PARTICIPATION AND THE NEW WELFARE.

Harris, Patricia Roberts

 This is the argument used by every dictator, inquisitor, and bully who
 seeks some moral, or even aesthetic, justification for his conduct. I must
 do for men (or with them) what they cannot do for themselves, and I cannot
 ask their permission or consent, because they are in no position to know
 what is best for them; indeed, what they will permit and accept may mean a
 life of contemptible mediocrity, or perhaps even their ruin and suicide.

Isaiah Berlin, `Two Concepts of Liberty'.

Introductory

The Australian report on welfare reform, Participation Support for a More Equitable Society, released in August 2000, recommends that payment of benefits for the majority of working age claimants should be conditional on participation in a designated range of activities (McClure 2000b). While the general tone of the report is moderate, and in certain instances sympathetic to claimants' interests, its focus on participation is in crucial respects similar to the more stringent strategies followed in the United States, Britain and New Zealand. In the United States, under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (1996), single mothers must accept jobs or lose benefits. Britain introduced a `welfare to work' program in 1995 with penalties for those who refused to participate. In the same period, New Zealand tightened eligibility requirements, and ran its famous social responsibility campaign.

In each case, the notion of `participation' is emphasised. Welfare is to be active, not passive; the disadvantaged are to become team members; social exclusion is to be overcome. Thus the Interim Report on Welfare Reform says that its aim is to `reorient the social support system in a positive way to encourage and enable even the most marginalised people to participate more fully in society and the economy' (McClure 2000a: 12). In the same vein, Senator Newman (1999a: 10) explains that:

 the income support system needs to be refocussed on participation,
 emphasising the principle of mutual obligation and recognising the
 contribution that all people can make to society. A modern system must
 embrace the belief in individual potential. It should promote personal
 responsibility to support oneself and/or contribute to the community in
 other ways. Those of us who can contribute to the community should be
 encouraged and expected to do so.

When politicians, officials and policy analysts talk this way they draw from local and familiar notions. `Society' is too large and abstract a notion to lend itself easily to participation talk. So government statements about participation, as well as the academic ideas on which they draw, extrapolate from homelier and more mundane notions: the family, the club, the local association; from the lessons learned at school, within families, and as good team members (cf. Jordan 1998).

This `participation speak' is trickier than it at first appears. It tells different stories, shifts ground, and blends contradictory elements. At least three different such `participation narratives' circulate in current policy debate:

* A story about self-sufficiency. Here participation is established as the opposite of dependency and passivity. It is about looking after yourself and not being a burden on others, and is exemplified in welfare to work programs and in the equation of independence with labour force participation.

* A narrative about paying your dues. In this case, the talk is about `putting back what you took out' and `playing by the rules of the game'. This is a story about fair dues, articulated through mutual obligation programs.

* A story about team effort. Here, participation is about working with others for a common goal, `pulling together' and making a contribution to the group. It is primarily exemplified in community regeneration programs and partnerships between government, business and philanthropy.

I emphasise that these narratives co-exist within contemporary strategies of welfare reform. Particular governments, depending on their political persuasion, highlight one or other element: Tony Blair's New Labour, for example, gives more attention to `team-work' than does the current Australian Government, which more often speaks up `self-sufficiency' and `paying your dues'. But there is plenty of talk about local communities and team effort in Australia too. So it is misleading to suggest that governments can be identified as, say, `neo-liberal' or `communitarian' depending on a particular point of emphasis. For whether the talk is about sole parents, older people without work, unemployed youth or people with disabilities, it is the presence of all three narratives, and, with that, the degree of resemblance between governments, which is most striking. (For reviews of international developments see King & Wickham Jones 1999; Mackay 1998; Taylor-Gooby 1996.)

What are we to make of this contemporary talk about participation? I explore the question with reference to Australian developments. Starting with a review of each participation story, I concentrate on its policy context and theoretical suppositions. Next I consider the kind of society which is presupposed or imagined by these accounts and juxtapose that picture with some alternative views circulating in different political contexts and with different political aspirations. Finally, I reflect on the social and political implications of contemporary participation talk, along with possible alternatives.

The current narratives

Preliminary note

Each of the participation narratives has a special niche in contemporary Australian government thinking and is associated with particular documents. `Self-sufficiency' is to be found in the `active society' discourses and presently occupies a special place in Senator Newman's calls for welfare reform. `Paying your dues' is associated with the Government's Mutual Obligation and Work for the Dole programs. Its suppositions have been most clearly articulated in statements made by the current Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Kemp 1998a, 1998b). Finally, the `team effort' theme is associated with a range of community and family support programs. It finds a particularly important place in the deliberations of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform and its associated recommendations for change, particularly as part of a refurbished and widened notion of mutual obligation.

