Social Policy & Administration: Journal and Discipline

‘Social Policy & Administration’ is the oldest British social policy journal. This article charts its evolution over the last 40 years in the wider context of British social policy. It presents a timeline of the journal and discipline, an analysis of articles in the journal, and presents its most‐cited articles and most‐published authors. It uses this material to inform some impressions of the journal and discipline.     

REVIEW ARTICLES

Book review in this Article Hard Times: The Prospects for European Social Policy By Peter Townsend Can the Welfare State Compete? By Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough, and Goran Therborn Social Welfare in Socialist Countries By John Dixon and David Macarov Trapped in Poverty? By Bill Jordan, Simon James, Helen Kay and Marcus Redley Routledge Introduction to Social Administration in Britain by Muriel Brown and Sarah Payne Unwin Hyman The Politics of Local Government by Gerry Stoker Macmillan Public Policy under Thatcher By Stephen P. Savage and Lynton Robins Whom God Hath Joined Together: the Work of Marriage Guidance By Jane Lewis, David Clarke and David Morgan Prisoners' Children: What Are The Issues? By Roger Shaw Maternity Rights in Britain: Report on the Experience of Women and Employers By Susan McRae Policy Evaluating Health Services' Effectiveness By Anthony St Leger, Harold Schneiden and Joanna Is British Food Bad for You? By Vincent Marks Structures of Control in Health Management By Rob Flynn Alternative Medicine in Britain By Mike Saks Science, Ideology and the Media By Ronald Fletcher     

From Gift Relationships to Quasi-markets: An Odyssey along the Policy Paths of Altruism and Egoism

Nearly forty years ago, the publication of ‘The Price of Blood’ (1968) and ‘The Gift Relationship’ (1970) added a new dimension of ideological conflict to the debate about the values, ends and means of social policy. The questions that Richard Titmuss posed in ‘The Gift Relationship’ are still discussed in current debates about the respective merits of unitary and pluralist models of welfare, the egoistic and altruistic motives that underpin them, and the rights and responsibilities intrinsic to the status of citizenship. The ways in which the content and focus of these debates have changed over the past forty years are here reviewed, taking Titmuss's ‘The Gift Relationship’, my own contributions in ‘Social Theory and Social Policy’ (1971) and ‘The Idea of Welfare’ (1979), and Julian Le Grand's ‘Motivation, Agency and Public Policy’ (2003) as the temporal and salient points of reference. A brief introduction describes how the academic debate became sharply polarized in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and how a key decision about the future development of this journal was taken at the same time.     

Garbage‐can Policy‐making Meets Neo‐liberal Ideology: Twenty Five Years of Redundant Reform of the English National Health Service

The garbage‐can theory of decision‐making (Cohen et al. 1972), has been adapted into a perspective on policy‐making, with adaptations of the approach placing notable emphasis upon the health sector (Kingdon 2006; Paton 2006). This article creates an adapted ‘garbage‐can’ framework to help explain each stage of the reform of the English National Health Service (NHS) over the last 25 years. The emergence of the key idea and resultant policy at each stage of reform of the English NHS has been arational and indeed sometimes irrational. Policy has reflected advocacy by policy‐salesmen (Kingdon 2002), proffering ‘solutions’ to ill‐defined problems and answers to unasked questions, and politicians' short‐termist responses at each decision‐point. Yet the garbage‐can alone is not enough: if arationality rules in policy‐making day to day, this does not mean that there is not an overall ideological context, trend or bias in reform. The article also posits that ‘market reform’ has derived from the ideological hegemony of a naive anti‐statism (hostility to a misleadingly defined and often mythological ‘centralist state’) in public services and enthusiasm for market competition rather than any evidence‐based application of pro‐market ideas to health policy. A question arises: how are these two approaches (short‐term arationality and longer‐term ideological bias) combined in explanation of how policy over time is biased in a particular direction while seemingly arbitrary and directionless at each messy decision‐point. The article attempts to combine the insights of a garbage‐can approach with wider explanations of ideological hegemony.     

