Privatizing the Polity

Holona LeAnne Ochs

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438457611
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

Research on poverty and research on governance currently exist as largely disparate literatures without a framework for building knowledge regarding how policies and practices compare as poverty alleviation strategies. In Privatizing the Polity, Holona LeAnne Ochs examines the evolution of the governance of welfare programs across the United States. Throughout the political spectrum the trend in recent decades has been towards welfare privatization, shifting the boundaries of poverty governance from public to private actors—whether they are foundations or social entrepreneurs—whose interests in poverty governance are more obscure. The analysis of more than eighteen years of data suggests that strategies of devolution and privatization make it more difficult for people to move out of poverty. At the same time the framework for understanding the governance structures, enactment practices, and social wealth leverage presented in Privatizing the Polity offers numerous opportunities for acquiring a deeper understanding of assumptions formerly taken for granted and redirecting the system to enhance poverty alleviation.

1

Framing the Welfare Policy Process

Public policy is concerned with problem definition, issue construction, agenda setting, the emergence of policy options, the actions (or inactions) of governance, and the effects and impact of such action or inaction. Welfare policy articulates values, crafts meaning, justifies political decisions, assigns or reinforces status, and may even attempt to solve social problems. The boundaries of the welfare conflict space are defined by the understandings generated through the battles over problem definition, the political negotiations over policy design and adoption, the bargaining, competition, and cooperation inherent in the implementation, and the culture and craft of enactment. The potential for learning from these conflicts is contingent upon the type of evaluation or analysis as well as the degree of opportunism.

This chapter proceeds by outlining the research defining the nature of those boundaries and the interconnected processes of welfare provision. Then, I describe a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of welfare policy that offers the potential for learning. Understanding the extent to which different policy choices provide opportunities for large numbers of people to move out of poverty by comparing how programs vary across states is a necessary but not sufficient condition for policy learning. It is essential that we also consider the nature and location of influence in order to ascertain for whom opportunities are afforded. My approach utilizes various analytical strategies to identify how opportunities can be broadly obtained and opportunism minimized. In this chapter, I also explain those analytic strategies.

Organizing the Welfare Literature throughout the Policy Process

Welfare policy as a field of study began with the definition of poverty as a social problem. Stories of welfare practices in the United States cannot be easily untangled from the Judeo-Christian traditions that defined the worldviews of the colonists and shaped the approach that the colonies took toward the welfare of the native populations. In many respects, those stories emphasize compassion, but the practices reveal patterns of compassion for those deemed worthy. In the European Christian worldview, God’s will was invoked to enrich and empower Christian followers. Consequently, Native Americans represented an opportunity to convert more souls and justify the taking of native lands in the name of God and the monarchy. Alternatively, the concepts of reciprocity and the practice of gift exchange were the central tenets of building relationships, forming alliances, addressing disparate needs, and established the welfare customs of the North American Indians. Reciprocity and gift exchange are based on the behavior of the “other” and maintain an emphasis on long-term objectives. These practices represent fundamental differences in the worldviews of the colonists and the indigenous population regarding human welfare. Attempts to enslave Native North Americans were unsuccessful, so contracts for indentured servitude, primarily performed by African slaves, convicts, paupers, and servants from the British Isles and throughout the continent of Europe, were sanctioned by colonial authorities. The contracts often provided the prospect of land ownership as an incentive at the end of the period of service, but the condition of servitude also often required conversion to Christianity and was justified as a charitable act by Christians.1

In the early colonial period in America, Christians were legally defined as worthy of the protections of the state. The word Christian in the legal code defined the rights and obligations of citizenship. The legalization of the institution of slavery in New England in 1641 shifted the legal discourse to an emphasis on “Black[ness]” identifying the subjects of private property, making slavery perpetual and inheritable in the North American colonies and subsequently the United States while retaining the proceeds of the Christian identity.2 The legacy of stories of compassion and the practices of judging the worthiness of the “other” viewed through the lens of religion and race continue to affect the character of welfare in the United States as the “problem of poverty” is constructed and reconstructed.