Participation as self-sufficiency

On this account, participation fundamentally means engagement in paid work and employment-related training. As summarised by Senator Newman (1999a: 9): `[P]aid work, and education and training that lead to paid work, are the keys to individuals achieving greater self-reliance and reducing their welfare dependence.' Here the contrast is with reliance on welfare benefits, construed in terms of `passivity' and `dependence'. Senator Newman's comments about people `achieving greater self reliance and reducing their welfare dependence' achieve their rhetorical effect through an association with the dependencies of addiction. Welfare is a habit that needs to be broken, a matter of learned helplessness to be undone through paid work and training. The theoretical base for this version of participation lies in notions of behavioural poverty and the cycle of deprivation (e.g. Sullivan 2000).

The discursive turn whereby notions of participation became equated with paid work entered the mainstream Australian lexicon in the mid 1980s under a Labor government. Following the lead of the OECD, it was argued that the income security system should be reshaped to encourage active participation rather than dependence and passivity. In this vein, a major review of the social security system, Income Support for the Unemployed in Australia: Towards a More Active System, argued for a system which encouraged a return to work, minimised the erosion of self-esteem and reduced labourmarket marginalisation (Cass 1988). Other elements of the active society approach included the Newstart program for long-term unemployed, the Jobs, Education and Training Scheme for sole parents, the Disability Reform Package and the Active Employment Strategy. The accent on activity was continued and strengthened by the Coalition and forms the basis of the Welfare Review announced by Senator Newman in September 1999.

In this version of participation, passivity is attributed, at least in part, to the welfare system itself. Well established metaphors characterise social security as a safety net rather than a springboard, a road to nowhere rather than an avenue of opportunity. In her calls for reform, Senator Newman makes a plea for a system which is a `gateway to self-reliance rather than a dead-end with no future', `a springboard to economic security and independence and not just a passive net' (Newman 1999a: 9; 1999b: 20). Drawing on behavioural poverty notions, the rhetoric considers claimants as lacking in `independence, self-respect and life satisfaction' (McClure 2000a: 12). Welfare exacerbates matters by producing an `erosion of work skills, lower incomes, poorer health and risk of isolation from the rest of the community' (Newman 1999a: 6). And these effects may be passed from generation to generation: `young people from income support families are much more likely than other young people to become parents at an early age, leave school early, receive income support and be highly income support reliant themselves' (ibid.). The Reference Group agrees. Participation in paid work, it says, is `a major source of self-esteem'. Without it, `people can fail to develop, or become disengaged from, employment, family and community networks. This can lead to physical and psychological ill health and reduced life opportunities for parents and their children' (McClure 2000b: 7). The Interim Report thus contends that:

 Disengagement from the paid workforce which leads to long term reliance on
 income support can be harmful for individuals, their families and for the
 communities in which they live. Long periods out of paid work reduce
 lifetime earnings and lead to loss of skills and self-confidence. These in
 turn increase the risk of longer term poverty and decrease the probability
 of a successful return to work in the future. (McClure 2000a: 7.)

One of the important motifs of this discourse is social exclusion. The theme plays a central role in Tony Blair's New Deal, where it is suggested that the young unemployed have formed a dispossessed, alienated and potentially dangerous sub-stratum as a result of their marginalisation from mainstream social and economic activities. As Walters (2000: 124-25) points out, Britain's Social Exclusion Unit operates on the idea that there is a group at the margins in need of rehabilitation, and in this respect shares many features with the notion of an `underclass' popular in the United States. In the Australian documents, social exclusion is linked to the welfare system which, in `isolating and excluding people within their own communities', has `negative effects on (people's) health, both physical and psychological, their finances, and their personal relationships' (McClure 2000a: 12). By contrast, the new welfare is said to be in `the long-term interests of individuals', as well as `the key strategy for addressing the prospect of entrenched social and economic disadvantage' (McClure 2000b: 49). It is a form of `tough love', visited on people in their own best interests, representing in Mead's (1997) terms, a `new paternalism' (cf. Yeatman 1999).

