarly, according to Huntington, Americans live by a creed that views government as the most dangerous embodiment of power. For Morone, American government is a “polity suspicious of its own state.” Hartz, too, asserts that the master assumption is that “the power of the state must be limited.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Directions in Policy History , January 2005 , pp. 52 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

References

Notes

1. Thoreau, Henry David, The Portable Thoreau, ed. Bode, Carl (New York, 1947), 109–110Google Scholar.

2. Wills, Garry, A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (New York, 1999), 21Google Scholar.

3. Lipset, Seymour M., American Exceptionalism (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour M. and Marks, Gary, It Didn't Happen Here (New York, 1999)Google Scholar.

4. Huntington, Samuel, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 33Google Scholar.

5. Morone, James, The Democratic Wish (New York, 1990), 323Google Scholar.

6. Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955), 62Google Scholar.

7. Quadagno, Jill, “Creating a Capital Investment Welfare State: The New American Exceptionalism,” American Sociological Review 64 (02 1999): 22Google Scholar.

8. Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935 (Pittsburgh, 1986), 2Google Scholar.

9. Jacobs, Lawrence R., “Health Reform Impasse: The Politics of American Ambivalence Toward Government,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 18, no. 3 (1993): 630Google Scholar.

10. Skocpol, Theda, Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn Against Government (New York, 1996), 163–164, 71Google Scholar.

11. Gilbert, Neil, Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility (New York, 2002), 13Google Scholar; see also Street, Debra and Ginn, Jay, “The Demographic Debate: The Gendered Political Economy of Pensions,” in Women, Work, and Pensions, ed. Ginn, Jay, Street, Debra, and Arber, Sara (Buckingham, 2001)Google Scholar.

12. Esping-Andersen, Gosta, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge, 1990), 47Google Scholar.

13. Titmuss, Richard, Essays on the Welfare State (London, 1958)Google Scholar, and Social Policy (London, 1974); Wilensky, Harold L. and Lebeaux, C. N., Industrial Society and Social Welfare (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Korpi, Walter, The Democratic Class Struggle (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, 49.

14. But see Goodin, Robert, Headey, Bruce, Muffels, Ruud, and Dirven, Henk-Jan, The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar.

15. Edlund, Jon, “Trust in Government and Welfare Regimes: Attitudes to Redistribution and Financial Cheating in the USA and Norway,” European Journal of Political Research 35–33 (1999): 342Google Scholar.

16. Blekesaune, Morten and Quadagno, Jill, “Public Attitudes Toward Welfare State Policies: A Comparative Analysis of 24 Nations,” European Sociological Review 19, no. 5 (12 2003): 415–427Google Scholar.

17. Huber, Evelyne and Stephens, John D., “Partisan Governance, Women's Employment, and the Social Democratic Service State,” American Sociological Review 65 (2000): 326Google Scholar.

18. Esping-Andersen, Gosta, The Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (Oxford, 1999), 106Google Scholar.

19. Hicks, Alexander, Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism (Ithaca, 1999), 139Google Scholar.

20. Kersbergen, K., Social Capitalism (London, 1995), 111Google Scholar.

21. Light, Donald, “Comparative Models of Health Care Systems,” in The Sociology of Health and Illness, ed. Conrad, P. and Kern, R. (New York, 1994), 465Google Scholar.

22. Maarse, Hans and Paulus, Aggie, “Has Solidarity Survived? A Comparative Analysis of the Effect of Social Health Insurance Reform in Four European Countries,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 28, no. 4 (2003): 585–614Google Scholar; Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, 27.

23. Huber and Stephens, “Partisan Governance,” 326.

24. O'Connor, Julia S., Orloff, Ann Shola, and Shaver, Sheila, States, Markets, Families (Cambridge, 1999), 44Google Scholar.

25. Esping-Andersen, The Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, 75.

26. O'Connor, Orloff, and Shaver, States, Markets, Families, 44.

27. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, 26; Marmor, Theodore, Mashaw, Jerry, and Harvey, Philip, America's Misunderstood Welfare State (New York, 1990), 5Google Scholar; Gould, Stephanie and Palmer, John L., “Outcomes, Interpretations, and Policy Implications,” in The Vulnerable, ed. Palmer, John, Smeeding, Timothy, and Torrey, Barbara (Washington, D.C., 1988), 428–447Google Scholar.

