Post-Welfare State Governance: Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility

Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility is a public discussion document sent by the New Zealand government to all households in early 1998. Analysis of the document is used to ask questions about post-welfare stare forms of social governance and their implications. Drawing from the governmentality literature, I show the proposed code can be understood as a hybrid assemblage of neoliberal and neoconservative forms of rule. These different regimes of power have specific implications for post-welfare state social relations. Neoliberalism incorporates elements of feminism and antiracism, whereas neoconservatism reinscribes more familiar forms of social relations.