Discourses about children's mental health and developmental disorders in North American women's magazines 1990–2012

This paper describes and analyses the portrayal of children's mental health and developmental issues (CMHI) in articles located in a random sample of a selection of available high‐circulating English language North American ‘women's magazines’ indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature from 1990 to 2012. It is based upon a qualitative discourse analysis. CMHI are portrayed as materially, biologically real, prevalent and growing in incidence, and severity. They are also portrayed as located in the ‘non‐normal’, ‘non‐nice’, ‘disliked’ and ‘non‐successful’ individual child. Neither the facticity nor the biomedicalization of CMHI is questioned. The psy‐scientists and practitioners cited as experts for the ‘disorders’ offer contradictory and confusing information and advice. The possible theoretical and pragmatic explanations and consequences of this portrayal are discussed.     

Aberration of the Citation

Multiple inherent biases related to different citation practices (for e.g., self-citations, negative citations, wrong citations, multi-authorship-biased citations, honorary citations, circumstantial citations, discriminatory citations, selective and arbitrary citations, etc.) make citation-based bibliometrics strongly flawed and defective measures. A paper can be highly cited for a while (for e.g., under circumstantial or transitional knowledge), but years later it may appear that its findings, paradigms, or theories were untrue or invalid anymore. By contrast, a paper may remain shelved or overlooked for years or decades, but new studies or discoveries may actualize its subject at any moment. As citation-based metrics are transformed into “commercial activities,” the “citation credit” should be considered on a commercial basis too, in the sense that “citation credit” should be shared out as a “citation dividend” by shareholders (coauthors) averagely or proportionally to their contributions but not fully appropriated by each of them. At equal numbers of citations, the greater number of authors, the lower “citation credit” should be and vice versa. Overlooking the presence of distorted and subjective citation practices makes many people and administrators “obsessed” with the number of citations to such an extent to run after “highly cited” authors and to create specialized citation databases for commercial purposes. Citation-based bibliometrics, however, are unreliable and unscientific measures; citation counts do not mean that a more cited work is of a higher quality or accuracy than a less cited work because citations do not measure the quality or accuracy. Citations do not mean that a highly cited author or journal is more commendable than a less cited author or journal. Citations are not more than countable numbers: no more, no less.     

The Search for Coordination: The Case of the Central Policy Review Staff and Social Policy Planning, 1971–77

The Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) attempted to create an ambitious strategy for the horizontal coordination of social policy in the UK during the early 1970s. The attempt – inspired largely by planning, programming and budgeting systems – was a failure, and gave way to a much modified ‘joint framework for social policies’ in 1975. Recent research has compared the CPRS's joint framework approach to the Labour government's promotion of ‘joined‐up government’ (JUG) in the 2000s. This article provides a case study of the CPRS's work on social policy planning, using archival sources. The case study addresses themes that remain significant, particularly approaches to and the politics of horizontal coordination. Finally, the article makes a modest attempt to signal the differences between the 1970s' approach and ‘JUG’.     

Learning by doing: the case of administrative policy transfer in China

This article explores of the role of policy transfer in facilitating the rise and consolidation of the ‘Reform and Open Door Policy' in China. It builds upon the seminal Dolowitz and Marsh [Dolowitz, D., and D. Marsh. 1996. “Who Learns What From Whom: A Review of the Policy Transfer Literature.” Political Studies 44: 343–357; Dolowitz, D., and D. Marsh. 2000. “Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-Making.” Governance 13 (1): 5–23] framework to provide an examination of processes of administrative policy transfer which it argues are broadly indicative of the dynamics of change underpinning the incremental process of reform. It is observed that the reforms under study have not been characterized by rational policy design underpinned by evidence-based policy-making in which issues of cultural assimilation were emphasized. Rather, the implementation process itself has been used to affect processes of adaptation. Policy transfer in China can best be described as learning by doing.     

