SOCIAL POLICY

This thoroughly updated new edition provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary

social policy and addresses its historical, theoretical and contextual foundations. Divided into four
sections, it opens with a survey of the socio-economic, political and governmental contexts within
which social policy operates, before moving on to look at the historical development of the subject.
The third section examines contemporary aspects of providing welfare, whilst the final part covers
European and wider international developments. The text explores the major topics and areas in
contemporary social policy, including:

■ work and welfare

■ education
■ adult health and social care
■ children and families
■ crime and criminal justice
■ health
■ housing
■ race
■ disability

Issues are addressed throughout in a lively and accessible style and examples are richly illustrated
to encourage the student to engage with theory and content and to help highlight the relevance
of social policy in our understanding of modern society. It is packed with features including
‘Spotlight’, ‘Discussion and review’ and ‘Controversy and debate’ boxes, as well as further readings
and recommended websites. A comprehensive glossary also provides explanations of key terms and
abbreviations.

Social Policy is an essential textbook for undergraduate students taking courses in social policy
and related courses such as criminology, health studies, politics, sociology, nursing, youth work and
social work.

Hugh Bochel is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Lincoln, UK.

Guy Daly is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Coventry University, UK.
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SOCIAL POLICY

Third Edition

■ Edited by
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly
First and second edition published 2005, 2009
by Pearson Education Limited
This edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 3rd Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 selection and editorial material, Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Social policy / edited by Hugh Bochel, Guy Daly. – Third Edition.
pages cm
1. Great Britain–Social policy. I. Bochel, Hugh M., editor of compilation.
II. Daly, Guy, editor of compilation.
HV248.S264 2014
320.60941–dc23
2013032289

ISBN: 978-0-415-73382-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-447-92957-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-81913-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Garamond
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
 C ONTENTS

List of figures and tables xi Conclusion 66

List of contributors xiii Summary 67
Preface xv

4 DEVOLUTION AND SOCIAL POLICY 70

1 INTRODUCING SOCIAL POLICY 1
Sharon Wright
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly
Why does devolution matter? 71
What is social policy? 2
What is devolution and how has it developed? 72
The structure of this book 7
What difference has devolution made? 78
Summary 7
Conclusions 84

Part 1: Context 11 Summary 84

2 THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT

OF SOCIAL POLICY 13 5 RESEARCH, EVIDENCE, AND
Nick Ellison POLICY 90
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly
Changing employment patterns 14
Policy and evidence 92
Changing social divisions 18
Post-war policy-making 94
The changing nature of the welfare state 22
Critiques of approaches to evidence-based policy 97
Further challenges: social policy, family structures, and
demographic change 24 Obstacles to evidence-based policy-making 99

Conclusion 33 Evidence-based or evidence-informed policy? 101

Summary 34 Evaluation 102

Conclusions 104
3 THE POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE
Summary 104
OF SOCIAL POLICY 39
Catherine Bochel and Guy Daly
Political parties 42 Part 2: The Development of
Social Policy 109
Pressure groups 46
6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL
The media 48
POLICY, 1800–1945 111
The governance of social policy 53 Bernard Harris
The Conservatives, 1979–97 53 Introduction 112

New Labour, 1997–2010 54 Victorian origins of the welfare state 115

Governance under the Coalition, 2010– 58 Welfare provision 1870–1906 118

Models of governance 60 Liberal welfare and the ‘social service state’ 120

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C ONTENTS

Welfare between the wars 125 An overview of the current systems 212

The Second World War and after 128 Taxation 215

Conclusion 133 Tackling fraud in social security and taxation 218

Summary 133 Recent reforms and future prospects 218

Conclusions 221
7 CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS AND
Summary 222
THE WELFARE STATE SINCE 1945 143
Robert M. Page
10 WORK AND EMPLOYMENT POLICY 225
Conservatism 144 Edwin Griggs
Conservative governments and the welfare state Introduction: Why work? The connection between
since 1945 150 work and welfare 226
Conclusion 165 Concepts and definitions 226
Summary 166 Theories of employment and unemployment 228

Trends in employment and unemployment 229

8 LABOUR GOVERNMENTS AND THE
WELFARE STATE SINCE 1945 170 Political responses: employment policy from the
Robert M. Page beginnings to Thatcher 233

Introduction 171 The Thatcher governments, the unemployment crisis,

and employment policy in the 1980s 234
Labour’s changing ideology 171
From ‘old’ to ‘new’ Labour: employment policy
The Attlee governments, 1945–51: establishing a 1997–2010 237
democratic socialist welfare state 175
Recent developments: economic crisis and
Revisionist social democracy: Labour governments in austerity 241
the 1960s and 70s. 181
The Coalition government’s policies 242
‘Modern’ social democracy and the third way:
New Labour and the welfare state, 1997–2010 186 Conclusion 244

Conclusions 192 Summary 244

Summary 192
11 EDUCATION 249
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly
Part 3: Themes and Issues 199
Introduction 250
9 PENSIONS, INCOME MAINTENANCE,
Pre-war education provision 251
AND TAXATION 201
Stephen McKay and Karen Rowlingson The post-war education settlement 252

Introduction 202 1979–97: the end of consensus 254

Cultural assumptions about tax and social security 203 1997–2010: Education, education, education? 257

The importance of social security and taxation 205 The Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition 262

Defining ‘social security’ and taxation 207 Conclusions 273

The aims of social security and taxation 210 Summary 273

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 C O N T ENT S

12 ADULT HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 277 Discussion 363

Jon Glasby and Guy Daly Assessment 365
The origins of current services 280
Conclusions 366
Current challenges and policy responses 283
Summary 367
Conclusion 290

Summary 292 16 HOUSING POLICY 371

Guy Daly and Kevin Gulliver
13 CHILDREN AND FAMILIES 298
Introduction 372
Paul Daniel
Historical background 373
Introduction 300
Housing policy under the New Right – residualised
Demographic change and the family 301
state involvement and the promotion of the
New Labour: children and families 303 market 376

The Coalition government and family policy 314 Public housing under the Conservatives 376

Conclusion 316 Home ownership 378

Summary 317 The private rental sector 379

Homelessness 380
14 DEBATING THE UPS AND DOWNS
OF YOUTH JUSTICE 323 New Labour’s housing policy 380

Peter Squires Public housing under New Labour 382

Introduction 324 Home ownership under Labour 385

The politics of youth criminalisation: What goes The private rental sector 387
up . . .? 325
Homeless and other vulnerable individuals and
A punitive transformation? 327 households 389
Youth justice U-turns 331 The ‘credit crunch’ and housing under the Coalition
And down again? 338 government 391

Conclusion 341 Social housing under the Coalition 392

Summary 342 The promotion of home ownership under the

Coalition 393

15 HEALTH POLICY 349 Conclusion 395

Martin Powell Summary 397
Introduction 350

Origins and development 350 17 ‘RACE’, ETHNICITY, AND SOCIAL

POLICY 401
The National Health Service 351
Norman Ginsburg
Conservative health policy (1979–97) 353
‘Race’, ethnicity, and racism 403
New Labour health policy (1997–2010) 355
From ‘race relations’ to ‘community cohesion’ and
Coalition health policy (2010–) 360 integrationism 405

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C ONTENTS

Ethnic categorisation and growing ethnic Conclusions 464

diversity 407
Summary 465
Immigration and refugee policy 407
20 AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
Anti-discrimination 411 GREEN SOCIAL POLICY 470
Poverty and the labour market 411 Michael Cahill
Policing 413 Introduction 471

Schooling 414 The environmental crisis 472

Housing 417 Responding to the environmental challenge 476

Conclusions 420 Conclusion 485

Summary 486
Summary 420

21 EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES OF

18 DISABILITY AND SOCIAL POLICY 425 SOCIAL POLICY 489
Alan Roulstone Catherine Bochel
Background and policy context 426 Introduction 490

Disability policy: a case of non-conformity to policy ‘New’ and ‘old’ social policy concerns 491
paradigms? 426 Setting the context: the changing nature of social
Policy frameworks and disabled people 430 policy 492

An edifice of social rights: a foundation of economic Food 493

citizenship? 431 The environment and sustainability 500
Social welfare 435 Transport and travel 505
Social care 440 Information and communication technology 508
Conclusions 442 Conclusions 511

Summary 442 Summary 512

19 OLDER PEOPLE, POPULATION Part 4: European and

AGEING, AND POLICY RESPONSES 449 International
Karen West Developments 517
22 COMPARATIVE SOCIAL POLICY 519
Introduction 450
Harry Cowen
Population ageing 451
Comparing welfare states 521
The UK House of Lords Select Committee on Public
The archetypal welfare states 524
Service and Demographic Change Report: ‘Reading
for Ageing?’ 453 Welfare state systems and the impact of the 2008
economic recession 530
Generational fairness and inter-generational
relations 455 Social policy responses to the crisis 535

Promoting independence and active ageing 457 Conclusion 538

Pensions and work 460 Summary 539

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 C O N T ENT S

23 GLOBAL SOCIAL POLICY AND THE The enlargement debate 576

POLITICS OF GLOBALISATION 543
Challenge to the Constitution and the Lisbon EU
Harry Cowen Reform Treaty 578
Global social policy and institutions 545
The United Kingdom and the Lisbon Treaty 578
Wealth distribution and income inequality 549
European social policy 581
Transnational corporations and global inequalities 553
The social and economic impact of the Eurozone crisis
The contending perspectives on globalisation 555 on the EU 586

Global recession and social welfare 559 Explanations of the Eurozone crisis 588

Global social policy response to crisis 560 The European Union policies in response to the
euro crisis 589
Competing explanations of the global crisis 561
Conclusion 591
The politics of globalisation and the anti-globalisation
movement 563 Summary 592

Conclusion 565
25 CONCLUSIONS 595
Summary 566
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly

24 THE EUROPEAN UNION AND

SOCIAL POLICY 570
Glossary 600
Harry Cowen Index 620

The European Union’s global significance today 572

The origins and structures of the European Union 573

ix
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 F IGURES AND TABLES

Figures

3.1 The black box approach to policy-making 49

3.2 Newman’s models of governance 61
6.1 Sources of government finance, 1701/25–1926/50 115
9.1 Views about what governments should do regarding taxes
and benefits 205
9.2 The number of income tax payers, 1938/39–2012/13 207
9.3 Final incomes compared with original incomes in 2010–11 207
10.1 Employment rates by sex, 1971–2011 230
10.2 Trends in economic activity, 1971–2011 230
10.3 Unemployment trends by sex, 1971–2005 231
13.1 The different family structures, 1996–2012 302
14.1 Annual average number of under-18s in secure facilities in
England and Wales, 1992–2010 326
14.2 First-time entrants and repeat offenders in the criminal
justice system, 2007–11 340
16.1 Social sector right-to-buy sales, 1980–2011 377
16.2 Percentage change in tenure in England, 1979–2012 378
16.3 Percentage tenure in UK by region, 2012 386
16.4 Housing completions by sector, 1971–2011 387
16.5 Average house prices and house sales volume, April 1995 to
April 2011 393
17.1 Proportion of pupils achieving 5 or more A*–C grades at
GCSE or equivalent including English and Mathematics by
ethnic group in England, 2006–07 and 2010–11 415
17.2 Contemporary pattern of housing tenure 418
18.1 Typology of policy for disabled people, post-1940 433
19.1 Population aged under 16 and aged 65 and over in the UK,
1971–2031 454
21.1 Prevalence of obesity among adults aged 16 years and over,
1993–2010 494
21.2 Ladder of interventions 498
21.3 Municipal waste management in the European Union by
country and EU27, 2007 503
21.4 Proportions of households without a car by household
income quintile, 1999–2001 and 2010 506
22.1 Youth unemployment rates in the EU27 countries and
Norway, 2010 and 2011 532
23.1 The world distribution of household wealth, wealth
per capita, 2000 549

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FIGU RES AND TA BL ES

23.2 Female labour force participation rates 552

24.1 Map of the 27-member European Union 579

Tables

2.1 Civilian employment in industry as a percentage of civilian

employment 16
2.2 Employment in services as a percentage of civilian employment 17
2.3 Civilian employment of women as a percentage of civilian
employment 17
2.4 Rate of unemployment as a percentage of the civilian
labour force 18
4.1 Quick guide to devolved powers over key social policy issues 73
6.1 Government expenditure on social, economic, and
environmental services in the United Kingdom, 1790–2000 114
7.1 Post 1945 ‘strands’ of British Conservatism 149
8.1 Ideologies of post-1945 Labour governments 175
9.1 Cost of selected social security benefits, 2011–12 206
9.2 Value of selected tax expenditures, 2012–13 210
9.3 Main and other sources of government revenue, 2011–12 215
11.1 Pupils reaching or exceeding expected standards through
teacher assessment in England, by Key Stage and sex 259
13.1 Changing family structures, 1997–2009 301
13.2 Change and stability in family structures over time,
compositional change (percentages) 303
17.1 Ethnic minority groups in England and Wales, 2001 and
2011, percentages 408
23.1 Purchasing power per capita from GDP in 2012, selected
countries (US dollars) 550
23.2 Selective figures comparing economic power of assets
(measured in sales) of transnational corporations and the
GDP of countries, 2009–10 553
24.1 Number of European Parliament seats per country, 2009–14
parliamentary term 581

xii
 C ONTRIBUTORS

Catherine Bochel is Principal Lecturer in Policy Studies at the University of

Lincoln.