There are a number of problems with this line of argument. Its starting assumption -- the passivity and dependence of long term claimants -- ignores the fact that existence on the poverty line incomes involves struggle, strategy, defiance, endurance, resistance and a good sense of how to get by. Further, as far as alienation and apathy are concerned, the causal arrows of this explanation point in the wrong direction. Such are foreseeable responses to long-term unemployment rather than its causes, with depression (say) a predictable outcome of a fruitless search for work, of applications refused, in a workoriented society. Finally, the focus on personal attitudes means that the structural imbalance between available positions and job seekers recedes from view. When references to such factors do surface it is to suggest that economic trends are underpinned by an ineluctable force about which government can do little or nothing:

 I don't want to be misunderstood here. We should be under no illusions. The
 globalisation of the economy is an irresistible phenomenon that no
 Australian government should seek to deny. Indeed it would be
 counterproductive to do so. (Newman 1999b: 1.)

Such a hands-off attitude to the international economy sits oddly with the new emphasis on mandatory participation for those yet to benefit from this irresistible phenomenon.

Participation as paying your dues

Although `paying your dues' intersects with `self-sufficiency' (and often gets confused with it), it tells a significantly different story. In the case of self-sufficiency, participation is a matter of being active; in `paying your dues' it is about paying the membership fees, putting back what you have received, and playing fair. The theoretical home of this discourse is public choice theory and the obverse to participation is not so much passivity as free-loading. It is to sentiments such as these that a whole host of government programs make rhetorical appeal:

 The government's principle of mutual obligation is based on a simple
 proposition that unemployed job seekers, supported financially by the
 community, should actively seek work, constantly strive to improve their
 competitiveness in the labour market and give something to the community
 that supports them. (Kemp 1998a: 1; emphasis added.)

Whereas the targets of the self-sufficiency narrative have lost their capacity to operate as economic subjects, the actors of `fair dues' are making decisions quite consistent with homo economicus. If it pays not to work, why do so? If one can get by without doing one's bit, why bother? If others will pay, what's the need to contribute? Such is the reasoning which a long line of welfare critics, ably led by Charles Murray (1984), in company with public choice theorists, have attributed to social security claimants. In tandem with the social exclusion/underclass thesis, but with a tragedy of the commons twist, these writers also suggest that welfare claimants make decisions which are not, in fact, in their own long-term interests. The choices are rational only in the context of short-term needs and limited horizons, and are re-enforced by the welfare system itself. For Murray, this process has led to `increasing unemployment among the young, increased drop out from the labour force ... (and) higher rates of illegitimacy and welfare dependency'. All of these, he says, are `results that could have been predicted from the changes that social policy made to the rewards and penalties, carrots and sticks, that govern human behaviour. All were rational responses to changes in the game of surviving and getting ahead' (Murray 1984: 154-55). This line of argument, like the dependency/passivity thesis, rests on a greatly over-simplified view of the manifold considerations bearing on people's decisions about the work/ welfare nexus: the actual availability of work, the costs of transport, the ages and health of children, child-care, the need for extra income, the level of social support, the emotional costs and benefits involved -- among much else.

In the United States, Murray's critique of the `Kennedy transition', elaborated by Mead (1986; 1992), became popular in a period of economic restraint and rising unemployment. Australia followed the same path, perhaps five to ten years later. The notion of reciprocal obligation, and with it proposals for changing the `carrots and sticks that govern human behaviour', underlay Labor's Working Nation scheme, particularly as far as the responsibilities of the unemployed under the Job Compact were concerned -- even though Murray's critique was overtly shunned. Officially, the position was simple: `if the government is providing income support, labour market programs and other services, it is only fair that clients take up any reasonable offer of assistance and do whatever they can to improve their employment prospects' (DEET 1992: 21-22). From here, Coalition policies increasingly place the onus of responsibility on the individual, as illustrated by the reduction of funding for national training programs, the development of work for the dole initiatives and the strengthening of activity agreements (Kerr & Savelsberg 1999; Hawke 1998; Kellie 1998; Macintyre 1999).

