ABSTRACT
With the rise of the USA to global hegemony, new nationalistic imaginaries accompanied both the gradual emergence of a modern welfare regime and the nativist exclusion of minorities and former slave populations. Universalist propositions were once more restricted, institutional reforms circumvented. The actual installation of a modern welfare regime was premised on two conditions: a tax state ready to mobilize and administer collective resources and a global institutional architecture making the US state capable of strategically controlling flows of migration, finance, and commodities. While the post-World War II era provided such a setting, and while indeed new modes of redistribution, participation, and integration were found, the promise of equality began to fall apart before it was ever significantly extended to non-majority populations.
