Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-27
Source: The Conversation – France in French (3)– By Érik Neveu, Sociologist, University of Rennes 1 – University of Rennes
Conservative and liberal revolutions have reconfigured public action at the origin of welfare states. Claiming to resolve the presumed phenomena of dependency and bureaucratic expansion, the new forms of public action have primarily shifted social dysfunctions. Individual voluntarism cannot address systemic problems.
The expression “public problems culture” was proposed by the American sociologistJoseph Gusfield. It refers here to what had become in the post-war period a kind of common sense regarding the ways of identifying and managing files and issues that had become prominent enough to appear as problems to be addressed. While its roots go back to the 19th century and the mobilizations around the“social question”, this culture will triumph with the Trente Glorieuses (1945-1975, ed.).
It is condensed into a simple pattern. A situation, a social relationship is constituted—often through mobilizations—as unjust and problematic, and thus perceived as such by a large part of public opinion. The State is called upon to respond to it. It does so through a dual process. On the one hand, by the recognition of a “right to”: protection against workplace accidents,voluntary termination of pregnancy, continuing education… On the other hand, by the designation or the creation of a body of public agents to address the problem thus recognized. One will think of the creation oflabor inspectors, later social workers, or even agents monitoring environmental damage.
A culture in action
This cultivation of public problems has given rise to “cathedral-institutions” (such as social security), contributed to protecting against many risks, limited some of the inequalities produced by an unregulated society. It can also be seen as an insurance policy against radical social changes. In the image of what is highlightedMartin Lipskyin a classic work on the work of “field bureaucrats”, it is less demanding to equip a poor neighborhood with asociocultural center, a dispensary and a police station with their officers rather than reducing school inequalities, income inequalities, and wealth inequalities.
This culture of public problems has taken shape in variants of the welfare state, dependent on national histories and singularities. If Bismarck gave his name to the“Bismarckian” welfare state system, is that in order to counter the German socialists, he combined in the 1880s repression with a system based on contributions, first for health and accident insurance, then for retirement. In the United States, it will be more thequestion of veterans’ protectionof the Civil War and their families, which will give rise to the first social laws.
The Danish political scientistGøsta Esping-Andersenproposed a typology of these welfare states. Among them, one can identify a liberal system, which places the market at the center (notablyviaa voluntary insurance system). It also targets public aid towards the most disadvantaged, under conditions that can stigmatize them, as symbolized by the category of the “losers” in France, or the myth of the“Welfare Queen”in the United States.
In the“conservative corporatist” model, the role of the State is central, but social rights initially depend on the employee status (for a long time largely male), before expandingviaa tax-based funding after 1945.
Finally, thesocial-democratic model of Northern Europeoffers a wide range of guarantees and public services to many beneficiaries, financed by the State based on a very progressive tax. While the scope of recognized rights as well as the role given to markets and private actors vary, the generating formula of these models is fixed: recognition of a problem – translated into a “right to” protection – deployment of regulation and specific professionals for its implementation.
The welfare state trial
With theconservative revolutionsfrom the Reagan-Thatcher years, it is the core of this common sense that is being challenged. The “bureaucracies” of“Welfare State”(the English equivalent of the expression “welfare state”) to be unproductive. They will soon be subjected to“New Public Management”which, framing all activity within a network of firmer hierarchies and statistical measures, promises to objectify and strengthen productivity.
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“Bureaucrats” are also criticized for a tendency to endlessly identify new problems and needs for intervention, which has the effect of expanding their jurisdiction and their staff. An ironic adage said about missionaries: “They came to do good. They stayed and found it good for them.” This would equally apply to social state agents who – this is one aspect of the relationship“vocational”that they often have at their work – would think of themselves as the spokespersons for their “troubled people”.
It is again the multiplication of causes and demands (minorities, environment, public health) and technical progress turning some situations of fatal constraints into the possibility of action (such as infertility with themedically assisted procreation, for example) which would lead to an incessant inflation of staff and public budgets.