The development of the various stages of the American welfare system begins on a path set by the English Poor Laws.3 During the Tudor period (1485–1603), fundamentalist battles between conservative Catholics and Reformers contributed to increasing the challenges of poverty as the closing of the monasteries in the 1530s limited the help available to people living in poverty. Demographic changes, high rates of poverty, and power politics during this period also resulted in increasing migration to the American colonies by Reformers in particular. Two years prior to the end of the Tudor dynasty, the Act for the Relief of the Poor (1601), commonly referred to as the Elizabethan Poor Law, was passed by Parliament formalizing the practices of poor relief and refining the Act for the Relief of the Poor (1597). In the state-centric view, this is the origin of the legal construction of poverty as a social problem necessitating the use of governing authority.

The English system of poor relief was imported during the colonial period and has since been characterized by localism in implementation and in the moral justifications for definitions of deservingness (Handler and Hasenfeld 1991; Katz 1989; Quigley 1999), which have always included gender, race, ethnic, and religious dimensions (Gordon 2002). Participation has been marked by stigma (Handler and Hasenfeld 1991), and the welfare state federally structured by the New Deal institutionalized the race-gendered, Judeo-Christian justifications regarding who is deserving and who is undeserving (Lieberman 1998; Mettler 1998). The federal programs for the “deserving” included Social Security Old Age Insurance, Unemployment Insurance, Old Age Assistance, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled. Separate state and local aid programs were widely perceived as inferior (Heclo 1994) and targeted those who did not fit the “white male breadwinner” model. However, state and local policy choices regarding job category eligibility were often designed to exclude women and people of color (Liberman 1998; Mettler 1998).

The role of mass pressures and resistance as a factor in the expansion of welfare coverage is fairly well established by scholars using the comparative method (Fording 1997; Piven and Cloward 1971; Schram and Turbett 1983). Additionally, beneficent responses to black insurgency specifically have been contingent upon electoral access and political mobilization as well as the black share of the population (Fording 2001). In other words, when black citizens did not have adequate access to electoral institutions and strong political mobilization or where the black population represented a smaller share of the state population, increases in incarceration rates with few concessions for welfare relief were evident in response to mass insurgency.

Stories of provider corruption and claimant fraud have their roots in the patronage practices characterizing Civil War Pensions (Skocpol 1992), and using these stories as a strategy for discrediting welfare has long been a conservative strategy for dismantling the welfare state (Piven and Cloward 1971). Anti–welfare fraud campaigns were especially common and particularly effective in the South by focusing on black caseloads and calling upon the myth of black criminality and the myth of black laziness (Gustafson 2009; Jordan-Zachery 2009; Kohler-Hausmann 2007; Reese 2005; see also Mendelberg 2001; Schram, Soss, Fording 2001). Political rhetoric and mass media framed welfare politics with a black face. In the 1960s, race dominated the welfare politics conflict space, and myths of black laziness, criminality, and irresponsibility were used to recast welfare policy as the problem rather than poverty (Gilens 2000; Peffley and Hurwitz 1999). The welfare policy process—from problem definition and issue framing, policy formulation, adoption, implementation, to feedback—thus cycles around patterns of historical disadvantage.

When an issue finds a frame that situates it within the public purview, it may gain attention in a number of ways. Poverty may gain attention in the media and from the public when white males experience widespread unemployment or when a pervasive economic crisis challenges stereotypical representations of poverty.4 Furthermore, racial isolation and chronic subordination locate poverty outside of the dominant American consciousness in the absence of a focusing event that receives widespread national attention (such as a natural disaster).5 It is also the case that the episodic framing of poverty has been shown to privatize the scope of welfare conflict; while thematic framing tends to encourage social attributions to the causes of poverty.6 The process of framing poverty as a particular kind of problem is constructed within the existing policy context, and the current context framing poverty policy is one in which political opportunism and negative, stereotypical representations of people living in poverty limit participation and debate.7

