State Paternalism Research Articles

Transformation of the functions of the institution of the welfare State: the evolution of views and modern challenges

The relevance of the chosen issues is determined by the subject of research - the institution of the welfare state, which plays a crucial role in ensuring the normative order in society and the balance of interests between different social groups. It also guarantees the realization of citizens' political and social rights.The study focuses on the transformation of the welfare state's functions and priorities in social policy, influenced by a rapidly changing internal and external environment. The main methodological foundation of the study is theoretical scientific methods and a systematic approach. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the research, the authors have drawn on both the results of sociological studies and a significant amount of data from international and domestic socio-economic statistics to address the identified issues. The authors have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the factors that contribute to socio-economic change and how these changes directly affect the functioning of the welfare state. They conclude that, despite differences in each country's stable preferences, external and internal socio-economic conditions influence the social functions of states, institutions, and the mechanisms for implementing these functions. Despite the fact that the principles and functions of the welfare state are implemented through specific measures that take into account the economic capabilities of the state, the peculiarities of state-building, national mentality, and the system of basic values, the idea of state paternalism remains at the heart of each model of the welfare state. This idea reflects the concept of state guardianship over the social sphere. In addition, there is a trend towards convergence among models of the welfare state in the modern world, which manifests itself in a steady trend towards unification of mechanisms for implementing social functions of the state and convergence in the scale of redistribution processes.

“There Is Only One Childhood”: A New Interpretation of China’s “Crackdown” on Education Companies

In recent years, the Chinese government has implemented a series of dramatic crackdowns on various business sectors in China, one of which, beginning in July 2021, targeted the private tutoring industry. This article offers a new interpretation of this crackdown on private education companies, arguing that it is part of a new comprehensive education policy called the “Double Reduction” (DR) policy. Although the policy’s main goal has been to reduce students’ educational burden, this article also links the policy to China’s core objective of advancing indigenous innovation to enable national rejuvenation. The analysis of the DR policy also reveals two contradictions that currently characterize China’s educational path: first, the contradiction inherent in the authoritarian and paternalistic state using tough measures to enforce parental compliance with policies aimed at fostering more democratic parenting styles; and second, the contradiction inherent in policies aimed at fostering happy childhoods for the purposes of global competitiveness.

The paternalistic state and civil society: the problem of socio-economic inequality

The issues of socio-economic inequality and stratification are quite relevant for modern Russia. At the same time, there is no objective justification for the inequality existing within the Russian population today, which undermines the basis for the formation of civil society. In the article the need for an active role of the state in regulating the level of socio-economic inequality is substantiated.

Paternalistic state care and the dynamic of COVID-19 pandemic governance in Jakarta's rented social housing

The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited debates on care, exposing the vital role of social reproduction despite its ongoing devaluation. Recent studies underscore the urban marginal's multidimensional vulnerabilities during the pandemic, coupled with inadequate state support and excessive policing amid their disproportionate engagements in low-paying care work essential to the city.This study extends the literature by exploring the discourse of care amid the pandemic in Jakarta's rented social housing (rusunawa), Indonesia. As a state-owned settlement hosting displaced residents from informal settlements, rusunawa represents a new form of urban marginality. Based on an ethnography of three rusunawa between 2019 and 2021, I argue that paternalism defines the state's vision and operation of rusunawa. By portraying the residents as vulnerable yet ignorant, the state justifies the combination of disciplines and supports in ‘caring’ for them.The continued paternalistic care during the pandemic, with an intensification of disciplines and assistance, ameliorated the residents' antagonism against the state. Yet, access to state relief programs still hinged upon the residents' invocation of vulnerabilities and personal connection with rusunawa management. Lastly, I demonstrate the residents' intractable desire for a state that embodies a powerful yet nurturing parent, shaping their assessment of the quality of state care.

