Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T08:58:33.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The First Social Policy: Alcohol Control and Modernity in Policy Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Extract

From modest beginnings in the systematic analysis of social insurance programs of advanced, industrialized countries, the scope of social policy studies has expanded to encompass myriad programs that seek to mitigate potential risks to employment, income, and economic security.1 At the same time, historical interest on policy development has extended back further in time to contextualize the otherwise excessive concentration on social policy developments of the twentieth century.2 Yet, as the boundaries of epistemology broaden, there remains a curious tendency among policy historians to maintain that what they are studying are the origins of modern social policies.3 Perhaps this focus on modernity is the outgrowth of a perceived need to have such research remain relevant to contemporary social policy debates. Whatever the reason, it does raise the question–What makes a social policy modern?4 To assume that particular social policies are modern suggests that there may be social policies that are not. Do there indeed exist social policies that might be thought of as premodern? If so, do such premodern social policies differ from modern ones not only in terms of particular historical epochs but also in terms of more-substantive distinctions?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Amenta, Edwin, Bonastia, Chris, and Caren, Neal, “U.S. Social Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Concepts, Images, Arguments and Research Strategies,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 215216CrossRefGoogle Scholar Amenta, Bonastia, and Caren list major related works in the study of education policy, taxation policy, veterans benefits, housing policy, economic policy, work programs, drug policies, discrimination policies, abortion policies, and imprisonment policies. More recently, other works in policy history studies have expanded further to incorporate AIDS policies and drug addiction policies. Baldwin, Peter, “Beyond Weak and Strong: Rethinking the State in Comparative Policy History,” Journal of Policy History 17 (2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Indeed, a recent special issue of the Journal of Policy History explicitly focuses on the development of political economy and regulation in the United States in the nineteenth century. John, Richard R., “Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Policy History 18 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See, for instance, Amenta, Edwin, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar, Amenta, Edwin, “What We Know about the Development of Social Policy: Comparative and Historical Research in Comparative and Historical Perspective,” in Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Amenta, Bonastia, and Caren, “U.S. Social Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective,” Heclo, Hugh, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda, eds., States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton, 1996)Google Scholar, Skocpol, Theda and Ritter, Gretchen, “Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States,” Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. This inquiry has distinct parallels with Frank Dobbin's work, which scrutinizes the socially constructed axioms of modernity, including rationality and progress, that supported the development of particular modes of industrial policy in Europe and North America. Dobbins, Frank, Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (New York, 1994), 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Wilensky, Harald L. et al. , “Comparative Social Policy: Theories, Methods, Findings,” in Comparative Policy Research, ed. Dierkes, Meinolf, Weiler, Hans N., and Antal, Ariane Berthoin (London, 1987), 381Google Scholar. See also Peters, B. Guy, American Public Policy: Promise and Performance, 6th ed. (Washington, D.C., 2004), 4.Google Scholar

6. Amenta, Bonastia, and Caren, “U.S. Social Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective,” 214–15, Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden.

7. Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold, eds., Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick, N.J., 1981).Google Scholar

8. Katznelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

9. Steinmo, Sven, Taxation and Democracy: Swedish, British, and American Approaches to Financing the Modern State (New Haven, 1993)Google Scholar; Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth, Frank, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (New York, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Witte, John, The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax (Madison, 1985).Google Scholar

10. Amenta, Bold Relief.

11. Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).Google Scholar

12. Baldwin, “Beyond Weak and Strong: Rethinking the State in Comparative Policy History.”

13. Blomqvist, Jan, “The ‘Swedish Model’ of Dealing with Alcohol Problems: Historical Trends and Future Challenges,” Contemporary Drug Problems 25 (Summer 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holder, Harold and Edwards, Griffith, Alcohol and Public Policy: Evidence and Issues (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Mäkelä, Klaus et al. , Alcohol, Society, and the State (Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar, Mäkelä, Klaus and Viikari, Matti, “Notes on Alcohol and the State,” Acta Sociologica 20 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meier, Kenneth, The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol, and Public Policy (Armonk, N.Y., 1994)Google Scholar; Moore, Mark and Gerstein, Dean, eds., Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition–Panel on Alternative Policies Affecting the Prevention of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Washington, D.C., 1981)Google Scholar; Moskalewicz, Jacek, “Alcohol in the Countries in Transition: The Polish Experience and the Wider Context,” Contemporary Drug Problems 27 (Fall 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schrad, Mark Lawrence, “Toward a Comparative Analysis of State Alcohol Control Systems: The Triadic Model,” Contemporary Drug Problems 32 (Summer 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Clasen, Jochen, “Defining Comparative Social Policy,” in Handbook of Comparative Social Policy, ed. Kennett, Patricia (Northampton, Mass., 2004), 93.Google Scholar

15. Amenta, Bold Relief, 55.

16. Ibid., 56–62.

17. Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden, 2.

