States' rights, women's obligations: Contemporary welfare reform in historical perspective

This abstract asks how the demise of the federal "entitlement" to welfare w ill affect how low-income single mothers will be governed. Historical-insti tutional analysis is used to predict how the states, given their regained a uthority, are likely to define eligibility and procedural rules for welfare . These expectations are tested by analyzing the new state plans for the ad ministration of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant prog ram. Indices of eligibility rules and procedural rules are created and comb ined in a typology that depicts the new varieties of welfare governance pla nned by the states. The central argument is that as historical precedents w ould imply, the decentralization of authority for welfare is promoting the development of forms of welfare governance that vary dramatically from stat e to state, and which tend, predominantly, toward restrictive and coercive forms of rule. These developments mean that the obligations of poor women a re being emphasized over their access to social provision.