About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

479 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1985)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0479 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE The period from the end of World War II to 1970 saw the consolidation of the welfare state throughout the Western world. Even the United States, long considered a welfare state laggard, had, by the end of the 1960s, massively expanded its income support and health care programs. The adoption of Medicare and Medicaid, the expansion of public assistance programs-Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps-the expansion of Social Security, and the adoption of the Supplemental Security Income program represented an impressive liberalization and expansion of the welfare state.' If the decade of the sixties represented an expansion and fulfillment of the welfare state, the seventies represented an apparent threat to its survival. Rising inflation, unemployment, the OPEC oil crisis, and increased government deficits triggered attempts to rein in the welfare state. The election of Ronald Reagan in the United States and of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, tax revolts in California, and the reaction of new political parties in Europe were in part political manifestations of shifting responses to the operation of government and the economy. Leading scholars could write books with titles such as Can Government Go Bankrupt?2 Albert Hirschman and Samuel Huntington, starting from different premises, concluded that there is a turning away from the welfare state as high expectations for its promises are dashed.3 Even countries with strong social- democratic regimes have had to face the prospect of cutbacks or rearrangements of the welfare state.4 Are the agonies of the welfare state in the late 1970s and early 1980s temporary aberrations? A matter of short-term adjustments? Or do they represent long-term shifts in the ability of modern societies to maintain and develop welfare programs? To a great extent, the answer to such broad questions depends upon one's prognosis of the future. In the early 1970s, Robert Heilbronner predicted a coming dark age. Heilbronner raised the triple specter of nuclear blackmail, resource depletion, and ecological catastrophe, leading him to see the end of civilized, liberal, democratic society. In many ways, his views paralleled those of the movie Soylent Green, in which the urbanized population, long deprived of fresh foods, has become reliant on plankton from the sea for its protein. The drama of the movie is provided by a long-term decline in plankton-soylent green-for which the elite conspiratorially substitutes reprocessed protein from human bodies. Heilbronner gave us a view in 1973 that was extraordinarily apocalyptic. But others, slightly less apocalyptically driven, also predicted a long-term decline. The 1. John E. Schwarz, America's Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Twenty Years of Public Policy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983). 2. Richard Rose and Guy Peters, Can Government Go Bankrupt? (New York: Basic Books, 1978). 3. Albert Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1981). 4. Newsweek, 25 July 1983, pp. 48, 51. 5. An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974). 9

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most