28. Steinmo, Sven and Watts, Jon, “It's the Institutions, Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Insurance Always Fails in America,” Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law 20, no. 2 (1995): 330Google Scholar.

29. Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar.

30. Wilsford, David, Doctors and the State (Durham, 1991), 56Google Scholar.

31. Hacker, Jacob, “The Historical Logic of National Health Insurance: Structure and Sequence in the Development of British, Canadian, and U.S. Medical Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 12 (1998): 57–130Google Scholar; Lipset, American Exceptionalism, 6; Lipset and Marks, It Didn't Happen Here, 13.

32. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 147.

33. Hacker, “The Historical Logic of National Health Insurance, 59.

34. Quadagno, Jill, “Why the United States Has No National Health Insurance: Stakeholder Mobilization Against the Welfare State, 1945–1996,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 4/5 (2004): 815–834Google Scholar; Gordon, Colin, Dead on Arrival (Princeton, 2003), 2Google Scholar.

35. Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 2; Quadagno, Jill, One Nation, Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance (New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

36. Marshall, T. H., Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (Chicago, 1964), 82–87Google Scholar.

37. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 147.

38. Korpi, Walter, “Power, Politics, and State Autonomy in the Development of Social Citizenship: Social Rights During Sickness in Eighteen OECD Countries Since 1930,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 309–328Google Scholar; Stephens, John D., The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism (London, 1979), 2Google Scholar.

39. Sombart, Werner, Why Is There No Socialism in America? (White Plains, N.Y., [1906]1976), 22Google Scholar.

40. Klein, Jennifer, For All These Rights (Princeton, 2003), 76Google Scholar.

41. Derickson, Alan, “Health Security for All?” Journal of American History 80 (03 1994): 1345Google Scholar.

42. Stevens, Beth, “Blurring the Boundaries: How the Federal Government Has Influenced Welfare Benefits in the Private Sector,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, 1988), 125Google Scholar; see also Gottschalk, Marie, The Shadow Welfare State (Ithaca, 2000)Google Scholar.

43. Skocpol, Theda, Boomerang (New York, 1996), 78Google Scholar.

44. Quadagno, Jill, The Transformation of Old Age Security (Chicago, 1988), chap. 3Google Scholar.

45. Quadagno, “Why the United States Has No National Health Insurance.”

46. Quadagno, Jill, The Color of Welfare (New York, 1994), 8Google Scholar.

47. Alston, Lee J. and Ferrie, Joseph, Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Lieberman, Robert C., Shifting the Color Line (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar.

48. Quoted in Quadagno, Jill, Aging in Early Industrial Society (London, 1982), 115Google Scholar.

49. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 265.

50. Street, Debra, “The Politics of Pensions in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States: 1975–1995” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1996)Google Scholar.

51. Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 2.

52. Hoffman, Beatrix, The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (Chapel Hill, 2001), 26Google Scholar.

53. O'Connor, Orloff, and Shaver, States, Markets, Families, 50.

54. Quoted in Jost, Timothy, Disentitlement? (New York, 2003), 208Google Scholar.

55. Tuohy, Carolyn, Accidental Logics: The Dynamics of Change in the Health Care Arena in the United States, Britain, and Canada (New York, 1999), 26Google Scholar.

56. Taylor, Malcolm, Insuring National Health Care: The Canadian Experience (Chapel Hill, 1991), 67–75Google Scholar.

57. Taylor, Insuring National Health Care, 161–234.

58. Tuohy, Accidental Logics, 55.

59. Maioni, Antonia, Parting at the Crossroads: The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar.

60. Keen, Justin, Light, Donald, and May, Nicholas, Public-Private Relations in Health Care London: King's Fund Publishing, 2001), 115–116Google Scholar; Light, Donald, “The Practice and Ethics of Risk-Related Health Insurance,” Journal of the American Medical Association 267 (13 05 1992): 2507Google Scholar; see also Bodenheimer, Thomas, “Should We Abolish the Private Health Insurance Industry?” International Journal of Health Services 20, no. 2 (1990): 213Google Scholar.

