Bold relief : institutional politics and the origins of modern American social policy / Edwin Amenta.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Amenta, Edwin, 1957- author.

Series:

Princeton studies in American politics, 1549-1307

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public welfare--United States--History.

Public welfare.

United States--Social policy.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--1933-1945.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (364 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1998]

Summary:

According to conventional wisdom, American social policy has always been exceptional--exceptionally stingy and backwards. But Edwin Amenta reminds us here that sixty years ago the United States led the world in spending on social provision. He combines history and political theory to account for this surprising fact--and to explain why the country's leading role was short-lived. The orthodox view is that American social policy began in the 1930s as a two-track system of miserly "welfare" for the unemployed and generous "social security" for the elderly. However, Amenta shows that the New Deal was in fact a bold program of relief, committed to providing jobs and income support for the unemployed. Social security was, by comparison, a policy afterthought. By the late 1930s, he shows, the U.S. pledged more of its gross national product to relief programs than did any other major industrial country. Amenta develops and uses an institutional politics theory to explain how social policy expansion was driven by northern Democrats, state-based reformers, and political outsiders. And he shows that retrenchment in the 1940s was led by politicians from areas where beneficiaries of relief were barred from voting. He also considers why some programs were nationalized, why some states had far-reaching "little New Deals," and why Britain--otherwise so similar to the United States--adopted more generous social programs. Bold Relief will transform our understanding of the roots of American social policy and of the institutional and political dynamics that will shape its future.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLES AND FIGURES

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION Paradoxes of American Social Policy

CHAPTER ONE An Institutional Politics Theory of Social Policy

CHAPTER TWO An Indifferent Commitment to Modern Social Policy, 1880-1934

CHAPTER THREE America's First Welfare Reform, 1935-1936

CHAPTER FOUR Consolidating the Work and Relief Policy, 1937-1939

CHAPTER FIVE Some Little New Deals Are Littler than Others

CHAPTER SIX Redefining the New Deal, 1940-1950

CHAPTER SEVEN A Welfare State for Britain

CONCLUSION

AFTERWORD

NOTES

INITIALS OF ORGANIZATIONS AND PROGRAMS

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

ISBN:

9780691227481

0691227489

OCLC:

1273307015