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This is the first book in the series Rethinking Community Development and it sets the tone for the series as a whole by probing some fundamental challenges and dilemmas for community development today. As contributors address the book title, Politics, Power and Community Development, they raise issues of international relevance but which are, nonetheless, specific in their focus. In its three sections and 13 chapters, contributors explore how diverse political and power configurations shape and are shaped by community development processes. There are critical reflections on policy and practice in Taiwan, Australia, India, South Africa, Burundi, Germany, the USA, Ireland, Malawi, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia and the UK. While all authors direct their chapters explicitly towards community development, in some cases their contributions are informed by a particular policy interest or political question. These include: the commons and alternative economies; global governance and the (post) Washington Consensus; disability arts and the affirmation model; challenges to diversity and egalitarian policies; environmental justice in the context of oil exploration; gender equality and the successes and limitations of India’s Panchayat system; service delivery protests and democratic deficits; and the remaking of place in the name of cultural specificity and economic competitiveness. A recurring issue across the book is the dominance of neoliberalism internationally, and the extent to which practitioners, activists and programmes can challenge, critique, engage with or resist its influence.

This book offers theoretical and practical insights in the responsiveness of social policies. It includes a comparative analysis of recent developments in social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies in the Netherlands and relates this to developments in other European countries. It shows how policy-makers and politicians deal with multiple challenges, interests and perspectives on social policies. It not only makes readers aware of societal transformations that are in need of responses, but also offers lessons to analyse and respond to these transformations. These lessons are placed in an international and European perspective. Modern welfare states are confronted with a wide variety of social and economic developments, including individualization, secularization, globalization and changing preferences and ideologies of citizens. This book closely analyses the consequences of these changes for social policies. It shows how policy-makers continuously are trying to incorporate social transformations into the existing welfare state institutions, while they are obstructed by the path-dependent development of welfare state institutions and their persistence. The book identifies three different ‘logics’ that might trigger change in social policies: (1) the institutional logic of the policy regime, (2) the logic of the (socio-economical and cultural) policy context and (3) the logic of public preferences. Sometimes these logics converge, but more often they diverge, placing policy-makers for the almost impossible task to adapt social policies to the conflicting demands of its context.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the third (or voluntary) sector role in the delivery of public services in the UK. It covers social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value; as well as the sector’s role in specific fields including employment, health and social care, housing and criminal justice. It is the first book to review developments over the New Labour and Coalition period which saw a sustained expansion of the scale and scope of third sector delivery. In this period, the sector was required to respond to new policy challenges such as personalisation, market-based mechanisms of funding allocation and regulation, and an increased focus on rewarding outcomes (payment by results). Drawing on research at the ESRC-funded Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, the book also makes an analytical contribution in charting historical shifts in state, third sector, and market relationships, with a focus on the controversies associated with such shifts.