From State Developmentalism to Financial Populism: The ‘Bank of Welfare' and Mexico’s Moral Economy

ABSTRACT The Mexican state-owned bank Banco del Bienestar (BB) — Bank of Welfare — has received a lot of attention for its role in the current Government’s ambitious political project to create an ‘alternative to neoliberalism’ and turn Mexico into a ‘moral economy’. This article analyzes the activities of Banco del Bienestar, with special attention to the recent economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. We conclude that BB has followed a path from a state developmentalist-corporatist, to a neoliberal, to a postneoliberal, ‘financial populist’ model, under changing political cultures and with an increasing historical importance for state-society relations. The BB currently operates as a government-funded public entity serving the distribution of non-repayable social benefits to large, vulnerable population groups, while maintaining links with financial markets. We interpret this shift from the neoliberal to the financial populist era of public banking as consolidation of a ‘fix’ of neoliberalism’s failures, which is based on the definitive acceptance of the reality of development perspectives of the Global South. ‘Public purpose’ in this context becomes based on a social imaginary where the ‘public’ is comprised of those that are permanently taken care of by the paternalistic state.

Paternalism at a Distance

I argue that the distance between state and citizen gives state paternalism a pro tanto advantage over paternalism between individuals. Pace Jonathan Quong, the state neither denies nor diminishes my moral status by acting on a justified negative judgment about my rational or volitional capacities. Nor does its failure to paternalize on the basis of detailed information about individuals constitute a source of disrespect. Rather, the less discriminating nature of general legislation both reduces the risk of social stigmatization and avoids a problematic dynamic with the paternalizee. But paternalistic policies may give us reason to be concerned about superiority or contempt in policy-makers towards the citizens at whom they are directed. Governments must remain ‘faceless’ enough for paternalism to operate at a distance, but they must reassure the governed that the judgment that they can do better for them does not conceal the attitude that they are better than them.

DA LI IM JE ZAISTA STALO DO NAS? O GRANICAMA DRŽAVNOG INTERVENCIONIZMA

This paper examines the limits of state intervention through the relationship between freedom and equality, the rule of law and social justice, as well as through two highly contradictory concepts regarding the scope of government action – the concepts of minimal state and paternalistic state. Accordingly, we seek to identify a model capable of outlining the extent to which the state can intervene in the light of socially beneficial goals, but without compromising individual freedom. Since we cannot find such a model within the extreme positions of liberalism and socialism, this paper seeks to offer a satisfactory solution by mitigating some of the ideologically exclusive positions. It embraces Aristotle’s teaching about the middle as a virtue and proposes sophisticated neoliberalism as a potential alternative to the status quo. Still, as insisted, the government should never be allowed to assume uncontrollable powers and create conditions for collectivist doctrines that recognize no individual freedom. Key Words: equality, freedom, rule of law, social justice, state intervention

Análisis jurídico-económico de la cuestión de género: costes, fallos y paradojas

This is a critical review on gender issue, to understand and to evaluate the impact of the gender interven-tionism, with its costs, failures, paradoxes and other unwanted effects. This review uses the theoreticaland methodological frameworks from New-Institutional approach (Law & Economics, Public Choice,Constitutional Economic, etc.), to build bridges between Economy, Law and Politics, without confusionamong the social spheres and under the principle of reality, which rejects economic thaumaturgy, politicalromanticism and state paternalism. There is a historical-comparative review on the development of coerciveimplementation based on gender perspective and its agenda, from a macro-view to a micro level, focusingthe attention on the Spanish case. There is a final statement of its results, to clarify what kind of incentiveshave been given the gender bills and policies, the level of efficiency and institutional quality to solve socialproblems, the risks of an endless agenda and other unwanted effects, but foreseeable according to the principleof reality.

