|
|
National
Culture
|
|
Individualistic
|
Collectivistic
|
|
Level
of Welfare Provision
|
Low
|
Self-help
(19th century England; USA before 1960s)
|
Family/community
aid
(Contemporary Japan and South-East Asia)
|
|
|
|
High
|
Unstable
welfare state
(Contemporary ÔAngloÕ countries)
|
Self-regulating
welfare state
(Continental European social democracies)
|
| |
| Note:
The core values of individualistic cultures
emphasise the virtues of self-reliance and personal
independence, and these were traditionally expressed
in these countries through minimalist systems of state
welfare and the extensive use of Ôself-helpÕ (type 1).
At the opposite extreme, collectivistic cultures emphasise
social duty and common interests, and this has given
rise to relatively generous state welfare systems underpinned
by strong collective pressures against Ôfree-ridingÕ
(type 4), or to family and community-based systems which
obviate the need for extensive state provision (type
2). It is when state welfare expands in individualistic
cultures (type 3) that systems become potentially unstable,
for ÔfreeÕ and ÔuniversalÕ provision of goods or services
in highly individualistic cultures where self-interest
ranks above communal solidarity is almost bound to generate
widespread Ôfree-ridingÕ, together with growing popular
resentment against claimants. |
The importance of national
cultures
Compared with other parts of the world, the 'Anglo' countries
are peculiarly 'individualistic' in their cultures.
In a fascinating study of cross-cultural psychology, based
on thousands of interviews across 50 countries, Geert Hofstede
found that the most individualistic country in the world
is the United States.6
In second place was Australia, followed by Great Britain
in third and Canada in fourth. Most of the continental European
nations ranked much lower in the list (although they still
ranked higher than most Asian and developing countries).
This clustering of the 'Anglo'
countries has been picked up in other ways in other studies.
Michel Albert, for example, draws a basic distinction between
what he calls the 'neo-American' capitalist nations (in
which he includes Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Canada
as well as the USA) and the 'Rhine model' countries (a category
that encompasses Japan as well as Germany and the rest of
the European Union).7
These two groups are found to differ on a wide range of
characteristics including investment strategies, the economic
role of government, industrial relations systems and their
systems of welfare. 'Anglo' countries also appear to have
much higher (and strikingly similar) rates of home ownership
as compared with the continental Euro-peans (the desire
to own one's home is a useful indicator of a spirit of individualism).
The sources of this peculiarly
individualistic 'Anglo' culture have been traced by Alan
Macfarlane as far back as the 12th century.8
At a time when most of Europe was mired in feudal controls,
Macfarlane finds that England was already a nation of 'rampant
individualists'. Land was being bought and sold in England
long before this was legally possible in most other parts
of Europe, people were moving between different parts of
the country to take advantage of a market for labour, and
cash transactions were common. The origins of 'Anglo' individualism
go back a long way.
It is this individualism
that helps explain the peculiar character of the contemporary
welfare reform debate in the 'Anglo' countries.
Social democratic welfare
regimes based on generous entitlements and high quality
provision are probably only sustainable in countries with
relatively strong collectivistic cultures. In countries
like Denmark and Sweden, collective norms are such that,
either individuals are dissuaded from abusing the generosity
of their fellow citizens (although data on working days
lost through sickness suggest this may not be the case),
or governments and their populations are content to tolerate
free riding as part of the price to be paid for a welfare
state to which they are committed as a matter of principle.
Either way, these countries do not see growing welfare dependency
as an issue demanding reform in the way that the 'Anglo'
countries do.
Widespread and growing welfare
dependency only really poses a threat to social cohesion
and stability in individualistic cultures. Here, self-regulation
in the interests of the collectivity is less developed,
group pressures to conform with collective norms are much
weaker, and individuals are more likely to resent those
who seek to benefit at their expense (see Figure 1).