Mutual obligation initiatives rest on the premise that membership of the `club' and its accompanying benefits are already in place. The benefits which governments have in mind are welfare payments. Once the understanding of welfare shifts from a payment owed a person to a provision for which the recipient is indebted, the claimant can reasonably be required to make some return. This means asking young people to `look for work more actively and be less selective about job opportunities' and to `improve their job prospects, their competitiveness in the labour market or contribute to the local community' (Kemp 1998a: 1; 1998b: 1). Perhaps in recognition of the real shortage of labour force opportunities, activity agreements now include voluntary work and Green Corps activities as well as job-search. From the vantage point of community development, the benefits are promoted. The Reference Group on Welfare Reform was keen to point out that participation includes `the care of vulnerable others ... and participation in community projects, voluntary organisations, educational, sporting and cultural activities' on the grounds that `these activities add to networks of care and support ... thereby increasing the resources available to the community as a whole' (McClure 2000a: 13). Similarly, Minister Kemp claims that:

 communities have benefited from the restoration of local historic buildings
 and their environment, the construction of walking tracks, park facilities,
 and picnic areas, bushfire hazard reduction, support for the elderly and
 people with disabilities, and numerous other innovative and worthwhile
 projects. (Kemp 1998d: 1.)

A strikingly similar point was made about relief work during the 1930s Depression by a contemporary analyst. The tasks then included:

 the making and maintenance of plantations, parks and gardens, and the
 carrying out of general beautification works; the repair and painting of
 fences, seats and exteriors of minor municipal buildings, the maintenance
 of roads and footpaths, the destruction of weeds, the draining of low lying
 areas, the transfer from the railways of firewood intended for distribution
 among unemployed persons, the repair of footwear belonging to unemployed
 persons, and so on. (Bland 1976, [1934]: 177-78.)

This is plausible rhetoric but raises the question, now as in the Depression, about a government's failure or refusal to establish these `innovative and worthwhile projects' as regular and award-level paid jobs, financed by public funds. Queries can also be raised about why social security recipients should be singled out to perform these public obligations. I return to these and related issues below.

Participation as contribution and collaborative effort

This third narrative is about team effort. Here participation means working with others for a common goal, pulling together and making a contribution to the local community. With regard to making a contribution to the local community, there is a link with mutual obligation programs, but the conceptual routes are different. Rather than deriving from public choice theory, this approach operates as a modified critique of economic individualism, at least as far as its atomistic principles are concerned. The narrative became popular in the mid to late 1980s, mainly in the United States, as part of a flurry of concern that the neoclassical orthodoxy had undermined trust and social cohesion. Here the obverse to participation is acting in one's own interests and failing to take community values into account. As this account is particularly material to discussions relating to the now popular `Third Way', a few comments on its theoretical basis may be helpful.

One of its main planks is the concept of social capital. The work of Robert Putnam (1993, 1995) is well known here. As part of his research into modern Italy, Putnam found that the regions with strong democratic and economic institutions were `blessed with vibrant networks and norms of civic engagement' (social capital) while those with weak institutions were `cursed with vertically structured politics, a social life of fragmentation and isolation, and a culture of isolation' (Putnam 1993:15). In the case of the Unites States, he found that civic participation in organised religion, unions, parent-teacher associations and voluntary activity in civic organisations such as the Boy Scouts was significantly down -- a cause of declining social capital (Putnam 1995: 67-70). Similarly, Fukuyama (1995) maintained that social bonds had been undermined by economic individualism, and that economic and political institutions needed to be remodelled to encourage trust, a sense of mutual ownership and shared responsibility. This type of argument also characterises the work of Michael Gray (1993) and Anthony Giddens (1994) in their calls for a political solution lying `beyond left and right'. A related line of inquiry is to be found in communitarianism. Amitai

xxx

Etzioni (1995, 1997) contends that a `moral vacuum' has followed the challenge to traditional mores in the 1960s and greatly weakened the social fabric of contemporary America. As evidence, he cites family breakdown, malingering at work, drug and alcohol abuse, public scandals, insider trading and other unethical business dealings (Etzioni 1995, 27-28; for the more personal influence on Tony Blair, see Macmurray 1996). His solution lies in a return to the community as a site of moral regeneration since it is `through communities that individuals and groups in a good society encourage one another to adhere to behaviour that reflects shared values' (Etzioni 1997:124). The emphasis on moral regeneration through community is also germane to the civic republican school, famously exemplified by Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, 1988) and Charles Taylor (1990). Their deliberations, though, are removed from welfare reform and, as far as MacIntyre's call for a neo-Aristotelian ethics is concerned, set against current forms of political power.

