Welfare and Citizenship: The Case for a Democratic Approach to the Welfare State

Abstract

The relationship between welfare and citizenship has been a key topic in political and academic discourses, and this interrelationship is still far from being unambiguous. This article reviews mainstream approaches to this relationship and argues that shifting our focus to an alternative perspective - viewing welfare as an agent of citizenship socialization - provides a more comprehensive picture. This approach broadens our understanding of the functions of welfare, being a key agent of the democratic institutional setting, and demonstrates the inextricable interrelationship between civil, political and social citizenship, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which apparent political inequalities are reproduced in practice. The paper discusses the functions of welfare institutions in the transition of Central and East European countries into democratic market economies and the establishment of their neoliberal political economies, with a particular focus on the Hungarian transition. The paper argues that the undemocratic, disempowering institutional characteristics and practices of the post-transition welfare regime in Hungary (such as the lack of information provided, the meagerness of benefits, the shame induced by treatment experienced in welfare offices and recipients' acute feelings of vulnerability vis-à-vis welfare administrators and politicians) diminish recipients' perceptions of their democratic subjectivity.