Hugh Bochel is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Lincoln.

Michael Cahill is Reader in Social Policy at the University of Brighton.

Harry Cowen is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of

Gloucestershire, and was formerly Principal Lecturer in Social Policy and
Sociology.

Guy Daly is Professor and Dean of Faculty, Health and Life Sciences,
Coventry University.

Paul Daniel is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton.

Nick Ellison is Professor and Head of the Department of Social Policy and
Social Work at the University of York.

Norman Ginsburg is Professor of Social Policy at London Metropolitan

University.

Jon Glasby is Professor of Health and Social Care and Director of the Health
Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham.

Edwin Griggs has taught social policy full-time and, more recently, part-time at
a number of higher education institutions, latterly at Birmingham University.

Kevin Gulliver is Research and Development Director at the Human City

Institute. HCi is an independent research agency that researches the nature
and extent of exclusion, disadvantage, and inequality and seeks to promote
practical and realistic solutions.

Bernard Harris is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde.

Stephen McKay is Distinguished Professor of Social Research at the University

of Lincoln.

Robert M. Page is Reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the

University of Birmingham. He has a long-standing interest in the political
history of the post-1945 British welfare state.

xiii
C ONTR IBUTORS

Martin Powell is Professor of Health and Social Policy at the Health Services
Management Centre and School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham.

Alan Roulstone is Professor of Disability Studies at Leeds University and

holds honorary professorial positions at Swansea University and the European
School of Public Health (Paris-Rennes).

Karen Rowlingson is Professor of Social Policy at the University of

Birmingham.

Peter Squires is Professor of Criminology and Public Policy at the University

of Brighton.

Karen West is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology and Social Policy Group at
Aston University.

Sharon Wright is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of

Glasgow. She specialises in the critical study of welfare reform and condition-
ality, the implementation of employment services, devolution and poverty in
the context of inequality and wealth.

xiv
 P REFACE

Social policy is an academic field that everyone encounters in one way or

another, even if we do not immediately recognise it. Conversations at home,
at work or with friends are frequently related, directly or indirectly, to areas
considered by the discipline. This includes when we consider:

■ whether education is being ‘dumbed down’;

■ why different parts of the United Kingdom have different tuition fees for
higher education and what their impact is on the participation of people
from poorer backgrounds;
■ whether the state should provide free child care;
■ whether pensions should be provided by the state or should depend upon
individuals making provision for themselves;
■ whether social security benefits are too generous;
■ what roles the individual, society, and the state should play in tackling
social harms arising from environmental change;
■ whether welfare services should be provided to people depending upon
their means (‘selective’ or ‘means-tested’ provision) or ‘free’, irrespective of
their income and wealth (‘universal’ provision).

This book therefore provides an introduction to the subject of social policy for
students studying specifically for a degree in social policy and for those
encountering the subject within their broader studies, such as part of a nursing,
social work, criminology or youth work qualification. We hope that those
studying social policy for the first time will find it a gentle and useful intro-
duction to the subject.
After the introductory chapter, the book is in four parts. The first contains
four chapters that provide the broad context necessary to understand current
debates in social policy. The three chapters in Part 2 consider the develop-
ment of the subject, particularly over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Part 3 examines contemporary aspects of providing welfare, including areas
where both government policies and provision, and the academic subject, are
developing. The final part is concerned with European and wider inter-
national developments, and the Conclusion seeks to draw together some of
the ideas presented throughout the book.
While we would hope that some readers will work through the book from
beginning to end, it has also been designed so that it can be used for particular
topics, by focusing on key chapters or sections. To help to understand and
explore the subject matter there are a variety of features, such as the
‘Controversy and debate’, ‘Spotlight’, and ‘Discussion and review’ features
that both highlight and remind the reader of important arguments and

xv
PREFACE

examples. The Glossary at the end of the book provides explanations of some
of the key terms and abbreviations that are part and parcel of the language of
social policy. Finally, each chapter also has guidance on further reading and
web sites where additional information can be found.
Overall, we hope that the book is interesting and enjoyable, since, in our
view, while clearly important, social policy should be ‘serious fun’.
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly

xvi
 CHAPTER 1

Introducing Social
Policy
Hugh Bochel and Guy Daly

Learning objectives

■ To introduce the subject of social policy

■ To consider how and why the subject has changed and developed
over the past three decades

Chapter overview

Social policy is one of the social sciences, together with, for example, poli-
tics and sociology. It is sometimes studied on its own, sometimes jointly
with another subject, and also is frequently delivered as part of another
subject. It is often taken as part of professional training, such as in nursing
or social work. This chapter seeks to provide a consideration of the subject
of social policy, how it relates to other cognate subjects, and what it means
to be studying it. The chapter, therefore:

■ explores the nature of the subject, including the way in which it has
developed as an academic discipline over time;
■ outlines the structure of the remainder of the book.

1
 IN T R ODUC IN G S OC IAL POL IC Y

What is social policy?

The almost inevitable starting point for a book such as this is the question,
‘What is social policy?’ While such a question is equally likely for a book on
one of the other social sciences, there is perhaps a greater importance for social
policy, in part because the subject itself has developed and changed direction
considerably since the 1980s, in part because the actions of governments and
others impact upon what might be considered ‘social policy’ (see, for example,
Chapters 20 and 21), and in part because these considerations continue to
have significant resonance within the subject as it and its subject matter evolve
further.
As an academic subject social policy is clearly related to other social science
disciplines, including economics, politics, and sociology, but it also has a reso-
nance with many professional courses, such as those focusing on social work,
housing or nursing. Given the connections, it is not surprising that the study
of social policy often draws upon concepts and insights that come from all of
these areas, but at the same time it brings its own distinctive approach to the
understanding and analysis of the world. In the same way, a subject such as
criminology, which has largely emerged in UK higher education since the
1990s, also draws upon a range of subjects, including social policy, but is itself
developing and debating its boundaries (see, for example, Chapter 14).
Although it may draw upon a range of cognate areas, social policy as an
academic discipline can be seen as differing from others in a number of ways.
For example, it is different from sociology in its focus upon the formulation,
implementation, and delivery of policies that affect the circumstances of indi-
viduals, groups, and society; it differs from politics in its focus upon welfare
and wellbeing; and it is different from economics, because it is less concerned
with the production of goods and services, and because of its emphasis upon
social or welfare policies and their outcomes. This is not to say that there are
not sometimes closely related interests, and social policy academics and
courses may be located in departments with a variety of labels in different
higher education institutions, while social policy departments may in turn
contain individuals who draw heavily upon or who originate from other
subjects. There are also many institutions where social policy is in a depart-
ment jointly with one or more other subjects, such as criminology, politics,
social work or sociology. These all reflect the complexity and breadth of the
subject.
Notwithstanding the discussion above, the nature of the subject has
changed considerably over time. For much of the twentieth century, ‘social
administration’, as it was then called, was strongly associated with the Fabian
tradition, itself linked to social democratic thought, including the Labour
Party (see Chapter 8). Many social administration academics were therefore
seeking not merely to study social policy, but also to influence it in a direction
that fitted generally with Fabian beliefs, often using their research and analysis
to support their political arguments. These could roughly be characterised as

2
 H U G H B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

a belief in the role of the state as a central pillar of welfare provision (the
‘welfare state’), generally located in a mixed economy, and a commitment to
research and analysis that was concerned with the identification of needs and
the impact of state welfare in attempting to meet those needs. This classic
welfare state was often conceived of in relation to policies of income mainte-
nance and social security, health care, the personal social services, education
and training, employment, and housing; and social policy was widely seen as
what the welfare state did. However, in the second half of the twentieth
century, a more critical approach emerged within the subject, and by the
1970s and 1980s it was possible to identify a number of theoretical challenges
to the association of Fabianism and the study of social administration and
social policies linked to the welfare state. These included:

■ The New Right and other ‘anti-collectivists’ – one of the most significant
attacks on state provision of welfare (see Chapters 7 and 8) came from the
right, and in particular from think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute,
the Centre for Policy Studies, and the Institute for Economic Affairs. These
critiques took a number of forms, but could generally be seen as arguing
that: the welfare state was a burden on the economy and that it demanded
too high levels of public expenditure and an excessive tax burden upon
entrepreneurs and citizens; that it damaged individual choice, in contrast
to the market, which is seen from this perspective as promoting it; and that
it weakens the family and encourages dependency. The strategies that the
New Right put forward as alternatives typically involved cuts in income
tax, a shift away from state provision to individuals providing for them-
selves and their families through the private market, direct charging for
services such as education and health, and the replacement of most of the
benefits and services provided by the state with alternatives from the private
and voluntary sectors.
■ On the left there also emerged a number of criticisms – some began to
accept that the role of the state remained problematic in the provision of
welfare, and while in some instances state intervention had been valuable
in changing social conditions, in others it had not always been so benefi-
cial. Some argued that one answer was the injection of more resources to
help tackle problems more successfully, while others favoured alternative
approaches, such as the decentralisation of power and the encouragement
of self-help for particular groups. One view, associated with a Marxist
approach, suggested that in reality state welfare reflected the needs of
capitalism for an educated, healthy workforce, and that this explained the
failure of the welfare state to solve social problems.
■ The centre – critiques of the welfare state also emerged from centrist
positions, often focusing upon the view that the large bureaucratic organi-
sations that were often responsible for delivering welfare were inefficient
and inflexible and were remote from the needs of consumers, and that they
tended to be run in the interests of professionals and administrators rather
than users or citizens. From this perspective, proposed solutions generally

3
 IN T R ODUC IN G S OC IAL POL IC Y

involved a shift towards a pluralistic, decentralised, and more participative

pattern of provision, including a much greater role for the voluntary sector.
■ Other critical perspectives – for example, feminists pointed out that there
were a number of assumptions behind the provision of many services,
including education, health care, and the personal social services, such as
that it was ‘natural’ for women to provide care for children, disabled people
and older people, and that they would often provide this care free at home
while men went out to work to earn the household income. The state,
therefore, could be seen as exploiting and encouraging the ‘caring role’ of
women. Even when women did work (often in the ‘caring services’), there
was a tendency for them to do so in the less-well paid jobs, while men
dominated the higher-status, better-paid positions. In a similar manner, it
could also be pointed out that many welfare services failed to recognise
particular needs of minority ethnic groups, disabled people, and others.

In addition, there were other developments that encouraged reflection within

the subject. These included other New Right critiques, in particular of
bureaucracies, which have been important in the delivery of state welfare.
New Right thinkers have argued that bureaucrats are primarily concerned
with promoting their own interests, and that they do this at the expense of the
public interest. Furthermore, they suggest that political control of state
bureaucracies is often ineffective. From the perspective of the New Right,
these combine to increase the pressure for higher levels of public expenditure,
which itself is seen as problematic and a drain on the economy. Given the
large bureaucracies often associated with state welfare provision, these argu-
ments, if accepted, raise significant questions over the mechanisms used for
delivering welfare.
It is also worth noting here that while the academic subject of social policy,
and indeed many social policies, has been concerned with improving the
welfare of citizens, or leading to greater social justice, there is nothing neces-
sary or inevitable about this. Social policies and other measures, such as taxa-
tion (see Chapter 9), can equally be designed to ignore or even to increase
inequalities.
From the 1970s, there also came to be a much greater awareness of the
relevance of comparison to the study and understanding of social policy. In
part, this resulted from the United Kingdom’s membership of the European
Union, which inevitably focused greater attention upon Europe and other
European states. However, increasingly this interest spread to other areas of
the world, and in particular sought to learn from the experiences and policies
of other states. For some, for example, the Scandinavian states provided
models for state welfare founded in a social democratic approach. For others,
the more market-oriented approach of the United States appeared to present
a more appropriate path for the UK. Whatever the approach, it became
apparent that there was a great diversity of forms of welfare provision, with
very different mixes of provision by the public, private, voluntary, and
informal sectors. The comparative approach to social policy has developed

4
 H U G H B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

greatly in recent years and is now a major strand within the subject (see
Chapters 22 and 23), while concerns over international trends such as globali-
sation have been seen as having implications for the shape of social policies,
and thus for the academic subject (see Chapter 24). In addition, there are
many examples of policy transfer, with governments drawing upon ideas and
policies from other countries, such as elements of Labour’s New Deal, which
drew on the experience of the United States, and the Coalition government’s
‘free schools’, which drew on the establishment of similar schools in Sweden
and the United States.
The impact of all of these developments has inevitably affected the academic
subject of social policy. Over a period of time it came to reflect and respond
to these debates, arguably becoming broader and, in some respects at least,
more critical. It is therefore not surprising that during the 1980s there was
considerable debate about the nature of the discipline. However, the subject
has not lost entirely its traditional links, with a number of university depart-
ments and awards continuing to use the term ‘social administration’, while
the government bodies that fund and oversee much of higher education, such
as the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Quality
Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), often refer to ‘social policy
and administration’. Indeed, the QAA’s subject benchmark statement (see
Spotlight, below), which seeks to outline the nature and characteristics of the
subject and the attributes and capabilities that an honours graduate in social
policy should possess, is for social policy and administration. As illustrated
elsewhere in this book, the boundaries and relevance of social policy and its
insights continue to evolve.

