Bureaucracy: Child-Care Subsidies and Their Effect on Family Well-Being - Assignment Example

Bureaucracy s Q1 The article under consideration presents a comprehensive and multifold research on the topic of child-caresubsidies and their effect on family well-being. It is well-known that many countries provide a set of opportunities for low-income (especially single-parent) families in order to enable parents find stable employment and, at the same time, have their children taken care of in special licensed child-care centers. Therefore, the authors focus on interdependence between receipt of child-care subsidies and well-being of families with working mothers in the U.S. Healy & Dufinon (2014, p.2) refer to multiple studies dealing with the issue and state that receiving child-care subsidies might not always be associated with increase in welfare of both children and mothers. Whereas children might experience both positive and negative consequences of being care of in child-care centers while their parents work, mothers are also very likely to be subjected to unfavorable influence of subsidies receipt, and these negative effects will be closely connected to administrative aspect of receiving and maintaining the subsidy. Social welfare as a bureaucratic has implementation of legislation and policy provided by the government. In this case, social welfare agencies function as enactors of governmental social policy and provide services according to this policy. The property of Weber’s model of bureaucracy that can be applied to the article especially apropos is, of course, the standard operating procedure that must be fulfilled in order to gain or recertify for child-care subsidies. Of course, all parents are required to go through a set of steps adhering to formalized rules that are equal for everyone and are aimed at singling out eligible citizens. The article highlights that there are families living both above and beyond the poverty line in the U.S., which are eligible for subsidies receipt. The article provides the following information on the comparison of parents living beyond and above the poverty line: “For mothers above deep poverty, problems fulfilling administrative procedures around recertification and maintaining the employment required to keep the subsidy may be more salient” (Healy & Dufinon, 2014, p.26). Considering the research conducted by the authors and the information about the bureaucratic aspect of child-care subsidies, it could be stated that depression and difficulties experienced by low-income families eligible for subsidies is mainly caused by the bureaucracy in Weber’s understanding. Every 6 or 12 months, mothers are required to recertify for subsidies and maintain stable employment that is a basic formal rule for application (which is obviously reasonable, as unemployed parents have time to take care of their children, in contrast to those who are employed and are distanced from their children during the working day). While the original task of social welfare institutions as a part of the bureaucratic machine is enabling balanced work of the society, formalities connected to certification for the subsidies might lead to certain ‘disruption’ in functioning of parents, as they might experience problems with maintaining stable employment or are concerned with the way increase in income can affect eligibility for subsidies. In this respect, Healy and Dufinon share their findings that mothers of families leaving beyond the poverty line do not get distressed with the bureaucratic procedure and the possibility of being ineligible for recertification, while mothers having higher income level feel more pressure. Moreover, Weber (1946, p.224) asserts that bureaucracy is the instrument aimed at leveling social differences, and availability of child-care subsidies seems to be the means for evening up opportunities of parents belonging to different income groups. However, the other side of this function apparently presupposes a kind of ‘turnover’ in the class of mothers eligible for governmental assistance in childcare: when income and hence affordability of child-care centers rise for one family, its ‘place’ is given to another one with lower income, and this bureaucratic system seems rather fair. The Cunning of History Q1 In “The Cunning of History”, another guise of bureaucracy manifests itself. Rubenstein gives a comprehensive analysis of the Holocaust as a mass genocide of the ethnic group in relation to bureaucratic machine that existed in the contemporary Germany. The “hitherto unbreachable moral and political barrier in the history of Western civilization was successfully overcome by the Nazis in the World War II and that henceforth the systematic, bureaucratically administered extermination of millions of citizens or subject peoples will forever be one of the capacities and temptations of government” (Rubenstein, 1987, p.2). As the state transformed acquiring s new ideology and a new form of organization, the law as the institution evolved into an instrument deployed by the dominating national community in order to exterminate national minorities promoting ethnic purity. Thereby, it is clearly seen that it was completely legal and ‘normal’ in perception of Germans, and the peculiar bureaucratic ethos made the elaborate organization of genocide possible. Bureaucratic ethos formed under the influence of secularization and rationalization, and it made people compel with orders silently. Viewing the case and the work of Rubenstein through the prism of bureaucracy as the central focal point, one could refer to two seminal theories of bureaucracy suggested by Karl Marx and Max Weber. As it is seen from Weber’s theoretical framework, bureaucracy is seen as a constructive rather than destructive entity. Politics, according to Weber, is governing a political union, i.e. a state – an organization, in which the balance of interests exists. However, the main distinctive feature of the state is the monopoly for legitimate violence, which is realized by the single social class or group maintaining control over the state. This means that Rubenstein’s interpretation of the Holocaust can be viewed as the manifestation of power and the monopoly for violence exercised by the ruling ethnic group (comprising the bureaucratic machine, too). Within this approach, bureaucracy is a hierarchical organization of authority, where the senior official manages the subordinates with help of legitimate rules, while the whole apparatus controlled by the body of officials maintains the impersonal nature