Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-sv6ng Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-07T04:18:27.171Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Curious Case of Post-Fordism and Welfare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

John Carter  and
Mary Rayner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The post-Fordist welfare state thesis is premised upon the economic and technological changes seen in Britain and elsewhere over the last twenty-five years. Its regulationist variant though goes further and locates welfare shifts within a broader account of the transformed accumulation regime. This amounts to a useful intellectual framework within which to consider social policy developments.

This article however, argues that the post-Fordist case is ultimately misleading as it works with an overly restrictive picture of welfare and pays insufficient attention to non-class social divisions. It overemphasises historical disjunctures in the development of welfare and in doing so misses important areas of continuity. This is compounded by a linked tendency to assume rather than demonstrate the actual transformation of the various services. The evidence from education provides only limited support for the predictive aspects of the model. It also confirms the need for sensitive causal accounts of welfare change.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 347 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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

Referecnes

Aglietta, M. (1979), A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, New Left Books, London.Google Scholar
Amin, A. (1994), ‘Post-Fordism: models, fantasies and phantoms of transition’, in Amin, A. (ed.) Post-Fordism: A Reader, Blackwell, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, J. and Meager, N. (1986), Changing Work Patterns: How Companies Achieve Flexibility to Meet New Needs, NEDO, London.Google Scholar
Bagguley, P. (1991), ‘Post-Fordism and enterprise culture: flexibility, autonomy and change in economic organization’, in Keat, R. and Abercrombie, N. (eds.), Enterprise Culture, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Bagguley, P. (1994), ‘Prisoners of the Beveridge dream? The political mobilisation of the poor against contemporary welfare regimes’, in Burrows, and Loader, (eds.) (1994).Google Scholar
Ball, S. J. (1990), Politics and Policy Making in Education, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Bryson, L. (1992), Welfare and the State: Who Benefits?, Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burrows, R. and Loader, B. (eds.) (1994), Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State?, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Carter, J. (1994), ‘The Conservatives and the restructuring of education policy in England and Wales’, Talking Politics, 6: 2, 98–103.Google Scholar
Cawson, A. and Saunders, P. (1983), ‘Corporatism, competitive politics and class struggle’, in King, R. (ed.), Capita and Politics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Elam, M. J. (1990). ‘Puzzling out the post-Fordist debate: technology, markets and institutions’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 11, 9–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Flynn, R. (1983). ‘Co-optation and strategic planning in the local state’, in King, R. (ed.). Capital and Politics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Freeman, C. and Perez, C. (1988), ‘Structural crises of adjustment: business cycles and investment behaviour’, in Dosi, G. et al. (eds.), Economic Theory and Technical Change, Pinter, London.Google Scholar
Hall, S. (1983), ‘The great moving right show’, in Hall, S. and Jacques, M. (eds.), The Politics of Thatcherism, Lawrence and Wishart, London.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity, Blackwell, London.Google Scholar
Jessop, B. (1989a), ‘Regulation theory in retrospect and prospect’, Economy and Society, 19: 2, 153–216.Google Scholar
Jessop, B. (1989b), Thatcherism: the British Road to Post-Fordism?, Essex Papers in Politics and Government, Colchester.Google Scholar
Jessop, B. (1991), ‘The welfare state in the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism’, in Jessop, B. et al. , The Politics of Flexibility: Restructuring State and Industry in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Jessop, B. (1994), ‘The transition to post-Fordism and the Schumpeterian workfare state’, in Burrows, and Loader, (eds.) (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, N. (1987), The Welfare State in Transition: the Theory and Practice of Welfare Pluralism, Harvester, Brighton.Google Scholar
Johnson, N. (1990). Reconstructing the Welfare State: a Decade of Change 1980–1990, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead.Google Scholar
Jones, K. (1989), Right Turn, Hutchinson Radius, London.Google Scholar
Kemeny, J. (1992). Housing and Social Theory, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Mann, K. (1992). The Making of and English ‘Underclass’?, Open University Press, Buckingham.Google Scholar
Newman, J. and Clarke, J. (1994), ‘Going about our business? The managerialization of public services’, in Clarke, J., Cochrane, A. and McLaughlin, E. (eds.), Managing Social Policy, Sage, London.Google Scholar
Nielsen, K. (1991), ‘Towards a flexible future – theories and politics’, in Jessop, et al. The Politics of Flexibility: Restructuring State and Industry in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984). The Second Industrial Divide, Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Rose, H. (1981), ‘Rereading Titmuss – the sexual division of welfare’, Journal of Social Policy, 10: 4, 477–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rustin, M. (1994). ‘Flexibility in higher education’, in Burrows, and Loader, (eds.). (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabel, C. F. (1994), ‘Flexible specialisation and the re-emergence of regional economies’, in Amin, A. (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader, Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Sinfield, A. (1978), ‘Analyses in the social division of welfare’, Journal of Social Policy, 7: 2, 129–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spicker, P. (1983). ‘Titmuss’s social division of welfare: a reappraisal’, in Jones, C. and Stevenson, J. (eds.), Yearbook of Social Policy in Britain, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Titmuss, R. (1958), Essays on the Welfare State, Allen and Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Warde, A. (1994), ‘Consumers, consumption and post-Fordism’, in Burrows, and Loader, (eds.), (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, F. (1989), Social Policy: a Critical Introduction, Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Williams, F. (1994), ‘Social relations, welfare and the post-Fordist debate’, in Burrows, and Loader, (eds.). (1994)Google Scholar