18. Skocpol, Theda and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, “Introduction,” in States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies, ed. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, 1996), 3Google Scholar. This time-frame is roughly coincident with that used by Hugh Heclo to describe “modern” social politics in Britain and Sweden. Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden, 10–11.

19. Skocpol and Rueschemeyer, “Introduction,” 3.

20. Rabinbach, Anson, “Social Knowledge, Social Risk, and the Politics of Industrial Accidents in Germany and France,” in States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies, ed. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, 1996), 60.Google Scholar

21. Skocpol, Theda, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (Princeton, 1996), 11.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., 7; Sutton, John R., “Social Knowledge and the Generation of Child Welfare Policy in the United States and Canada,” in States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies, ed. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, 1996), 203.Google Scholar

23. Mäkelä et al., Alcohol, Society, and the State. Such options have been consistently articulated in similar terms for generations. See also Hercod, Robert, “Alcoholism as an International Problem,” British Journal of Inebriety 23 (01 1926): 116.Google Scholar

24. The historical literature on temperance and American alcohol policy are too numerous to be mentioned here, though a number of excellent works on temperance history in addition to those mentioned throughout this article include: Blocker, Jack Jr., American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar; Gusfield, Joseph, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, Ill., 1963)Google Scholar; Krout, John Allen, Origins of Prohibition (New York, 1925)Google Scholar. On temperance and prohibition, see Clark, Norman H., Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Hamm, Richard, Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill, 1995)Google Scholar; Kerr, K. Austin, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (New Haven, 1985)Google Scholar; Sinclair, Andrew, Prohibition: The Era of Excess (Boston, 1962)Google Scholar; Szymanski, Ann-Marie, Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes (Durham, N.C., 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Timberlake, James, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On repeal, see Kyvig, David E., Repealing National Prohibition, 2d ed. (Kent, Ohio, 2000).Google Scholar

25. Rush, Benjamin, An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind (Springfield, Mass., 1817)Google Scholar. Indeed, one of the more influential temperance conferences of the mid-1880s was called to commemorate the centennial of Rush's publication. One Hundred Years of Temperance: A Memorial Volume of the Centennial Temperance Conference Held in Philadelphia, PA, September, 1885(New York,1886).Google Scholar

26. Hamilton, Alexander, “Second Report on Public Credit, Dec. 13, 1790,” in Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the United States, 1776–1861, ed. MacDonald, William (New York, 1898), 6263.Google Scholar

27. Thomann, Gallus, Liquor Laws of the United States: Their Spirit and Effect, 2 vols. (New York, 1885), 1:4.Google Scholar

28. Hamilton, Alexander, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury to the House of Representatives, Relative to a Provision for the Support of the Public Credit of the United States (New York, 1790), 17Google Scholar, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Alexander Hamilton Papers, Reel 21.

29. See Rorabaugh, W. J., “Estimated U.S. Alcoholic Beverage Consumption, 1790–1860,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol 37 (1976).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

30. The position of New Jersey representative Elias Boudinot is particularly illustrative. Thomann, Liquor Laws of the United States, 13. This point is more generally made in Rorabaugh's seminal work on the role of alcohol in American history. Rorabaugh, W. J., The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York, 1979), 5051.Google Scholar

31. Thomann, Liquor Laws of the United States, 15.

32. New York Representative Lawrence was a particularly vocal opponent of the tariff measure. Ibid., 14.

33. Hamilton, Alexander, Act Imposing Certain Inland Duties on Foreign Wines [1790, Jan. 9] (1790)Google Scholar, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Alexander Hamilton Papers, Reel 21, Speeches and Writings file. Hamilton, Alexander, “Federalist No. 12,” in The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States, Being a Collection of Essays Written in Support of the Constitution Agreed Upon September 17, 1787, by the Federal Convention, ed. Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, and Madison, James (New York, 1937).Google Scholar

34. Chernow, Ron, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004), 342Google Scholar, Madison, James, Papers, ed. Hutchinson, William T. and Rachal, William M. E., 17 vols. (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar, 13:366. More such debates are included in Johnson, William, The Federal Government and the Liquor Traffic (Westerville, Ohio, 1911), 3945, 56–60.Google Scholar

35. See Figure 1. Hu, Tun Yuan, The Liquor Tax in the United States (New York, 1950), 50Google Scholar; Yevlington, Brenda, “Excise Taxes in Historical Perspective,” in Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination, ed. Shugart, William II (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997), 47.Google Scholar

36. Hill, William, “First Stages of the Tariff Policy of the United States,” Publications of the American Economic Association 8 (11 1893): 34.Google Scholar

37. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic, 28.