The opportunistic and stereotypical framing of poverty in the current context has restricted participation and debate to the extent that neither party is aligned with the preferences of low-income constituents (Rigby and Wright 2013). People living in poverty do not appear to influence social policy, and the interests of people living in poverty are left off the active agenda when they diverge from the interests of those with higher incomes (Rigby and Wright 2013). Among elected officials, black women tend to give the most attention to the issue of poverty, and the ability of politicians concerned with poverty to influence the institutional agenda regulates poverty as a public priority.8 If poverty reaches the institutional agenda, the race-gendered representation of the policy target affects the options considered. Public attitudes toward welfare are conditioned upon the race and gender of the perceived beneficiaries,9 and media framing of “welfare queens” shifted public opinion against welfare based on false notions that undeserving women of color were the primary beneficiaries.10 Women of color are framed as undeserving and deviant, so when attempts to make poverty policy a priority are met with negative race-gendered associations, the issue of poverty is not likely to become a priority.11 In fact, race and gender have been manipulated to systematically associate public policies with “undeserving” groups in efforts to undermine or dismantle social programs.12

The race-gendered nature of welfare discourse also influences policy formulation and design.13 When poverty moves up the institutional agenda, the potential policy remedies are contingent upon the policy target.14 Those advantaged by positive social constructions and political power receive welfare benefits that tend to be oversubscribed, often unquestioned, and sometimes even not conceived of as welfare. For example, one man at a political gathering in Simpsonville, South Carolina, in 2009, yelled at Republican representative Robert Inglis, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” His misguided statement aptly characterizes the wider Tea Party resistance to perceived “government takeovers” of healthcare and student loans. The political mobilization of these widening demographics are likely to maintain the political power of both the aging and student populations, but the framing of one or the other as greedy or deviant might shift that group to contenders. Contenders in welfare policy have political power but are negatively socially constructed. Dependents, on the other hand, lack political power but are constructed as basically good people. For example, people receiving food stamps tend to lack political power as they are less likely civically engaged; while there is a stigma associated with participation in the program, participants are generally described as in need and not taking advantage. This is increasingly the case as more middle-class educated whites find themselves turning to food assistance during the long Great Recession. Alternatively, those who lack political power and are negatively constructed are regularly set up for punishing policies. Welfare reform built the mechanisms for punishment in poverty governance through the “stick and carrot” approach to behavioral management. People living in poverty who are negatively socially constructed and live in jurisdictions where their political mobilization is a potential threat to the status quo are more likely to be subject to sanctions. For example, states with large populations of people of color tended to opt for second-order devolution to manage people living in poverty at the county or regional level, and racial isolation in these states results in disparate sanctioning of people of color at that level.15

Because the wealthy are more likely to have large organizations lobbying on their behalf, they are much more likely to directly participate in the formulation of policy (Winters and Page 2009). While campaign contributions amplify the voice of the wealthy and both parties rely on affluent donors to finance their campaigns, legislative proposals and the analyses that are used to support them are most often produced by organizations controlled by the wealthy. Policy formulation, like all aspects of the policy process, is a fluid and ongoing course of negotiations that take place in multiple intergovernmental venues. Access to those conflict spaces is a fundamental aspect of “who gets what, when, and how.” These negotiations shape the consideration of policy options, the causal framework for potential policy action, and the venue in which action might be taken. Successful negotiations result in policy adoption.