SPOTLIGHT
Social policy and administration subject benchmark: the nature and
extent of the subject

Social policy and administration is about the study of the distribution and
organisation of welfare and wellbeing within societies. Its focus is on the
ways in which different societies understand and meet the needs of their
populations. The discipline is characterised by the following principles:

■ the rigorous linking of theoretical analysis with empirical enquiry

■ the identification and understanding of different value positions
■ a willingness to engage with a range of intellectual traditions and social
science disciplines
■ the belief that students should acquire the skills and qualities which
enable them to become active and informed citizens.

Social policy is an interdisciplinary and applied discipline which is concerned

with analysing the distribution and delivery of resources in response to social

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 IN T R ODUC IN G S OC IAL POL IC Y

need. The subject draws on ideas and methods from sociology, political
science and economics, while also using insights from a range of disciplines
including social anthropology, human geography, social psychology and
social work. As a discipline in its own right, social policy studies the ways in
which societies provide for the social needs of their members through
structures and systems of distribution, redistribution, regulation, provision
and empowerment. It seeks to foster in its students a capacity to assess
critically evidence from a range of social science disciplines and to appreciate
how social policies are continuously reconstructed and changed. Students
will understand the contribution to these processes from those who come
from different value positions and different social, cultural and economic
backgrounds. They will also appreciate the fact that some social groups are
more able to protect, alter or advance their value positions more effectively
than others.
(QAA, 2007, p. 2)

Interestingly, consideration of the benchmark statement demonstrates both

the academic and the applied nature of the subject, since the statement
attempts to set out academic characteristics, but does so in response to a policy
imperative in the form of pressure from governments to measure and main-
tain standards in higher education (see Chapter 11).
However, attempts to define the subject also need to recognise that social
policy exists outside the academic world, and that much of what governments
and other bodies do is social policy. Policies can be designed to help people,
although even those that are intended to do so may not always achieve their
aims, for a variety of reasons. Others may be ‘technocratic’ in nature – designed
to improve a mechanism, perhaps to achieve something more efficiently or
economically, or even to improve the nature of policy-making itself. And
social policies can be used to control people, as we have seen in recent years
with demands to control or deter asylum seekers and migrants, or with regard
to anti-social behaviour. One of the things that students and analysts of social
policy need to do, therefore, is to examine policies critically – to look at their
intentions and impacts and consider the extent to which they achieve their
goals, and the reasons why this might or might not be the case. As the QAA
benchmark statement suggests, we must therefore sometimes try to set aside
our personal views and opinions, and recognise that it can be useful to try to
see things from the perspectives of others. For example, we can seek to under-
stand why some people feel strongly about individual choice and others favour
collective provision, or why politicians, managers and health professionals in
the National Health Service may clash over the best way to meet particular
goals. We can try to put ourselves in the place of politicians who sometimes
have to make difficult decisions about the level of resources that should be
spent on welfare (and other areas of activity) and how the money for this
should be raised, or the people who then have to deliver services, or those who
are recipients. Each of these may provide us with very different perspectives on

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 H U G H B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

social policies. However, we also have to recognise that we all have our own
values and attitudes, our own visions of what a good society should be like,
and that the study of social policy is likely to involve us in both seeking to be
objective and in maintaining our beliefs, and that at times there is likely to be
a tension between the two.

The structure of this book

While the discussion above has outlined the complexity of the study of social
policy, this book is written on the assumption that most students of social
policy have little or no knowledge of the academic subject, even if all have
inevitably come into contact with social policies. Given that social policy
exists in a social, political, and economic environment, the chapters in Part I
set out the background, including social and economic changes and the polit-
ical context within which social policies are made and delivered, including the
new framework that has emerged from devolution.
Part II focuses on the development of social policy, beginning with changes
in the provision of welfare and changing attitudes to the role of the state, and
then considering key influences upon social policy in the form of the ideas
that have underpinned Conservative and Labour governments and their
approaches.
Part III consists of a series of chapters that can be broadly characterised as
focusing primarily upon the delivery and impacts of social policy. While
inevitably reflecting the legacy of previous governments and policies, these
examine in particular social policy under Labour from 1997 to 2010 and
developments under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition govern-
ment from 2010 to the present. In many respects, therefore, these chapters are
concerned not only with changes and priorities in social policy, but also with
social policies as they affect individuals.
Reflecting the preceding discussion about the broader international scope
of interests in social policy, Part IV examines European and international
developments, including the European Union and its impact upon social
policy development, comparisons between the UK and other states, and
debates about globalisation and its implications for social policy.
Each chapter is designed to provide information and also to encourage
you to think for yourself about its subject matter. Each also gives directions
to additional sources of information, both written and via the Internet,
to allow students to follow up areas in which they have a particular
interest.

Summary

This chapter has outlined the development of the subject of social policy and
provided a brief history of the welfare state in the UK. It has shown that:

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 IN T R ODUC IN G S OC IAL POL IC Y

■ The academic study of social policy has moved away from a focus upon the
welfare state towards a much broader consideration of provision by the
public, private, voluntary, and informal sectors.
■ Theoretical debates have been and continue to be important, not only
in improving our ability to understand and explain social policy, but
also in influencing the decisions of policy-makers, as was reflected in
the move away from the post-war consensus over the social democratic
state towards a view that has been more influenced by New Right
thinking.
■ Our understanding of social policy has been affected further by the growth
of an international dimension, which itself has been affected by the greater
awareness of the range of modes of welfare provision (and different systems
of payment for welfare) in different states, and by the UK’s involvement in
the European Union.

Discussion and review

■ What is social policy?

■ In what ways do social policies affect your everyday life?
■ How useful is the concept of the ‘welfare state’?

Reference

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (2007) Social Policy and
Administration, QAA, Gloucester.

Further reading

Alcock, P., Erskine, A. and May, M. (eds.) (2002) The Blackwell Dictionary of
Social Policy, Blackwell, Oxford. This is a useful source of definitions of a
range of ideas relevant to social policy.
Alcock, P., May, M. and Wright, S. (eds.) (2012) The Student’s Companion to
Social Policy, Blackwell, Oxford. This book contains a number of concise
but comprehensive discussions, including over many key aspects of social
policy.
Fraser, D. (2009) The Evolution of the British Welfare State, Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke. This title provides a comprehensive history of
welfare policy in Britain.

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 H U G H B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

Useful websites

http://www.gov.uk – intended to be the first port of call for access to govern-

ment, this site provides links to government departments and other organi-
sations responsible for social policy and services throughout the UK.
http://www.oecd.org – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development site contains considerable amounts of information relevant for
comparisons across countries.
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Pages/Subject-
benchmark-statement-Social-policy-and-administration.aspx – this is the
QAA benchmark statement for ‘Social Policy and Administration’.
http://www.social-policy.org.uk/ – this is the website for the Social Policy
Association (SPA), which is the professional association for teachers,
researchers, students, and practitioners of social policy.

9
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PART 1
CONTEXT

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT OF

SOCIAL POLICY
THE POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF
SOCIAL POLICY
DEVOLUTION AND SOCIAL POLICY
RESEARCH, EVIDENCE, AND POLICY

11
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 CHAPTER 2

The Socio-economic
Context of Social
Policy
Nick Ellison

Learning objectives

■ To illustrate the interaction between social and economic phenomena

and policies
■ To explore changing social patterns and the issues that they raise for
social policy and policy-makers
■ To provide some wider context for the UK situation
■ To consider the extent to which social and economic change and
welfare dependency are leading to new policy responses

Chapter overview

Changing patterns of employment, the changing shape of families and

family life, the impact of key demographic changes on national communi-
ties, each of these phenomena carries profound implications for how social
policy is perceived and understood. Why should this be so? How is it

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

that welfare policies are so closely connected to issues of employment and

family life?
There is a constant ‘dialogue’ between social and economic phenomena
that make up the context of social policy-making and the organisation of
social policy itself. So, briefly taking changes in employment patterns as an
example, the majority of welfare systems in the mid to late twentieth
century were constructed around particular assumptions about the nature
of work and the respective roles of men and women in the labour market.
Unfortunately (for policy-makers at least), these assumptions quickly
became outdated. What constituted ‘work’ and who did it changed rapidly
and radically – and it is no exaggeration to say that the majority of welfare
states have been playing catch-up ever since the 1960s when these changes
first became evident.
This chapter demonstrates how rapidly things can change in the modern
world and how relatively slowly welfare arrangements seem to respond to
these changes. The result, of course, is that welfare states, despite having
their roots in the radical, progressive politics of the first half of the twen-
tieth century can appear rather ‘conservative’ and unresponsive to social
and economic change. The chapter explores the following key issues:

■ changing patterns of work in the UK and elsewhere;

■ the impact of employment changes on key social divisions;
■ changing family structures;
■ demographic change.

Changing employment patterns

Work is absolutely central to social policy. Why? Because ensuring the avail-
ability of paid employment is the most obvious way of reducing the risk of
poverty for individuals and their families. While this statement needs to be
qualified in a number of ways – it may not be possible for literally everyone to
work even if jobs are available, because some people suffer from physical
impairments that prevent them from working and women carry out a vast
amount of unpaid domestic and caring work in the home – it is the case,
nevertheless, that paid employment underpins social policy-making in all the
developed welfare states.
This stress on employment is as old as ‘social policy’ itself – and of course
it continues to play a central role in current debates about ‘welfare reform’ in
the UK and elsewhere. In England, the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 saw the
appointment of overseers in each parish who were charged with the task of
finding work for the able-bodied unemployed, while the ‘New Poor Law’ of
1834 actively forced the able-bodied into the employment market by making
conditions in the new workhouses so bad that only those on the verge of

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

complete destitution would contemplate entering them (see Chapter 6). Poor
Law arrangements of one kind or other existed in most parts of Europe into
the twentieth century, only being gradually overtaken by organised welfare
systems that aimed to produce full employment as part of a wider strategy of
economic management. Certainly by the end of the Second World War in
1945, governments in Northern and Western Europe, in addition to those in
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA, had come to recognise that
they had a major role to play in maintaining employment. How they did this
varied among the different countries, but between roughly the late 1940s and
the late 1970s ‘full employment’ was a major policy goal in these states.
Following broadly Keynesian economic policies throughout this period,
governments actively managed the ‘demand side’ of their economies in efforts
to achieve it.
The real issue, however, is what sort of ‘employment’ governments were
attempting to sustain. In the early part of the post-war period, almost without
exception, the (unstated) goal was full male employment, and it is no great
exaggeration to suggest that the welfare systems that developed in Europe and
elsewhere took for granted the fact that men worked while married women
remained at home. Consequently, income provision for unemployment, sick-
ness, and old age largely depended on the size and continuity of the male
wage. In the majority of welfare states, the employed ‘breadwinner’ would pay
insurance contributions from his wages either directly to the state or into
special insurance funds to provide pensions and other benefits for both himself
and his wife. Outside these arrangements, which were quite generous in coun-
tries like Germany and France, although less so in Britain, there were only
means-tested forms of ‘social assistance’ to support those who were not able to
work or who had gaps in their employment record.
Whether or not this understanding of ‘full employment’ is defensible
in terms of the clear gender bias that characterises it is not the issue here –
important though this matter is. In terms of the socio-economic context of
social policy, the significant point is that, from the 1960s onwards, structural
changes in the majority of the developed economies meant that full male
employment became increasingly hard to sustain. These changes favoured
new forms of work, were less dependent on the male industrial worker, and if
anything, were more disposed towards the employment of women.
The key shift concerned the dramatic decline of ‘Fordist’ manufacturing
industry – characterised by the virtually all-male, unionised workforce engaged
in production line assembly – and the rise of ‘post-Fordist’ or ‘post-industrial’
forms of employment, usually based in the service industries (Amin, 1994).
Although the causes of this change are complex and cannot be addressed in
detail here, it is important to appreciate that a number of factors contributed
to it. It is highly likely that rising global economic competition meant that
many manufactured goods could be produced more cheaply in the developing
economies; but it is also the case that ‘post-industrial’ changes within many
advanced economies were also significant factors. The emergence of new
labour-saving technologies reduced reliance on human labour for example,

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

while changes in patterns of consumption as incomes rose and consumers

became more discerning, meant that demand for mass-produced standardised
goods gave way to a range of new ‘wants’ for evermore sophisticated ‘niche’
products and services. To meet these changing consumption patterns,
producers had to become more ‘flexible’ – able to shift product lines and
re-focus workforce skills according to market demands. Underpinning these
changes has been the dramatic rise of the ‘knowledge economy’, which has
entailed a need to move workforces away from the traditional skills associated
with heavy industry and mass production towards a very different range of
abilities concerned with ‘informationalisation’, knowledge exploitation, crea-
tivity, and above all, the capacity continually to ‘re-skill’ in response to
constantly shifting consumption patterns.
The following tables provide an insight into the nature and timing of this
move from male-based industrial production to service sector employment – a
process that became visible around the early 1960s, developed throughout
that decade, and gathered speed across the 1980s and early 1990s. The trends
continue to this day, although, with much of the transformation complete,
the pace of change has inevitably lessened in recent years. Table 2.1 provides
data, gathered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), which demonstrate how employment in industry fell
as a percentage of civilian employment in a number of key economies between
1960 and 2011.
With the exception of Japan (which is something of an anomaly in the
table on manufacturing employment because, during the 1960s and 1970s in
particular, the country benefited from having a large and cheap workforce,
an advantage lost during the late 1980s and 1990s as other Asian and South
East Asian countries – South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and now of course
China – overtook Japan in their ability to produce cheap manufactured
goods), all countries experienced a loss of industrial employment in the early
part of the period, but it is worth acknowledging how serious the decline was

Table 2.1 Civilian employment in industry as a percentage of civilian employment

1960 1974 1986 1994 2000 2006 2011

USA 35.5 32.5 27.7 24.0 23.0 19.9 17.3

Japan 28.5 37.0 34.5 34.0 31.2 28.0 26.0
Germany 47.0 46.7 40.8 37.7 33.7 29.8 28.4
France 37.6 39.4 31.4 24.5 (e) 22.5 (e) 20.8 (e) —
Italy 33.9 39.3 33.1 34.3 32.4 30.5 28.5
UK 47.7 42.0 34.1 27.6 25.2 22.1 19.1
Canada 33.1 30.5 28.2 22.3 23.1 23.6 19.8
Australia 38.9 34.9 26.5 23.4 21.7 21.4 20.7
Denmark 36.9 32.3 31.4 24.5 (e) 26.4 23.6 18.6
Sweden 40.3 37.0 29.8 25.1 24.6 22.0 19.9
Source: Adapted from OECD (2012).

