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Social Rights Advocacy and State Building: T. H. Marshall in the Hands of Social Reformers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jytte Klausen
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Abstract

This article argues that it is a fallacy to regard “social citizenship” as granting social rights equivalent to civil rights and suffrage. The argument is based partly upon a textual analysis showing that in formulating his influential “trinity” of citizenship, T. H. Marshall obfuscated differences between the distributional logic of redistributive policy and political and civil rights. The second part of the argument is based upon an empirical discussion of how social citizenship arguments have been applied to create comprehensive social reform.

The Scandinavian welfare states play a central role in the discussion as examples of the inclu-sionary benefits of social citizenship. Three instances of welfare state expansion are discussed: the passage of legislation establishing flat-rate retirement benefits, the institution of supplementary earnings-related retirement benefits, and feminist mobilization in the 1980s for a “woman-friendly” welfare state. It is shown that claims to social citizenship are used by out-groups to demand inclusion in electoral coalitions aiming at welfare state expansion.

The article concludes that social citizenship is inextricably linked to redistributive political conflict between in-groups and out-groups and depends upon state capacity to raise revenues and to police entitlement. A key difference between social rights and political and civil rights is that consumption of the former hinges on both the consent of the community and the willingness of others to pay for such consumption, while consumption of the latter does not impose direct costs upon others.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1995

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References

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6 From a Scandinavian perspective, this is curious, because Scandinavians have serious doubts about their welfare states. They have come increasingly to consider them both overly expensive and at times less fair than they are supposed to be. Lindbeck, Assar, “Overshooting, Reform and Retreat of the Welfare State” (Tingenbergen Lecture delivered at de Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam, October 1, 1993)Google Scholar; Lane, Jan-Erik, “The Twilight of the Nordic Model,” Political Studies 41 (June 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 Orloff (fn. 3) goes further, arguing that “true social rights” thus imply both the right of women to “leave oppressive situations” (i.e., marriages) and “women's political participation and power” (p. 322).

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19 Ecologists have argued for an ecological concept of citizenship that defines such primarily in terms of obligation and belonging, e.g., as “fecund ecological processes that reveal the growth of com-muity and the individuals who populate them.” See Bookchin, Murray, The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987), 11Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid., 65.

34 Ibid., 55.

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45 The Norwegian labor party received 41% of the vote in the first postwar election but then gradually improved its standing, reaching 48.3% in 1957. In later elections, however, the party's share of the vote declined again and has ranged between 35% and 42%. The Danish social democrats have been hampered by persistent fragmentation on the left. Postwar highs of about 40% peaked in 1964 with 41.2% of the vote, but ten years later, in the 1974 “earthquake” election, the party received only 25.7% of the vote.

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60 For a landmark report in this respect, see Sweden, Statens offentliga utredningar, Socialdeparte-mentet, Frivilligt Social Arbete: Kartlägning och kunskapsöversikt: Rapport av socialtjänstkotnmittén (Volunteer social work) 82 (Stockholm 1993).

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72 Danmarks Statistik (fn. 51), 380.

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