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A systematic review of comparative studies of attitudes to social policy
- Authors:
- SUNDBERG Trude, TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Administration, 47(4), 2013, pp.416-433.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Systematic review (SR) is often promoted as a ‘best practice’ method to inform both policy-making and policy-evaluation in social policy in the light of the ever-growing volume of research. This article considers an innovative use of the method to advance and refine academic knowledge and illustrates this through a small-scale study of the literature on attitudes to welfare. SR relies on rapid, structured searches of large quantities of material. However, the method has encountered criticism. The article calls for a greater degree of reflection in terms of possible bias in SRs. A pilot using tools from SR methodology to survey attitudes towards social policy is used to demonstrate the problems. These include the US bias of major databases, and weaker reporting of book publications than of articles. SR may help to advance knowledge in social policy, but researchers need to be aware of its weaknesses and possible biases. (Publisher abstract)
Assumptive words and images of agency: academic social policy in the twenty-first century?
- Author:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Society, 7(3), July 2008, pp.269-280.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
As many commentators have pointed out, the pressures facing modern welfare states are formidable. One response by government is to place greater emphasis on a policy-making paradigm that rests on an individual rational actor account of agency. This finds its intellectual home in the leading tradition of neo-classical economics, its ideological home in a politics of active citizenry and equality of opportunity and its institutional home in the mechanisms by which the Treasury currently directs social policy. The resulting policies have strengths in delivering productivity improvements and responsiveness to consumer demand, but weaknesses in accommodating the value positions of an increasingly diverse society, in sustaining the social cohesion necessary to the continuance of state welfare and in confronting the structural basis of some social interests. These issues have traditionally been recognised in the sociology of values, the psychology of trust and the political science of power. One strength of academic social policy is that it is a field of study in which a number of disciplines are deployed. The ascendancy of one paradigm may obscure the contribution of others. It is hard for social policy academics to gain recognition when they speak a different language from that of policy making at the highest level.
Fairness, equality and legitimacy: a qualitative comparative study of Germany and the UK
- Authors:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter, MARTIN Rose
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Administration, 44(1), February 2010, pp.85-103.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The qualitative study reported in this article looked at ideas about fairness and social provision in Germany and the UK, using facilitated focus groups to examine how people understood and talked about fairness in social provision in relatively free conversations within peer groups from a similar background. The analysis showed that respondents in both countries value equality of opportunity as a normative principle, that those in Germany are much more likely to argue that an equal opportunity approach requires government to guarantee equal access to basic services and more likely to express concerns about market freedoms which allow those who can afford it better access to health care and education, and that there was a strong current in the UK groups that interprets equality of opportunity in terms of the availability of a common baseline of education, training, health and other services, but accepts differences in access between social groups and argues that it is the responsibility of the individual to grasp the opportunities that are available. The authors conclude that national conditions remain influential in welfare values, despite similarities in response to common pressures on policy.
Can ‘new welfare’ address poverty through more and better jobs?
- Authors:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter, GUMY Julia M., OTTO Adeline
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 44(1), 2015, pp.83-104.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
New welfare involves mobilising more people into paid work, improving human capital and ensuring fairer access to opportunities. This programme is attractive to business (more workers, better human capital and reduced social conflict to enhance productivity and profitability) and to citizens (more widely accessible job-opportunities with better rewards): a relatively low-cost approach to the difficulties governments face in maintaining support and meeting social goals as inequalities widen. The general move towards ‘new welfare’ gathered momentum during the past two decades, given extra impetus by the 2007–09 recession and subsequent stagnation. While employment rates rose during the prosperous years before the crisis, there was no commensurate reduction in poverty. Over the same period the share of economic growth returned to labour fell, labour markets were increasingly de-regulated and inequality increased. This raises the question of whether new welfare's economic goals (higher employment, improved human capital) and social goals (better job quality and incomes) may come into conflict. This paper examines data for seventeen European countries over the period 2001 to 2007. It shows that new welfare is much more successful at achieving higher employment than at reducing poverty, even during prosperity, and that the approach pays insufficient attention to structural factors, such as the falling wage share, and to institutional issues, such as labour market deregulation. (Publisher abstract)
Security, equality and opportunity: attitudes and the sustainability of social protection
- Author:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of European Social Policy, 21(2), May 2011, pp.150-163.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Welfare states account for more than half of all state spending in Western countries, but currently face pressures from many directions. This article notes that the sustainability of state welfare requires citizen support for the idea that government should be responsible for provision and also depends upon trust that government can and will continue to deliver good quality services that will meet people's needs in an uncertain future. It uses data from the 2008 European Social Survey to consider whether citizen attitudes will provide continuing support for the welfare state. It discusses policy interventions and welfare state sustainability and presents the findings of analysis of data from 20 countries on general themes and directions in social provision (equality, opportunity and security) and attitudes to social protection, including trust and support for welfare state provision. The analysis found that support for and trust in the welfare state pull in opposite directions: greater security weakens support but reinforces trust.
