The Dialectics of Privatization and Advocacy in New York City’s Workfare State

WITH THE RECENT PASSAGE OF WELFARE REFORMS IN 2006 AS A LITTLE-DISCUSSED element of a federal budget bill, welfare policy in the United States has moved ever closer to universal workfare.1 Even before the more sweeping reforms of 1996, Bob Jessop described an emerging “workfare regime” that was replacing the welfare state in the industrialized democracies. The latter’s logic of protecting citizens from the fortunes of the market was being supplanted by its opposite. This new regime emphasizes: (1) flexibility for enterprise; (2) geographic re-scaling of economic and social intervention; (3) replacement of entitlements with obligations on the part of citizens; and (4) coalitional power-holding spanning governmental, civil-society, and profit-motivated actors (Jessop, 1994; see also Jessop, 2003; Peck, 2002).