The Expansion of Regulation in Welfare Governance

• Date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Avishai Benish,David Levi-Faur
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220949230

ANNALS, AAPSS, 691, September 2020 17

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220949230

The Expansion

of Regulation in

Welfare

Governance

By

AVISHAI BENISH

and

DAVID LEVI-FAUR

949230ANN The Annals of the American AcademyExpansion of Regulation

research-article2020

This article provides an historical and theoretical

account of the emerging regulatory welfare state, which

is greatly understudied in contemporary regulatory and

welfare research. We analyze the interplay between the

welfare state and the regulatory state in an age in which

regulation is expanding through liberalization, privati-

zation, and the new public management of social ser-

vices. We then provide a multi faceted framework for

understanding the regulatory welfare state and discuss

its implications in terms of 1) the normative social goals

of the state; 2) the ways in which social policy is deliv-

ered through institutions; and 3) the implications of the

framework for individuals’ rights and duties.

Keywords: welfare state; regulation; governance;

social services; social benefits; privatiza-

tion; social rights

Over the last four decades we have wit-

nessed a rapid growth of regulation within

and outside welfare and social arenas, such as

the regulation of private old-age pension funds

and the regulation of non–state actors provid-

ing welfare-to-work services. This growth has

Avishai Benish is an assistant professor (tenured) at the

Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social

Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His

fields of expertise are social law and administration,

and his main research is on regulation and governance

reforms in welfare states.

David Levi-Faur is professor of regulation and policy in

the Department of Political Science and the Federmann

School of Public Policy at the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem. He is a founding editor of Regulation &

Governance, a top journal that serves as the leading

platform for the study of regulation and governance in

the social sciences.

NOTE: We would like to thank the Israeli Science

Foundation for their Research Grant (1029/15) and

Workshops Grant (2223/18). This is also the opportu-

nity to thank our research assistants Yuval Peleg, Daniel

Hirsch, and Tslil Landau.

Correspondence: levifaur@mail.huji.ac.il