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. However,
the rise in service sector employment over the same period is very clear, as
Table 2.2 illustrates.
Employment in industry, then, has plainly declined in the major econo-
mies. In addition, service sector work, which includes a wide variety of
employment from the highly paid banking and legal sectors to low-paid jobs
in catering, cleaning, and leisure services, increased markedly in all cases
between 1960 and the early 1990s, and has continued to do so through to
2011, albeit at a slower pace.
Table 2.3 shows how the percentage of women in the workforce has risen
as the nature of employment has changed. In fairly simple terms, as male
employment in the manufacturing sector declined, employment in the service
sector increased and this shift allowed more women to enter the workforce.
Although the change was by no means an unalloyed good for women, because

Table 2.2 Employment in services as a percentage of civilian employment

1960 1974 1986 1994 2000 2006 2011

USA 56.2 63.4 69.3 73.1 75.2 78.5 81.1

Japan 41.3 50.1 57.1 60.2 63.7 67.7 70.2
Germany 39.1 46.3 54.8 59.1 63.7 67.9 69.0
France 39.9 49.9 61.3 68.4 74.2 76.4 —
Italy 33.5 43.2 56.0 59.7 62.2 65.2 67.8
UK 47.6 55.1 66.7 72.4 73.3 76.6 79.7
Canada 54.1 63.1 69.9 73.3 73.6 75.3 78.1
Australia 50.1 58.0 66.9 71.3 73.4 75.2 76.4
Denmark 44.8 58.0 65.9 68.1 70.2 73.4 79.2
Sweden 44.0 56.3 65.7 71.6 73.0 76.0 78.1
Source: Adapted from OECD (1996, Table 2.12), OECD (2012).

Table 2.3 Civilian employment of women as a percentage of civilian employment

1960 1974 1986 1994 2000 2006 2011

USA 33.3 38.9 44.4 46.0 46.0 46.5 46.9

Japan 40.7 37.7 39.8 40.5 40.8 41.6 42.2
Germany 37.8 38.1 39.5 42.1 44.1 45.5 46.3
France 34.8 37.2 42.3 45.3 45.9 47.2 48.2
Italy 30.9 29.2 33.8 35.0 37.2 39.8 40.8
UK 33.4 38.4 42.5 45.6 46.1 46.3 46.5
Canada 26.8 35.7 42.8 45.3 46.0 47.0 47.5
Australia — 34.4 39.3 42.6 44.1 45.1 45.5
Denmark 31.8 41.5 45.3 46.0 45.9 47.2 48.2
Sweden — 41.6 47.6 48.7 46.5 47.6 47.4
Source: Adapted from OECD (2012).

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

Table 2.4 Rate of unemployment as a percentage of the civilian labour force

1960 1974 1986 1994 2000 2006 2011

USA 5.5 5.6 7.0 6.1 4.0 5.8 7.6

Japan 1.4 1.4 2.8 2.9 4.7 4.1 4.5
Germany 1.0 2.2 6.6 8.5 7.8 10.3 5.9
France 1.3 2.6 9.6 10.6 9.3 8.6 9.1
Italy 5.7 5.4 11.2 11.2 10.4 6.9 8.4
UK 1.4 2.6 10.8 9.6 5.4 5.4 7.9
Canada 7.0 5.3 9.7 10.4 6.8 6.3 7.4
Australia 1.4 2.7 8.1 9.7 6.3 4.8 5.1
Denmark 2.0 3.6 5.5 8.1 4.4 4.1 7.8
Sweden 1.7 2.0 2.9 9.8 5.6 7.1 8.9
Source: Adapted from OECD (2012).

many service sector jobs are non-unionised, part-time or casual, with the low
wages that these working conditions imply, it nevertheless had the effect of
radically altering prevailing assumptions about the nature of work.
A further table (Table 2.4) is necessary because it is important to see how
the changes discussed here affected overall rates of employment. In essence,
from a low base in the early 1960s, unemployment rose in the majority of
the advanced economies from the late 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s
as industry shed workers. Although the service sector helped to stem the
resulting unemployment, the fact that work in this sector tends to be less
secure and non-unionised has meant that service jobs have never fully offset
the combined effects of the decline in industrial employment and (with
more women coming into the labour market) the rising numbers of people
seeking work. The period from the late 1990s to the recession created by the
banking crisis in 2008 saw unemployment fall as a percentage of the civilian
labour force – but not to the low levels that were considered ‘normal’ in the
immediate post-war years.

Changing social divisions

The discussion above suggests that the changing nature of work, including the
rising incidence of unemployment, has had a clear impact on the employment
structures of the developed economies, but what changes have taken place and
who has been most affected? These are complex questions and only fairly brief
answers can be provided here. It is important to appreciate, however, how
traditional socio-economic class divisions have changed over the past 30 years
or so, while the impact of post-industrial employment patterns on gender
divisions, alluded to above, need to be explored in more detail.
Where ‘social class’ is concerned, there are many ways of defining the term
(see Giddens, 2006), but for present purposes ‘occupation’ and particularly

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

the division between manual and non-manual employment is the most useful.
The decline in industrial employment implies a decline in manual work and
the system of class-based industrial relations associated with it. In short, as
‘working-class’ manual occupations based in manufacturing declined, the
strength of organised labour was simultaneously reduced. This process was
hastened and exacerbated in the UK in the 1980s by Conservative govern-
ments’ attacks on trade unions, the 1984–85 miners’ strike being the most
dramatic example of the assault on organised labour at a time when the days
of the traditional unionised, male working class were already numbered. The
speed of the decline of trade union membership in the UK is marked. In
1979, membership stood at 13.3 million, with 55 per cent of employees
belonging to a union. By 2011 these figures were 6.4 million and 26 per cent
respectively (Brownlie, 2012). An indicative aspect of this process is that, as
union strength has waned, those areas of employment that have remained
relatively highly unionised have been the professions and public sector occu-
pations (lawyers, doctors, teachers, civil servants), as opposed to what remains
of the manufacturing sector. In addition, women are now more likely than
men to be members of a trade union, with females in professional occupations
being one-and-a-half times more likely to be union members than their male
counterparts (Self and Zealey, 2007).
Similar patterns of trade union decline can be detected in many, although
not all, developed economies. The USA, for instance, has seen a marked
reduction in union membership from 36 per cent of the labour force in the
1950s to 16 per cent in the 1990s, and according the US Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 11.3 per cent in 2012. Particularly steep declines can be detected in
manufacturing and construction. Elsewhere, union membership fell in Sweden
and Germany – but actually increased in Denmark and the Netherlands.
According to the Federation of European Employers (2012), membership
rates are generally falling across Europe, with a dramatic – if unsurprising –
collapse in trade union membership in the latest countries to join the European
Union from Eastern Europe. While this decline cannot be attributed solely to
changing employment patterns – after all, political changes in Eastern Europe
have clearly influenced matters in the post-Communist states – this dimension
is crucial.
What, then, does the post-industrial socio-economic landscape look like in
terms of social structure? With the old unionised class politics in abeyance, if
by no means entirely absent, the picture is highly fragmented. The growth of
flexible and casual work has meant that individuals across a range of areas and
income groups have been affected by unemployment and insecurity. With the
threat of unemployment ever-present for all sectors of the labour market, it
has been easier for employers to demand more from their employees, with the
result that the amount of hours spent at work has risen while the amount of
work actually carried out during those hours has also gone up. This intensifi-
cation of work has been accompanied by greater income inequalities. Although
it is important to note that absolute living standards in the UK and other
developed economies have risen for most people over the past 30 years, the

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

absence of strong labour movements to maintain income levels for the low
paid has meant that income distribution has been increasingly ‘stretched’.
According to Carrera and Beaumont (2010, p. 3), ‘GDP per head in the UK
more than doubled in real terms’ between 1970 and 2009 – although it is
important to remember that, as a result of the economic downturn following
the banking crisis, gross domestic product (GDP) per head had dropped by
5.5 per cent to just below its 2004 level. However, according to information
derived from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Gini Coefficient – the
measure of overall income inequality in the UK – has risen to its highest level
since 1979, from 26 to 41 points (The Poverty Site, 2010).
In place of the single most significant twentieth-century division between
manual and non-manual occupations have come more fine-grained divisions
among different income groups. While those in certain professions – law,
financial services, medicine, and the higher echelons of business – have seen
their incomes rise markedly, even in the period of economic recession associ-
ated with the banking crisis of 2008, others in the lower reaches of the service
sector, where employment patterns tend to be more casual, have fared less
well. Employment among young people has fallen in the UK, with 16- to
17-year-olds experiencing a 24.9 per cent fall in employment rates between
1992 and 2011 (Spence, 2011). Of course, many women work in these latter
occupations, as do individuals from minority ethnic communities, with the
result that income divisions tend to be gendered and racialised. As Self and
Zealey (2007, p. 65) make clear,

. . . in 2004/5 in Great Britain, all ethnic minority groups had greater than
average likelihood of being in the bottom quintile group, with the Pakistani/
Bangladeshi group being particularly at risk. In addition, groups with greater
than average risks of being in the bottom quintile group in the UK were single
parent families and families where one or more adults and one or more of the
children were disabled.

The only way in which this picture of more subtle income divisions needs to
be qualified concerns not so much a divide between social classes, as one
between those who work (or have access to work) and those who do not. As
Rowlingson (2003, p. 15) stated, ‘another fairly new phenomenon in the
1980s and 1990s was the workless household [original emphasis]. Work has
polarised across households, as there has been a rise in the number of dual-
earner households and the number of no-earner households’. Rowlingson
goes on to note that ‘there has been a substantial increase in worklessness
among couples over the last 30 years’ with about ‘two-thirds . . . of the change
[being] caused by variations in access to employment for different types of
household’. Essentially, in better-off households women joined their partners
in employment, whereas ‘in worse-off households, men were joining their
partners in the home’.

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

If lone parents, who are another group that suffers from high unemploy-
ment rates, are added to those in workless households, it is possible to portray
the resulting divide between the ‘work rich’ and ‘work poor’ as a variation on
more traditional class divides. The phraseology used by some commentators,
such as Charles Murray in the USA, is considered by others – especially in the
UK – to be pejorative (Deacon, 2002; Lister, 2004). Murray (1994) refers to
certain key segments of the workless poor (he particularly singles out African-
Americans) as an ‘underclass’, arguing that individuals in this ‘class’ are distin-
guished by high rates of single parenthood, high divorce rates, high crime
rates, poor educational achievement, and dependency on welfare benefits.
One way of encouraging different behaviours, according to Murray, would be
to remove welfare support so that individuals had little choice but to find
work – in other words, the important issue is to alter the behaviour of irrespon-
sible individuals. Others, including the US sociologist William Julius Wilson
(1987), for example, while accepting that an ‘underclass’ might exist, never-
theless do not ascribe its existence to individual behaviour but to key ‘struc-
tural’ factors of the kind discussed in this chapter – most obviously the decline
of manufacturing employment and the associated rise of unemployment and
casual, low-paid jobs. Wilson also acknowledges that, in the USA, additional
difficulties have been arisen owing to the close association between ‘race’ and
poverty, although he argues that these, too, owe more to structural failings of
the economy than to the behaviours of African-American individuals and
communities.
Yet others (see Bagguley and Mann, 1992; Deacon, 2002; Lister, 2004;
Alcock, 2006) argue that the use of the term ‘underclass’ is dangerous and
should be avoided. For one thing, there is little empirical evidence to suggest
that the ‘underclass’ is a coherent class at all, but rather a series of different
groups (lone parents, the unemployed) who may experience particular kinds
of misfortune at different stages of the life cycle. Again, it is not clear that the
apparent behaviours associated with the ‘underclass’, such as lone parenthood
and high divorce rates, differ much from those found in other sections of
society. More importantly, perhaps, the tendency to use flimsy evidence to
label vulnerable people as irresponsible and ‘undeserving’ itself separates and
excludes them from the social mainstream – and this stigmatizing process can
hardly be expected to result in greater social inclusion or better understanding
of the challenges facing the most deprived sections of society.
Debates of this kind, stimulated as they are by the ever-changing socio-
economic environment, are highly significant, and relate directly to social
policy. In view of the sweeping changes that have occurred in the world of
work over the past 30 years, how should governments respond? Is it really the
case that the welfare states of the post-war era created a dependent ‘under-
class’? How should governments balance employers’ demands for a ‘flexible’
workforce with the problems, particularly for women, disabled people, and
minority ethnic communities, generated by unemployment and low pay? Is
there a way for welfare provision both to support the ‘new economy’ and
protect the interests of the most vulnerable?

