ABSTRACT
In Beyond Entitlement, the Social Obligations of Citizenship, Lawrence Mead explained that in the case of welfare recipients, the equilibrium between rights and obligations was off balance. Based on communitarian notions of citizenship, Mead argued that parallel to the right to a welfare benefit, the obligation to look for a job had been inadequately developed. Mead's point of view was that citizens have social obligations to the community whose public means they benefit from. There is a reciprocal relation between citizens and the state. Mead used his conception of citizenship to criticize the permissiveness of the welfare state and to support his argument in favor of workfare programs. Modern arguments were presented mainly by respondents who were using welfare to freely choose their own life style. In actual practice, the agency that enforces the obligations of the unemployed is the Welfare Department, the "street level bureaucracy" that represents the welfare state.