'Sifting the Wheat from the Chaff': A Two-dimensional Discriminant Analysis of Welfare State Regime Theory

Welfare state modelling has long been an important strand within comparative social policy. However, since the publication of Esping‐Andersen's ‘Worlds of Welfare’ typology, welfare state classification has become particularly prominent and a multitude of competing typologies and taxonomies have emerged. Each of these is based on different classification criteria, and each is trying to capture what a welfare state actually does. The result is that the literature is in a state of confusion and inertia as it is unclear which of these rival systems is currently the most accurate and should be taken forward, and which are not and should perhaps be left behind. This article extends Bonoli's two‐dimensional analysis of welfare state regimes by using multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant analysis to compare and contrast the various classifications on universal criteria. It also examines the usefulness of the two‐dimensional approach itself and suggests how it can be enhanced to benefit future attempts at holistic welfare state modelling. The article concludes that there are some welfare state classifications that are more useful than others, especially in terms of reflecting a two‐dimensional analysis: it thereby ‘sifts the wheat from the chaff’ in terms of welfare state regime theory.     

Statistical equality and cultural difference in Indigenous wellbeing frameworks: A new expression of an enduring debate

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in developing indicator frameworks for ‘Indigenous wellbeing’. Implicit in each of the frameworks are particular conceptions of what constitutes the ‘good life’ for Indigenous peoples and what ‘Indigenous development’ should entail. In developing these frameworks, then, certain judgements must be made about whether statistical equality should be prioritised as a ‘development’ goal. This issue has generated long‐standing debate and in this context must be broached anew. In this paper we briefly examine the growing interest in Indigenous wellbeing and outline three prominent indicator frameworks: the Productivity Commission's indicators for ‘Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage’; the ‘capability indicators’ developed by the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership; and the indicators of wellbeing developed by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The first prioritises statistical equality between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians; the second adds a concern with ‘capabilities’; and the last emphasises the importance of distinct cultural preferences. We offer an assessment of these approaches, drawing in part on Amartya Sen's work. We argue that in seeking to improve the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, policy‐makers should not only make their own normative assumptions clear, but also be aware of the implications of their decisions for constituents with different worldviews.     

From the Cradle to the Grave: Funeral Welfare from an International Perspective

This article reports on a pilot study examining funeral welfare for citizens from low income backgrounds. Through a review of funeral welfare provision in 12 capitalist democratic countries it seeks to inform the current system of state support in Britain, arguing that insufficient attention has been given to funeral costs as a policy issue. Mindful of the British welfare state's original ‘cradle to grave’ ethos, such attention is ever more pressing in light of rising funeral costs, an ageing population and projected increases in the death rate. Arguing that funeral costs are an issue of income support, the article draws on Esping‐Andersen's threefold welfare‐regime typology to situate the British system within a comparative study of funeral welfare that identifies similarities and differences both within and between the three welfare‐regime types. On the basis of an empirical example, the article further argues that systems of funeral welfare reflect the relationship between culture, politics and local practice. The findings indicate that the British system is hampered by a discourse of welfare dependency rather than entitlement, which stigmatises those who need support with funeral costs at a time when they are under pressure to ensure that the deceased person receives a ‘dignified’ send‐off.     

The implications of dialogicality for ‘giving voice’ in social representations research

Social representations research is often undertaken by scholars who seek to ‘give voice’ to knowledge(s) that are held by socially disenfranchised individuals and groups. However, this endeavour poses a number of problems in practice, not least because it assumes that the ‘voices’ voiced by individuals and/or groups in social research will be unambiguous and uniform, and unchanged by the research encounter. Despite the growth of attention to the critical potential of social representations theory, there remains a lack of scholarship on the relationship between the theory's emphasis on the relational, or dialogical, nature of social life (the Ego‐Alter‐Object relation) and the implications of this for critical research. In this article, I argue that the dialogical epistemology from which social representations research must depart incites reflection upon (i) the design of empirical studies, which must equally attend to both ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, and (ii) the researcher‐researched relationship, which may itself be best viewed as an Ego‐Alter interaction. I make the case for adopting dialogical epistemology in critical social psychology, and argue that this is essential to undertaking ethical social research. I conclude by suggesting that claims to ‘giving voice’ have little place in critical social psychology in general, and social representations scholarship in particular.     