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CONTROVERSY AND DEBATE

Charles Murray’s ‘underclass’ thesis rests on the assertion that a distinct and
separate class exists outside ‘normal’ society. This ‘class’ is characterised by
certain types of behaviour, which Murray deems unacceptable. High rates
of single parenthood, divorce, fatherless families, illegitimacy, crime, and
welfare dependency mean that this ‘class’ is both economically and cultur-
ally segregated. (For further details, see Murray, 1996a, 1996b.) Others, such
as Buckingham (1999), also argue that there is evidence of the existence of
an ‘underclass’ in the UK. Buckingham’s analysis of the National Child
Development Study indicated that there is good reason to distinguish between
a ‘working class’ and an ‘underclass’ in the UK – and evidence to suggest that
there are distinct patterns of family formation, commitment to work, and
political allegiance between the two classes.

Many academics, especially in the UK, have challenged these views. They
argue that there is no real evidence to support the conclusions advanced by
Murray and Buckingham, pointing to the fact that rising rates of divorce,
single parenthood, and illegitimacy are by no means confined to an ‘under-
class’, but characterise changes throughout society. They also argue that to
stigmatise groups and individuals in this way is inherently counter-productive.
(For further details, see Bagguley and Mann, 1992; Lister, 1996, 2004; Deacon,
2002; Levitas, 2005; Prideaux, 2005; Alcock, 2006.)

Examine the evidence that Murray uses to argue for the existence of an
‘underclass’ and then assess the evidence discussed by Buckingham. Consider
how accurate both accounts are by considering the arguments against the
existence of an ‘underclass’ by the critics mentioned above.

The changing nature of the welfare state

The changes discussed above have, over time, resulted in wide-ranging altera-
tions to the role and purpose of social policies in the developed economies.
What follows concentrates mainly on the UK because it constitutes one of the
more marked examples of how welfare arrangements developed in the late
1940s have changed to accommodate the challenges posed by changing
economic conditions and employment patterns. However, it is important to
understand that the majority of welfare states in the developed economies
have been confronted with the same difficulties and have responded in similar,
although not identical, ways.
At the most general level of analysis, social policies in the UK and other
welfare states have shifted from an orientation around ‘social protection’ to
one that is more concerned with ‘competition’. Commentators such as Jessop
(1994, 2002) and Cerny (1990, 2000) have discussed the ways in which

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states, faced with the mounting costs of welfare support in the face or rising
unemployment and falling economic growth, turned to forms of ‘welfare’ that
would support the changing economic environment rather than compensate
the victims of it. Jessop (1994) suggested that there has been a shift from what
is frequently referred to as the ‘Keynesian Welfare State’ to the ‘Schumpeterian
Workfare State’, while Cerny (1990) refers simply to the emergence of the
‘competition state’. In both cases, the point being made is that the role of the
state in the newly competitive capitalist world economy is one of securing and
maintaining the conditions for economic growth. In particular, the extension
of the free market and retreat from direct state intervention in economic
management has characterised state economic strategies in the developed
economies, and the conduct of social policy has been a key aspect of – indeed,
almost a metaphor for – this change. As Evans and Cerny (2003, p. 26) state:

The creation of the competition state involves a policy agenda which seeks to
provide the conditions that will help the state to adapt state action to cope
more effectively with what [are perceived] as global ‘realities’. Particular types
of policy change have thus risen to the top of the policy agenda . . . [including]
a shift . . . in the focal point of party and governmental politics away from the
general maximisation of welfare within a nation (full employment, redistribu-
tive transfer payments and social service provision) to the promotion of enter-
prise, innovation and profitability in both private and public sectors.

In other words, where competition is becoming increasingly global, domestic

economies ‘post-industrial’, and the nature of the workforce changing as a
result, social policy is used to work with the grain of the new economy rather
than to act as a countervailing force. It is in this way that those claiming
unemployment benefit have been turned into ‘job-seekers’ and labour market
policies have been re-orientated to ‘activate’ the unemployed. In the UK, the
Job-Seekers Allowance (1996) was the first attempt by policy-makers to
‘encourage’ those claiming unemployment benefit actively to seek work.
Under the New Labour governments between 1997 and 2010, this formula
was increasingly refined in the shape of various ‘New Deals’ (for the young
unemployed, the long-term unemployed, lone parents, and disabled people),
which have required claimants to attend regular work-based interviews and
take active responsibility for finding paid employment – with penalties being
imposed on those who refused to attend interviews or accept job offers. This
approach has been considerably strengthened, but by no means radically
altered, by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government that
came to office in May 2010. Similar systems have developed in many other
countries, including the USA and Australia (from which the UK learned a
great deal), and also Germany and France. In each case, too, these policy
changes have been accompanied by a political rhetoric that emphasises the
dangers of welfare dependency and lack of individual responsibility, while

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stressing the benefits of work, the free market, low taxation, and workforce
flexibility.
On one reading, then, welfare has become more ‘conditional’ (Dwyer and
Ellison, 2009). Certain goods and services are not supplied as of right but
according to acceptable behaviour, and there is a greater awareness of how
welfare support can create dependency, as ‘right-of-centre’ think tanks such as
Policy Exchange make clear (see Doctor and Oakley, 2011). Do these changes
mean that Murray’s ‘underclass’ thesis has been vindicated? The short answer
is ‘not entirely’. Although New Labour governments in the UK clearly
endorsed elements of the ‘underclass’ analysis, and this approach has been
further elevated by the ‘strivers’ and ‘shirkers’ rhetoric of the UK Coalition
government (Osborne, 2013), it is too simplistic to argue that welfare reform
over the past decade has been driven entirely by it. Ruth Levitas (2005), for
instance, is correct to point out that although evidence of a ‘moral underclass
discourse’ can be found in New Labour governments’ social policies – the
stress on ‘conditionality’ stands as evidence of this tendency – it is equally
clear that other ‘discourses’ have been present in discussions of welfare reform.
For example, the emphasis on social inclusion was a key feature of welfare
debates during the New Labour years, as governments reacted to the need to
maintain social stability and cohesion in the face of increasing global economic
pressures. And it could be argued that the theme of inclusion has been main-
tained, albeit in a rather different idiom, by David Cameron’s apparent
favouring of the ‘Big Society’ (Ellison, 2011) – although at the time of writing,
it appears that this dimension of the Coalition government’s social policy in
the UK has atrophied in the face of the perceived need to cut welfare spending.
Nevertheless, in the current environment of economic austerity, it is clear
that, in their efforts to cut welfare spending, governments quickly point to the
drawbacks of ‘welfare dependency’ in a manner that would not have been
contemplated a generation or two ago. UK governments, for instance, have
followed their counterparts in the USA and Australia, in encouraging a
number of social groups hitherto not embraced by welfare-to-work policies –
disabled people and lone parents being the key examples – to take offers of
work or face penalties for not doing so.

Further challenges: social policy, family structures,

and demographic change

Whether in fact the stress on paid employment is really a panacea for ‘solving’
economic and social challenges that owe their existence, as suggested, to the
changing employment structures of post-industrial economies is, to say the
least, unclear. Although the central objectives of welfare reform in many coun-
tries have undoubtedly been to improve access to work – and the take-up of
work – it is evident that other changes in economy and society also have an
impact on how social policy is understood and perceived – and here it is not so
obvious that paid work offers a solution to the difficulties that welfare states are

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currently facing. The discussion that follows explores two key changes. First,
the changing structure of the family has forced policy-makers to confront tradi-
tional assumptions about the role of women and the nature of ‘care’. Second,
certain demographic changes have led to the emergence of greater ethnic and
cultural diversity, while other demographic shifts are beginning to impact
upon the ability of post-war welfare systems to provide security in old age.

The changing family

With the partial exceptions of the Scandinavian systems, post-war welfare
states essentially allocated women to the private sphere of the home. The
necessary corollary of the full-time, permanently employed male ‘bread-
winner’ is the unpaid female domestic worker who takes care of the children
and other family members. In return, she receives certain types of support in
the form of access to health care and an old age pension not in her own right
but as a function of contributions taken in the form of social insurance from
her husband’s income. Superficially, it could be argued that this system
worked. Certainly for the first 20 years or so after the end of the Second
World War, the breadwinner model was not explicitly challenged, and welfare
states in the UK, USA, Australia, and the greater part of Western Europe
established social insurance arrangements that essentially confined married
women to the home. However, from around the mid 1960s onwards, changes
began to occur that were to result in mounting criticism of both the model
and the assumptions about the family and the role of women in society that
underpinned it.
These assumptions about the structure of the family in the post-war world
were largely based on quite recent perceptions of its role – family structures
in previous eras being radically different (Steel and Kidd, 2000; see also
Chapter 14). So, for example, the ideal type of family unit was perceived to be
the small ‘nuclear family’ consisting of two adults and roughly two children.
The relationship between the husband/father and wife/mother was typically
portrayed as based on sexual attraction and romantic attachment, with respon-
sibility for the family’s economic wellbeing allocated to the male worker and
for its emotional or ‘affective’ wellbeing to the wife and mother. A number of
potentially problematic issues with this depiction of the family were taken for
granted. These included:

■ all families in all cultures either are, or should be, based on the nuclear unit;
■ women are essentially domestic creatures, content in their caring and
nurturing roles;
■ all families are based on primary (hetero)sexual attachments;
■ (hetero)sexual attachments should be monogamous;
■ the nuclear family is the most stable social unit yet to have evolved and, by
virtue of its flexibility and capacity for mobility, is better suited than other
family types to the demands of industrial society.

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

There is no need to go into too much detail here to see how misplaced assump-
tions of this kind have turned out to be. Leaving aside the fact that the nuclear
family is mainly a Western phenomenon – different family structures operate
in different cultures and parts of the world – it has become clear over the past
30 years that the perception of gender roles that lies at the heart of the nuclear
family is open to challenge. From the mid 1960s, with their increasing ability
to control contraception as a result of the pill, and with the labour market
beginning to offer greater opportunities than had existed hitherto, women
began to speak out against the oppressive nature of ‘a domestic life bound up
with child care, domestic drudgery and a husband who only occasionally put
in an appearance and with who, little emotional communication was possible’
(Giddens, 2006, p. 211). This ‘speaking out’ took a number of forms.
Certainly the emergence of feminism as a major social movement, starting in
the USA and spreading to the UK and the Western world, served to crystallise
and advance women’s demands for greater equality both within the home and
outside it. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Germaine
Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1969) formed the intellectual basis for a range of
increasingly radical demands for equality of opportunity and equal pay to an
end to male patriarchy in the private and public spheres (Barrett and McIntosh,
1991). Radical feminists, in particular (Firestone, 1970), not only challenged
assumptions about the domestic orientation of women but also their predis-
position to monogamous heterosexual attachments, while socialist feminists
argued that the patriarchal nuclear family was essentially a creature of indus-
trial capitalism, using female domestic labour to ‘reproduce’ the male work-
force and so perpetuate the capitalist mode of production.
Looking specifically to the changing context for social policy, it is clear that
the nuclear family, understood as a stable, monogamous, heterosexual unit
comprising two married adults and their offspring, began a rapid decline from
the 1970s onwards. The erosion of this institution is relatively easy to trace in
the form of the rising incidence of divorce, single parenthood, and cohabita-
tion. In the UK, ‘first marriage’ rates (where both partners are marrying for
the first time) have fallen from a peak of 426,000 in 1940 to 150,000 in 2009.
Overall marriage rates have fallen from a high of 480,000 in 1940 to 230,000
in 2009. Divorce rates rose dramatically from a low of 24,000 in 1958,
climbing to 50,000 by 1968, rising steadily to a peak of 165,000 in 1993.
Thereafter, however, the rate has fallen consistently, standing at 155,000 in
2000 and 113,900 in 2009 (Beaumont, 2011a). Of course, divorce rates are
by no means the only indicator of the ‘state of marriage’ and the changing
state of the family. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics,
following the Civil Partnership Act of 2004, there are now 66,000 same-sex
couples in civil partnerships (ONS, 2012), suggesting a desire on the part
of these couples for formal recognition of their relationship. It is also the
case that there has been a rise in the number of individuals forming new rela-
tionships and either choosing to re-marry or cohabit. Remarriages for one
or both partners increased by a third (to 120,000) between 1971 and 1972,
and peaked at 141,000 in 1988. Since that time the figures have fallen