38. Thomann, Gallus, Colonial Liquor Laws (New York, 1887), 145.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 147.

40. Johnson, The Federal Government and the Liquor Traffic, 56; Thomann, Colonial Liquor Laws, 148.

41. Thomann, Colonial Liquor Laws.

42. Ibid., 6–7.

43. Ibid., 131.

44. An alternative interpretation might stem from Mancur Olson's “stationary bandit” metaphor, where a leader has an economic incentive to provide for the general welfare as a means to maximizing expected long-term taxes to be reaped from a healthy and more economically productive subject population. See Olson, Mancur, Power and Prosperity (New York, 2000), 610.Google Scholar

45. Thomann, Colonial Liquor Laws, 82, 67.

46. Johnson, The Federal Government and the Liquor Traffic, 160–73; Thomann, Colonial Liquor Laws, 143, 145, 166, 177, 87, 10.

47. Blocker, American Temperance Movements, 7.

48. Thomann, Colonial Liquor Laws, 194. See also Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic, 38.

49. See Scomp, Henry A., King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton, or, A History of the Liquor Traffic and of the Temperance Movement in Georgia from 1733 to 1887 (Chicago, 1888).Google Scholar

50. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic, 49. For an official assessment of the effectiveness of the English alcohol taxes, see Peel, Robert, Speech of the Right Honorable Sir Robert Peel, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons, March 10, 1835, on the Motion of the Marquis de Chandos Relating to the Repeal of the Malt Tax (London, 1835).Google Scholar

51. Rudé, George, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1971), 203204.Google Scholar

52. Cherrington, Ernest H., ed., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 6 vols. (Westerville, Ohio, 1926), 3:916930Google Scholar; Eddy, Richard, Alcohol in History: An Account of Intemperance in All Ages Together with a History of the Various Methods Employed for Its Removal (New York, 1887), 143, 160.Google Scholar

53. Cherrington, Ernest H., ed., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 6 vols. (Westerville, Ohio, 1930), 6:2562, 2568Google Scholar. The most thorough history of Swedish alcohol control in the English language remains Thompson, Walter, The Control of Liquor in Sweden (New York, 1935).Google Scholar

54. Winskill, Peter T., The Temperance Movement and Its Workers: A Record of Social, Moral, Religious, and Political Progress, 3 vols. (London, 1892), 1:2223.Google Scholar

55. Fridman, Mikhail, Vinnaya monopoliya, tom II: Vinnaya monopoliya v Rossii, 2 vols. (Petrograd, 1916), 2:14.Google Scholar

56. Ivanov, Yurii, Kniga o vodke (Smolensk, 1997), 9Google Scholar; Lanovenko, Igor', Svetlov, Aleksandr, and Skibitskii, Vasilii, P'yanstvo i prestupnost': istoriya, problemy (Kiev, 1989), 65Google Scholar; Pokhlebkin, Vilyam, Istoriya vodki (Moscow, 2000), 98, 327.Google Scholar

57. Pryzhov, Ivan, Istoriya kabakov v Rossii (Moscow, 1914), 12, 25Google Scholar, Smith, R. E. F. and Christian, David, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (New York, 1984), 84.Google Scholar

58. Eddy, Alcohol in History, 111–12. Dorchester, Daniel, The Liquor Problem in All Ages (New York, 1884), 2629.Google Scholar

59. Tannehill, Reay, Food in History (New York, 1973), 64.Google Scholar

60. Dorchester, The Liquor Problem in All Ages, 16–18. Eddy, Alcohol in History, 75–77.

61. Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974)Google Scholar and Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Bates, Robert, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Downing, Brian, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1992)Google Scholar; Ertman, Thomas, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hintze, Otto, “Military Organization and the Organization of the State,” in The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, ed. Gilbert, Felix (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles and Blockmans, Wim, eds., Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800 (Boulder, Colo., 1994).Google Scholar

62. Tilly, Charles, “Entanglements of European Cities and States,” in Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800, ed. Tilly, Charles and Blockmans, Wim (Boulder, Colo., 1994), 1011.Google Scholar

63. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 89.

