Silencing the social: Debt and depletion in UK social policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dannreuther

This article draws on a social reproduction approach to examine how debt informed the development of UK welfare provision. A brief history of the Public Works Loan Board introduces its centrality not only in the delivering of welfare institutions but also in the typographies and social values that informed welfare policies. The depletion of social care services today may be evident in the extensive use of debt to deliver social policy across the United Kingdom. However, in the past access to publicly backed borrowing enabled local authorities to deliver social rights that had been legislated for by central government. We can therefore see that it was not debt but its democratic accountability that played a central role in the changing fortunes of the UK’s welfare state.

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Tomasz Mering

The article presents the origins and evolution of social policy programmes in Scotland since the referendum in 1997. Regional authorities in Scotland obtained significant prerogatives in payment of social benefits. They actively exercised the rights granted by the UK legislation, resulting in the partial decentralisation of the social security system in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has become a fact. This decentralisation is not complete, because the administration of pensions, and unemployment benefits remains the sole responsibility of London’s central government. One of the features of British social policy has become territorial asymmetry, consisting of partially different programs and social policy institutions in other parts of the UK. The most important effect of the reforms is the creation of institutions and draft social policy programs that can be put into effect, when the process of political emancipation in Scotland will lead to a new regional referendum.


1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. J. Dingwall

ABSTRACTThis paper takes up three particular themes in the historical development of the present pattern of social service provision in the United Kingdom and argues that existing accounts are somewhat misleading in their treatment of these issues. The three themes are the relationship between collectivism and individualism in social policy legislation and practice, the influence of centre and periphery in British political life and, to a lesser extent, the occupational roles available to women in the social services. These questions are examined through a study of the history of health visiting. It is argued that the fluctuating fortunes of the health visiting service allow us to see more clearly the changing influence of collectivist and individualist philosophies on government policy and the degrees to which definitions of problems and possible solutions have either been imported from the national periphery to the national centre or vice versa. Insufficient attention has been given to the defeat of metropolitan individualist philosophies by the peripherally-based public health movement at the beginning of the twentieth century and to the conditions which have led to their subsequent re-emergence and the waning influence of collectivist approaches.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvie

Abstract The United Kingdom is at the forefront of a global movement to establish a social-investment market. At the heart of social investment we find finance – and financialisation. Specifically, we find: a financial market (the social-investment market); a series of financial institutions (Big Society Capital, for example); a financial instrument (the social-impact bond); and a financial practice (social investing). Focusing on the UK, given its pioneering role, this paper first provides a brief history of social investment, tracing its development from the politics of the ‘Third Way’ to the social-impact bond. It then maps the terrain of the social-investment market, explaining the main institutions and actors, and the social-impact bond. Finally, it proposes a framework for analysing the disciplinary logics of finance, which it uses to understand the promise or threat (depending on one’s perspective) of social investment and the social-investment market.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Daykin ◽  
D. A. Akers ◽  
A. S. Macdonald ◽  
T. McGleenan ◽  
D. Paul ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTRapid developments in genetic science have been accompanied by confusion regarding the predictive power of DNA-based tests and in the impact of such tests on the insurance industry. The United Kingdom actuarial profession has begun to engage in the associated social policy issues and to try to throw some light on the issues through quantitative research and objective analysis. At the same time, many insurance industry actuaries have been involved in work on behalf of the insurance industry to develop a sound basis for permission to be sought to make use of the results of certain predictive genetic tests. This paper briefly outlines some of the history of the development of the debate in the U.K. and draws together some of the debates and discussions which have taken place within the Genetics Group of the Social Policy Board of the U.K. actuarial profession, as well as providing some pointers to the directions which the debate might take in the future, with some important potential consequences for the insurance industry and for actuaries.


2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana M. Guillen ◽  
Manos Matsaganis

Recent research has shown that the traditional view of social welfare in Southern Europe as 'rudimentary' is a misreading of its distinct nature: welfare arrangements in the region do not 'lag behind' as a whole, rather they suffer from serious imbalances that cause inequities and inefficiencies. The article focuses on Greece and Spain, two countries that differ in terms of economic performance and size, but share a recent history of successful transition to democracy and common membership of the Southern European 'model' of welfare. The article shows that the welfare policies pursued in these two countries over the last 20 years were marked by strong expansionary trends that clearly outbalanced occasional cut-backs. This evidence lends no support to the 'social dumping' hypothesis. If anything, 'catching up with Europe' in terms of social as well as economic standards seems to have been elevated to something of a national ideal, shared by both government and opposition. As the expansionary thrust of 'welfare state building' is being exhausted, the biggest challenge facing Southern European welfare states is the construction of welfare institutions in tune with a changing society.


Author(s):  
Ros Scott

This chapter explores the history of volunteers in the founding and development of United Kingdom (UK) hospice services. It considers the changing role and influences of volunteering on services at different stages of development. Evidence suggests that voluntary sector hospice and palliative care services are dependent on volunteers for the range and quality of services delivered. Within such services, volunteer trustees carry significant responsibility for the strategic direction of the organiszation. Others are engaged in diverse roles ranging from the direct support of patient and families to public education and fundraising. The scope of these different roles is explored before considering the range of management models and approaches to training. This chapter also considers the direct and indirect impact on volunteering of changing palliative care, societal, political, and legislative contexts. It concludes by exploring how and why the sector is changing in the UK and considering the growing autonomy of volunteers within the sector.


