POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Security

This ambitious book explores the employment effectiveness of minimum income schemes, and provides the first comprehensive examination of its dependency on how the rights and obligations of the recipients are defined.

This book challenges the underlying presupposition that regular employment is the royal road to inclusion. Drawing on original empirical research, it investigates the inclusionary and exclusionary potentials of different types of work, including activation programmes.

While reforms of welfare policies have been widely analysed, the reform of welfare administration has received little attention. Using empirical case studies, this book provides new insights into the way welfare administration is being internationally transformed. Particular attention is given to the effect on welfare clients, staff and agencies.

'An offer you can't refuse' compares, in depth, international 'work-for-welfare' (workfare) policies objectively for the first time. It considers well-publicised schemes from the United States alongside more overlooked examples of workfare in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Norway.

Using the idea of the social division of welfare as a template, this book assesses different approaches to retirement pensions policy, highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses. An invaluable resource for social science students and for those who teach them. Economists and pension practitioners will also find food for thought here.

The impacts of austerity and welfare reform on work and employment relations are explored in this perceptive assessment. This book highlights the role of trade unions and social movements in challenging the insecurities and inequalities imposed by work-focused welfare policies such as Universal Credit and proposes progressive new paths for welfare.

Throughout Europe, standardised approaches to social policy and practice are being radically questioned and modified. Beginning from the narrative detail of individual lives, this book re-thinks welfare predicaments, emphasising gender, generation, ethnic and class implications of economic and social deregulation.

This book provides an overview and comparative analyses of the arrangements for the care of children, disabled and older people in Europe, within the context of changing labour markets and welfare systems. Gender, family change, social integration and citizenship are all explored in a report based on original empirical, cross-national research.

There have been major shifts in the framework of social policy and welfare across Europe. Adopting a multi-level, comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this book develops a critical analysis of policy change and welfare reform in Europe.

Written for a broad readership, the book takes an authoritative look at Conservative party policy and practice in the modern era. Its time-defined content and broad historical thread make it a valuable resource for academics and students in social policy and politics as well as social history.

This book provides a rich background to the development of post-war social policy in Britain and Japan. Ageing, domestic violence, housing, homelessness, and health are chosen for analysis, each exploring its development process of policy and practices, current issues, and future directions.

Drawing on first-hand accounts from those living under the systems, this novel study explores the impact of Australia and New Zealand’s income management policies and asks whether they have caused more harm than good.