The opening of a policy window

This chapter explores the development of the ‘troubled families’ discourse, starting in the early years of the coalition government that was formed in 2010. It details the shift from the localist approach of Whole Place Community Budgets and the Big Society Working Families Everywhere project to the local authority-led Troubled Families Programme. The role of the 2011 riots in England in shifting the government discourse and opening a policy window for a more robust interventionist approach is fully explored, with ‘compassionate Conservatism’ giving way to a more muscular policy programme following the disturbances. The chapter also analyses the establishment of the TFP in its first phase along with the role of Louise Casey, the charismatic senior civil servant in charge of it.

An Autobiography

I hated the office. I hated my work...the only career in life within my reach was that of an author.' The only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, Trollope’s account offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions. After a miserable childhood and misspent youth, Trollope turned his life around at the age of twenty-six. By 1860 the ‘hobbledehoy’ had become both a senior civil servant and a best-selling novelist. He worked for the Post Office for many years and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Best-known for the two series of novels grouped loosely around the clerical and political professions, the Barsetshire and Palliser series, in his Autobiography Trollope frankly describes his writing habits. His apparent preoccupation with contracts, deadlines, and earnings, and his account of the remorseless regularity with which he produced his daily quota of words, has divided opinion ever since. This edition reassesses the work’s distinctive qualities and includes a selection of Trollope’s critical writings to show how subtle and complex his approach to literature really was.

Rebuilding the Future: C. A. Doxiadis and the Greek Reconstruction Effort (1945-1950)

<p>The importance of ideas – and the individuals propagating them – is enhanced at times of crisis. When existing arrangements are challenged, new ideas help reconfigure group interests and alliances, forge new institutions and plan the future. This paper looks at one such set of ideas, born in response to the crisis facing Greece’s post-war economy: the views of Constantinos Doxiadis, an architect, senior civil servant and policy-maker active in Greece’s recovery programme. Drawing on policy documents, publications and memoranda, the paper sketches the values, intellectual influences and methods underpinning Doxiadis’ views on reconstruction. This casts light on the origins of his later proposals for a science of ekistics, whilst also undermining the conventional notion that left-wing theorists were alone in advancing progressive views of Greek development before 1947. In fact, Doxiadis’ vision seeks to transcend the Right–Left divide by presenting economic progress as an apolitical, scientific process, which would render ideology irrelevant. Such views owe much to the intellectual tradition of interwar technocracy and played a key role in shaping the concept of economic development after 1945.</p>

ACADEMIC FREEDOM – RHETORIC OR REALITY?

Academic freedom is a concept that has a particular significance in a University, not least in a University, which, uniquely in a British context, prides itself on its independence from the State. My interest in academic freedom was sparked by a set of instructions received in this instance from the Government of Hong Kong. The issue in the prospective litigation was relatively simple. The Department of Education had planned some reforms. As is no more unusual in Hong Kong than it is in England, the proposals met with vocal opposition from certain academics. A senior civil servant telephoned the head of the faculty of the Hong Kong institution of Education, the focus of the controversy and – it was asserted and indeed found by a Commission of Inquiry (“the Commission”) established to investigate the affair – suggested that the turbulent teachers be disciplined.