Given that collective systems
of welfare entitlement are likely to be most unstable when
located in strongly individualistic cultures, it is no surprise
that a renewed concern with monitoring and controlling access
to welfare should have arisen in the 'Anglo' nations over
the last 20 years as a response to the loosening of control
and expansion of eligibility that took place in the 1960s
and 1970s. What we are seeing now (in Britain's 'welfare-to-work'
policy, in Australia's 'mutual obligation' strategy, and
in the dramatic American reforms of 1996) is an attempt
to pull these systems back into a form which is more consistent
with the strongly individualistic cultures in which they
are embedded.
This
individualism helps explain the peculiar character of the
contemporary welfare reform debate in the ÔAngloÕ countries.
How to reduce welfare dependency
The question, of course,
is how best to achieve this shift. The current debate reveals
four quite different sets of proposals linked to four very
different analyses of what the problem is.
(a) Lack of jobs. The
first position holds that the problem has to do with the
supply of suitable jobs rather than with people's reluctance
to accept employment. Writers on the left like Duncan Gallie
9, Gordon
Marshall, Stephen Roberts and Carole Burgoyne,10
and Hartley Dean and Peter Taylor-Gooby 11
believe that people who are long-term welfare dependent
want jobs but cannot find them because employment opportunities
have disappeared as a result of globalisation and capital
restructuring. The argument that there is a significant
problem of free riding, or that a culture of welfare dependency
is stopping people from working, is dismissed as a right-wing
myth.
If this position is correct,
then what is needed is intervention by governments to create
(or encourage the creation) of new jobs, for once the vacancies
become available, claimants will leave the welfare rolls
without further prompting and will take employment. Evidence,
however, suggests that job creation programmes have done
little to reduce welfare dependency in the 'Anglo' countries.12
(b) Lack of skills or resources.
The second position agrees that the initial causes of joblessness
often lie in the collapse of local labour markets, but it
also recognises that long periods out of the labour market
can erode people's skills and undermine their confidence
with the result that they fail to grasp such opportunities
as may present themselves. To the extent that long-term
claimants fail to chase work, therefore, this is seen as
the effect, rather than the cause, of their continuing reliance
on income support. This is, broadly, the line taken in the
USA by William Wilson,13
in the UK by Frank Field,14
and in Australia by Mark Latham15
and Noel Pearson.116
If this position is correct, then what is required is some
package of government interventions designed to raise the
morale and competence of those who are 'socially excluded'.
In the past, this has involved things like training and
work experience programs, but these have been largely unsuccessful
in getting people back into work except in the case of mature
women returning to the labour force.17
More recently, other more radical ideas have been floated
such as earned income tax credits and 'asset-based welfare'.
(c) Lack of will: The third
position, associated particularly with Lawrence Mead,18
holds that there is a distinct culture among many welfare
claimants which is a major cause of their initial and continuing
'welfare dependency'. Mead suggests that claimants lose
confidence in their own efficacy and gradually subside into
passivity as they come to rely on the welfare system to
prop up their lives. They continue to pay lip service to
the work ethic (they say they want a job), but they lack
the commitment needed to find and retain steady employment.
If this diagnosis is correct,
then the solution lies in requiring welfare claimants to
work. This is precisely what has happened in the USA with
such spectacular success (the welfare caseload fell by 42%
between 1994 and 1998), and it has also been adopted in
a much diluted form in Australia and the UK.
(d) Ripping off the system:
The final position is associated with the work of Charles
Murray. 19
In his early work, Murray argued that the welfare state
provides incentives to people to give up their self-reliance
and to free ride on others. Unlike Mead, Murray thinks that
welfare claimants do not want to work. More recently, hehas
also argued that long-term welfare dependency is associated
with low intelligence and with the decline of traditional
sexual morality. He now believes that none of this can effectively
be combated-we cannot stop individuals from making rational
calculations about the benefits to be gained by abusing
the system, we cannot do much to raise IQ levels, and there
are few obvious ways of stemming the tide of sexual permissiveness.