REVIEW ARTICLES

All about Ageing
World Directory of Old Age. By Centre for Policy on Ageing
Efficiency-improving innovations in social care of the elderly. By Evan Ferlie, David Challis and Bleddyn Davies. Gower
Human Ageing and later life. By Anthony Warnes (Ed). Edward Arnold
Families, Services and Confusion in old age. By Enid Levin, Ian Sinclair, Peter Gorbach. Gower
Aging and health care by Marcia G. Ory and Kathleen Bond. Routledge
Social work with old people (second edition). By Mary Marshall
Alarm Systems and elderly people. By Malcolm J Fisk (Ed)
The caring relationship: elderly people and their families. By Hazel Quereshi and Alan Walker
Ageing in developing countries. By Kent Tout
Women as they age
Family Obligations and Social Change. By Janet Finch. Polity
The Goals of Social Policy. By Martin Bulmer, Jane Lewis and David Piachaud     

Making Markets in the English National Health Service

Many commentators point to the rise of markets in public services such as healthcare. However, the conventional ‘similarity’ thesis has been challenged by the ‘difference’ thesis. This article critiques and extends the analysis of a recent contribution by Jane Gingrich to the ‘difference thesis’ with a more detailed case study of the English National Health Service (NHS). It argues that the text tends to ignore earlier models and other associated variables; provides a rather crude monolithic characterization of ‘left’ and ‘right’; and assumes rather than demonstrates strategic choice. It modifies some of her major conclusions: markets in public services matter (correct); markets vary in profound and important ways (correct, but perhaps in other ways); and partisan politics are central to explaining and shaping markets (perhaps over‐stated). While Gingrich's ‘breadth’ account is persuasive at the macro‐level, some questions arise from a more detailed account of the English NHS. First, it is not certain that Gingrich's typology is based on the most important dimensions. Second, her account tends to under‐state the importance of issues such as the nature of contracts, price competition, regulation and policies such as Private Finance Initiative. Third, it is not clear that the Conservative healthcare market can be characterized as an Austerity Market, and the Labour market as a Consumer‐Controlled Market. Fourth, this static characterization under‐states the degree of change between and within governments. Lastly, it is not clear what type of market the coalition government has introduced, but this hybrid type may be marked more by policy learning than ideology.     

REVIEW ARTICLES

Book review in this Article
Hard Times: The Prospects for European Social Policy By Peter Townsend
Can the Welfare State Compete? By Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough, and Goran Therborn
Social Welfare in Socialist Countries By John Dixon and David Macarov
Trapped in Poverty? By Bill Jordan, Simon James, Helen Kay and Marcus Redley Routledge
Introduction to Social Administration in Britain by Muriel Brown and Sarah Payne Unwin Hyman
The Politics of Local Government by Gerry Stoker Macmillan
Public Policy under Thatcher By Stephen P. Savage and Lynton Robins
Whom God Hath Joined Together: the Work of Marriage Guidance By Jane Lewis, David Clarke and David Morgan
Prisoners' Children: What Are The Issues? By Roger Shaw
Maternity Rights in Britain: Report on the Experience of Women and Employers By Susan McRae Policy
Evaluating Health Services' Effectiveness By Anthony St Leger, Harold Schneiden and Joanna
Is British Food Bad for You? By Vincent Marks
Structures of Control in Health Management By Rob Flynn
Alternative Medicine in Britain By Mike Saks
Science, Ideology and the Media By Ronald Fletcher     

‘A Common Sense of the Times’? Neo‐liberalism and Changing Public Opinion in New Zealand and the UK

