Examine the essential principles of social policy; how they inform welfare, tackle the unfairness of treating people unequal, and improve conditions of people in different communities and societies.
Understanding the Core Principles of Social Policy
On the other hand, the principles of social policy can be understood in different interconnected ways.
- Principles have moral and ethical components, often reflecting beliefs of right and wrong (e.g., universal health care, benefits with conditions, equalizing outcomes vs. normative values).
- Principles serve as the framework and rules of social welfare, specifying the laws, regulations, and criteria of eligibility for service provision.
- Principles inform the social policies, for example, utilitarianism[1], in spite of the overwhelming empirical reliance, it is often influenced by ideology and values.
Equality – A Disputed Idea
An important aspect of social policy is equality. The left argues that making access to health, education, and other services equally available to everyone is a means of making society more just. The right and center, however, argue that the incentive to work is diminished, there is likely to be a greater need for taxation, and it increases governmental control. Philosopher Robert Nozick argues that such policies may infringe upon the rights of individuals. Discussions of equality also involve the ideas of need and freedom.
Even though politics today is less divided into left and right, people still argue about equality. John Rawls said everyone should have equal access to things like education and welfare, and some inequality is okay if it helps the poorest. Sharing wealth is less popular now, but equality is still valued for moral and fairness reasons.
This leads to equity, meaning people are treated differently to reach fair results. But equity is hard to apply because people disagree on what is “fair” or who is “in need.” A more pronounced case of equity is fairness of access while removing the obstacles such as discrimination in access to employment, education, services, etc.
This is a point both left and right sides converge, albeit their reasoning diverges. This is why both sides engage in discourse around equality, fairness, and opportunity, but it gets messy when we begin to utilize a terminology of equity in a discourse considering equal opportunity. It is essential to structure the discourse in consideration of a case for equity the same.
Policies that involve interests of the right and left can be described within two extremes.
- Minimalist policies: The aim is to remove discrimination through laws.
- Maximalist policies: Take steps to support merely disadvantaged groups.
Need – An Indefinable Concept
Since the beginning of the social welfare system, the concept of need has posed a important issue for policy makers and social theorists, as need is subjective, and people often disagree on who is truly ‘in need’ and how much the state ought to assist. An instance of need being sharply defined is the 1834 Poor Law, which defined need solely as food, shelter, and basic medical care, which often had to be accessed via the punitive workhouse system. However, to merely survive is not enough.
Human needs also encompass health and the autonomy or the ability to make choices and live freely. This is beyond the distinction of needs vs. wants, the latter of which is unsatisfied personal preference. Building on this, Amartya Sen offered the view that the critique of the economic theory of welfare is that while resources, such as income and education, are essential, they are not ends in and of themselves; rather, they are instrumental in providing people the means (or capabilities) to live in a way that they value and to do those activities which they consider worthwhile (functioning).
Sen argued that the goal of good public policy is to equitably provide both means and the ends to people so that they are able to live a life that is of value and to fulfill their purpose.
Freedom and Rights – Pillars of Human Potential
The constructs of freedom and rights are crucial to people being able to fully develop as human beings. However, putting these into policies is not straightforward, and policies often require trade-offs that represent a dangerous shift from individual freedoms to overall societal good ( e.g., curtailing a dangerous driver’s freedom to hold a driver’s licence). In disability rights debates, the social model posits that the real issue is not the disability, rather it is the societal barriers that exist.
In this way, the greatest limitations to freedom are things like insufficient support or inaccessible environments, and so there is a case to be made for the investment in more accessible infrastructure. T.H. Marshall (1949) famously identifies three types of rights, which he argues tend not to develop simultaneously.
Types of Rights
- Civil rights encompass protection from arbitrary detention in addition to rights pertaining to personal liberties, safety, ownership.
- Political rights involve a person’s ability to express viewpoints, peacefully assemble, and partake in electoral processes.
- Social rights relate to the welfare system and include rights to access free education and social welfare.
