Social Policy & Administration 

About: Social Policy & Administration is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Social policy & Welfare state. It has an ISSN identifier of 0144-5596. Over the lifetime, 1928 publications have been published receiving 41649 citations. The journal is also known as: Social policy and administration.

Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective

Abstract: Since the beginning of the 1980s, historical institutionalism has emerged as one of the most influential theoretical perspectives in social policy studies. Although their work is insightful, most institutionalist scholars tend to relegate policy ideas to the back of their theoretical constructions dealing with welfare state development. The objective of this paper is to show how institutionalist scholarship can pay greater attention to ideational processes without abandoning its core assumptions about the structuring impact of political institutions and policy legacies on welfare state development. If institutions truly influence policy-making, policy ideas matter in and beyond the agenda-setting process. Related to existing policy legacies, perceived problems mesh with policy alternatives grounded in a specific paradigm. When stressing the need to reform, and promoting new alternatives, policy entrepreneurs draw on existing ideological repertoires to frame these alternatives. The ability to successfully frame policy alternatives can become a decisive aspect of the policy process. A discussion of recent European and North American policy debates illustrates these claims.

Social Exclusion in Britain 1991—1995

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to offer a working definition of social exclusion and to operationalize it in such a way that an initial empirical analysis of social exclusion in Britain today can be undertaken. After a brief review of conceptions of social exclusion and some of the key controversies, we operationalize one definition based on the notion of participation in five types of activity—consumption, savings, production, political and social. Using the British Household Panel Survey, indicators for participation on these dimensions are developed and analysed both cross-sectionally and longitudinally for the period 1991–5. We find strong associations between an individual’s participation (or lack of it) on the five different dimensions, and on each dimension over time. However, there is no distinct group of socially excluded individuals: few are excluded on all dimensions in any one year and even fewer experience multiple exclusion for the whole period. The results support the view that treating different dimensions of exclusion separately is preferable to thinking about social exclusion in terms of one homogeneous group.

Mothers at the Service of the New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades, Mexico's Conditional Transfer Programme

Abstract: This article considers some of the changes and continuities in social protection in Latin America through a focus on the ways in which motherhood is positioned as key to the success of the new anti-poverty programmes that have followed structural reform. It examines a flagship cash transfer programme known as Progresa/Oportunidades (Opportunities) established in Mexico in 1997 and now being widely adopted in the region. Characterized by some commentators as a quintessentially neo-liberal programme, it is argued that Oportunidades represents a novel combination of earlier maternalist social policy approaches with the conditional, co-responsibility models associated with the recent approaches to social welfare and poverty relief endorsed by international policy actors. In the first section, the gendered assumptions that have governed Latin American social policy are described; the second outlines social policy provision in Latin America and identifies the key elements of the new approaches to poverty; and the third critically examines the broader implications of the Mexican programme's selective and gendered construction of social need premised, as it is, on re-traditionalizing gendered roles and responsibilities. © 2006 The Author(s) Journal Compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The Choice Revolution: Privatization of Swedish Welfare Services in the 1990s

Abstract: During the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state was declared by some to be in a “crisis”, due to both financial strain and loss of political support. Others have argued that the spending cuts and reforms undertaken during this period did slow down the previous increase in social spending, but left the system basically intact. The main argument put forward in this article is that the Swedish welfare state has been and is still undergoing a transforming process whereby it risks losing one of its main characteristics, namely the belief in and institutional support for social egalitarianism. During the 1990s, the public welfare service sector opened up to competing private actors. As a result, the share of private provision grew, both within the health-care and primary education systems as well as within social service provision. This resulted in a socially segregating dynamic, prompted by the introduction of “consumer choice”. As will be shown in the article, the gradual privatization and market-orientation of the welfare services undermine previous Swedish notions of a “people's home”, where uniform, high-quality services are provided by the state to all citizens, regardless of income, social background or cultural orientation.

Investing in the Citizen‐workers of the Future: Transformations in Citizenship and the State under New Labour

Abstract: There is growing interest in the idea of the “social investment state”. This paper analyses the emergence of such a state in the UK, in the context of a brief account of the more general transformations of citizenship and the state under New Labour. It argues that, despite the iconic status of the child in the social investment state, it is the child as “citizen-worker” of the future rather than “citizen-child” of the present who is invoked by the future-oriented discourse of social investment.