The call to community occupies a central place in Blair's New Deal and softens Clinton's `tough love'. It also weaves its way through Australia's welfare reforms, particularly the local regeneration programs. These are to produce `greater confidence, cohesion and responsibility' where welfare has `undermined an older ethos of community spirit' (Newman 1999a: 1). In this respect, the cornerstone of the Government's approach is its `belief in the ability of people to generate their own solutions to their own problems' (ibid.). Such thinking underpins programs such as the Stronger Communities Strategy, the National Families Strategy and the Youth Pathways Action Plan. It is also an important part of the partnerships between government, business and philanthropy which ensure that `all players, working with government, co-ordinate their efforts and combine their strength' (ibid.). This accent on community and collaboration is greatly strengthened in the Report on Welfare Reform, where it becomes more central than either `self sufficiency' or `paying your dues', while clearly linked to both. The authors of the Report suggest that social capital is formed through `the bonds of trust and relationship and shared norms that communities build and renew when people interact with each other in families, workplaces, neighbourhoods, local associations and a range of informal and formal meeting places'. In such settings, social participation helps `people to grow and flourish as human beings and be full members of Australian society' (McClure 2000a: 13).

There are several strands to the Report's reading of mutual obligation. First, the singular concept is re-defined as a framework of mutual obligations, plural. Second, a concept of `social obligations' is brought into play where `social' refers to `all obligations that everyone has to the rest of society' (McClure 2000b: 51). Third, this social/mutual obligations framework endorses a wide range of participation activities, through a philosophy which `recognises, supports and validates voluntary work and caring, without prescribing any particular form of social participation' (McClure 2000b: 9).

Finally, and most critically, the Report argues for a widened concept of mutual obligation which acknowledges that `responsibility for economic and social contribution flows reciprocally between all parties of society' (McClure 2000a: 51). Arguing that `all members of society, government business, community organisations, families and individuals, have obligations to each other', the Reference Group suggests that mutual obligation must recognise `the interdependence of individuals, communities and broader social groupings' (ibid.). By the time of the Final Report, these considerations occupy a central place in the Reference Group's deliberations:

 The Reference Group believes that the mutual obligations of governments,
 business and community are of no less importance than the obligations of
 individuals. In our view, the whole social support system, with its various
 components, is a very tangible expression of the mutual obligations of the
 community as a whole towards its more vulnerable members. Thus, the whole
 of this report should be read as addressing the responsibilities of all
 sectors of society. (McClure 2000b: 52.)

These considerations provide a social dimension absent in the more strident versions of self-sufficiency and paying your dues, leading to a more generous tone and a wider set of recommendations. But it is not clear how they are to be translated into policy. The Report's recommendation that mutual obligations be extended to people of workforce age, including sole parents with children aged over 13 years, is clear. Beyond this, ambiguities prevail. The Report does not provide concrete details about how its notion of social participation might offset the current onus on job-search and retraining for individuals. It also sets the obligations of government and business at a high level of generality. For government, it is a matter of `continuing obligations to maintain an adequate safety net to alleviate poverty, provide leadership in the development of the new system and provide additional assistance to help individuals and communities in their capacities for participation' (McClure 2000b: 49). For business, mutual obligation involves `join(ing) with government to create more opportunities particularly for those who face significant barriers to social and economic participation' (ibid.). And here mutual obligation becomes something voluntarily entered into -- a demonstration of worth -- rather than an enforceable contract with failure resulting in an equivalent to the withdrawal of benefits.

Despite these reservations, the general tone of the Report is good news for claimants -- better, by far, than, say, the hard-line Wisconsin experiment with its fixation on getting claimants, including mothers with extremely young children, off welfare and into paid work at any price. Nevertheless, the rhetorical appeal to community remains troubling. By deflecting attention from the national and structural toward the local and individual, the appeal to community suggests that the problem of welfare resides in the affected communities themselves, rather than in the economic forces which, it might be argued, have so dramatically altered the nature and distribution of work, and the political power of nation states over the last quarter century (cf. Rose 1999; Walters 2000). There is indeed some recognition of this problem in the Report itself. Having maintained that `in a very real way, it is the community that has to take responsibility for its own well being' the Reference Group then accepts that `many communities, particularly those where people have difficulty in accessing social and economic participation, are themselves low on resources to support and encourage disadvantaged members' (McClure 2000b: 58). Having thus opened up the contradiction between self-help and structural deprivation (which contradiction runs throughout the deliberations of both the Interim and Final Report) the Reference Group effectively abandons it, simply saying that it `welcomes the Federal Government's Stronger Families and Communities Strategy' (McClure 2000b: 58).

Before considering the implications of all this, we should look at the cumulative profile of the three participation narratives and their implications for welfare.