Opportunity and solidarity
- Author:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 40(3), July 2011, pp.453-470.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
European welfare states have developed a range of services designed to meet the social risks encountered in the normal life-course such as unemployment, sickness, education for children, with some expenditure on benefits to reduce poverty. The main themes are security and redistribution. However, there has been a recent restructuring of provision across European welfare states which emphasise proactivity, individual responsibility, and access to opportunities. This article considers whether the development of these more individualist approaches risks damaging the support for collective provision on which the welfare state rests. The study uses data from the 2008 round of the European Social Survey regarding aspects of welfare and social provision and attitudes to governance, to compare attitudes in 3 countries: Sweden, Germany and the UK. The findings suggest that the new opportunity-centred approaches in social policy can provide a basis for trust and solidarity just as much as the security and equality approach. However, there also needs to be a corresponding proactivity of government to secure good access to more equal opportunities for vulnerable groups to support individual proactivity in grasping opportunities.
Does risk society erode welfare state solidarity?
- Authors:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter, GUMY Julia M., OTTO Adeline
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 39(2), April 2011, pp.147-161.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
A substantial body of literature suggests that the transition from modern industrial society is accompanied by an erosion of solidarities. Everyday life risks become understood as issues of personal failure and responsibility rather than social problems to be addressed through collective action. The corresponding welfare literature emphasises the way policy change highlights individual responsibility and proactivity as a result of the constraints on government, for example from globalisation, post-industrialism and other changes. The author uses recent attitude data (the 1985 and 2006 sweeps of the International Social Survey Programmes) to investigate whether risk society dissolves traditional welfare state solidarities, and how far it offers a basis for new solidarities to maintain support for vulnerable groups. The pattern of ideas in the survey data was complex. Some shifts could be detected in the pattern of mass attitudes to and perceptions of the proper role of government in spending money in areas that affect people’s lives. There appears to be a drift away from endorsement of interventionist government, but any transition towards a more individualist “risk society” is a slow and diffuse process and one that may recreate solidarities as well as dismantle them.
Public values and public trust: responses to welfare state reform in the UK
- Authors:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter, WALLACE Andrew
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 38(3), July 2009, pp.401-419.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
The welfare state faces a number of challenges. Recent reforms in the UK appear broadly successful in attaining targets and improving cost-efficiency, but are nonetheless confronted by public disquiet and unease. This article argues that one difficulty with the new directions in policy is that they rest on a particular and limited understanding of agency. Reformers tend to operate within a theoretical framework that understands behaviour as driven by individual and predominantly rational incentives and pays little attention to the expressive and normative aspects of social action. The problems that arise in these areas when a competitive market logic is applied in social provision tend not to be recognised. Such a logic may contradict established values of social care and commitment to user interests. A qualitative survey of 48 members of the general public is used to examine perceptions of and responses to the NHS reforms, and to show how public discourse in this area is at variance with the instrumental and individual assumptions of policy-makers. The result is that the reform programme damages the legitimacy of the service and that those responsible for the new policies fail to recognise that the individual instrumental agenda is eroding public trust.
Choice and values: individualised rational action and social goals
- Author:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 37(2), April 2008, pp.167-185.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
For excellent reasons, in response to pressures from social, economic and political changes, welfare states are undergoing reform. A central theme in the new policies, particularly influential in the UK, is the use of incentives through activation programmes and reforms to public sector management to promote rational responsible choices by both service users and providers. The theoretical underpinning of this approach relies on a model of people as plural in their values, but holding values that are independent from social context and institutional framework. Policy seeks to harness those values to produce desired behaviour. This article focuses on two relevant literatures. Analyses of rational action at an individual level by economic psychologists, evolutionary biologists and game theorists indicate that the context in which choices are framed influences responses. Further work by economic sociologists and social psychologists suggests that the values that guide behaviour have an important social element as normative systems embodied in institutional frameworks. The norms appropriate to market interactions typically differ from welfare norms, so that different value frameworks and responses apply. The implication is that the transition to quasi-market and individualised incentive systems risks damaging the norms that sanction support for distant but vulnerable groups. The article falls into three sections: reviewing the background to reform and the emergence of an emphasis on individualised rational choice, considering each of the literatures mentioned above and discussing policy consequences.
Choice and public policy: the limits to welfare markets
- Authors:
- TAYLOR-GOOBY Peter, (ed.)
- Publisher:
- Palgrave
- Publication year:
- 1998
- Pagination:
- 258p.
- Place of publication:
- Basingstoke
Public policies increasingly emphasize active consumerism, entrepreneurship on the part of service providers and professionals, privatisation and an expanded role for markets. This book draws on research by economists, psychologists, sociologists and public policy experts. The research demonstrates that the traditional rational choice model of economic behaviour is unsatisfactory in providing accounts of the way people choose in relation to work, saving, spending, investment and social welfare. It also shows that the public policies of active consumerism, public sector entrepreneurship and privatisation based on this approach are seriously flawed.