ABSTRACT
Marshall's classic lectures on 'Citizenship and Social Class' forward, the people have grown accustomed to tracing the history of the welfare state in terms of the expanding 'rights of citizenship'. From the welfare rights movement of the 1960s onward, we have grown accustomed to thinking of welfare rights as the clear alternatives to more odious forms of official discretion. After having mapped the dimensions of the concept and shown why some forms of discretion are logically ineliminable from any system of rules, the author proceeds to survey four major moral objections to discretionary powers. For present purposes, it is enough to note that the only theory of rights which makes them importantly different from other forms of rule (obligation, duty, responsibility) in constraining official behaviour construes rights as 'powers'. Both duty-based and responsibility-based strategies are, at root, strategies for superiors exercising control over subordinates.
