These two books on the American welfare state seek to challenge conventional understandings of redistributive policy and politics in the United States. Christopher Howard does so by looking at the many tools of social policy that, he argues, have been downplayed or ignored in most academic research. In addition to the well-known social insurance and transfer programs such as Social Security and public assistance, he argues, tax expenditures subsidizing private welfare provision (e.g., child tax credit), regulatory policies, minimum wage laws, tort laws, housing loan guarantees, and entities such as the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation should all be included within the definition of the welfare state. Doing so reveals that the American welfare state is not a “chronic underachiever” but, in fact, “large and far-reaching” (p. 1). Howard cautions, however, that this heterogeneous mix of social policy tools does not make the American welfare state particularly effective. On the contrary, given enduringly high rates of poverty and widening income inequality in this country, the welfare state is paradoxically both extensive and limited in its ability to address some of the greatest social problems in the United States.

The aim of The Welfare State Nobody Knows is to debunk the many myths that Howard believes are pervasive in scholarly work on the subject. Some of his more persuasive challenges come in Chapters 1 through 4, in which he shows that the American welfare state is quantitatively larger than is often believed; that the welfare state is not divided into two tiers of programs in which the upper tier consists of programs that are more generous, uniform, popular, and less politically vulnerable than the means-tested programs of the lower tier; and that social policy advances did not occur in two “big bangs” of policy innovation during the 1930s and the 1960s when Democrats had unified control of government. By embracing a wider understanding of the welfare state, Howard is able to show that many of the unconventional social policy tools were developed at other times and under situations of divided government, with Republicans often playing an important role in crafting these policies. Chapter 5 also levels a powerful attack on the notion that means-tested programs are more politically vulnerable than broad-based ones, using the expansion of Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as examples of successful, targeted programs. The remaining chapters are less provocative but still interesting, and include analyses of American public opinion toward the welfare state (which is shown to be more supportive of social provision than commonly believed), the role of race and federalism in undermining redistributive policy, and a rejection of the argument that senior citizens dominate the policymaking process and are “greedy geezers” who care only about the social programs that benefit them.

Sanford E. Schram challenges existing work on the welfare state, not by the kinds of programs he studies but rather through his mode of analysis. Schram argues that research on social policy is incomplete if it fails to take into consideration the discursive context within which these programs are fashioned. Though often contested and open to multiple interpretations, Schram argues, some discourses are more pervasive than others and emphasize certain policy approaches while effectively shutting out alternatives. He focuses particularly on the globalization discourse that he sees shaping social policy in the United States but also in a number of European countries. Regardless of whether or not globalization is in fact happening and threatening social provision in these states, he argues that it is almost more important that people think this to be the case and then use the rhetoric of global economic challenges to justify cuts in social programs and/or to push people off of public assistance or unemployment benefits and back into the labor market. As a result, he argues, the dominant welfare discourses tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Schram also employs the notion of governance, a concept, rooted in the work of Michel Foucault, that signifies the ways in which welfare policy disciplines the population. The overall purpose of this book is to challenge the reigning discourses in American (and, to a lesser degree, European) social policy so that new forms of welfare governance may be envisioned.

Welfare Discipline focuses heavily but not exclusively on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)—the successor to the AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program, which was abolished in 1996. He traces the elimination of the federal entitlement to AFDC to the globalization discourse ascendant in the 1980s and 1990s; he argues that this seemingly race-neutral policy reform in fact reproduces racial disadvantage; and he challenges the dependency discourse that has pathologized public assistance recipients and helped justify forcefully removing them from the welfare rolls. He also argues that the ideas of welfare reform jumped the Atlantic and shaped efforts in Western Europe to “activate” passive welfare recipients and return them to the labor market. Other chapters examine the dilemmas around trying to support paid work for women without devaluing caregiving, the weaknesses of an asset-building approach to poverty (e.g., promoting home ownership), and problems in the philosophy of compassionate conservatism.

It is particularly interesting to read these two books side by side and imagine the conversation (or argument) these two authors might have if directly confronted with each other. While Howard is strongly critical of those who would view the American welfare state as consisting of two tiers of programs—the upper tier generous and politically sustainable, the lower tier stigmatized and politically weak—Schram adopts precisely this characterization. Thus, while Schram argues that “the development of social provision for low-income groups [is] an uphill struggle” (p. 141), Howard vigorously contests this view by pointing to the political strength and expansion of Medicaid and the EITC, programs either ignored by Schram or mentioned only in passing. They also differ fundamentally on methodology. Howard argues that academic welfare state research has been impoverished by its failure to employ the tools of policy analysis, and that the detailed study of policies and programs provides a wealth of factual data that can be used to challenge “facile generalizations” (p. 8). Yet Schram frequently criticizes the field of policy analysis for relying heavily on decontextualized data and ignoring the larger discursive and historical environment that could help make sense of what appears to be neutral and objective data.

Juxtaposing these books also usefully draws out some of the strengths and weaknesses of each author's approach. Howard persuasively shows the merit of broadening the lens through which we view the welfare state. Focusing too heavily on the discourses surrounding a few programs, as Schram does, misses large elements of the welfare state that may challenge some of his sweeping characterizations. At the same time, however, Schram's analysis reveals that what often matters for the politics of the welfare state are people's perceptions of welfare and who is receiving it, rather than the objective realities of social provision. If scholars have missed many elements of American welfare provision, it is likely that ordinary people also do not see the home mortgage interest deduction or child tax credit as elements of the welfare state, and thus probably believe that they do not receive much support from government. These perceptions may be particularly important in shaping the dynamics of redistributive policy in this country, fueling the tendency to stigmatize those receiving public assistance while preserving the illusion among much of the population that they do not rely on government for support. Finally, Schram focuses heavily on the consequences of social programs for class, race, and gender equality, but tends to rely heavily on the research of others and thus does not offer many new empirical findings. Particularly in the chapters on gender relations and the Americanization of the European welfare state, Schram summarizes other scholars' research and adds little to the stock of knowledge on these topics. Howard does the opposite, offering new empirical material about how best to characterize the American welfare state, but downplaying its consequences. One short chapter at the end of his book treats the failure of the American model to redress poverty or inequality, but there is little or no attempt to probe some of the consequences for racial inequalities or gender relations that are emphasized by Schram.

Each of these books should challenge assumptions about redistributive politics in the United States and advance the study of the welfare state. Both books are particularly ideal for teaching undergraduate or Masters-level policy students.