Upon not finding a direct relationship between civil disorder and welfare growth in American cities in the late 1960s, some analysts have rejected the Piven and Cloward (1971) thesis that the expansion of welfare in the late 1960s operated largely as aform of social control so as to recreate political stability. We hypothesize that the welfare explosion in the late 1960s was in part the result of a two-step process in which civil disorder impelled the national government to enact liberalizations of welfare policy which in turn were most actively implemented by those states most wracked by rioting. Analysis of the relative state growth rates in the number offamilies receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children suggests the plausibility of our hypothesis and the Piven and Cloward thesis.