Social Policy and the Separation between Acting and Making

: Kananen, Johannes

Publisher: SocArXiv Preprints

: 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ewbgj_v2

: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ewbgj_v2

Modern social policies, including cash benefits and public services have emerged to compensate for the lossof solidarity at the local level. While reducing poverty and increasing welfare, these policies have tended toremain technocratic, their democratic legitimacy being contested. This paper examines contemporaryWestern social policy in the light of Hannah Arendt’s distinction between making and acting. Making is thehuman condition of worldliness. We live in a world of durables and construct these durables through theprocess of making. Acting is the human condition of plurality. We live together with others and musttherefore agree on the forms of our social life. For Arendt acting and making are strictly separate activities.Therefore, the means-ends schema plays no role in politics, which is about acting together. Thus, socialpolicy is not about reaching a pre-defined outcome in technocratic fashion but about the negotiation andagreement on the forms of our social life