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Citizenship, Social Citizenship and the Defence of Welfare Provision
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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This article analyses the normative status of claims to the social rights of citizenship in the light of New Right criticisms of the welfare state. The article assesses whether there is any normative justification for treating welfare provision and citizenship as intrinsically linked. After outlining T. H. Marshall's conception of citizenship the article reviews its status in relation to: traditional arguments about citizenship of the polity; relativist arguments about the embedded place of citizenship within current societies; and, drawing upon Rawlsian analysis, absolutist arguments about what being a member of a modern society implies. Each argument has some strengths and together they indicate the importance of retaining the idea of citizenship at the centre of modern political debates about social and economic arrangements.
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References
1 See, for example. Taylor-Gooby, Peter, Public Opinion, Ideology and State Welfare (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).Google Scholar The 1986 British social attitudes survey revealed growing support for the institutions of the welfare state: see Bosanquet, Nick, ‘Interim Report: Public Spending and the Welfare State’, in Jowell, Roger, Witherspoon, Sharon and Brook, Lindsay, eds, British Social Attitudes: The 1986 Report (Aldershot: Gower Publishers, 1986).Google Scholar For an alternative view, and criticisms of these opinion polls, see Harris, Ralph and Seldon, Arthur, Welfare Without the State: A Quarter-Century of Suppressed Choice (London: Hobart Paperback No. 26, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1987).Google Scholar
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