The United States as a liberal welfare regime

Abstract

Having previously set out the basic theories lying behind liberal welfare regimes (section 3.1), we wish now to test those theories against the actual experience of one liberal welfare regime in particular – that of the United States. The basic institutional structure of the American welfare regime has already been discussed (section 4.2). Our task here is simply to assess its performance in pursuit of its chosen strategies and goals. This test will essentially be against the liberal welfare regime's own internal standards of success. But to know whether the liberal welfare regime did as well as it could along those dimensions, it helps to know whether others have done better still. Thus in assessing how well the liberal welfare regime accomplishes its chosen goals through its chosen means, we look at the performance of the United States welfare regime alongside that of Germany and the Netherlands. Mapping liberal welfare strategy In terms of its social welfare policy, the ultimate goal of the liberal welfare regime is to promote high economic growth and, within its specifically social welfare sector, to reduce poverty in the most efficient possible manner. As shown schematically in figure 13.1, the liberal welfare regime aims to promote people's welfare primarily through a highly productive capitalist economy and only very much secondarily through a residualist system of social-welfare transfer payments.