The imagined society and its implications for welfare reform At the start of the paper I suggested that contemporary participation discourses extrapolate from the familiar and the local to society as a whole. But what sort of `society' is imagined in these discourses? Put another way: what conditions need to hold for the principles of self-sufficiency, paying your dues and team effort to be legitimate requirements? In a cursory way, we might consider that these notions make most sense when:

* membership of the given society is voluntary;

* benefits are equally available to all members;

* members are more or less equally well placed to be self-sufficient and make a contribution;

* the responsibilities which attach to membership are subject to democratic negotiation;

* those involved have agreed to a common project which operates to the mutual benefit of all concerned; and

* the group is harmonious and/or characterised by social and cultural homogeneity.

Conversely, self-sufficiency, paying your dues and team effort make least sense when:

* membership is not a matter of choice and people cannot withdraw from the association;

* members do not benefit equally from the activities of the group;

* the capacity to be self-sufficient and make a contribution is influenced by factors beyond the control of those concerned;

* what counts as contribution, responsibility, benefit, and so on has not been arrived at through democratic negotiation; and

* the group is marked by structural divisions and enduring sources of alienation which prevent some members from articulating their views, desires and beliefs.

In brief, the imagined society of contemporary participation narratives is a local voluntary association in which the code of rules is negotiated by all and there is a common project which operates to everyone's benefit. Its prototypes include local sports clubs, mutual aid societies, community fundraising groups, car-pooling arrangements and hobby-groups: precisely the kind of association which social capital theorists have in mind. Whether the advocates of mutual obligation actually think of contemporary society in these terms, whether they start with welfare reform and then justify their proposals with local metaphors, or whether they regard the local as an exemplar to be striven for, is rarely clear. In any case what is more important for my argument is that despite the theoretical heterogeneity of the current participation narratives, the three main strands all allude to the same type of imagined society. And drawing from this, these accounts, separately and together, promote two crucial elements of welfare reform. First, that it is obligation-based; participation is something people ought to do. And second, that it concentrates on personal behaviours, both as the cause of problems and as the targets of reform.

These elements are linked to the `new conditionality' in welfare provision. Both Senator Newman's announcements and the deliberations of the Reference Group make it clear that dependence on benefits without some form of agreed participation is no longer an option for the great majority of working age claimants. Measures are to be taken to ensure that 'support does not go unconditionally for long periods to people with the capacity to contribute to their own support and to the community' (Newman 1999a: 6). But how new is this? It can be pointed out that in one form or another, conditions have always been attached to the receipt of welfare payments, particularly unemployment benefits. Walters (2000: 132) notes that even in the era of full employment, a recipient had `a duty to be a regular worker, look for work, save for rainy days etc.'. But this, he says, was always tempered by the recognition that unemployment `was a predominantly social problem -- industrial, cyclical, regional in nature' (ibid., emphasis in original). In contrast, the contemporary focus on the ethical worth of the subject produces a form of conditionality under which the individual must demonstrate his or her moral worthiness in order to receive benefits (Dean 1998; Rose 1996b, 1990; Walters 2000). Participation becomes obligatory, a proof of worthiness to be demonstrated by all those deemed able to earn their own way or improve their chances of so doing.

What are the practical implications of this stand? It is more or less inconceivable that starvation and destitution will be officially approved outcomes for people who fail to participate in the designated ways -- although, judging from the US data, increased poverty almost certainly will be. (A recent study undertaken by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic WellBeing of Single Mother Families, indicates that the incomes of the poorest 10% of female-headed families with children fell by about one seventh during the period 1995-1997, despite strong economic growth.) So the proposed denial of benefits has to involve a tacit acknowledgment, even an intent, that the tab will get picked up one way or another through charitable handouts, reliance on family, trading with friends or pittance earnings.

This has a threefold effect. First the onus of responsibility is shifted, with the public welfare bill decreasing to a proportionate extent. Secondly, there is increased pressure on people to take any kind of job, helping ensure that there is `as large a pool of skilled and job ready labour as possible to drive the economy forward' (Reith 1998: 10). In this vein, the Minister for Employment Services, Tony Abbott, is reported as saying that the 'picky unemployed' must take whatever work is available, including short term seasonal jobs in different locations (Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 2000: 9). Third, the provisional moral status of all claimants is underlined. Despite the evidence that the great majority of recipients are either involved in some form of systematic activity or would prefer to be so (Pawagi & Pech 1999), the new welfare implies that moral back-sliding is the norm.