and governs people through a formal set of procedures. Thus, Weber’s perspective depicts bureaucracy as the rational organization creating the basis for efficient work of the society. Rubenstein himself addressed the framework of Weber, referring to the constructive property of bureaucracy to work for any dominating group, which knows how to take over control of it (Rubenstein, 1987, p.77). The author relies upon “the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler, the bureaucratic competence of the German police and civil service and the mood of the German people at the particular moment of history” (Rubenstein, 1987, p.6). Therefore, viewing the issue described by the author from Weber’s viewpoint, one could state that bureaucratic nature of mass annihilation of Jews was triggered by the initially constructive stimulus of the Nazi aimed at elimination of politically useless segment of population to make the society function in a more balanced way. Marxist theory of bureaucracy differs from that of Weber, depriving it of its alleged constructive nature and instead considering it as the ultimate evil. Moreover, Marx did not view bureaucracy as a self-sufficient social power; instead, it was understood as the instrument functioning for subordination of the exploited class to the dominating one. Moreover, in the conditions of capitalism typical for the Western society of the 20th century, bureaucracy is stated to be the instrument serving interests of the ruling class. Any conflict between bureaucratic and nonbureaucratic elites is secondary, because both belong to the same system of class domination. Marx views bureaucratic relations as those caused by connection between private property and performance of state functions; thus, private interests are realized as general. Thus, bureaucracy in its parasitic nature functions only due to the fact that it shifts the burden on the minorities. Such perception of bureaucracy suggested by Karl Marx apparently undermines the principles and properties underlying the Holocaust as the manifestation of bureaucratic organization, for it is opposed to the ideals of socialistic society with the dominance of working people possessing power. The Nazi might have used bureaucratic system not to construct the balanced society, but to subdue the lower classes promoting the interests of the privileged group governing the state. Considering the opinion of Marx on bureaucracy, it would be reasonable enough to assume that he would criticize the essay of Rubenstein in terms of bureaucracy as an explanation and ‘justification’ of the Holocaust as a manifestation of the bureaucratic machine’s functioning in the 20th century. Q2 "The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future" by Richard Rubenstein offers a perspective of one of the most terrible events of the first half of the 20th century, creating the insight into the reasons and premises underlying this inhumane policy affecting Jews. Thereby, analysis of the event is presented via the methodological prism of distancing, for the author considers distancing oneself emotionally form both perpetrators and victims the only way to understand the essence of the Holocaust (Rubenstein, 1987, p.2). Focusing mainly on Auschwitz as a symbolic ‘heart’ of evil, the author considers the nature of the Holocaust as of a typical and even ‘expected’ phenomenon of the 20th century, which became the time of mass deaths. In conditions of large-scale deaths and an overall tendency of treating ethnic minorities existing in the country as useless to certain extent, concentration camps established by the Nazi evolved to the level of completely legal and highly organized institutions (Rubenstein, 1987, p.15) rather than a citadel of wild uncontrolled brutality. Rubenstein asserts that “the Holocaust is a thoroughly modern exercise in total domination that could only have been carried out by an advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy.” (1987, p.4). The main thesis standing out on the background of Auschwitz experience is that the Holocaust was certainly only the manifestation of “some of the most profound tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century” (Rubenstein, 1987, p.21) and the reflection of the “evolution” of slavery existing in the 18th and 19th centuries. Moreover, the author asserts the discussed event to be the sign of a new form of oppression and domination in the Western society that already finds some parallels in the modern Western countries, particularly, the U.S. The way apartides were denationalized and subjected to all the terrors of death camps and – subsequently – genocide – was highly bureaucratized, while bureaucracy was at the beginning of the extermination process: defined as Jews, people were deprived of civil right and property, and as a result, became politically meaningless and thus ‘superfluous’ (Rubenstein, 1987, p.4). Rubenstein seeks to explain the way the Nazi exercised power and domination, legitimizing even the most terrible actions (from the humanistic point of view). Supporting the part of the thesis implying that tendencies of the Nazi’s experience find their reflection (though in a modified form), Rubenstein provided modern examples including that of a parallel to medical experiments carried out on the inmates of death camps: "Another recent American parallel to the Nazi experiments was the decision of welfare authorities in Georgia to sterilize several mentally deficient black girls. Their illiterate parents were allegedly compelled by representatives of the welfare bureaucracy to sign papers permitting the sterilization». Reading the book, one could trace the thesis implied in it, though it is not written explicitly in a single sentence: the history is prone to repeat itself regularly, though there can be differences. Thus, history has been repeating itself in terms power, domination and various forms of ‘slavery’ and discrimination that led to devastating consequences. The Holocausts as a fruit of the elaborate, socially, culturally and politically developed society relying on bureaucracy became an illustrative example of what might happen, if people do not do anything to preserve humanity and power balance. References Healy, O. & Dufinon, R. (2014). ‘Child-Care Subsidies and Family Well-Being’. Social Service Review Vol. 88, No. 3. The University of Chicago Press. Rubenstein, R. L. (1987). The Cunning of History – The Holocaust and the American Future. Harper Torchbooks. Weber, M. (1946). Essays in Sociology. Oxford University Press. Read More