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This book provides a longitudinal perspective on change and continuity in voluntary action in recent decades in the UK. Drawing on more than 30 years of different quantitative and qualitative data, its longitudinal, mixed-methods approach offers insights into recent and contemporary British voluntary action. The book deploys a range of quantitative data sources on individual behaviour, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, to analyse aggregate trends in individual engagement in both formal and informal volunteering, in the level and frequency of engagement, the types of activities that volunteers carry out, their responses to questions concerning their motivation and the rewards they obtain from volunteering. These analyses are complemented, and given much greater depth, by the use of qualitative data from individuals who volunteer for the Mass Observation Project, through which they provide free-form written testimony about their daily lives. Tracking a subset of these individuals over time provides unique and novel insights into behaviour, motivation, and lifetime engagement. This source is also highly informative of individuals’ understandings of, and particularly their attitudes towards, voluntary action, and the balance between public and private responsibility for the provision of public services. The findings lead us to caution against any simplistic suggestions that levels of voluntary action can be increased significantly without policies that work with the grain of individuals’ everyday lives.

Drawing on empirical research with the UK’s two largest charitable food organisations, this book explores the prolific rise of food charity over the last 15 years and its implications for overcoming food insecurity. As the welfare state withdraws, leaving food banks to protect the most vulnerable, the author questions the sustainability of this system and asks where responsibility lies – in practice and in theory – for ensuring everyone can realise their human right to food. The book argues that effective, policy-driven solutions require a clear rights-based framework, which enables a range of actors including the state, charities and the food industry to work together towards, and be held accountable for, the progressive realisation of the right to food for all in the UK.

Whilst there is a growing body of literature on formal voluntary organisations, relatively little research has been undertaken into the roles and functioning of small, informal, below the radar community groups and actions. ‘Community groups in context: Local activities and actions’ brings together a decade of research with informal community groups and small scale civil society organisations. It explores the wealth and diversity of their forms and activities, their fragility, strategies for survival and their position in relation to a range of public policy objectives. In particular the book examines under-researched aspects of small scale community action: from voluntary arts through to Gypsy, Traveller and Roma groups through to how people learn through to how activists learn, the emotional investment in community action and the voice of below the radar groups in local and national policy contexts.

Personalisation – the idea that public services should be tailored to the individual, with budgets devolved to the service user or frontline staff – is increasingly seen as the future of the welfare state. This book focuses on how it evolved as a policy narrative and has mobilised such wide-ranging political support.

Does the coalition government represent a new politics in Britain, or is the new government just the same old Tories hiding behind an opportunist pact with the Liberal Democrats? Does Cameron differ from past Conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, and if so, how? This book looks at the coalition government in the context of conservative ideas and seeks to assess what, if anything, is new about it.

Contemporary democracies need to develop a better governance of problems, as all too often policy is a sophisticated answer to the wrong problem. This book offers a new approach to public-policy making as problem processing, bringing together aspects of puzzling, powering, and participation, relating them to cultural theory, to issues about networks, to models of democracy, and to modes of citizen participation. It is part of a growing body of work in policy analysis literature.

This book is an English version of a successful text on public policy analysis originally written for policy practitioners in Switzerland and France. It presents a model for the analysis of public policy and includes examples of its application in everyday political-administrative situations. This English version introduces supplementary illustrations and examples from the United Kingdom. Structured and written accessibly for readers who may not have an academic background in the social sciences, this book applies key ideas from sociology, political science, administrative science, and law to develop an analytical framework that can be used to carry out empirical studies on different public policies.

In a time of unprecedented turbulence, how can public sector organisations increase their ability to find innovative solutions to society's problems? This book shows how government agencies can use co-creation to overcome barriers and deliver more value, at lower cost, to citizens and business. The book is prescriptive. It shapes around the framework of an innovation ecosystem, encompassing the four Cs of consciousness, capacity, co-creation and courage. Through global case studies and practical examples, the book addresses the key triggers of public sector innovation. It shares new tools for citizen involvement through design thinking and ethnographic research, and pinpoints the leadership roles needed to drive innovation at all levels of government.

This book rethinks the public, public communication, and public action in a globalising and mediated world. It develops theoretical perspectives for investigating the formation of publics, focusing on four overlapping processes: claiming publics; personalising publics; mediating publics; and becoming public. Using case studies, the book offers a set of methodological resources on which other researchers can draw, and foregrounds the need to interrogate the boundaries between theory, research, and politics.

Everyone is talking about partnerships: environmental partnerships, social partnerships, public–private partnerships, partnerships between NGOs in Europe and the third world. How did partnerships come to emerge almost everywhere and at almost the same time? What is their inner logic? And at what point does that logic begin to break down? In a highly complex society, the conditions on which agreements are built are constantly changing, demanding, first and foremost, that parties agree to reach an agreement. Partnering is an answer to the growing differentiation and dynamism of the societies in which we live. While this answer holds great potential, it is, however, also very fragile. It is the aim of this book to improve our understanding of the shifting ground on which agreements must be reached in today’s hyper-complex society.