Ideology in the US welfare debate: Neo-liberal representations of poverty

This article discusses the political ideologies underlying the welfare debate in the US. It argues that conservative arguments and rhetoric, that were in the margin of the political debate in the early 1980s, have been naturalized in the mainstream discussion on welfare and poverty in the US. A sample of 11 articles taken from the relatively liberal news magazine Newsweek is compared with conservative ideology concerning welfare and poverty to illustrate this argument. This transformation of the welfare debate is placed in the broader context of a changing political climate and dominant ideology, in which the socially inclusive 'Keynesianism' (or corporate-liberalism) has been increasingly replaced by the neo-liberal ideology of unfettered market forces. The conservative argument concerning poverty which stresses cultural factors and induces victim-blaming is part and parcel of the neo-liberal discourse of individualism and laissez-faire economics.