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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book considers the impact of neoliberal policies and ideology on the status of care work in Nordic countries. With new research perspectives and empirical analyses, the book assesses challenges for care work including technologies, management and policy-making. Arguing that there is a care crisis even in the supposedly feminist Nordic ‘nirvana’, the book explores understandings of the care crisis, the serious consequences for gender equality and the hitherto neglected effects on the long-term sustainability of the Nordic welfare states. This astute take on the Nordic welfare model provides insights into what the Nordic experience can tell us about wider international issues in care.

The book explores the links between politics, learning and sustainability. It seeks to answer a fundamental question: how do we move to a politics in which political leaders are honest with voters about the need to fly less, to use less energy, to use our cars less and to forsake the latest high-tech gadgets? This presents a real challenge for the world's political leaders. Are they capable of making the necessary brave decisions? The book's central focus is on the future of people and planet itself. The challenges that we face in combatting climate change and building a more sustainable world are complex, and the book argues that if we are to successfully meet these challenges we need a fundamental change to the way we do politics and economics, embedding a lifelong commitment to sustainability in all learning. We have no option but to make things work for the better. Planet earth is the only home we have. A central argument of the book is that the terms of the debate need to be shifted, so that responding to the challenges of climate change and shaping a more sustainable world is not seen in negative terms (simply giving up stuff!), but rather is viewed as an opportunity to build a more sustainable and fulfilling way of life.

This book brings theoretical understandings of migration and displacement (including displacement as a result of urban redevelopment programmes) together with empirical illustrations of the varying ways in which communities respond. These responses can be negative, divisive and exclusionary. But responses to migration and displacement can also be positive and mutually supportive, building solidarities both within and between communities, whether locally or transnationally. Drawing upon original research, the book includes case studies from varying international contexts, illustrating how different communities respond to the challenges of migration and displacement. These include examples of responses through community arts – such as poetry, story-telling and photography, exploring the scope for building communities (including transnational, diaspora communities) of solidarity and social justice. The concluding chapters identify potential implications for public policy and professional practice, aiming to promote communities of solidarity, addressing the structural causes of widening inequalities, taking account of different interests, including those related to social class, gender, ethnicity, ability and age.

This collection of original essays explores the myriad expressions of austerity since the 2008 financial crisis. Case studies drawn from Canada, Australia and the European Union provide extensive comparative analysis of austerity --fiscal consolidation and structural reforms to labour and the public sector. Contributions examine such themes as privatisation, class mobilization and resistance, the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of the far right. The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in shaping future austerity and alternatives is signalled. The controversies around the pandemic’s merciless revelation of the status of public health infrastructures after decades of austerity capitalism and the sudden visibility of the fragility of globalized neoliberal capitalism at large at the same time help to anticipate alternative scenarios: a) another return to the status quo ante crisis, b) selective escape from the prerogatives of austerity capitalism mainly in the areas of immediate concern for public health and c) more comprehensive departures from what then could finally be understood as late austerity capitalism and post-neoliberalism. What is needed is a transition to a mode of economic governance that not only opens up scope to overcome austerity and structural reform policies, but which also offers a functional framework for the indispensable social-ecological transformation of the economy. Such an objective calls for democratic economic governance to overcome the austerity regime and combine environmental and social policy objectives. Given the rapidly shifting terrain, this comprehensive handbook provides important insights into a complex and fast changing period of politics and policy.

The re-emergence of China as an economic superpower is a spectacular phenomenon. How has it happened? Where does China go? Is there a model which China is believed to have been following and does the model offer some transferable lessons? This book tries to answer those questions, as it is intended to contribute to the explanation of China's contemporary development trajectory. There is a plethora of analyses of post-Mao China's transformation and development. However, this book is the first comprehensive attempt to frame China's advancements within the context of the East Asian developmental miracle. It is argued here that China is a genus of post-socialist developmental state model, which fuses the two intellectual streams, that of the concept of the developmental state and that of post-socialist transformation. As China transits from central planning to market, it tries to imitate the institutions and policies of Japan and South Korea during their high growth periods of the second half of the twentieth century. This approach – broadly in opposition to the 30 years of neo-liberal propaganda worldwide – has brought impressive results and gives us some predictability as to the future. The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter one examines the concept of the developmental state. Chapter two focuses on post-socialist transformation in China. Chapter three is a comparative analysis of systemic and institutional arrangements of China, Japan and Korea. Chapter four discusses the three countries’ development policies. Chapter five examines China as a post-socialist developmental state and discusses the model's broader applicability.

This book takes an authoritative look at the policies and politics of Britain’s Conservative Party to discover if it has developed a distinctive approach to the post-war welfare state. After exploring the record of the wartime Conservative-led coalition government, attention is focussed on the progressive One Nation wing of the party. The author explores the efforts that were made to embrace the features of the welfare state that were compatible with underlying Conservative philosophy. The modern technocratic Conservative approach of the Heath government (1970-74) is then put under the spotlight as a prelude to a discussion of the neo-liberal Conservative approach to the welfare state which was instigated under successive Thatcher governments (1979-90) and solidified during John Major’s Premiership (1990-97). David Cameron’s progressive neo-liberal Conservative strategy (2005-15) is discussed in the penultimate chapter of the book. The epilogue discusses whether a distinctive Conservative approach to the welfare state emerged in the post-war era.

With trust in top-down government faltering, community-based groups around the world are displaying an ever-greater appetite to take control of their own lives and neighbourhoods. Government, for its part, is keen to embrace the projects and the planning undertaken at this level, attempting to regularise it and use it as a means of reconnecting to citizens and localising democracy. This unique book analyses the contexts, drivers and outcomes of community action and planning in a selection of case studies in the global north: from emergent neighbourhood planning in England to the community-based housing movement in New York, and from active citizenship in the Dutch new towns to associative action in Marseille. It will be a valuable resource for academic researchers and for postgraduate students on social policy, planning and community development courses.

The main arguments in this book reflect the politics and social climate created by austerity in the early 21^st century and provide an analytical framework for examining the notion of ‘de-professionalisation’ and how it has emerged. The centrepiece offers a part- historical narrative for understanding an evolving process (of ‘de-professionalisation) and poses a question as to whether the direction and substantive nature of this process may have been altered by austerity, or whether this should be regarded as continuity rather than any radical change. Other policy questions include whether social investment as a means of increasing productivity has played a positive role in economic regulation and investment in human capital - training and education - and social programmes. The book sets out the main theoretical frameworks used to study the work of professions, contrasting disciplinary perspectives in the context of their application to different policy fields. Perspectives on professions and professionalism, taken from disciplines such as sociology, social policy, and public administration, are set against a contemporary and contrasting paradigm, for example managerialism or collaborative professionalism, with a purpose of ingraining new ways of deepening accountability towards more collectivist values.

This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice. The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.

Many of the Nordic countries have designed parental leave policies in ways that can promote participation of fathers in child care. Norway was the first country to introduce a father-specific leave quota in 1993. This quota is non-transferable and generously paid, and Norway has functioned as a sort of laboratory for testing such radical policies. This book is a collection of research publications from three studies conducted at various stages since the introduction of the quota. It looks at its various design characteristics and possible consequences such as take-up, framing of the leave, what fathers do when on leave, how they develop as caregivers and competent parents, how working life relates to male employees with care obligations in terms of parental leave, how fathers adapt their leave to work and how immigrant fathers relate to the laws and expectations directed to fathers in Norway. Although the chapters are based on different qualitative studies, they show changes in employed men’s fathering practices over the years and how the parental leave design may have contributed to this change.