Introduction

Since early 2020, the covid-19 pandemic has unfolded as a global crisis that poses significant challenges to governments and societies.1 Governments have reacted quite variably, with policies ranging from strict lockdowns over a longer period of time to flexible approaches with restriction of freedoms at very low thresholds of intrusion into citizens’ rights.2 While the pandemic does not affect everyone equally, and some countries are more advanced in containing the virus than others, the sense of vulnerability and insecurity is widespread. In addition to the 6.5 million people who have died from covid-19 as of late August 2022, many more are affected by ongoing symptoms of long covid-19. Increased economic disparities and new forms of inequality only exacerbate the degree of uncertainty and the feeling that life is out of control.3 However, the popular yearning to regain control has not led to an unambiguous “desire for the state.”4 Rather, trust in governments has fluctuated in the wake of the pandemic. If there was a “rally around the flag” effect, it was certainly not found in every country.5 Even if support for government regulations and restrictions were prevalent within a state, it was not shared equally by different parts of the population. In several countries, the pandemic has also given rise to substantial protests against the restriction of civic, economic, and social liberties, often driven by fears of state surveillance, libertarian rebellion against state paternalism, and conspiratorial beliefs.6

The Evolution of the State and the Failure of Society: Theoretical Notes

The article presents a theoretical and historical analysis of the state transformation processes, starting from the household patriarchal form of paternalism up to its later transfer to the state, creating the basis for “paternalistic state”, which differs from the patriarchal model by the collective nature of generating public interests and democratization possibilities of the public choice process itself. In this context the problems of democratization of non-market decisions, with their inherent risks of distortion of public choice, are considered, and the fundamental contradiction of the modern political process is formulated. As one of its consequences, the article draws a fundamental conclusion about the exhaustion of the “welfare state” model and the onset of the next stage of evolution, the feature of which is the transformation of the welfare state into a paternalistic state. This conclusion is combined with other results of this study, which highlighted the main stages of state evolution, including the initial phase of the “patriarchal state” and the stage of the “decline of the paternalistic state”, associated with the “failure of society”. The matter here is such a state, when the society's broken protective mechanisms no longer prevent the choice of paternalistic state goals that do not correspond to the interests of society, and the erroneous strategies of their implementation. The article formulates an assumption about the possibility of restoring society's “immune system”. Having reached the stage of a developed paternalistic state, society faces zevolutionary cross-roads. In one case, the process of paternalistic state degradation starts, accompanied by a reduction of the field of social choice and a transition to autocracy, and then to the liquidation of the mechanisms of social choice. In another case, there are prerequisites for recovery of society's immune system connected with the development of social networks, creating an essentially new channel of communication between politicians and society that contributes to the formation of informal institutions, providing expansion of the public choice field.

The Contradictory Emotions of Gendered Labor

Abstract This article examines family care for sick older people in a rural hospital in Guangdong Province. Drawing on six months of fieldwork, I show how local families divide the duty of care for the elderly, and how care is perceived in local discourse. Specific attention is paid to competing notions of care and how their meanings are negotiated: neighbors and even family members often show themselves to be indifferent to elder care, and care work is feminized and devalued. At the same time, family members and daughters in particular have to shoulder duties of care. The contradictory emotions of gendered care work offer a vantage point to understand the changing dynamics of patriarchy, marketization, and state paternalism in China today.

Informalisation of state-subsidised housing in South Africa – the people's response to state paternalism

ABSTRACT: Since 1994, the state has delivered more than 3.4 million housing opportunities to previously marginalised populations. Despite challenges, state subsidised housing has often been cited as the post-apartheid government's major success. The state's primary objective has been to meet the housing needs of the previously disenfranchised majority African population. However, some of the beneficiaries started selling their houses informally. Since the state saw this as defeating the primary purpose of the programme, it introduced a prohibition on the selling of the properties within the first eight years. This paper explores examples of intricate and complex informal transactions in state subsidised housing, drawing on on a substantial study of the processes involved. In conclusion, the paper argues that informalisation of state-subsidised housing in South Africa represents the people's push back against state paternalism in housing provision – whether directly or indirectly – and recommends alternative approaches.

State Paternalism and Economic Inequality: the Practice of the USSR and Modern Realities

The article shows the significant role of the state in regulating the level of socio-economic inequality. The scale of state regulation in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods is compared. During the Soviet period, the state purposefully carried out a reduction in wage differentiation, which led to equalization of earnings and a decrease in labor productivity. In the post-Soviet period, the state practically withdrew from solving the problem of economic inequality. A steady trend of growth in income differentiation of the population has been formed, accompanied by a decrease in economic growth rates.