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somewhat – to approximately 80,000 in 2009. Perhaps the most dramatic

figures are those that chart the rise of cohabitation. The numbers of non-
married men and women under the age of 60 who are cohabiting has risen
from 1.5 million in 1996 to 2.9 million in 2012 (ONS, 2012). Significantly,
too, the percentage of dependent children in cohabiting couples rose from 8
per cent in 1996 to 14 per cent in 2012. Finally, there has also been a marked
rise in the numbers of people who form single-parent families. The propor-
tion of children living in lone-parent families increased from 7 per cent in
1972 to 24 per cent in 2012 (ONS, 2012).
Changes of the kind discussed here can also be observed elsewhere in the
developed economies, although not always to such a marked extent. Thus,
divorce rates have risen throughout the European Union, although the pattern
is uneven. Northern countries typically have higher rates of divorce than
those in Catholic Southern Europe, and marked rises can also be seen in
certain former communist states, such as Poland and Slovakia. Numbers of
divorces have also risen in the USA, although there has been a consistent, if
slight, decline since the mid 1990s. Again, lone-parent families have increased
in Europe with the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Finland leading the way,
while ‘in the EU-27 some 38.3% of children were born outside marriage
in 2010’ – the corresponding figure for 1990 being 17.4 per cent (Eurostat,
2012, p. 24).
To this already complex picture should be added
the important dimension of ethnic and cultural diver-
STOP AND THINK
sity. Certainly in Britain, but also in many other coun-
tries, populations have become increasingly diverse as The changing nature of the family
those migrant groups that arrived in the early years of Arguments that there has been a
the post-war period become settled second- and third- ‘revolution’ in the nature of the
generation communities. New waves of migration family and family life are not
have added to these communities over the years, while exaggerated – but why should social
new migrant populations are emerging as a result of policies accommodate these changes?
the expansion of the European Union into the former
Perhaps, as the right-leaning Centre
communist countries of Eastern Europe. Clearly, atti-
for Social Justice has suggested, social
tudes to marriage and the family differ among different
policies should protect ‘core values’ –
groups. Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi communi-
including marriage and the traditional
ties display higher rates of marriage than either White
family. On this reading, social policies
or mixed communities, and significantly lower rates of
should aim to rebuild fragile
cohabiting and single parenthood. Conversely, Black
relationships, encourage marriage and
African and Black Caribbean populations have lower
responsible fatherhood, and
rates of marriage and cohabiting and higher rates of
discourage divorce and the formation
lone parenthood – but these trends need to be under-
of ‘non-traditional’ families.
stood in the cultural context of the extended family
structures and kinship networks that characterise See Centre for Social Justice (2006),
Black Caribbean groups in particular. On a different Breakdown Britain, and Centre for
note, in the more sexually tolerant climate of the later Social Justice (2007a, 2007b),
1990s and early twenty-first century, gay and lesbian Breakthrough Britain.
couples have begun to adopt children in greater

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

numbers, while individuals who may have had children in heterosexual rela-
tionships are rather more likely to redefine their sexuality and move with their
offspring into same-sex relationships.
Taking all these changes into account, it appears that the ‘traditional’
nuclear family is far from being the typical family form in many, if not all, of
the developed economies. In fact, sociologists have been arguing for some
time that this model – if it ever really was dominant – has now given way to
very different types of family structure characterised not only by ‘natural’
parents and their offspring, but also by step-parents, half-brothers and half-
sisters, and the grandparents and other family members associated with past
marriages and cohabitations (Williams, 2004). The most important feature of
contemporary family life, perhaps, is its innate ‘flexibility’. When discussing
changes of the kind considered here – and especially when categorising social
groups in particular ways – it is easy to suppose that these groups are somehow
‘fixed’ and unchanging. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Rising divorce rates have to be set in the context of re-marriage, cohabitation,
and changes in the shape of the families involved (Smart and Neale, 1999).
While it continues to be true that, at any one time, the majority of families
continue to be two-parent, heterosexual couples and their children, these
‘families’ are increasingly likely to be ‘reconstituted’ with step-children,
ex-husbands/wives/partners participating – one way or another – in ‘family
life’. Where lone parents are concerned, rising overall numbers say little about
the key feature of lone parenthood – that it is a potentially fluid state.
Depending on the reasons why women become lone parents – covering a
range of possibilities from widowhood, through divorce or separation to active
choice – this type of family is the most likely to be reconstituted through (re)
marriage or cohabitation.
Where social policy is concerned, the changes to the family examined here
present serious challenges (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 13). Without
doubt, the breadwinner model of welfare is not appropriate to family struc-
tures that have become so far removed from the traditional ‘nuclear family’. In
its place, and over time, governments have begun (more or less reluctantly) to
recognise that a more individualised system of welfare support is required if
women are to have the recognition that they deserve as both paid workers and
unpaid carers, and children are also to be properly supported. However,
progress has been piecemeal at best, with social policy provision tending to lag
behind the social and economic changes that have been the key subject of this
chapter. As Rowlingson (2003) suggests, the following features are necessary
for an approach to social policy that would treat the individual, and no longer
the family, as the prime unit of welfare:

■ gender equality and justice in the welfare state and within the family;
■ work–life balance;
■ labour supply;
■ anti-poverty alleviation;

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■ the value that should be attributed to care and caring by government on

behalf of society as a whole.

With the exception of Sweden, which treats both men and women as indi-
vidual citizens able to receive benefits, goods, and services in their own right,
the majority of welfare systems are some way from being able to make such a
claim. Precisely how the welfare system operates in the UK will be discussed
in later chapters, but suffice it to say here that much greater and more generous
attention would need to be paid to the following matters if British social
policy was to be moved permanently beyond the post-war breadwinner model:

■ rights to maternity and paternity leave, with fathers in particular having the
right to substantial periods of time for child care duties;
■ the availability and affordability of care for children under five years of age;
■ more generous remuneration for those who undertake caring roles in the
home;
■ rules governing the payment of tax credits and other income-enhancing
measures (which remain subject to couple-based assessment).

Demographic change
The final area of crucial significance for an understanding of the socio-
economic context of social policy concerns ‘demography’. Demographic
changes are particularly important ‘because they alter the size and composi-
tion of the population who contribute to and use the services provided by
welfare states’ (Liddiard, 2007, p. 132). In short, in the context of (inevitably)
scarce resources, the precise amount of spending on different services is partly
dictated by the numbers of potential users involved. So, for example, numbers
of school children will influence the amount and nature of expenditure on
education, while a rise or fall in the numbers of retired people will impact
upon health and pensions policies. Certain aspects of population change in
the UK and other developed economies over the past 50 years or so have been
dramatic – and two examples will be examined here. First, migration in and
out of a country can result in the emergence (and in some cases the decline) of
communities with different cultural assumptions and lifestyles, and move-
ments of this kind are likely to influence social and political debates about the
nature of welfare as well as the kinds of support that society may be expected
to provide. Second, perhaps the most compelling issue in terms of its urgency
is population ageing – and this will be discussed in some detail below.
UK migrations patterns altered considerably over the course of the twen-
tieth century. For much of the century, more people left Britain than entered
the country but this pattern had reversed by the 1990s. As Beaumont (2011b,
p. 8) notes, between 1993–94 and 2009–10 ‘there has been a bigger inflow to
the UK than outflow’, the most dramatic incidence being the 260,000 people
who entered the UK from the EU Accession countries in 2006. However,

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since that year, the apparent increase in net migration (the difference between
those entering and leaving the country) can be explained by a fall in emigra-
tion rather than increases in the numbers of people coming into the UK.
Of course not all inward-migration comes from the European Union. The
need to attract those from overseas with particular skills that the UK labour
market lacks, together with the greater awareness among those in developing
countries of the relative wealth of Northern and Western economies, and
consequences of (civil) war and political oppression in key parts of the
world, have all contributed to increased inward-migration. In social policy
terms, increasing numbers of migrants can increase demand for social goods
and services, which, in turn, can lead to short-term
difficulties for service providers in those areas where
new migrant populations settle (although it is equally
STOP AND THINK the case that immigration can bring important
A way forward for immigration? skills and other benefits to destination countries).
As at early 2013, the UK used a points- Conversely, those groups which over a period of time
based system to facilitate judgements move from first-generation ‘immigrant’ status to
about immigration decisions. Points become settled second- and third-generation citizens,
are awarded to individuals according present rather different issues. In the UK, for example,
to their status defined in the although individuals from different minority ethnic
following categories: groups comprise about 8 per cent of the total popula-
tion, the great majority have been born in the UK
■ Tier 1: ‘High value migrants’ –
and enjoy full UK citizenship. Here, as initial phases
investors, entrepreneurs and
of immigration give way to increasingly settled,
exceptionally talented people can
permanent communities, the population as a whole
apply to enter the UK without the
comes to be characterised by greater ethnic and
need of a job offer.
cultural diversity.
■ Tier 2: Contains four categories of Demographic changes of this kind raise a number
skilled worker: general, Minister of of issues for social policy, not least because the
Religion, sportsperson, intra- needs of different minority ethnic groups have to be
company transfer. understood and accommodated differently (see also
■ Tier 4: Overseas students with Chapter 17). Although individuals from all estab-
confirmed acceptance from an lished minority ethnic communities generally fare less
approved institution to study in well than their counterparts in the majority White
the UK. population in terms of access to employment and
■ Tier 5: Youth mobility and various welfare goods and services, differences of treatment
categories of temporary workers: among these communities, as well as between them and
people coming to the UK to satisfy the White population, are marked. For example,
primarily non-economic objectives. although all minority ethnic groups suffer from higher
levels of unemployment than the White population,
■ ‘Other’: Domestic workers, contract
Bangladeshi communities experience the highest
seamen, representatives of
incidence of worklessness (closely followed by the
overseas business.
Pakistani and Black Caribbean populations). Again,
How necessary is a system of this type looking at educational attainment rates, large differ-
in the UK today? ences can be found among ethnic groups. At GCSE
level, African-Caribbean, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi

30
 NI C K ELLI S O N

children do less well than White students – but Indian and Chinese students
do better than any of these groups. Where the highest qualifications are
concerned, 34 per cent of Chinese men and 32 per cent of Indian men had a
degree in 2005 compared with 9 per cent of Black Caribbean and 13 per cent
of Bangladeshi men; figures for women are similar (Self and Zealey, 2007).
While it is certainly true that greater attention has been paid recently to how
welfare institutions treat people from minority ethnic communities – much
greater attention being paid to the incidence of ‘institutional racism’, for
example – the challenge is to ensure that social policies provide different
communities with the resources and opportunities required to eradicate
poverty and allow individuals to realise their full potential. Many of these
issues are discussed in greater depth in Chapter 17.
A different, and in some ways more challenging, demographic problem
now confronting most developed economies is population ageing. This
phenomenon has two main causes. First, it is certainly the case that people
in the developed economies of the West and North now live longer than
their parents or grandparents did. Second, however, fertility rates have been
declining for some time; indeed, fertility fell for much of the twentieth
century – with the marked exception of the post-war ‘baby boom’. The
combination of these two factors is expected to lead to a near-doubling of the
‘old age dependency ratio’ (OADR) in many countries, which in simple terms
means that there will be fewer and fewer people of working age to support
increasing numbers of people in retirement and old age. Of course, now that
the first cohorts of the baby boom generation are beginning to hit retirement,
the potential difficulties are easy to see. As Pierson (2001, p. 91) writes:

The key argument in relation to ageing societies is that at some point in the
next fifty years in all developed societies and many developing countries the
costs of supporting a growing elderly population out of the current produc-
tion of a much smaller active workforce will place on the latter a burden
which is either unsustainable or . . . politically unacceptable.

