Organized Labor, State Structures, and Social Policy Development: A Case Study of Old Age Assistance in Ohio, 1916-1940

Abstract

In attempting to explain the relative underdevelopment of the American welfare state, one theory, based on a class conflict model, attributes the lack of comprehensive social benefits to the weakness of the labor movement. The state-centered approach, by contrast, locates social program development in aspects of state structures: party competition, autonomous activity of party officials and state bureaucrats, and state organizational structure. This historical case study of the initiation and implementation of old age assistance in Ohio demonstrates that neither a class conflict nor a state-centered model can adequately explain the development of American welfare programs. Old age assistance was shaped through the complex intersection of class and political factors involving different factions of the labor movement, party politics, and an expanding federal bureaucracy.