To Love and Freedom: Post-martial Law Subjectivity in Detention and Your Name Engraved Herein

This paper investigates the contemporary cinematic representation of the White Terror period (1949–1987) in Taiwan. The government started the process of Transitional Justice in 2017, uncovering and articulating the violence of the martial law period, which has coincided with Taiwan’s search for visibility and recognition on the international stage. Meanwhile, the PRC’s military threat to annex Taiwan turns the collective memory of White Terror into a cautionary tale of dictatorship. Considering this historical and political context, I examine two commercial films set against the martial law period, Detention (2019) and Your Name Engraved Herein (2020). I argue that the two films, in their criticism of authoritarianism, construct antagonism between a paternalistic state apparatus and innocent, idealistic youth in melodramatic romantic narratives. With their hyperbolic expression of physical and psychological struggles, the pursuit of love and freedom is upheld as the ultimate expression of humanity. The romantic subjectivity formed in the melodramatic love stories eventually displaces the historical trauma, turning into escapism or gender binarism. Rather than locating and mediating the complexity of trauma, the two films celebrate liberalism by perpetuating stereotypes and exclusionism.

Coping with Welfare Shame: Responses of Urban Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Peoples to “Mutual Obligation” Requirements in Australia

AbstractThis article examines how Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people in cities navigate welfare and the mutual obligation regime in Australia. Since the introduction of the mutual obligation requirements (MORs) and the accompanying “Work for the Dole” program, initially for Indigenous and later for non‐Indigenous welfare beneficiaries, welfare recipients from both groups are perceived as morally deficient people and are stigmatized by paternalistic state surveillance. Drawing on the idea of shame as a cultural boundary‐making process, this article shows that although welfare recipients from both groups have reinterpreted the concept of “mutual obligation” based on their cultural values and practices, contesting interpretations of the concept within each group have hindered them from fully deflecting shame by disrupting and replacing normative scripts of conduct. This article argues that such variations occurred first because the interpretations that both groups adopted to cope with government surveillance are already mobilized by the state to justify intervening in citizens’ lives, and second because the sociospatiality of a city such as Adelaide, where a broad range of neoliberal policy experiments have been implemented, facilitates the internalization of neoliberal values among citizens, regardless of whether they are Indigenous or not. [mutual obligation, “work for the dole” program, Indigenous, welfare recipients, shame]

Caste, Conservative, Colonial, and State Paternalism in India's Alcohol Policies


 Alcohol consumption in India is governed by social and moral codes and religious norms, stratified by caste and gender, and controlled by state policies. Indian alcohol policy today consists of measures ranging from high taxation to strict prohibition across different states. Our article examines whether the Western state paternalistic framework is adequate to explain the alcohol policies of India. We conduct a critical reading of texts on socio-cultural and political history of alcohol consumption, taxation, and regulation in India, and study their influence on contemporary alcohol policies of Indian states. A central theme presented in this paper is that India’s complex history, with social institutions of caste, religious conservatism, regional politics and colonialism, has created a unique complex of experiences related to alcohol, and argues for a greater alignment of Western paternalistic frameworks with Indian socio-political context. Broadly, we argue that state paternalism should be understood beyond the national and state politics of the present, and factor in the path-dependency of socio-cultural and political history of the state being examined.

Economic science and publication activity in a paternalistic state

The increasing impact of scientometrics and formal approaches to science management distorts employee motivation, which, in turn, impedes the growth and accumulation of scientific knowledge. The paper aims to gauge public opinion on the paternalistic state activity in the field of science using the results of a sociological survey. The methodological basis includes the principles of paternalism and scientometric management. The study uses the results of the survey of the economic community held by the New Economic Association in 2022. The methods of regression analysis and factor analysis modified for multiway data were applied. Formalization and bureaucratization of science management processes are viewed within the framework of the well-known conflict between the Higher Attestation Commission and the RSCI, which created numerous barriers for researchers who prepared candidate and doctoral dissertations. To assess the attitude of experts to the current situation, it is necessary to obtain a constant sociological cross-section of opinions, if possible. Public monitoring of economic journals and the MW-analysis methodology made it possible to rank journals for the year of 2022. The compiled private and aggregate rankings contain information about the preferences of the economic community and are markedly different from the RSCI scientometric-based indicators. The paper also presents an expert assessment of the proposals for reforming the journal activity, in particular, the proposal of creating material incentives by research periodicals for scientists to prepare high-quality articles.