That the new conditionality will involve an intensification of behavioural controls becomes abundantly clear in the Interim Report on Welfare Reform. Drawing from OECD research, the Report suggests that the most effective ways of reducing unemployment are `in-depth counselling, financial incentives for those who get a job and job search assistance ... combined with increased monitoring and enforcement of the work test' (McClure 2000a: 24). In the reformed system, contracts are to be individually negotiated so that `the same customer service officer will deal with all the needs of an income support recipient' allowing `one person to build up a history of the person, their circumstances and their needs' (McClure 2000a: 25). Indeed, behavioural intervention is not to be limited to current recipients as `foundation skills for social and economic participation are developed from early childhood and throughout the school years' (McClure 2000a: 12). Strategies `for prevention and early intervention' are thus to be important components of the new system with `early interventions for disadvantaged people starting as early as pre-school' (McClure 2000a' 24).

The defects of the behavioural approaches to poverty and unemployment are wellrehearsed and do not need much elaboration here (see, e.g., Kellie 1998; Wearing & Smyth 1998; Watts 1999). They include ignoring structural factors, blaming the victim, and creating divisions between taxpayers and claimants. In this case, the moral authoritarianism which underlies all such accounts creates a new class of losers based on approved forms of participation. At best, in denial of the political and economic causes of unemployment, this is simply ineffective -- a form of fiddling while Rome bums. But it may also actively worsen the situation through producing new divisions based on shame, refusal, withdrawal, anger and alienation. It is no coincidence that fortress conditions -- cities in which the rich barricade themselves against the poor, security teams roam the streets and whole segments of the population are shunted off into dirty, dangerous and dead end jobs -- have reached their apogee in the United States, the primary home of nostalgic social capital discourse (see Kaplan 1997). Such are the costs attached to the pretence that society is a tennis club.

Alternative visions: a brief reminder

I now turn to some `alternative visions'. I do this as a reminder that there are other possibilities and that the current terms of debate are not ordinary common sense. I am not thereby suggesting that these alternative views are beyond reproof. Far from it. Most of the writers to be mentioned below are representative of the `old' welfare paradigm, and subject to all the allegations of paternalism, middle class prescription, and normative standardisation which that provokes (e.g. Wilson 1977; Gough 1979; Simpkin 1979; Wilding 1982; Carter 1998). Further, just as the advocates of `obligation' tend to leave that concept unpacked, so these proponents leave the notion of `rights' wide open to question (cf. Turner 1990). Such is the subject of a different paper. Here my focus is on what happens if one starts from the assumption that social membership is neither voluntary nor personal, that benefits are not equal, that democracy is partial and that social relations are marked by deep divisions. From this vantage point, I suggest, the whole perspective changes. Above all, participation becomes something which is `rights-prevented' (granted all the vagueness attached to this notion) rather than `obligation-unfulfilled'. Allied to this, the key issue is no longer individual behaviours and inclinations, but the social and economic factors which prevent participation in the first place.

For welfare state proponents such as T.H. Marshall and William Beveridge, eradicating inequality or socialising production was never in question. Indeed, the third principle of Beveridge's post-war plan was to `leave room and encouragement for voluntary action .for each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family' (Beveridge 1942: 7). So welfarist thinking was always in the nature of a compromise, a middle way between the claims of the free market and the principles of social solidarity. At the same time, and precisely because of the inequalities of the market, it was argued that `a fundamental principle of the welfare state' is that `the market value of an individual cannot be the measure of his right to welfare' (Marshall 1981 [1972]: 107). Marshall's pivotal argument was that a benchmark of citizenship rights was needed to ensure that participation in social and economic life was to be a realistic possibility:

 What matters is that there is a general enrichment of the concrete
 substance of civilised life, a general reduction of risk and uncertainty,
 an equalisation between the healthy and the sick, the employed and the
 unemployed, the old and the active, the bachelor and the father of a large
 family. Equalisation is not so much between classes as between individuals
 within a population which is now treated for this purpose as though it were
 one class. (Marshall 1964 [1949]: 102.)