Neo‐liberalism represents a significant and enduring shift in the politics shaping social policy. Although frequently ascribed a hegemonic, all‐powerful status that focuses our attention on the coherence found in neo‐liberal policies, this article builds on scholarly work highlighting variegation in the neo‐liberal project across different policy areas, national settings and time periods. Specifically, it employs Peck's and Tickell's (2002) view that neo‐liberalism has gone through multiple phases in response to both external and internal crises as an entry point for studying neo‐liberalism's impact on public support for the welfare state. Drawing upon New Zealand and British attitudinal data, the article argues that public reactions to an early period of retrenchment (‘roll‐back’ neo‐liberalism) differ from those reported in the ‘roll‐out’ or embedding phase of neo‐liberalism implemented by Third Way Labour Governments in both countries. Indeed, continuing public support in many policy areas arguably contributed to the internal crisis that provoked an adaptation to the neo‐liberal project. The article further explores public support for the welfare state following the external crisis provoked by the financial meltdown of 2008–09 asking whether New Zealand and British attitudes showed signs of resisting austerity measures or whether they, instead, indicated a third, ‘roll‐over’ period of neo‐liberalism where the public accepted not only a neo‐liberal economic agenda but also the need for further retrenchment of the welfare state. Conclusions about the politics of social policy at the level of public opinion offer both good and bad news for welfare state advocates.     

The Changing Face of Social Administration

This article explores the changing nature of the discipline of Social Administration in the post‐1945 era. The vigorous challenge to Traditional Social Administration in the 1970s and 1980s did not lead, as some had feared, to the demise of the subject's applied, problem‐solving, ethos. Within the broader discipline of Social Policy, the Social Administration perspective adapted and evolved. While retaining some elements of Traditional Social Administration namely, empiricism and a problem focus, the emergence of Contemporary Social Administration represents a significant and distinctive change in this sphere of academic enquiry.     

The Contributions of the Health Decommodification Typologies to the Study of the East Asian Welfare Regime

Since Esping‐Andersen presented the three worlds of welfare typology thesis, the study of the classification of welfare regimes has been dominated by his work and the debates surrounding it. This article is concerned with two important responses to his work. The first response is the development of welfare typologies based on the principle of decommodification. The second response is the concern that East Asian countries are underrepresented in the 18 members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) studied by Esping‐Andersen. As a result, there are calls for expanding the scope of the studies on the classification of welfare regimes to those in East Asia. This article makes contributions to these two responses by presenting two analytical tasks. The first task is to develop two health decommodification typologies based on two different methods (cluster analysis and Esping‐Andersen's index‐based regime construction). Both of them cover the 18 OECD members studied by Esping‐Andersen and four tiger economies (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second task is to demonstrate that the two health decommodification typologies provide important information for the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all‐encompassing East Asian welfare regime, namely the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the 18 OECD countries studied by Esping‐Andersen (1990 ) and the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems between East Asian countries.     

“It's like he just goes off,BOOM!”: mothers and grandmothers make sense of child‐to‐parent violence

Child to parent violence (CPV) involves continual and cumulative abusive actions perpetrated by children and adolescents towards their parents or caregivers. This abuse produces short‐term distress and ongoing long‐term harmful consequences for parents and their families. Practitioners, researchers and policy‐makers are increasingly challenged to identify, conceptualize and respond to this form of family violence. A major challenge is that parents and caregivers under‐report this abuse so there is a lack of awareness and understanding of their psychological experiences in relation to CPV. This research adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach to explore the psychological experience of CPV. Interviews were conducted with six New Zealand mothers and two grandmothers who all experienced CPV. This abuse was experienced as an ‘emotional bloody roller coaster’ of unconditional love through to hatred; as ‘judgement’ – self‐blame and others' blame of their parenting skills; and the ‘absent father’ in their adolescents' lives was drawn on as an explanation for the abuse. Taken together, these psychological experiences identify the silencing of CPV is related to parents' conflicting emotions towards their children, their thoughts and feelings about themselves and how other people view them, and the impact of an absent father figure in their children's everyday lives.