Any examination of population ageing can quickly become highly technical

and impenetrable – and it is important to point out that some commentators
are more sceptical about its possible impact than others (Bonoli, 2000).
Nevertheless, it is important to consider two particularly significant issues that
impinge directly on social policy. First, in many countries – Australia and the
USA as well as Northern and Western Europe – rising OADRs mean that
the arrangements for old age pension provision put in place in the aftermath
of the Second World War are likely to be inadequate. In short, the money
produced by working populations through taxation and other surpluses
from increased production will not be sufficient to pay the pensions and
associated costs of health and social care for those either in, or nearing, retire-
ment. Second, however, to change arrangements that have been established

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for the best part of 50 years is exceedingly difficult. Any dramatic alteration
in pensions policies can have a significant impact on those who, having
contributed through taxation or social insurance contributions to preceding
generations’ pensions, see their own assumptions about their income in
old age undermined. To do nothing, on the other hand, would impose
equally unacceptable costs on younger generations who would be faced
with much higher taxes and insurance contributions. National governments,
in other words, are caught between a rock and a hard place! Failure to act
could lead to the disenchantment of economically active populations and the
collapse of the unspoken inter-generational agreement about paying for old
age, while to alter existing systems could provoke the wrath of those nearing
retirement.
In the event – and unsurprisingly – governments appear to be opting for a
mixture of policies that will certainly reduce state pension commitments over
time as greater reliance is placed upon occupational and private provision. So,
in the UK, for example, governments have discouraged over-reliance on the
contributory state pension for the past 25 years, shifting away from an
earnings-related system in the 1980s to a minimal (and declining) basic state
pension that can be enhanced by means-tested supplements for those without
alternative sources of income in old age. Meanwhile, UK governments have
also attempted to persuade those in work to make provision for occupational
pensions where employers offer them, or take out private pensions plans.
Elsewhere, governments have been more generous, although the principle that
a pensions system should be arranged among a number of ‘tiers’ – state, occu-
pational, and private – rather than relying too heavily on any one of these is
becoming universal. Australia, for example, alongside the basic ‘Age Pension’,
has established a system of mandatory superannuation, with employers and
employees contributing to approved private funds, which now covers the vast
majority of Australians. After a lengthy consultation process that lasted
throughout the latter part of the 1990s, Sweden radically reformed its pension
system to cater for the difficulties posed by population ageing – although the
full effects of the new system will not be felt for some years. Again, various
tiers are involved, including a reorganised ‘Guaranteed Pension’ that sits
alongside a contributory scheme that has both state- and privately-funded
elements. Other policies being adopted – particularly in France, Italy, and
Germany – involve downward pressure on early retirement, an increase in the
official retirement age (or encouragement to work past the official age of
retirement), and the general encouragement of ‘active ageing’ (Ellison, 2006).
Generally speaking, the phenomenon of population ageing offers a particu-
larly good example of how social policy constantly needs to be adjusted to take
account of wider social and economic changes. In the case of pensions, it is
important to understand that the pace of change is in fact quite slow – after
all, the retirement of the baby boom generation will take over 10 years to
complete and the impact of changing OADRs will continue for at least
another 30 years. However, this apparently gradual process has to be under-
stood in the context of how long certain forms of social policy take to establish

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

and properly embed. Once embedded, whole generations develop expecta-

tions about life in retirement based on the policies they have grown up with.
It is not surprising, then, that decisions to alter social policies, although they
may be deemed necessary by an analysis of the changing socio-economic
environment, are intensely complex, involving significant political as well
as economic calculations about the impact of new arrangements as well as an
assessment of likely policy ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.

Conclusion

This chapter has examined some important dimensions of the changing socio-
economic context of social policy. Looking back over the past 30–50 years, it
is clear just how much societies in the economically developed world have
altered. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to argue that assumptions about the
nature of working life, the relationships between genders and generations,
what is understood by the ‘family’ and family life – and even the character of
entire national populations – have changed out of all recognition.
So, what does attention to the socio-economic environment say about
the nature of social policy? For one thing, it points to an area of politics
and policy-making that is, of necessity, dynamic. Social policies are never
‘settled’ for long and, of course, in a world increasingly characterised by a
range of global pressures (see Chapter 24), it is important that welfare systems
remain able to respond flexibly to the needs of vulnerable populations even as
policy-makers struggle with inevitably scarce resources. Second, in contrast to
the welfare pioneers of 60 years ago, who believed that welfare states were
inherently progressive, providing welcome relief from the rigours of market
solutions for vulnerable sections of the populations, it is possible to see now
that this perception is not always accurate. Indeed, welfare systems can be
highly conservative forces depending on their institutional make-up. It is clear
from the discussion of the changing nature of employment, or changing
family structures, that social policies make assumptions about work and
gender roles that turn out to be based on particular understandings of social
needs and values that themselves are historically specific. Far from always
being at the forefront of societal change, welfare arrangements can act as
brakes upon it – although whether this fact is necessarily problematic is a
matter for debate. Finally, it is important to be clear that welfare states are
inherently political projects. If the socio-economic environment contributes
significantly to establishing the overall framework within which discussion
can take place, how this environment is ‘interpreted’, who does the ‘inter-
preting’, and the priorities subsequently established are decided through polit-
ical argument and struggle. For this reason, debates about the role and purpose
of social policy should not be confined to the realm of representative politics
but should extend into broader forms of ‘social politics’, because decisions
about welfare affect such a vast range of populations, communities, interests,
and movements.

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

Summary

This chapter has shown how a range of socio-economic factors creates an

overarching framework for political arguments about the role and nature of
social policy. The discussion has also established how rapid social and
economic changes can make welfare systems and the assumptions that
informed their development appear outdated. The key issues explored here
include:

■ The changing nature of employment in many economically developed

countries, the decline of full male employment in manufacturing industry
in particular. This decline has been offset by a rise in service sector employ-
ment – the change also being accompanied by the increasing numbers of
women in some form (full-time, part-time or casual) of work. Rising female
and falling male employment has challenged the basis of the ‘breadwinner
model’ of welfare – forcing national governments to develop social policies
that are less dependent on the male earner.
■ These changes were associated with others – specifically the emergence of
a central division between ‘work rich’ and work poor’ households. A
key argument is whether the shift in employment patterns has led to the
development of an ‘underclass’, as those most vulnerable to unemploy-
ment in the ‘new economy’ become increasingly dependent on welfare.
■ While it is difficult to argue that a distinct ‘underclass’ has emerged, partic-
ularly in the UK and European societies, it is nevertheless clear that
changing employment patterns have altered the nature of social policy and
the shape of welfare states. Specifically, welfare systems have become less
‘protective’ and more ‘competitive’ – and in so doing it may be that neo-
liberal and conservative critiques of the dangers of welfare dependency have
at least partly influenced policy-makers.
■ Changing employment patterns are partly, but by no means wholly,
responsible for changing family structures. Greater access to employment
has encouraged women to leave the home in ever-increasing numbers, but
a higher degree of economic independence has been accompanied by
greater sexual freedom as a result of the universal availability of contracep-
tion in many countries. Both of these factors contributed to nothing less
than a revolution in women’s perception of their roles and a ‘cultural revo-
lution’ that saw the traditional model of the ‘nuclear family’ rapidly under-
mined in favour of a range of family types arising from the increasing
incidence of divorce and re-marriage, single parenthood, civil and same-sex
partnerships.
■ Demographic changes associated with the emergence of second- and third-
generation minority ethnic communities stemming from initial periods of
inward migration have contributed to greater ethnic and cultural diversity
in many of the developed economies. The presence of settled ethnic

34
 NI C K ELLI S O N

communities raises issues about the nature of social policy and whether
policies are sufficiently sensitive to minority ethnic needs.
■ A further dimension of demographic change concerns population ageing.
That the numbers of those either in or nearing retirement are rising is not
in doubt – the real issue is how governments are responding to rising
OADRs. Whether or not population ageing poses a ‘real’ threat to existing
arrangements in the developed welfare states is not entirely the point. The
issue is that governments think that ageing populations will create difficul-
ties in time to come, and are consequently taking measures to reduce their
commitments to those nearing retirement while encouraging individuals to
provide for themselves in old age by contributing to different ‘tiers’ of
provision. In many countries, these developments have led to significant
changes in traditional post-war pensions policies.

Discussion and review

■ What have been the key changes in employment patterns over the past 50
years and how have these affected welfare state organisation in developed
welfare systems?
■ In what ways have women’s roles changed over the past 50 years and what
factors in your view have been responsible for the changes?
■ To what extent have changing employment patterns contributed to the
emergence of an ‘underclass’?
■ Consider how family structures have changed since the 1960s. What impli-
cations do the changing structure of the family have for social policy?
■ Why might demographic changes such as the increasing size of minority
ethnic communities or population ageing have an impact on perceptions of
welfare and social policy-making?

References

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Amin, A. (ed.) (1994) Post-Fordism, Blackwell, Oxford.
Bagguley, P. and Mann, K. (1992) ‘Idle thieving bastards? Scholarly represen-
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pp. 113–26.
Barrett, M. and McIntosh, M. (1991) The Anti-social Family, Verso, London.
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Beaumont, J. (2011b) ‘Population’, in J. Beaumont (ed.) Social Trends 41,
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Bonoli, G. (2000) The Politics of Pension Reform, Cambridge University Press,
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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

Brownlie, N. (2012) Trade Union Membership 2011, Department for

Business, Innovation and Skills, London.
Buckingham, A. (1999) ‘Is there an underclass in Britain?’, British Journal of
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Carrera, S. and Beaumont, J. (2010) ‘Income and wealth’, in J. Beaumont
(ed.) Social Trends 41, Office for National Statistics, London.
Centre for Social Justice (2006) Breakdown Britain: Interim Report on the State
of the Nation, Centre for Social Justice, London.
Centre for Social Justice (2007a) Breakthrough Britain: Ending the Costs of
Social Breakdown: Overview, Centre for Social Justice, London.
Centre for Social Justice (2007b) Breakthrough Britain: Ending the Costs of
Social Breakdown: Vol. 1. Family Breakdown, Centre for Social Justice,
London.
Cerny, P. (1990) The Changing Architecture of Politics, Sage, London.
Cerny, P. (2000) ‘Restructuring the political arena: globalization and the
paradoxes of the competition state’, in R. Germain (ed.) Globalization and
its Critics, Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Deacon, A. (2002) Perspectives on Welfare, Open University Press, Buckingham.
Doctor, G. and Oakley, M. (2011) Something for Nothing: Reinstating
Conditionality for Jobseekers, Policy Exchange, London.
Dwyer, P. and Ellison, N. (2009) ‘Work and welfare: the Rights and respon-
sibilities of unemployment in the UK’, in M. Giugni and P. Statham (eds.)
The Politics of Unemployment in Europe: Policy Issues and Collective Action,
Ashgate, Aldershot.
Ellison, N. (2006) The Transformation of Welfare States?, Routledge,
London.
Ellison, N. (2011) ‘The Conservative Party and the “Big Society” ’, in
C. Holden, M. Kilkey and G. Ramia (eds.) Social Policy Review 23, Policy
Press, Bristol.
Eurostat (2012) Marriage and Divorce Statistics, available at http://epp.eurostat.
ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Marriage_and_divorce_statistics
[accessed 3 April 2013].
Evans, M. and Cerny, P. (2003) ‘Globalization and social policy’, in
N. Ellison and C. Pierson (eds.) Developments in British Social Policy 2,
Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Federation of European Employers (2012) Trades Unions in Europe, available
at http://www.fedee.com/tradeunions.html [accessed 5 April 2013].
Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex, Bantam, New York.
Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Giddens, A. (2006) Sociology, Polity, Cambridge.
Greer, G. (1969) The Female Eunuch, Flamingo, London.
Jessop, B. (1994) ‘The Schumpeterian workfare state’, in R. Burrows and
I. Loader (eds.) Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State?, Routledge,
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Jessop, B. (2002) The Future of the Capitalist State, Polity, Cambridge.

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 NI C K ELLI S O N

Levitas, R. (2005) The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour,
Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Liddiard, M. (2007) ‘Welfare, media and culture’, in J. Baldock, N. Manning
and S. Vickerstaff (eds.) Social Policy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lister, R. (ed.) (1996) Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing
Debate, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, London.
Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Polity, Cambridge.
Murray, C. (1994) Losing Ground (10th anniversary edition), Basic Books,
New York.
Murray, C. (1996a) ‘The emerging British underclass’, in R. Lister (ed.)
Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate, IEA Health and
Welfare Unit, London.
Murray, C. (1996b) ‘Underclass: the crisis deepens’, in R. Lister (ed.) Charles
Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate, IEA Health and Welfare
Unit, London.
OECD (1996) Historical Statistics, 1960–1994, OECD, Paris.
OECD (2012) Employment and Labour Statistics, available at http://0-www.
oecd-ilibrary.org.wam.leeds.ac.uk/employment/data/oecd-employment-and-
labour-market-statistics_lfs-data-en [accessed 5 April 2013].
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2012) Statistical Bulletin: Families and
Households, 2012, available at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/family-
demography/families-and-households/2012/stb-families-households.html
[accessed 3 April 2013].
Osborne, G. (2013) Speech on Changes to the Tax and Benefit System,
2 April, available at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_35_13.htm
[accessed 7 April 2013].
Pierson, C. (2001) Hard Choices: Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Polity,
Cambridge.
Prideaux, S. (2005) Not So New Labour? A Sociological Critique of New
Labour’s Policy and Practice, Policy Press, Bristol.
Rowlingson, K. (2003) ‘“From cradle to grave”: social security over the life
cycle’, in J. Millar (ed.) Understanding Social Security: Issues for Policy and
Practice, Policy Press, Bristol.
Self, A. and Zealey, L. (eds.) (2007) Social Trends 37, Office for National
Statistics, London.
Smart, C. and Neale, B. (1999) Family Fragments?, Polity, Cambridge.
Spence, A. (2011) ‘Labour market’, in J. Beaumont (ed.) Social Trends 41,
Office for National Statistics, London.
Steel, L. and Kidd, W. (2000) The Family, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
The Poverty Site (2010) Income Inequalities, available at http://www.poverty.
org.uk/09/index.shtml [accessed 31 March 2013].
Williams, F. (2004) Rethinking Families, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation,
London.
Wilson, W.J. (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL.

