Response to Symposium on The Welfare Workforce

Like many scholars who embark upon new subfields, my initial steps into mental health care raised two, conflicting questions for me.First, one of shock: Why had scholars of the welfare state completely overlooked this crucial policy area?Soon following, though, was one of uncertainty: Could I convince the field that mental health deserved its attention?These reviews from my colleagues-landmark contributors to the study of the welfare state-offer valuable reassurance on the answers to these questions.I am grateful for their reception of The Welfare Workforce, noting both the empirical value of studying mental health care in its own right and its theoretical contributions to our broader field.The reviews also draw attention to several areas for further exploration.One area concerns the role of the electoral and legislative arena, the flagship site of democratic policy-making.Elected officials can certainly matter.My theory of "supply-side" policy feedback posits that politicians can either: join the welfare workforce coalition to gain votes (bolstering the independent variable; p. 17) or cede to its demands to avoid retribution (motoring one of the causal mechanisms; p. 19).The role of elected officials lessens, however, when the national electoral salience of a policy area is low-as is the case in mental health.Moreover, the welfare workforce can circumvent the legislative arena, particularly because public sector managers can hold independent policy-making influence.The French case is a prime example.Elected officials belonging to confessional parties may be especially sympathetic to the mentally ill; however Rogers (2025) has shown that they prefer voluntary, not statist, solutions to their needs.My findings align with hers.Although Norwegian Christian Democrats showed interest in mental health in a broad sense, they did not originally make financial commitments to it.Only after the workforce advocated did they agree to allocate significant public funds to the expansion of care.Workforce activism was necessary to both the reform's enactment and its statist orientation.Both theory and empirics hence underscore the autonomous influence of the welfare workforce

Comparative politics · Health care · Legislature · Mental health · Voluntary sector · Welfare · Welfare state · Workfare · Workforce · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation · Social Work Education and Practice

• Party ideology and care policy

  Open Access•Katren Rogers•Journal of European Social Policy•2025

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