Implementing welfare reform in Massachusetts and Washington State: Bureaucracy and ideology in street-level policy

This dissertation is a study of policy implementation in two cases of state welfare reform in the late 1990s: Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC) in Massachusetts and WorkFirst in Washington State. Both reoriented their programs around policies promoting immediate employment and experienced dramatic declines in their caseloads. I investigate the ideas and bureaucratic processes involved. I draw on structuration theory and organizational theory to understand these cases. I use in-depth qualitative interviews with nearly one hundred people involved with the implementation of policies including people who work for welfare agencies, advocates on behalf of welfare recipients, and community college staff. I discuss several important changes in welfare casework and federal control over state programs. Casework has changed from expert determinations based on local knowledge to increasing reliance on standardized categories. New block grant funding for welfare assumes standardized bureaucratic information and forces increasing standardization of case records. I found four rhetorical packages in my respondents\u27 understandings of welfare policy: immediate employment, long term strategies for human capital development, support for mothering and a safety net, and coercion. The first set of ideas promoted getting a job as the whole answer to the problem of welfare. In the rhetoric of long term strategies, education and training is packaged in short programs with integrated job placement. Although maternalist reformers did not want mothers to work, this idea survives only weakly among my respondents. A few caseworkers suggested the responsibilities of mothering might take precedence over employment, while administrators argued employment makes recipients better mothers. The last rhetorical package makes time limits, participation requirements, and sanctions central to welfare reforms. Both states studies fundamentally transformed their welfare programs and reduced their caseloads dramatically. Caseload reduction was a clear and measurable goal pursued under favorable bureaucratic conditions. Advocates and educators in Washington State successfully introduced training opportunities into WorkFirst. Massachusetts achieved greater caseload reductions through more single-minded attention to this goal