64. Tilly, Charles, “Warmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Evans, Peter, Rueschmeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda (New York, 1985), 182.Google Scholar

65. Webber, Carolyn and Wildavsky, Aaron, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York, 1986), 6873.Google Scholar

66. These restrictions were in fact initiated and supported by the indigenous tribes, claiming that the liquor traffic “demoralized their young men and rendered them dangerous alike to friend and foe.” Andrews, E. Benjamin, History of the United States: From the Earliest Discoveries of America to the Present Time, 6 vols. (New York, 1925), 6:195.Google Scholar

67. Gifford, Adam Jr., “Whiskey, Margarine, and Newspapers: A Tale of Three Taxes,” in Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination, ed. Shughart, William II (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997), 5960.Google Scholar

68. Tooke, William, View of the Russian Empire, 2 ed., 3 vols. (London, 1800), 3:354Google Scholar. To be sure, the discourse surrounding the centrality of alcohol revenues to the Russian government is virtually identical to debates in the post-Soviet context some two hundred years later. In particular, see “Perils of Alcoholism Forgotten in Rush to Raise State Revenues,” St. Petersburg Times, 6–11 January 1997; Schrad, Mark Lawrence, “Kicking the Vodka Habit,” The Moscow Times, 3 11 2006.Google Scholar

69. Fletcher, Gilers, Of the Russe Commonwealth: 1591 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Ivanov, Kniga o vodke, 9. Pokhlebkin, Istoriya vodki, 98. Lanovenko, Svetlov, and Skibitskii, P'yanstvo i prestupnost', 65.

71. For example, the 1744 decision to increase alcohol taxes to 1.3 rubles/vedro in 1744 followed wars with Sweden and Turkey; increases to 2.235 rubles/vedro in 1756 corresponded to the Seven Years' War; increases to 2.54 rubles/vedro in 1766 occurred at the same time as another war with Turkey, and a more drastic increase to 4 rubles/vedro in 1794 followed simultaneous wars with both Sweden and Turkey. Kahan, Arcadius, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout (Chicago, 1985), 341, 325Google Scholar. Christian, David, Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (Oxford, 1990), 382391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. Quoted in Frånberg, Per, “Drink and Drinking Culture in Nineteenth-Century Sweden: Some New Perspective,” in Maktpolitik och husfrid: Studier i internationell och Svensk historia tillägnade Göran Rystad, ed. Ankarloo, Bengt et al. (Lund, 1991), 139.Google Scholar

73. It is the shifting attention between various salient issue dimensions that political scientists have begun to study as a primary underlying causal mechanism to both policy stability and change. Baumgartner, Frank R. and Jones, Bryan D., Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago, 1993)Google Scholar; Jones, Bryan D., Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar; Jones, Bryan D. and Baumgartner, Frank R., The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (Chicago, 2005).Google Scholar

74. “Control over the production, sale, and taxation of spirits in particular became an arena for struggles among various class interests and with the state in many countries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Barrows, Susanna and Room, Robin, “Introduction,” in Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern History, ed. Barrows, Susanna and Room, Robin (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), 11.Google Scholar

75. Room, Robin, “Alcohol and Harm Reduction, Then and Now,” Critical Public Health 14 (12 2004): 332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76. On temperance and alcohol control in late Imperial Russia, see Christian, David, “Prohibition in Russia 1914–1925,” Australian Slavonic and East European Studies 9 (1995)Google Scholar; Herlihy, Patricia, The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (New York, 2002)Google Scholar; Johnson, William, The Liquor Problem in Russia (Westerville, Ohio, 1915)Google Scholar; McKee, W. Arthur, “Taming the Green Serpent: Alcoholism, Autocracy, and Russian Society, 1881–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar; Phillips, Laura, Bolsheviks and the Bottle: Drink and Worker Culture in St. Petersburg, 1900–1929 (DeKalb, Ill., 2000)Google Scholar; Transchel, Kate, Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932 (Pittsburgh, 2006).Google Scholar

77. Tarschys, Daniel, “The Success of a Failure: Gorbachev's Alcohol Policy, 1985–88,” Europe-Asia Studies 45 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Stephen, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State, and Society (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

78. Feshbach, Murray, Russia's Health and Demographic Crises: Policy Implications and Consequences (Washington, D.C., 2003)Google Scholar; Feshbach, Murray, “Russia's Population Meltdown,” Wilson Quarterly 25 (Winter 2001)Google Scholar; Schrad, Mark Lawrence, “Abnormal Demographics,” Foreign Affairs 83 (0708 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Specter, Michael, “The Devastation,” New Yorker, 11 10 2004Google Scholar; Nemtsov, Aleksandr, Alkogol'naya smertnost' v Rossii, 1980–90-e gody (Moscow, 2001).Google Scholar