Paternalistic state: Academic science and scientific journals

The paper is prefaced by the statement that a paternalistic state was not invented by anyone and is a result of an endogenous process of society development, at different phases of which the state can generate both positive and negative consequences. In this context, the paper justifies the fallacy of the state’s decision to reorganize the Russian Academy of Sciences by escalating bureaucratic interference in scientific life — using scientometric management methods and introducing an “effective contract” that brought forth a “waterfall” of worthless articles and predatory journals. In order to eliminate “scientometric failure” the paper proposes recommendations on science reforming based on principally new view on the processes of knowledge production as a public good and its transformation into market products with an emphasis on one of the branches of this transformation — scientific articles publication. The theoretical result has served as a platform for the development of institutional modernization of the knowledge distribution system, according to which the authors for an appropriate fee may grant the right to use their scientific texts for publication in journals. The revenues of journals should come from two sources: the sale of journals at market prices consistent with the individual utility of publishing products, and a budget subsidy consistent with the social utility of journals’ knowledge dissemination services. The implementation of this reform implies state funding of scientific journals and targeted subsidies to scientific libraries of universities and academic institutions to pay for subscriptions to major scientific journals.

Transformation of the national medical services market: A review of the works of modern Russian authors

Aim. The presented study aims to assess the current state and possible vectors of changes in the Russian medical services market by analyzing the results of secondary data of Russian researchers. Tasks. The authors analyze existing scientific and theoretical approaches to the problem under consideration; identify patterns in the development of the medical services market in Russia; determine regulatory mechanisms for the medical market. Methods. This study is based on multidisciplinarity, methods of related scientific disciplines, quantitative and qualitative tools. The diversity of research tools is due to the specifics of a particular subject area and its social necessity. Results. The structure of the medical services market, which includes related sectors associated with the development of pharmaceutics, medical equipment, and specialized software, poses a wide range of challenges for researchers. There is an ongoing discussion in the Russian scientific community about the mechanisms for the incentivization of such a market. The number of publications by Russian authors on this problem is growing. Conclusions. Competition in the medical services market is caused by the existence of public and private medicine (some researchers also distinguish the informal shadow sector). The emergence of competition has a positive effect on the quality of medical care and medical services, making it possible to enhance the prestige of the medical profession and the income of medical workers. However, there are also specific regional problems related to pricing in private medicine and compliance with quality standards. Other significant issues include overcoming the existing state paternalism and forming a new perception of medical services in general, which most consumers in Russia find difficult to accept.

Ideal Discussants, Real Food: Questioning the Applicability of Public Reason Approach in Healthy Eating Policies

Healthy eating policies have become a hot and thorny domain of public concern because they affect people’s liberties, life prospects, and public expenditures. However, what policies state institutions may legitimately enforce is a controversial matter. Is state paternalism for the sake of public health permissible? Could people be incentivized to eat in a healthier manner? Barnhill and Bonotti’s recent book (Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy) tackle these issues (and others) in a manner that seeks to combine the liberal values of state neutrality and antipaternalism, as well as the effectiveness and legitimacy of food policies. To do so, they rely on the accessibility model of public reason. Although Barnhill and Bonotti’s proposal fills an important gap in the field and the accessibility model of public reason overcomes some strictures of the Rawlsian account, their account of public reason faces some practical challenges. Indeed, the institutionalization of their framework seems to need the figure of a moderator of a deliberative panel. However, this figure would create a tension between the public reason framework and the common requirements of deliberative accounts.