Author(s):  
Jane Buckingham

Historical analyses, as well as more contemporary examples of disability and work, show that the experience of disability is always culturally and historically mediated, but that class—in the sense of economic status—plays a major role in the way impairment is experienced as disabling. Although there is little published on disability history in India, the history of the Indian experience of caste disability demonstrates the centrality of work in the social and economic expression of stigma and marginalization. An Indian perspective supports the challenge to the dominant Western view that modern concepts of disability have their origins in the Industrial Revolution. Linkage between disability, incapacity to work, and low socioeconomic status are evident in India, which did not undergo the workplace changes associated with industrialization in the West.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110080
Author(s):  
Lois McNay

Steven Klein’s excellent new book The Work of Politics is an innovative, insightful and original argument about the valuable role that welfare institutions may play in democratic movements for change. In place of a one-sided Weberian view of welfare institutions as bureaucratic instruments of social control, Klein recasts them in Arendtian terms as ‘worldly mediators’ or participatory mechanisms that act as channels for a radical politics of democratic world making. Although Klein is careful to modulate this utopian vision through a developed account of power and domination, I question the relevance of this largely historical model of world-building activism for the contemporary world of welfare. I point to the way that decades of neoliberal social policy have arguably eroded many of the social conditions and relations of solidarity that are vital prerequisites for collective activism around welfare.


1997 ◽  
Vol 69 (9) ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Fatić

This paper deals with specific aspects of the crisis of social policy on the "central"-eastem European region, after the onset of political changes that commenced in 1989 with the so-called ..anti-communist revolutions", especially in "central" European countries. The period that began then has been characterised by fast political "transition" and restructuralisation of the economy and political institutions. It has brought with it the excitements of the "capitalisation" of the economy and society, greater individual liberties and rights. However, it has also inflicted on the region a social crisis of apocalyptic dimensions, which is truly unprecedent in this century's history of eastern Europe. The paper explores some particular elements of this social crisis, both statistically and qualitatively. These aspects of the crisis are interpreted, and in its concluding section the paper purports to suggest that any institutional and political change tends to have its more or less devastating social price, which in the case of most countries of "central"-eastern Europe could be have been lower if the reform had progressed at a more moderate and better planned pace.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Hasanuddin Hasanuddin

AbstrakPontianak mendapat perhatian kolonial Belanda setelah Inggris melakukan perdagangan di Kalimantan Barat. Persaingan dagang antara Belanda dan Inggris membawa pengaruh bagi perdagangan di Pontianak. Kemajuan perdagangan menarik perhatian kolonial Belanda untuk menguasai Pontianak. Kolonial Belanda membatasi kekuasaan Sultan Pontianak melalui perjanjian-perjanjian membawa dampak sosial, politik, ekonomi, dan budaya. Eksploitasi kolonial Belanda melahirkan perubahan-perubahan baru dalam hubungan kekuasaan kongsi-kongsi Cina dan monopoli perdagangan di Pontianak. Kolonial Belanda semakin mempertegas kekuasaannya di Pontianak setelah Inggris mengesahkan James Brooke sebagai wakil pemerintahannya di Kalimantan Utara. Terdapat interelasi yang dinamis antara perubahan struktur politik dan ekonomi terhadap perubahan sosial masyarakat di Pontianak. Hubungan komunikasi melalui jaringan perdagangan antarpulau telah mendorong para pedagang sebagai komunitas baru membentuk dan mendirikan perkampungan suku bangsa di Pontianak. Hubungan yang dinamis antara Pontianak dengan daerah-daerah di Kalimantan Barat terutama Sambas, Mempawah, Landak, Sanggau, Sintang, Matan, dan Sukadana telah membawa kemajuan politik dan ekonomi Pontianak sebagai pusat perdagangan dan pemerintahan Residen Kalimantan Barat. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode sejarah yaitu studi pustaka dengan mengumpulkan data-data sejarah, dengan menguraikan suatu peristiwa ke dalam bagian-bagiannya dalam rangka memahami kebijakan politik dan perdagangan kolonial Belanda di Pontianak. Abstract Pontianak had an attention of Dutch colonial after British trade in West Kalimantan. Trade competition between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had an impact on trade in Pontianak. The pprogress attract the attention of Dutch colonial to master Pontianak. The Dutch Colonial control the power of the Sultan of Pontianak through agreements and bring the impact in the social, political, economic, and cultural. Dutch colonial exploitation brought changes in the power relations of chinesse allied and the monopoly of trade in Pontianak. The Dutch colonial emphasized rule in Pontianak after United Kingdom endorses James Brooke as a representative government in North Kalimantan.There is a dynamic interrelation changes in political and economic that brought change social structures in Pontianak. The communication links through a network of inter-island trade has prompted traders as new communities formed and founded the settlement of ethnic groups in Pontianak. The dynamic relationship between Pontianak and West Kalimantan areas such as Sambas, Mempawah, Landak, Sanggau, Sintang, Matan, and Sukadana has brought political and economic progress.And declared Pontianak as a center of commerce and government Resident West Kalimantan. This study uses the history of the literature by collecting historical data, describing an event into its parts in order to understand the political and trade policies of the colonial Dutch in Pontianak.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document