If Murray is right, then
the only solution to increasing welfare dependency is to
abolish the welfare system altogether. As Murray himself
admits, however, this is politically a non-starter.
Conclusion
Current debates about the
need for fundamental reform of the welfare state are concentrated
in the English-speaking countries. This is because it is
in these countries that the welfare ethic clashes most disastrously
with traditional individualistic principles of self-reliance
and personal responsibility. Most commentators accept that
welfare dependency undermines these principles, but there
are still significant disagreements about how best to respond
to this.
Endnotes
1 In Australia, over
18% of the workforce age population is receiving income
support payments (as compared with just 3% in the early
and mid-1960s). Over three-quarters of these have no other
source of income. Department of Family and Community Services,
'Research FaCS sheet, number 3' (1999).
2 D. Kalisch, 'Welfare to Work: A Review of International
Practices and Outcomes', Paper given to seminar on welfare
reform (Melbourne: Melbourne Institute, 25 January 2000).
3 Fifty years ago, T. H. Marshall argued that the
modern welfare state helps bind a society together. He thought
that the capitalist market system undermines community and
fragments social bonds, while the modern welfare state counteracts
this fragmentation by emphasising the responsibilities that
we all owe to each other. See T.H. Marshall, Citizenship
and Social Class, and Other Essays (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1950). Today, however, many commentators in
the 'Anglo' countries believe that quite the opposite has
happened. The welfare state has undermined community-based
voluntary activity and has encouraged social divisiveness.
For a review of these arguments, see P. Saunders, 'Citizenship
in a Liberal Society' in Citizenship and Social Theory,
ed. B. Turner (London: Sage, 1993).
4 G. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare
Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 23.
5 Although Sweden was forced to make some cuts in
its welfare system in the 1990s, its recent economic resurgence
allowed the Prime Minister, Goran Persson, to introduce
the September 1999 budget with the promise that, 'Sweden
will consolidate its position as a leading welfare nation'.
Indeed, a new entitlement was introduced enabling every
person who turns 65 to retain a personal assistant (New
York Times, 10 October 1999).
6 Discussed in P. Smith and M. Bond, Social Psychology
Across Cultures (London: Prentice Hall, 1993).
7 M. Albert, Capitalism Against Capitalism (London:
Whurr Publishers, 1993).
8 A. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).
9 D. Gallie, 'Are the Unemployed an Underclass? Some
Evidence from the Social Change in Economic Life Initiative',
Sociology, vol. 28 (1994), 737-57.
10 G. Marshall, S. Roberts, and C. Burgoyne, 'Social
class and the underclass in Britain and the USA' British
Journal of Sociology, vol.47 (1996), 22-44
11 H. Dean and P. Taylor-Gooby, Dependency Culture:
The Explosion of a Myth (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1992).
12 J. Martin, 'Making Active Labour Market Policies
More Effective: Key Lessons and Experiences', The OECD Perspective
(Helsinki: OECD Conference on Jobs, 2000).
13 William Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987).
14 F. Field, 'Welfare dependency and Economic Opportunity:
A Response to Lawrence Mead', in Reforming the Australian
Welfare State, ed. P. Saunders (Melbourne: Australian Institute
of Family Studies, 2000).
15 M. Latham Civilising Global Capital (Sydney: Allen
& Unwin, 1998).
16 N. Pearson, 'Passive Welfare and the Destruction
of Indigenous Society in Australia', in Reforming the Australian
Welfare State.
17 J. Martin, 'Making Active Labour Market Policies
More Effective'.
18 L. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking
Poor in America (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
19 C. Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy,
1950-1980, 2nd edn. (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
Author
Peter Saunders is Director of the social policy research
programmes at The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).
This article is adapted from a presentation he gave at CISÕs
annual public policy conference, Consilium, in May 2001.