In the post-war period, the structural focus which accompanies a `rights-prevented' welfare approach was exemplified in the approach to poverty that focused on relative deprivation. Dismissing the idea that poverty could be explained by the behaviours of the poor, Peter Townsend argued that the market produces levels of deprivation which systematically prevent people from participating in the social and economic activities of society: `it may be hypothesised that, as resources for any individual and family are diminished, there is a point at which there occurs a sudden withdrawal from customs and activities sanctioned by the culture' (Townsend 1979: 57). This notion of poverty as relative deprivation, with its postulated link between inadequate income and social withdrawal, was influential in structuring the inquiries of the Australian Poverty Commission (1975) and its recommendations for a guaranteed minimum income.

Another version of participation circulated from the mid to late 70s. Arising as a critique of the centralised state, it was concerned to strengthen people's influence over decision making, particularly as far as welfare decisions were concerned. In her classic `ladder of participation', Sherry Arnstein (1976) placed `power over decisionmaking' on the top rung. This version of participation was pivotal to many community development and social action groups at the time. Most famously in Australia, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence ended its traditional social program in favour of `an experiment in self-help' whereby participants received a guaranteed income and took over a large part of the running of the family centre (Liffman 1978). Later developments, drawing partly from sociological critiques of professional and bureaucratic power, and partly from the notions of self-actualisation popularised by Maslow (1970), advocated devolving welfare to local forms of government in order to maximise citizen participation (eg. Hadley & Hatch 1981; Hirst 1994; Hutton 1996, 1997).

If nothing else, it is worth remembering these alternative visions to show that current uses of participation draw on a particularly restricted use of the term. I say this acknowledging that the solutions of the 1940s and 1960s are not necessarily the answers for today, as Walters' discussion of the difference between the Keynesian and post-Fordist modes makes clear (Walters 2000:91-120). Changes in international finance, the movement of capital, trading patterns, manufacturing locales, the distribution and uptake of work, among other factors, have altered the political and economic landscape and require different responses. But the starting point of the `rights-prevented' approaches -- recognition that we live and work within a divided, unequal and increasingly troubled society -- is what is most relevant when considering welfare reform. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to make any detailed proposals for change, a few suggestions may be floated.

A rights-based approach to participation points, in the first instance, to a guaranteed minimum income -- no ifs, no buts. Costings were done by the Poverty Commission under a cautious and reputable economist in the 1970s and can be done again. The McClure recommendations for a single payment for all of workforce age provides a starting point. The thing is possible. At base, it involves an untying of the historical nexus between eligibility for income and imputed behaviour, and a reassigning of certain costs from the private and charitable sectors to the public sphere with a corresponding reduction of surveillance, monitoring and their associated costs. A rights-based approach also suggests the importance of a `work guarantee' operating alongside, but independently of, the minimum income guarantee. Under a work guarantee, the Government would agree to provide up to (say) fifteen hours of paid work a week for all who wanted work and were without it. Projects would be publicly funded, paid at award rates, and directed toward community projects with high interest and social use value. This could be accompanied by a reduction in the excessively long hours currently worked by some. Finally, any such programs would need to be part of an international movement whereby national governments act in concert as part of a mutually agreed social justice platform. If redistributive strategies cause capital to move offshore, then nations need to band together to prevent this happening.

Concluding considerations

Perhaps the greatest trouble with current participation narratives is that they systematically deflect attention from the most urgent questions facing us today: among them, how to reduce the instability of the international money market, create alliances between nations, invest in socially productive employment and build a strong democratic sector.

I have argued that this deflection is achieved through a mix of persuasiveness and disingenuousness. The discourse is persuasive because it uses the language of the everyday, promising, as Jordan says, `to take us "back to basics" in a nostalgic, emotional and direct way, that seems almost beyond intellectual criticism' (Jordan 1998: 31). It is disingenuous because it pretends things to be as they are not. This pretence, this speaking of society as though it were a local hobby group, is what stifles serious discussion of how to create a fairer and more economically sustainable society under the conditions of late capitalism. At the end of his long career as a moderate social democratic economist, Peter Self observed that the failure to challenge the neo-classical orthodoxy `in the time available ... seems already to be leading to the re-emergence of fascist-type movements as a political response to ... market failures and could lead on to irrational fascist or authoritarian regimes' (Self 2000:221). So we need to get moving. Urging participation on the casualties of economic change simply doesn't fit the bill. This is not just because it blames the victim or because enforced participation is close to being an oxymoron. It is also because such talk is simply not relevant at a time when serious questions hang over the future and sustainability of liberal market society itself. In presenting his report on social insurance Beveridge (1942) commented that `a revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions not for patching'. Perhaps the same is true today. Time to get real; play school is over.

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