Contemporary articles citing Pierson P (1994) Dismantling Welfare

state, suggests, states, institutional, state's, policy, historical, model, way, role

Manza, Jeff & Clem Brooks. 2012. "How Sociology Lost Public Opinion: a Genealogy of a Missing Concept in the Study of the Political." Sociological Theory. 30:2 89-113. Link

In contemporary sociology the once prominent study of public opinion has virtually disappeared. None of the leading theoretical models in the closest disciplinary subfield (political sociology) currently provide ample or sufficiently clear space for consideration of public opinion as a possible factor in shaping or interacting with key policy or political outcomes in democratic polities. In this article, we unearth and document the sources of this curious development and raise questions about its implications for how political sociologists have come to understand policy making, state formation, and political conflict. We begin by reconstructing the dismissal of public opinion in the intellectual reorientation of political sociology from the late 1970s onward. We argue that the most influential scholarly works of this period (including those of Tilly, Skocpol, Mann, Esping-Andersen, and Domhoff) face an underlying paradox: While often rejecting public opinion, their theoretical logics ultimately presuppose its operation. These now classical writings did not move toward research programs seeking engagement with the operation and formation of public opinion, even though our immanent critique suggests they in fact require precisely this turn. We address the challenge of reconceptualizing how public opinion might be productively integrated into the sociological study of politics by demonstrating that the major arguments in the subfield can be fruitfully extended by grappling with public opinion. We conclude by considering several recent, interdisciplinary examples of scholarship that, we argue, point the way toward a fruitful revitalization.

Beland, D. 2005. "Insecurity, Citizenship, and Globalization: the Multiple Faces of State Protection." Sociological Theory. 23:1 25-41. Link

Adopting a long-term historical perspective, this article examines the growing complexity and the internal tensions of state protection in Western Europe and North America. Beginning with Charles Tilly's theory about state building and organized crime, the discussion follows with a critical analysis of T. H. Marshall's article on citizenship. Arguing that state protection has become far more multifaceted than what Marshall's triadic model suggests, the article shows how this protection frequently transcends the logic of individual rights while increasing the reliance of citizens on the modern state. The last section formulates a critique of the idea formulated by theorists like Manuel Castells that globalization favors a rapid decline of state power. Yet, state protection may not necessarily grow indefinitely, and tax cuts, for example, the ones recently enacted in the United States, could seriously jeopardize a state's capacity to raise revenues and effectively fight older and newer forms of insecurity.

Goldberg, CA. 2001. "Welfare Recipients or Workers? Contesting the Workfare State in New York City." Sociological Theory. 19:2 187-218. Link

This paper addresses how New York City's workfare program has structural opportunities for collective action by welfare recipients. As workfare blurs the distinction between wage workers and welfare recipients, it calls into question accepted understandings of the rights and obligations of welfare recipients and fosters new claims on the state. The concept of ``cultural opportunity structures'' can help to explain the political mobilization of workfare participants if it is linked to a Durkheimian tradition of cultural analysis attentive to symbolic classification. The dramaturgic approach to culture exemplified in the work of Erving Goffman can usefully complement this structural approach if a narrow focus on frames and framing process is broadened to include interaction rituals and ceremonial profanation.

Campbell, JL. 1998. "Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy." Theory and Society. 27:3 377-409. Link

Goldberg, CA. 2003. "Haunted by the Specter of Communism: Collective Identity and Resource Mobilization in the Demise of the Workers Alliance of America." Theory and Society. 32:5-6 725-773. Link

This article seeks to integrate identity-oriented and strategic models of collective action better by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of classification struggles. On the one hand, the article extends culture to the realm of interest by highlighting the role collective identity plays in one of the key processes that strategic models of collective action foreground: the mobilization of resources. The article extends culture to the realm of interest in another way as well: by challenging the notion that labor movements are fundamentally different from or antithetical to the identity-oriented new social movements. On the other hand, the article also extends the idea of interest to culture. Rather than viewing collective identity as something formed prior to political struggle and according to a different logic, I show that collective identity is constructed in and through struggles over classificatory schemes. These include struggles between movements and their opponents as well as struggles within movements. The article provides empirical evidence for these theoretical claims with a study of the demise of the Workers Alliance of America, a powerful, nation-wide movement of the unemployed formed in the United States in 1935 and dissolved in 1941.

Krippner, Greta. 2007. "The Making of Us Monetary Policy: Central Bank Transparency and the Neoliberal Dilemma." Theory and Society. 36:6 477-513. Link

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve's shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policyrnaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the ``neoliberal dilemma.'' In the context of generally deteriorating. economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled ``markets to do the Fed's work for it.'' These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state's active role in managing the economy.

Haydu, Jeffrey. 2010. "Reversals of Fortune: Path Dependency, Problem Solving, and Temporal Cases." Theory and Society. 39:1 25-48. Link

Historical reversals highlight a basic methodological problem: is it possible to treat two successive periods both as independent cases to compare for causal analysis and as parts of a single historical sequence? I argue that one strategy for doing so, using models of path dependency, imposes serious limits on explanation. An alternative model which treats successive periods as contrasting solutions for recurrent problems offers two advantages. First, it more effectively combines analytical comparisons of different periods with narratives of causal sequences spanning two or more periods. Second, it better integrates scholarly accounts of historical reversals with actors' own narratives of the past.

Kwon, Oh-Jung. 2011. "The Logic of Social Policy Expansion in a Neoliberal Context: Health Insurance Reform in Korea After the 1997 Economic Crisis." Theory and Society. 40:6 645-667. Link

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of the late 1990s, the Korean government reformed health insurance system to enhance social equity and solidarity. This article identifies the institutional features and political dynamics involved in completing the reform. The Korean case suggests a model of countermovement that differs from the historical experiences of both democratic corporatist and liberal welfare states. Two institutional conditions within the politics of crisis contributed to the reform. A legacy of limited state welfare was critical in providing the impetus for reforming health insurance system. More importantly, the crisis maximized the state's coordination capacity by mobilizing a coherent bureaucracy under the presidential authority, and by limiting interest politics. The Korean experience has important implications for the study of economic crisis and social policy response. The way in which a crisis provides new contexts for welfare and policy making institutions, rather than the institutions themselves, should be the main focus in analyzing policy responses. The focus on the political dynamics of an economic crisis helps us acknowledge the limit of ideological forces of a crisis in facilitating a particular policy response.