Discipline, debt and coercive commodification:Post-crisis neoliberalism and the welfare state in Ireland, the UK and the USA

Ireland, the UK and the USA are heterogeneous examples of liberal worlds of welfare capitalism yet all three countries were deeply implicated in the 2008 global financial crisis. Examining these three countries together provides the opportunity to further develop an international comparative political economy of instability in the context of the globalised and financialised dimensions of Anglo-liberal capitalism and disciplinary governance. Our analysis is guided by the concept of disciplinary neoliberalism (Gill, 1995) through which we explore: (i) the dynamics that have shaped the impacts of and responses to the Great Recession; (ii) the ways in which state-market relations, shaped by differentiated accommodations to market imperative or market discipline, have been used as disciplinary tools and how these have interacted with existing social divisions and iii) the implications for shaping conditions for resistance. We suggest that the neoliberal pathways of each country, whilst not uniform, mark a ‘step-change’ and acceleration in the operation of disciplinary neoliberalism, and is particularly evident in what we identify as the coercive commodification of social policy

President Obama, poverty, and the scope and limits of social policy change

There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and asks how they fit with models of policy change. The paper illustrates that the Obama administration did adopt an array of anti-poverty measures in the stimulus bill, but these built on existing programmes rather than create new ones and much of the effort was stymied by institutional obstacles. The expansion of the Medicaid program, which was part of the ACA, was also muted by institutional opposition, but it was a more path breaking reform than is often appreciated

Assessing policy transfer from the United States to the British National Health Service

Much has been written about the claim that the British National Health Service (NHS) is becoming more like the US health care system, something a number of commentators view as a form of “Americanization”. Yet, that term is imprecise and unhelpful for rigorous analysis of what has, and has not, happened. This paper uses the lens of policy transfer to explore this issue, which provides a sharper insight into policy development. The paper examines the relevance of the Dolowitz and Marsh framework for the study of policy transfer from the US to the British NHS from 1979 onwards. In terms of the framework’s main research questions, the discussion of the potential US influence on the NHS case stresses the role of policy entrepreneurs in policy transfer. In terms of policy success, however, commentators suggest a mix of uninformed, incomplete, or inappropriate transfer. We conclude that Dolowitz and Marsh do provide a useful framework that asks relevant questions about policy transfer, which provides a more nuanced account of policy transfer from the US to the NHS than the crude term “Americanization”

Social policy responses to COVID-19 in Canada and the United States: Explaining policy variations between two liberal welfare state regimes

Canada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare-state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian governments in response to COVID-19. In general, we show that Canadian responses were both more rapid and comprehensive than those of the United States. This variation, we argue, can be explained by analysing the divergent political institutions, pre-existing policy legacies, and variations in cross-partisan consensus, which have all shaped national decision-making in the middle of the crisis

Reassessing Policy Drift: Social Policy Change in the United States

As formulated by Jacob Hacker, the concept of policy drift turned institutional theories of public policy on their heads by suggesting that consequential policy changes often happen in the absence of reform. Especially prevalent in times of political gridlock or stasis, policy drift is a useful concept for capturing how inaction can gradually diminish the effectiveness of social programmes over time. By highlighting cases of difficult-to-see policy inaction, however, Hacker's concept sets a high bar for empirical scholarship. In this article, we suggest that analyzing policy drift requires attention to comparative policy outcomes, the implementation of reforms intended to alleviate drift, and the time frame of the study. With these insights in mind, we analyze the impact of drift on US retirement security and health care coverage to reflect policy changes that have occurred since Hacker's original analysis was published

POLICY FOR THE'DESERVING,'BUT POLITICALLY WEAK: THE 1996 WELFARE REFORM ACT AND BATTERED WOMEN

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law #104-193) is perhaps the most visible national legislation since the sweeping Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. For social policy so well entrenched into the American social fabric, the rapidity with which reforms swept through the welfare system was unprecedented and confound conventional theoretical pronouncements on bureaucracy and policy change. The swiftness of reform, and the political rhetoric that surrounded the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, have prompted criticism that reformers responded more to the social construction of welfare recipients than they did to the dictates of sound public policy (Magusson and Dunham, 1996). This article discusses the ramifications of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act for battered women and concludes that battered women's social construction as deserving of public assistance, but politically weak, precipitated welfare reform policy, targeted to battered women, that has been largely rhetorical rather than substantive. Copyright 2001 by The Policy Studies Organization.