Why Solidarity Matters: The Political Strategy of Welfare Design

Abstract

Reporting on our recent book, The Solidarity Society, this article explores the way in which the design of welfare programmes interacts with and shapes the underlying quality of social relations between members of society—and, through this, public attitudes to welfare. Given that sustaining generous welfare over long timescales requires the support of electorates, this ‘relational’ dimension of welfare policy is crucial for the long‐term strategy of tackling poverty and inequality. The article looks in particular at the ‘welfare dilemmas’ that can arise from tensions between targeting and universalism and between need and entitlement, where the distributional and relational elements of welfare policy work against one another. We conclude that entrenching a generous welfare settlement will require strong elements of both universalism and reciprocity in the design of welfare.

Theoretical and practical challenges of proportionate universalism: a review

“…From this perspective, the results of our review show an entirely different reality: except for parenting interventions, the majority of papers directly referring to PU described interventions targeting downstream determinants to increase access to prevention or care ( 32 , 35 , 36 , 39 ).…”

“…Many scholars analysed advantages and disadvantages of targeting and universalism ( 15 – 17 , 20 – 30 ). Despite a seemingly cost-effective principle, targeting leads to many issues: stigmatisation, increased social distance between recipients and non-recipients, administrative cost for means-testing, and also misclassifications, under-coverages and leakages ( 20 , 31 , 32 ). On their side, advocates of targeting argued that universal approaches increase inequalities, and involve significant costs for society.…”

‘It's the tip of the iceberg’: the hidden tensions between theory, policy and practice in the management of Freedom of Information in English local government bodies—evidence from a regional study

“…These authors assume an engaged, or at least would-be engaged, citizenry. We, on Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:22 22 December 2014 the other hand, argue that these processes have a performative (Law, 1994;Doolin, 2003;Horton and Gregory, 2010) quality-open, transparent government plays a role in creating engaged citizens.…”

<b>Exploring the Potential of Belgium’s Social Restaurants for Poverty Reduction</b>

“…Does the SI contribute to the empowerment (or contrary the stigmatization) or social mobility of the poor, and how? The third factor relates to the sometimes forgotten subjective conditions for poverty reduction: the need to generate the will, support and political climate to actually implement the measures that could reduce poverty (Gans, 1995;Horton, Gregory, 2010;Royce, 2015). Processes of politicization, awareness raising and collective mobilization (of the poor) are analyzed.…”