The formal adoption of a policy necessitates administrative action outlining the implementation structures and procedures. Despite an “inadvertent bipartisanship” characterizing the “national consensus” to reform “the poor” and the bureaucracy, states did not take a systematic approach to the adoption of welfare reform policy choices.16 States in which blacks made up a larger percentage of the welfare caseload were significantly more likely to adopt more disciplinary program features (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a). Numerous studies indicate that state policy choices to restrict benefit levels and eligibility respond to the racial makeup of the caseload, tax revenues, overall caseloads, Republican control of the statehouse, and a more conservative citizenry (see R. Brown 1995; Hero 1998; Howard 1999; Orr 1976; Plotnick and Winters 1985; Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a; Wright 1976). Additionally, the percentage of black residents and their relative dispersion across the state were a primary factor determining whether or not states adopted second-order devolution. Although devolution may serve conservative, progressive, and/or democratic purposes in general (Freeman and Rogers 2007; Fung 2004), state decisions to localize authority in poverty governance are most likely in states in which there is a larger black population unevenly dispersed in an effort to strengthen social control (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a). State choices in the adoption of first or second-order devolution as a governing structure are politically contingent. The adoption of second-order devolution represents a conscious effort by the state to use “flexibilities” to manage the “underclass,” and racial disparities in sanctioning patterns likewise reflect local control over people of color (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a). States with higher percentages of racial minorities in the welfare caseload tend to adopt more disciplinary measures and are more likely to adopt second-order devolution (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a).

The implementation of public policy is highly responsive to the environment. In other words, poverty governance is an open system (Keiser and Soss 1998) in which portals of influence in implementation come from a variety of actors (Derthick 1990), the political orientations and cultural beliefs of agency personnel and the local community (Khademian 2002), the attitudes and beliefs about poverty held by those responsible for social service provision (Reingold and Liu 2009), organizational norms (March and Olsen 2006; J. Martin 1992; Weick 1995), as well as the “political and task environments” (Meier 1993). The street-level action of implementation imposes poverty governance. The everyday practices of social service providers enact policy, giving meaning to the law and interpreting the values represented in policy. Devolution and privatization were justified as strategies for making government more flexible, accountable, and responsive, and the findings regarding the implementation of these reforms are mixed. Some find that devolution mobilizes the citizenry and enhances volunteerism (Gonzales-Baker 1993; Marston 1993); while others find that the devolved public-private partnerships tend to lead to staff professionalization that distances volunteers and community ties, particularly as competition among nonprofits increases (Smith and Lipsky 1993). Studies also indicate that local control over implementation increases the influence of community employers and political actors (Katz 1996; Piven and Cloward 1993; Ward 2005).

Policy implementation makes policy through action and is therefore inherently political (Lineberry 1977). Consequently, the use of “sticks” and “carrots” to promote compliance are likely to vary in accordance with the ideological makeup of the region of authority (Ridzi 2009) and client characteristics (Hasenfeld, Ghose, and Larson 2004; Kalil, Seefeldt, and Wang 2002; Keiser, Mueser, and Choi 2004; Koralek 2000; Wu et al. 2006). The implementation of the punitive elements of welfare reform, such as sanctions, are products of governance, and the appropriate level of analysis for understanding patterns of punitiveness in poverty governance is determined by the level of devolution (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a). In fact, poverty governance that is most responsive to local control exhibits disciplinary practices that are more punitive in conservative counties, and risk disparities accumulate over time (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a). Marital status, age, family size, education level, work experience, and race are the factors that determine who is most likely to be subject to the punitive elements of TANF (Hasenfeld, Ghose, and Larson 2004; Kalil, Seefeldt, and Wang 2002; Koralek 2000; Pavetti, Derr, and Hesketh 2003; Wu et al. 2006). State-level aggregations of national sanctioning patterns also indicate that states with larger nonwhite caseloads sanction more frequently and that state sanction patterns respond to individual-level factors that are often contingent upon the order of devolution (Kim and Fording 2010; Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011a).

Managerial reforms and welfare privatization have substantially changed the implementation of social policy. The successful push to implement Osbourne and Gaebler’s (1992) strategies for “reinventing government” through “innovative” consumer-oriented, cross-sector collaborations modified service provision in at least two broad ways: (1) managerial practices replaced the “helping relationships” model of service provision and (2) service provision shifte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1: Framing the Welfare Policy Process
• 2: The Evolution of Devolution
• 3: The States of PRWORA-Related Welfare Programs
• 4: The Privatization of Poverty Governance
• 5: Workfare Policies and the State of Self-Sufficiency
• 6: Philanthrocapitalism: “New Markets” for Social Services
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Conceptual Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover