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Access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay, has been a core democratic value. But this basic human right has come under threat through wider processes of restructuring, with an increasingly market-led approach to the provision of welfare. Professionals and volunteers in Law Centres in Britain are struggling to provide legal advice and access to welfare rights to disadvantaged communities. Drawing upon original research, this unique study explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services might be developed in ways that strengthen rather than undermine the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The book explores how such strategies might strengthen the position of those who provide, as well as those who need, public services, and ways to empower communities to work more effectively with professionals and progressive organisations in the pursuit of rights and social justice agendas more widely.

The book explores the objectives, philosophies and outcomes of supported housing for vulnerable people. The exploration is intended to further our understanding of an often-neglected topic in housing research and to stimulate further research in this area. But, the book is also intended to share what is known about supported housing in a way that helps the planning and running of supported housing in the future and so improves the well-being of vulnerable people. The focus of the book is on the impact that supported housing makes on the well-being of those who live in it and whether some forms of supported housing are better at doing this than others. An evaluation framework based on the concept of well-being and the affordances of home and neighbourhood is used to evaluate different supported housing models for older people, homeless people and people with disabilities in Britain and Sweden. The evaluation finds that the forms of supported housing that most increase the well-being of residents are those that enable residents to live in individual self-contained dwellings with full occupancy rights, whilst enabling them to receive appropriate support in these homes. The closer the model of supported housing is to an institution and the more that support is designed to control the behaviour of residents, the less is well-being achieved. The book concludes with recommendations for future policy and practice to support well-being.

The United Kingdom should now be understood as a counter-terrorist state, that is a state in which counter-terrorism law, policy, discourse, and operations are mainstreamed across the domains of law and government in forms that are conceptualised and designed as ‘permanent’ in at least some cases; in which non-state actors are responsibilised for counter-terrorism; and in which all persons are the subjects of counter-terrorism, although not to equal degrees. This book argues that counter-terrorism review—which it defines as the legal, political, and policy processes that consider the application and impacts of counter-terrorism law and policy in theory as well as in practice, with a view to assessing its merits and contributing towards its improvement—has the capacity to enhance accountability in the counter-terrorist state. Building on exclusive interviews with political actors and practitioners, as well as detailed empirical analysis of existing reviews—it presents the first comprehensive, critical analysis of counter-terrorism review in the United Kingdom. While this reveals substantial pockets of good practice, it also shows that the accountability enhancing potential of counter-terrorism review is limited in practice by executive domination, parliamentary limitations, persistent state secrecy, and the absence of trust in the counter-terrorist state.

Environmental justice aspires to a healthy environment for all, as well as fair and inclusive processes of environmental decision-making. In order to develop successful strategies to achieve this, it is important to understand the factors that shape environmental justice outcomes. This optimistic, accessible and wide-ranging book contributes to this understanding by assessing the extent of, and reasons for, environmental justice/injustice in seven diverse countries - United States, Republic of Korea (South Korea), United Kingdom, Sweden, China, Bolivia and Cuba. Factors discussed include: race and class discrimination; citizen power; industrialisation processes; political-economic context; and the influence of dominant environmental discourses. In particular, the role of capitalism is critically explored. Based on over a hundred interviews with politicians, experts, activists and citizens of these countries, this is a compelling analysis aimed at all academics, policy-makers and campaigners who are engaged in thinking or action to address the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time.

This book contains a selection of articles and papers by Andrew Gamble on political economy and British politics which have appeared over the last forty years. The essays attempt to understand the shifting agendas, issues, outcomes and debates in British politics through an analysis of the political economy of the British state, exploring the historical, institutional, and ideological contexts which have shaped it. The book has four main themes – political economy, Europe and America, Thatcherism, and the British constitution. It provides a frame for thinking about how the increasing Europeanisation of Britain’s laws, institutions, policy-making processes and its regulatory regime over the four decades of membership intersected with other domestic issues and debates, including the response to the relative decline and poor performance of the economy, the character of Britain’s hybrid Anglo-liberal model of capitalism, the reshaping of the post-war Keynesian welfare state, the rise and fall of Thatcherism, the transformation of both the Conservative and Labour parties, the relationship between Britain and the United States, the new regulatory state, and the changing constitutional order. The book includes a biographical introduction, notes on the essays and an epilogue which reflects on what the essays got wrong and what they got right.

In this collection, innovative and eminent social and policy analysts, including Colin Crouch, Anna Coote, Jeremy Gilbert, Grahame Thompson and Ted Benton, challenge the failing but still dominant ideology and policies of neo-liberalism. The book suggests extending and deepening democracy and participation into economic and cultural institutions for greater material and social equality to reinforce established social democratic principles of redistribution and public investment. Updated to assess the Brexit and Trump upsurges, the editors’ synthesis offers a framework for a revitalised social democracy. It links concepts such as Polanyi’s ‘commons’ and Habermas’s ’lifeworld’ to the attempts by social justice, feminist, environmentalist movements to advance equality through democratisation and market accountability to civil society. The lifeworld of voluntary associations, families and communities is proposed as the logical starting point for radical transformation, not in ‘blue-sky’ projects, but in existing alternatives like: community organisations, municipal enterprises, mutual and cooperative societies, social movement organisations, and trade-union branches. As well as the more informal networks in which popular involvement is already shaping solutions to the human needs which neoliberalism frustrates. The collection critically dissects, but goes beyond the ideologies and institutions of neoliberalism. It identifies the agents which could promote an alternative political economy for the UK; one based on local and international models of democratic governance to rival and displace prevailing market and corporate dominance. Its combination of critique, analysis and political engagement could be invaluable for those teaching, studying and campaigning for transformative political, economic and social policies.

The United States has become the central state of a global world-system. Analogous in structure to China's historical Ming Dynasty tianxia ("all under heaven"), the American Tianxia is centered on the United States but incorporates other countries in proportion to their acceptance of individualistic world-society principles like human rights, democracy, and rule of law. Contrary to declinist narratives, the prominence of the United States in global distinction hierarchies is solidifying, because the externalities generated by membership in global networks ensure that people value access to these networks even when the interests of their countries clash with US interests. In the state-centric world-view of international relations scholars, China is a potential challenger to US unipolarity, but by 2010 the five Anglo-Saxon countries are likely to reach population parity with China, while over the same period hundreds of thousands of elite Chinese are likely to move their families to the United States, primarily through birth tourism. Continued US dominance is based on the incentive structures faced by these and other individuals, not on the vagaries of international relations. The American Tianxia is thus the Hegelian universal and homogeneous state that Francis Fukuyama was looking for but did not find at the end of history. It constitutes a new, millennial world-system that is very stable and likely to last for several centuries.

This edited volume offers comparative, historical, and political surveys of the international development of social policy concepts and language and the changing boundaries they entails. The volume features comparative and transnational perspectives on social policy language and key social policy concepts in the OECD (Economic Co-operation and Development). What characterizes social policy language in the individual countries and regions? How does social policy language and concepts travel between countries and what role have international organizations played in that respect? Which are the dominant social policy concepts and how are they contested? How did they become dominant and how does it relate to the institutional legacies of different types of welfare regime? The individual chapters, written by a cross-disciplinary group of leading social policy researchers address these questions and trace the development of concepts such as ‘welfare state’ and ‘social security’. Theoretically, the volume draws on a number of perspectives, including conceptual history and the literature on role of ideas and discourse in public policy.

Through a focus on control (self-organisation) and communication (alternative social media platforms), Anarchist Cybernetics explores the structures and functions of radically participatory and democratic organisation. Discussing some of the structures that organisations can build that allow their members to directly control how the organisation behaves, the book takes inspiration from an often-misunderstood concept: cybernetics. Building of the work of cybernetician Stafford Beer and providing a radical reading of his Viable System Model, Anarchist Cybernetics makes a unique and timely contribution both to academic debates around anarchist organisation and radical politics more generally and to broader public debates about how organisations can be democratised to allow for more participation by their members. With continuing discussions around the world about popular sovereignty and ‘taking back control’, the book outlines a clear set of proposals for how organisations can function effectively in radically democratic ways. While other contributions to these discussions often priorities one side of the communication-organisation relationship over the other, Anarchist Cybernetics addresses both and show how they are interrelated and that effective organisation demands a consideration of both.

The book provides fresh perspectives on the link between welfare policy and employment relations. A central argument of the book is that austerity in the work first policies (including Universal Credit) play a key role in attacking both social and employment rights. The book analyses the role and strategies of trade unions and civil society organisations in contesting the reform agenda demonstrating the importance of union organisation and bargaining for welfare policies. The geographies of austerity play a central role in the politics of welfare, with the ‘left behind’ regions, bearing the brunt of public expenditure cuts. In the case studies of Greater Manchester, as England’s flagship Devolution initiative, and the Sheffield Needs a Pay Rise Campaign the book explores the role of trade unions and civil society organising against welfare reform and precarious work. The final two chapters are devoted to exploring alternatives including lessons which can be drawn from Denmark’s, more redistributive welfare and industrial relations system and the importance of challenging the austerity narrative. The author calls for a greater role for economic and welfare democracy involving strengthening employment rights through coordinated collective bargaining and investing in public services and local government as a basis of building a democratic and accountable labour market.

At a time when neoliberal and conservative politics are again in the ascendency and social democracy is waning, Australian public policy re-engages with the values and goals of progressive public policy in Australia and the difficulties faced in re-affirming them. It brings together leading authors to explore economic, environmental, social, cultural, political and Indigenous issues. It examines trends and current policy directions and outlines progressive alternatives that challenge and extend current thinking. While focused on Australia, the contributors offer valuable insights for people in other countries committed to social justice and those engaged in the ongoing contest between neoliberalism and social democracy. This is essential reading for policy practitioners, researchers and students as well as those with an interest in the future of public policy.

The Labour party has been largely defined by the battle of ideas between its left and right sections. This book chronicles those battles, highlighting the key ideas and people behind them since Attlee. It focuses on the totemic moments in the party, but pays particular attention to the Corbyn era. It argues that to understand Corbynism it is important to understand the previous battles over ideas in the party. The final chapter analyses how Corbynism has reacted to Brexit, the biggest issue to face UK politics since WWII, and how this issue has re-opened the left and right battle.

This is the first book to investigate how migrants and migrant rights activists work together to generate new forms of citizenship identities through the use of language. It begins with an overview of the important connection between language and the materiality of migration and discusses how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. The book then looks at the acts of citizenship in more detail, showing that not only the visible but also the audible presence of noncitizens is constitutive of struggles for citizenship. In conclusion, it reflects on the insights obtained from the study on multilingual migrant activism. The book is an original take on citizenship and community from the perspective of translation, and an alluring amalgamation of theory and detailed empirical analysis based on ethnographic case studies of Japan.

Between Realism and Revolt explores urban governance in the “age of austerity”, focusing on the period between the global financial crisis of 2008-9 and the beginning of the global Coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019. It considers urban governance after the 2008 crisis, from the perspective of governability. How did cities navigate the crisis and the aftermath of austerity, with what political ordering and disordering dynamics at the forefront? To answer these questions it engages with two influential theoretical currents, Urban Regime Theory and Gramscian state theory, with a view to understanding how governance enabled austerity, deflected or intensified localised expressions of crisis, and generated more-or-less successful political alternatives. It develops a comparative analysis of case studies undertaken in the cities of Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Leicester, Montreal and Nantes, and concludes by highlighting five characteristics that cut across the cities, unevenly and in different configurations: economic rationalism, weak hegemony, retreat to dominance, weak counter-hegemony and radically contagious politicisations.

