States of relief

At a time when the relationship between work and welfare is at the centre of policy debates, Edwin Amenta's reappraisal of the New Deal raises important issues. It challenges the view of the United States as a "laggard" welfare state. Amenta argues that the New Deal made the US a leader in publicly provided welfare. He presents a compelling argument that the US was not a failed welfare state, but a different model of public provision: a "work and relief state". Most accounts of the New Deal have stressed its legacies of social insurance and assistance programmes. Amenta insists that these were constructed around the public provision of work for those in need. The Work Projects Administration occupied the central role in a system intended to provide work for those who could work and assistance for those deemed unemployable. The argument is impressive, and it offers a political reminder that providing work was, for a time, thought a legitimate and desirable role for governments.

This book is also addressed to major debates in the historical and comparative study of social policy. Amenta aims to move beyond the conventional opposition that treats social policy as being shaped by either politics (especially the role of social democratic parties) or institutional conditions. Instead he proposes an "institutional politics" approach that stresses the combinations of institutional and political forces shaping policy development.

In particular, Amenta highlights the institutional importance of an underdemocratised US political system (particularly in the South) and the implications of patronage-oriented political organisations. He argues that the development of social policies needs to be seen as the outcome of "reform-oriented regimes": coalitions of progressive politicians supported by active expertise, state organisational capacities and social movements beyond political parties (such as organised labour). Amenta makes a persuasive case for treating such "regimes" as the characteristic political form associated with welfare development, of which the European social democratic parties may be one variant rather than the norm.

This intellectual framework gives rise to some problems. Like many involved in comparative studies, Amenta has a diminished view of what the "social" in social policy might be about. These debates tend to focus on spending patterns rather than the social relationships produced or reproduced in welfare. At least Amenta tries to address some questions about the impact of the New Deal programmes on gendered and racialised divisions. However, these dimensions are less than comfortably integrated into his analysis. Given how central these divisions have been to recent political struggles over the provision of welfare in the US, this represents a significant shortcoming.

These politics of welfare also raise a more fundamental question about Amenta's analysis: how does one get a "reform-oriented regime"? Amenta does not go beyond the electoral results into how the progressive alliances were constructed, supported and voted for. In some respects, he is better at explaining how the New Deal was dismantled and diminished by "anti-spending" forces. In both the US and the UK, we have plenty of recent experience of these politics. Yet, given Amenta's pessimism about prospects for welfare policy, how to build a new "reform-oriented regime" is surely a pressing question.

John Clarke is professor of social policy, Open University.