1. Opposing Workfare in New York City: Mechanisms of a War of Position.
- Author
-
Krinsky, John
- Subjects
EMPLOYMENT of welfare recipients ,PUBLIC welfare ,SOCIAL movements ,EMPLOYABILITY - Abstract
A case study of recent challenges to welfare-work programs in New York City reveals the complex dynamics of social movements with institutional politics, and reveals continuities and discontinuities between the two. Drawing on Gramscian state theory, political process theory, and recent relational extensions of political process theory, the paper shows the ways in which five mechanisms-path-dependency, institutional spillover, certification/decertification, scale-shift, and time-shift-combine within and across instititutional settings to enable or stymie workfare workers' and their allies' efforts to gain rights under a workfare program that denied them clear rights-bearing status. In showing the operation of these mechanisms-which lie between structure and strategy-in worksite-based organizing, courts, legislatures, and in mass-mediated moral protest, the paper shows the ways in which challengers to workfare were at a structural disadvantage. It argues further that revealing structural disadvantage is the main justification for the study of social movements as distinct from (though embedded in) institutional politics, and is preferable to an analytic strategy that begins with pluralism, and treats movements and interest groups as the same type of entity. Finally, assessments of social movement outcomes should focus on the reconfiguration of policy options and the coalitions that underlie them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006