A common misunderstanding of the Abortion Act 1967 is that it granted women the ‘right’ to access abortion. In reality, there is no such thing; the current provision of abortion in the United Kingdom rests on a system in which doctors, not women, are the arbiters of abortion access. In recent years, calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion have been given a vigour not seen before. For the first time, MPs and medical associations have moved to back decriminalisation, in line with the demands of pro-choice campaigners across the UK. But at the same time, opponents are mobilising to undermine public faith in both the Abortion Act and abortion providers. In doing so, they have tended to set aside the classic ‘right to life’ arguments, instead focusing on issues such as sex-selective abortion and disability rights. This book makes sense of today’s changed landscape of abortion debate by tracing the evolution of political and parliamentary discourse on abortion from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present. It makes the case that to understand contemporary abortion politics, it is necessary to move beyond a conceptualisation of the debate as characterised by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’.

In recent years, new areas of biology, especially epigenetics and neuroscience, have enthralled the public imagination. They have been used as powerful arguments for developing social policy in a particular direction, from early intervention in the lives of disadvantaged children to seeking 'biomarkers' as identifiers of criminality. This book critically examines the capabilities and limitations of these biotechnologies, exploring their implications for policy and practice. The book will enable social scientists, policy makers, practitioners and interested general readers to understand how the new biologies of epigenetics and neuroscience have increasingly influenced the fields of family policy, mental health, child development and criminal justice. The book will facilitate much needed debate about what makes a good society and how best to build one. It also draws attention to the ways that the uncertainties of the original science are lost in their translation into the everyday world of practice and policy, and how the primary work is co-opted and manipulated to support particular moral agendas.

The need to secure civilians and their fundamental rights has led to the moral imperative to track, record and memorialise the killing and the suffering of those who find themselves in the midst of violent conflict. Body Count tracks and explores civilian deaths in Iraq following the 2003 invasion by the US-led coalition. It is a recounting of the conflict through the counting of its victims. The book provides a narrative of the War on Terror by charting its course and its impact, through ‘live’ reports and through reflective analysis by the principal researcher of the NGO Iraq Body Count. It highlights the importance and the challenges of casualty recording, it maps the insurgency in Iraq and the ensuing civilian deaths, the struggle between military power and ideology, the increasing radicalisation, the seeking of security through hegemony, and the cycle of violence. The book narrates state collapse through discussions on the neoliberal system’s effect on Iraq’s security, on military interventions and the Western control paradigm, on individual and community trauma. It raises questions on leadership and hegemony, the vulnerability of weak states, winning and losing, regime and energy security. It tells the daily story of Iraq: a story of fear, of executions and mass graves, of airstrikes and car bombs, of heroism and sacrifice, and of life carrying on.

This book examines how borders structure the working class, shaping exploitation and resistance. The book uses the example of Britain to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of a Marxist approach and develop insights that have international relevance. In the wake of the 'Brexit referendum' and facing an uncertain future, debate rages as to whether immigration is good or bad for British society, in economic and cultural terms. Within the political mainstream, both sides in this debate share the assumptions that categories based on nationality, citizenship and country of origin are fixed, legitimate, and appropriate for assessing social change, measuring social benefit and harm, and allocating resources. Likewise, both sides of the debate limit their horizons to what is possible within the capitalist mode of production. Given the long history of migration to and from Britain, and the historically recent development of ideas of nation and citizenship, it is necessary to ask how and why borders and the divides they produce have become so deeply rooted and widely accepted, to the point that they appear as a ‘common sense’ division of humanity. Perhaps more importantly, what role do these ideas play in shaping responses to the crisis, and what are the alternatives?

Britain and Europe at a Crossroads: The Politics of Anxiety and Transformation dissects the complex social, cultural and political factors that led the UK to take its decision to leave the EU and examines the far-reaching consequences of that decision. Developing the conceptual framework of securitization, the book uses primary sources and a focus on rhetoric and discourse analysis to examine the ways that political elites engineered a politics of fear, insecurity and Brexit nationalism before and after the Brexit vote. The book situates Brexit within a wider shift in international political ideas, traces the resurgence in popularity of far-right politics and explores how Britain and Europe now face a choice between further neoliberal reform or radical democratic and social renewal. The book posits a number of policy responses that might serve as antidotes to the causes of Brexit and radical right populism centred on a new Social Europe, redistribution and social justice and forms of deliberative democracy that extend participation and preserve representative judgement in the British tradition of ‘pouring new wine into old bottles’.