ABSTRACT
Comparative analysis across countries of the shifts in relations between the poor and their state managers point to the variegated ways nations are enacting neoliberal welfare policy reforms. This chapter highlights moves toward progressive responses even as neoliberal pressures for market compliance remain ascendant. With responsibilization, the neoliberal relations of poverty are masked and erased from consideration. The Keynesian welfare state that arose during the Great Compression provided social protection for those who were seen as deserving of public assistance given their inability to provide for themselves and their family due to unemployment, disability, retirement, death of a wage-earning spouse and other conditions. Neoliberalism is most often seen as being about promoting market freedom and it is undoubtedly about enhancing the power of the market and the supremacy of market logic. As inequality skyrockets under neoliberalism, the welfare state increasingly is at risk of not being able to counteract the adverse effects for people on the bottom.