61. Light, “Comparative Models of Health Care Systems,” 465.

62. Oberlander, Jonathan, The Political Life of Medicare (Chicago, 2003), 119–122Google Scholar.

63. Tuohy, Accidental Logics, 213.

64. Waitzkin, Howard, At the Front Lines of Medicine: How the Health Care System Alienates Doctors and Mistreats Patients … and What We Can Do About It (Oxford, 2001), 156Google Scholar.

65. Street, The Politics of Pensions.

66. Ibid.; Gilbert, Transformation of the Welfare State.

67. Oberlander, The Political Life of Medicare, 108.

68. O'Connor, Orloff, and Shaver, States, Markets, Families, 53; Ginn, Street, and Arber, eds., Women, Work, and Pensions, chaps. 1 and 13; Myles, John and Quadagno, Jill, “Political Theories of the Welfare State,” Social Service Review (03 2002): 34–35Google Scholar.

69. Ginn, Street, and Arber, Women, Work, and Pensions.

70. Gilbert, Transformation of the Welfare State, 13.

71. Thatcher observed that Progressive Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was both too progressive and insufficiently conservative.

72. O'Connor, Orloff, and Shaver, States, Markets, Families, 53.

73. Mellor, Jennifer, “Filling in the Gaps in Long-Term Care Insurance,” in Care Work: Gender, Labor, and the Welfare State, ed. Meyer, Madonna Harrington (New York, 2000), 210Google Scholar; Wiener, Joshua, “Financing Reform for Long-Term Care: Strategies for Public and Private Long-Term Care Insurance,” in From Nursing Homes to Home Care, ed. Cowart, Marie and Quadagno, Jill (New York, 1996), 116Google Scholar.

74. Garrett, Bowen and Holahan, John, “Welfare Leavers, Medicaid Coverage, and Private Health Insurance,” National Survey of America's Families, series B, no. B-13 (Washington, D.C., 2000), 3Google Scholar.

75. Swartz, Katherine and Stevenson, Betsey, “Health Insurance Coverage of People in the Ten Years Before Medicare Eligibility,” in Ensuring Health and Income Security for an Aging Workforce, ed. Budetti, Peter B., Burkhauser, Richard V., Gregory, Janice M., and Hunt, H. Allan (Kalamazoo, Mich., 2001), 16Google Scholar.

76. Gould, Stephanie and Palmer, John L., “Outcomes, Interpretations, and Policy Implications,” in The Vulnerable, ed. Palmer, John, Smeeding, Timothy, and Torrey, Barbara (Washington, D.C., 1988), 428–447Google Scholar; Cook, Fay Lomax and Barrett, Edith J., Support for the American Welfare State (New York, 1992), 102Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Mark, “Reprivatizing the Public Household? Medical Care in the Context of American Public Values,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law (2004)Google Scholar.

77. Somers, Margaret R., “What's Political or Cultural About Political Culture and the Public Sphere? Toward an Historical Sociology of Concept Formation,” Sociological Theory 13, no. 2 (1995): 123Google Scholar.

78. Edelman, Murray, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar; Kane, Anne E., “Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements: Symbolic Structures and Interpretation During the Irish Land War, 1879–1882,” Sociological Theory 15, no. 3 (1997): 249–276Google Scholar.

79. Jacobs, Lawrence R. and Shapiro, Robert, Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (Chicago, 2000), 4Google Scholar.

80. Pedriana, Nicholas and Stryker, Robin, “Political Culture Wars 1960s Style: Equal Employment Opportunity—Affirmative Action Law and the Philadelphia Plan,” American Journal of Sociology 10 (1997): 323–391Google Scholar; Kane, “Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements,” 249–76; Burstein, Paul, “Policy Domains: Organization, Culture, and Policy Outcomes,” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991): 327–350Google Scholar.