In the vein of what Hirschman identified as theinvariants of a reactionary rhetoric, the argument is also to emphasize that policies intended to address public problems create new ones: under the pretext of fighting school segregation, the overall level would be lowered, and poverty reduction programs would have increased the number of “welfare recipients” more than they reduced that of the unfortunate.
This critical turning point, fueled by conservative and neoliberal views, also calls into question the status of public aid beneficiaries. Do they have or cause problems? Would they always be justified in complaining if obesity results from unhealthy eating behaviors, if milking the welfare state is a strategy to avoid working? Has too much compassion and “rights to…” given rise to“welfare dependency cancer” ?
Respond to problems by individualizing them
If the critique of the culture of public problems has led to the reduction of rights and benefits, it would be unfair to argue that it boils down to an obsession with the least rights and costs, to the denial of all social discomforts. The latter mainly proposes to address these problems by individualizing them.
According to her, it is primarily through working on themselves that those who face difficulties will overcome them. It is up to women to acquire throughtraining or psychic therapies ofempowermentself-confidence or learning to optimize their “female assets.” Job seekers must break free from dependency by accepting greater spatial mobility and lower-paying jobs. Then Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron explained the employment problems of Breton poultry workers in the distressed sector by their “illiteracy”… for which a remedy could be found by awell-chosen internship.
In this new culture, solidarity is no longer an unconditional right, regulation is no longer the royal road to solutions. Now prevail the contractual-conditional logic, and a network of incentives (thefamousnudges, “elbow nudges” in English) that do not necessarily need the State to organize themselves.
An RSA? Yes, but the A emphasizes an “active” solidarity, which could be accompanied by a contractual obligation to provide hours of service. An unemployment benefit? Certainly, but linked to proof of active behavior and the inability to refuse offers that differ from previous experiences. A policy against junk food that causes obesity? Of course, but without liberticidal regulation since Nutri-Scores and recommendations to consume five fruits and vegetables a day are displayed, and evenCoca-Cola encourages its consumers to do sports. Is it still necessary to devote enormous resources to an urban traffic policy when it is enough to equip oneself withthe applicationWazeto outsmart traffic jams?
Renew the “new” culture of public problems
While the criticism of the culture of public problems has highlighted its inefficiencies and blind spots, it has also generated more problems than it has been able to resolve. The pathology of numbers, which has consumed an increasing amount of time producing statistics, has, for example, led the police toreplace field timeby spending time in front of a keyboard, and by not recording certain complaints so as not to have poor figures.
The handling of public problems by the private sector itself generates new issues: circumventing the State also means depriving oneself of its agents when it is necessary to systematically verify compliance with the rules. The complexity of certain files and conditionality mechanisms has also increased what is called the“non-use”To rights or services. If public finances benefit, justice less so.
The new culture of public problems is, finally, depoliticizing. By referring the genesis of many discomforts to individual responsibility, it suggests the oxymoron ofprivate public problem. But aren’t the causes of global warming, and the responses it requires, more structural in nature than merely individual negligence, all comparable? If 20% of Americans suffer frommajor relational difficulties, wouldn’t that be the symptom of a social dysfunction whose solution might not be aopen-bar of anxiolyticsTo? This culture thus promotes a every-man-for-himself mentality, and a worldview where — beyond charity — acting together would be nothing but wasted energy and money, or even a likelihood of liberty-destroying disasters.
Radical cuts in public action have, finally, a cost –expansion of poverty,decline of public health, channelling shipwrecked victims of the welfare state towardsunderground or criminal economies.
But while the new culture of public problems can be challenged on its practical results, it must equally be contested due to the debates it makes impossible or biased by demonizing everything that is “public” and by making individual initiative and voluntarism the only legitimate tools to respond to problems that remain, for their part, stubbornly systemic.
Érik Neveu does not work for, does not advise, does not own shares in, does not receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no affiliation other than his research institution.
–ref. Are liberals and conservatives right to attack welfare and the social state? –https://theconversation.com/liberaux-et-conservateurs-ont-ils-raison-de-sattaquer-a-lassistanat-et-a-letat-social-272291