Types of Freedom
The duality of freedom is composed of two forms; negative and positive.
Negative Freedom
Negative freedom is “freedom from.” Here the absence of violence and the absence of crime and discrimination are used to define freedoms. Some people consider the market to provide the most freedom because of the way the markets treat people equally. This means the market does not consider a person’s economic class.
People such as Karl Marx criticize this viewpoint by saying that freedom is the ability to economically dominant. The economically disadvantaged will always have their ability to exercise freedom restricted. People living in underdeveloped areas posses legal freedoms such as the right to travel unrestricted, and the right to conduct business, however, their economic situation may force them to remain where they are.
This situation is a defining example of the paradox of legal freedom and economic oppression. The positive freedom from poverty and the lack of economically advantageous means enable limited opportunities to the economically disadvantaged to exercise their freedom.
Positive Freedom
Positive freedom (“freedom to”) – Having the ability to access things like food, housing, and education. This usually needs government help, but worries about high costs and dependency have led to policies focusing more on personal responsibility, like “welfare to work.”
Social citizenship includes a person’s rights to nationality, residence, ability to work, and social rights. Marshall saw the welfare post world war expansion as these rights. Today, the rise of inequality, and the emerging new social movements of the right to gender discrimination, race, disability, and sexual orientation. The debates in the contemporary world are whether there is formal citizenship that means that there are equal rights to all people, especially those who are migrants and asylum seekers.
Key Principles of Social Policy
The main tenets of social policy explain the fundamental aspects of how governments design programs to assist constituents and benefit society as a whole. These tenets help ensure that policies are equitable, universally applicable, and beneficial to all constituents.
Universality
Social programs should be open to all regardless of social, economic, or demographic stratifications. This means that regardless of an individual’s social class, a fundamental social service like public education and/or healthcare should be available; and, as a result, discrimination against low class, middle class, and high class constituents, is eliminated, and all constituents receive essential services that help society to operate efficiently.
Equity and Fairness
As one may expect, providing support for people with like needs should be equitable. This support may mean that, depending on an individual’s circumstances, some people may need more support than others. This is called equality outcome. This is the reason why people are treated unequally. As example, financing education is a means of providing equity and fairness to an underserved population just so they may have the opportunity to become equal.
Adequacy
Social services must address and resolve actual problems, and they must meet needs that are socially and personally acceptable. Social benefits should allow people to live with dignity and security. If unemployment benefits are too small to cover basic living costs, they fail the adequacy principle because they don’t provide meaningful support.
Solidarity
Social insurance is a service that operates on the principle of solidarity. Solidarity is the principle that every individual has equal economic responsibility towards every other individual. Some may have a greater capability to give and some less, but it is their mutual contribution that develops a community. Each individual is responsible for the community/ society’s welfare sensitivity to their individual financial conditions.
Accessibility
The benefit to reach and use the community social services is what accessibility means. Each social service must be simplified to be easily reachable and usable. This creates a sense of community where everyone has a stake in society’s well-being, like how social insurance systems work where everyone contributes when able.
Sustainability
Sustainability means that social policies can continue working effectively over time without running out of resources or creating bigger problems for future generations. A social program must be financially and environmentally sustainable. The needs of the community must be met, and the program must be able to adapt to the changing needs of the community and social problems over time.
Conclusion
Social policies lack definitional clarity. They tend to embody competing concepts filtered through various interests. At times, the competing concepts serve as disguises for economic realities or political trade-offs rather than serve as authentic principles. Posing as authentic principles does not diminish their importance as directions for policies yet to come.
The fundamental principles of the welfare state are continuously re-evaluated as a result of major social and economic shifts. In analyzing social policy, the interplay of need, equality, and rights across time must be the focal point.
FAQs: Principles of Social Policy
[1] An ethical theory known as utilitarianism states that the best course of action or the best policy is that which yields the greatest overall happiness or well-being of the greatest number of people.
