Social Welfare Policy and Politics

Abstract

The statement “Policy affects practice and practice affects policy” helps educate and remind social workers of the dual role they play—practitioners, working with individuals, groups, organizations, and communities to improve currently occurring difficulties, and advocates, working through political means to alter or remove the causes of current problems. Working both in the present and for the future places social workers in a unique position. Still, the connections between social welfare policy and the political world are not always well explained or understood. This essay defines basic terms, presents a range of political philosophies, and shows how their adherents operationalize their view of the “ideal” social policy. A brief description of the process of politics, advocacy, is also provided, in the context of the generalist model of social work practice. Social welfare policy, a complex and ill-defined term, has three important characteristics: it relates to enhancing the quality of life of individuals, sometimes acting through groups or communities to do so; it is created by both action and lack of action on the part of decision-makers; and it is the outcome of a process involving politics. Politics, as a term, has two separate meanings which are both explored. First is politics as ideology, or a view or how the world does or should operate. Second, politics is also a process that is used to create, defend, or change social welfare and other types of policy. A spectrum of ideologies and their associated policy implications are presented. Starting with libertarians, on the right, we move leftward, looking at conservatives, centrists, liberals, social democrats, and socialists. The connection between politics as ideology and social welfare policy is made clear by showing the variation in desired policies, depending on the ideology used for their justification. Following the discussion of politics as ideology, we turn to politics as process. Advocacy in the political world is broken into six steps that anyone can follow, modeled after the steps in the generalist, problem-solving model of social work. These steps are: getting involved, understanding the issue, planning, advocating, evaluating, and monitoring. Keywords: politics; social welfare policy; advocacy; ideology; political parties