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 S OC IO- E C ON OM IC C ON T E X T OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

Further reading

Crompton, R., Gallie, D. and Purcell, K. (1996) Changing Forms of

Employment: Organisations, Skills and Gender, Routledge, London. This
work looks at the trends that underlie pressures around changes to employ-
ment and employment-related institutions.
Deacon, A. and Williams, F. (eds.) (2004) Themed section on ‘Care, values
and the future of welfare’, Social Policy and Society, Vol. 3, No. 4. This
section of the journal draws on a 5-year research programme to consider
changes in parenting and partnering and their policy implications.
Levitas, R. (2005) The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour,
Palgrave, Basingstoke. This book examines differing conceptions of social
inclusion under the New Labour governments and the ways in which they
responded to social exclusion.
Murray, C. (1996) ‘The emerging British underclass’, in R. Lister (ed.) Charles
Murray and the Underclass Debate, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, London.
Murray’s work was influential in sparking debate about the ‘underclass’.
Pierson, C. (2001) Hard Choices: Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Polity,
Cambridge. Within a consideration of social democracy, this book exam-
ines the challenges posed by demographic change and globalisation.
Williams, F. (2004) Rethinking Families, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation,
London. This book outlines the major trends around families, the effects
of these, and their implications for social policy.

Useful websites

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ – this general reference to The Guardian’s website

(Guardian Unlimited) is included mainly because the easy search facilities
provide swift access to news and commentary about key social policy issues.
Guardian Society, published each Wednesday, also carries important news
and information about social policy matters.
http://0-www.oecd-ilibrary.org.wam.leeds.ac.uk/employment/data/oecd-
employment-and-labour-market-statistics_lfs-data-en – the OECD is an
excellent source of comparative statistical material. This website provides
employment data about all OECD countries in historical and contempo-
rary perspective.
http://ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/social-trends-rd/social-trends/social-trends-41/index.
html – the current issue of Social Trends can be downloaded free. It carries a
wealth of detail about core areas of UK society and social policy.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ – a more challenging website that provides
access to the full range of UK Government statistical information.

38
 CHAPTER 3

The Politics and

Governance of
Social Policy
Catherine Bochel and Guy Daly

Learning objectives

■ To describe the structures within which social policies are made

■ To explore changes to the government of social policy from 1979
■ To consider a range of influences on the making and implementation
of social policies
■ To introduce a number of models that can help us understand the
nature of the governance of social policy

Chapter overview

Both social policy and politics are closely tied to decisions about
the make-up of society and the distribution of resources (including
income and wealth) within it. Each is therefore concerned with the
appropriateness of social arrangements and the means by which these are
determined. Within the political system there are a variety of forces that

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impact upon social policy – changes of government inevitably bring

different policy priorities and approaches, pressure groups lobby govern-
ments to achieve their aims, the media also seek to influence government
and to highlight issues, and as implied above, individuals and groups can
also participate in different ways. In addition, there have been significant
changes in recent years in the mechanisms of social policy formulation and
implementation, with devolution to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and
Wales being a clear instance of this, and these also have implications for
social policy.
This chapter examines:

■ the role of political parties, pressure groups, and the media with regard
to social policy;
■ developments in approaches to the government of social policy under
Conservative, Labour, and Coalition administrations;
■ the use of models of governance that can assist us in our understanding
of the formulation and implementation of social policies.

SPOTLIGHT
Does politics matter?

Whether we realise it or not, politics impacts on the lives of all of us. The
media report daily on issues that include: taxation, immigration, ID cards,
funding of services, health, schools, climate change, the economy, the EU,
elections, conflict in countries around the world, human rights, refugees,
trade unions, and so on. These, directly or indirectly, affect us all, and this is
why politics matters.

In the 2010 general election, only 65 per cent of people in the UK who were
entitled to vote did so. However, participation in politics is not limited to
voting, and many more people chose to participate by belonging to pressure
groups and by taking part in protests and campaigns, whether an ad hoc
group fighting the closure of a local school or hospital, an organised
campaign to fight a new airport runway or train line, or pig farmers
demonstrating against food companies importing cheap foreign bacon.
Other action might include campaigns against roads, rubbish tips, housing
developments, supermarkets, and animal experiments.

In these ways, people are choosing to get involved and participate. They are
electing representatives from different political parties who will make
decisions on their behalf, about issues that will affect their lives, and/or they
are directly participating in pressure groups and campaigns to try to
influence the decisions that will be taken on their behalf by government.

40
 C AT H ER I NE B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

How politics affects...

your night out
It decides where and when you can buy an alcoholic drink
t
says at what age you can buy an alcoholic drink
t sets the amount of tax that you have to pay every time you buy
one t decides where and when you can listen to music and
whether it can be played live t controls how loud that music can
be and whether or not you’re allowed to dance to it t decides
whether your local town can have its own casino t decides
what is acceptable behaviour when you’re under the influence and
what is liable to get you arrested t affects the number of police
officers patrolling town centres at night t says what
substances are illegal and what will happen to you if you’re
caught with them t says how much you can legally drink
and still drive home t decides what time trains and buses stop
running and whether or not there will be a night service t controls
the licensing of taxis t controls the licensing of doormen
and bouncers t sets hygiene standards for restaurants,
pubs and takeaways.

www.dopolitics.org.uk

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 POL IT IC S AN D G OV E R N AN C E OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

There is considerable evidence that many people, especially younger people,

are less engaged with ‘politics’, or at least with ‘mainstream politics’, than
was previously the case. Yet, as the Electoral Commission poster highlights,
politics, broadly defined, affects all of our lives.
It is almost impossible to consider social policy divorced from ‘politics’,
as social policy is concerned with, among other things, the distribution of
goods, services, and life chances, all of which are affected by ‘political’
decisions.
Attempts to define ‘politics’ can develop into complicated debates in the
same way as can occur with definitions of social policy. However, for now
we can adopt a simple view. Politics can be seen as the arena within which
conflicts and differences are expressed and, to a greater or lesser extent,
resolved. If politics is sometimes defined as ‘who gets what, when, and how’,
this illustrates well the inevitable link between politics and social policy.
Similarly, given the centrality of social policy concerns in contemporary
society, with issues such as education, employment, immigration, housing,
health, welfare benefits, and pensions frequently at the core of political debate,
this is clearly a two-way relationship.
There are, of course, many aspects of politics that could be considered in
relation to social policy. For present purposes, we concentrate on political
parties, pressure groups, and the media, as these can be seen as having a direct
impact upon social policies. Later in this chapter, some of the institutions and
mechanisms of government will also be examined, together with a number of
models that can help us analyse and understand how they operate.

Political parties

Perhaps surprisingly, there is a relative paucity of literature on political parties

and social policy, and in looking at this area students of social policy are there-
fore often reliant upon more general literature drawn from political science.
However, although a little dated now, Bochel and Defty’s (2007) Welfare
Policy Under New Labour provides an example of links between political
parties and social policy, particularly at the parliamentary level, while Jones
and MacGregor (1998), although older, provides an example of a linkage
from the social policy perspective, focusing in particular upon the 1997
general election. A few other books, such as those edited by Powell (1999,
2002, 2008) on New Labour, and Bochel (2010) on the Conservatives, focus
on particular parties and their social policies. This section draws out some of
the key characteristics of parties as they might be seen to relate to social policy.

The functions of parties

The functions of political parties can be categorised in a number of ways,
many of which can be seen to have some relationship with social policy,
although for some the connection is more apparent and perhaps more

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 C AT H ER I NE B O C H EL A ND G U Y D A LY

important. If we examine three of these, the nature of the links with social
policy can be illustrated:

■ Representation: political parties seek to organise within the electorate and to

provide meaningful choices that enable voters to elect governments. In
reality, most voters cast their vote for a party rather than for an individual
candidate. These votes may be cast for a number of reasons, such as judge-
ments on party policies (including those that relate to social policy), the
parties’ likely effectiveness to govern, and, perhaps increasingly, their
leaders.
■ Participation: parties also provide a significant form of participation,
varying from voting at general elections to membership and working for a
party through attending meetings, campaigning, and even standing for
election.
■ Elaboration of policies: parties develop programmes and policies to present
to the electorate as part of their attempts to achieve office. These range
from fairly general statements of intent to more detailed policy proposals.
Any examination of political debates or party manifestos over the post-war
period demonstrates that social policies have been a fundamental part of
this function.

Ideology and political parties

The close relationship between politics and social policy is further illustrated
by the importance of ideas to parties and the impact that these have had upon
their policies. Chapters 7 and 8 examine this in some detail in relation to the
Conservative and Labour parties. However, if we briefly examine the post-war
period, while it is quite apparent that ideology has impacted upon social
policy, it may not always do so as extensively, or in quite the ways, that might
be supposed.
The Labour government elected in 1945 is often depicted as creating the
welfare state in the UK, or at least with doing so on the foundations laid by
previous governments, and in particular the Liberal government of 1906–14.
Whichever of these views is accepted, there can be little doubt that Clement
Attlee’s Labour government, itself influenced by the Beveridge Report of
1942, did fundamentally shape the welfare state as it developed in the post-war
years. However, while it was the Labour Party that became associated with the
creation of the welfare state, the very idea appeared to have widespread support
so that even when Labour was defeated at the general election of 1951, there
followed a period that has often been described as one of ‘consensus’. This
implied a general acceptance of broadly social democratic ideals that included
a commitment to the welfare state and to a continued expansion of state
welfare provision as the economy grew, as well as to the role of government in
maintaining low levels of unemployment through Keynesian economic
policies.

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 POL IT IC S AN D G OV E R N AN C E OF S OCI A L P O LI C Y

While the extent and basis of this ‘consensus’ might be questioned, for the
next 30 years there was a general maintenance and expansion of the role of the
state in the provision of welfare. However, by the mid 1970s a number of
challenges had emerged to the welfare state, including practical problems,
such as reduced economic growth and oil price rises, and political and ideo-
logical questions about the extent to which the welfare state had been successful
and whether it was the most appropriate way of meeting needs. From the mid
1970s the Conservative Party began to move more to the political right, influ-
enced by ‘New Right’ ideas (see Chapter 7), and when it returned to power in
1979 under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher it had a commitment to the
free market and the private sector and to reducing state intervention in society.
The period from 1979 to 1997 thus saw attempts to roll back and reshape the
frontiers of the state, including welfare provision, using a variety of instru-
ments such as privatisation (for example, sales of council homes), increased
use of means-testing (in social security), restructuring (including the NHS
and local government), greater use of performance measurement (school and
hospital ‘league tables’), and the introduction of internal markets (such as in
health and social care).
Following the election of Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party in 1994,
many commentators have suggested that the party shifted to the political
right, and that the creation of ‘New Labour’ (see Chapter 8) included accept-
ance of some of the ideas that had emerged from New Right critiques of the
state, and of the welfare state, and the continuation of policy trends that had
originated under the Conservatives, such as means-testing and a commitment
to an increased role for the private and voluntary sectors in the provision of
welfare services and the encouragement of an active welfare state in which
citizens accepted that in return for certain rights to welfare, they had obliga-
tions to society. However, it is also possible to argue that under the Blair
and Brown premierships there were some changes that contrasted with the
position under the Conservatives, such as significant increases in public
expenditure and attempts to redistribute from the rich to the poor (see
Chapters 2 and 9).
Following their election defeat in 2001, the Conservative Party in turn
began to adapt its policies, seeking to develop itself as a more inclusivist party,
with successive leaders at least paying lip-service to the recognition that the
United Kingdom had changed and that some of the party’s perceived political
excesses during the 1980s and 1990s were no longer appropriate. After another
election defeat in 2005, David Cameron’s leadership appeared to reinforce
this, with a shift towards a recognition that there is a significant role for the
state in social welfare, breaking with the dominant stream of Conservative
thinking in this area from the late 1970s. Following the general election of
2010, Cameron’s Conservative Party formed a Coalition government with
the Liberal Democrats. The Coalition’s dominant discourse has been that of
‘austerity’. Through this, despite pre-election appearances, they have pursued
a programme of significant cuts in welfare and other areas of public expendi-
ture, arguably with the exception of the National Health Service (NHS),

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which the Coalition has said it will protect. As a result, since 2010 we have
seen a significant ‘rolling back’ of the welfare state and the privatisation of
provision – both to individuals and families and also to private and inde-
pendent sector providers.

CONTROVERSY AND DEBATE

It is often difficult to be clear exactly what new policy directions different

governments might take. The amount of taxation that different groups in
society pays raises issues around equality, fairness, and social responsibility,
and affects the level of resources available for public expenditure, including
upon welfare services such as health and education.

Although tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not. In recent years, govern-
ments have sought to reduce levels of tax avoidance by individuals and
companies, although at the same time they have sometimes used it and the
tax system to encourage what they see as positive behaviour, such as paying
money into pension schemes.

Visit the websites of the three major parties (www.conservatives.com; www.

libdems.org.uk; www.labour.org.uk) and consider how each might address
the issue of tax avoidance, why they might take different approaches to this,
and what effects this might have on policy.

Party leaders
From the 1960s onwards, it has frequently been argued that Britain has been
moving towards a ‘prime ministerial’ – or even ‘presidential’ – style of govern-
ment, with the Prime Minister occupying an increasingly central and powerful
position. This has arisen at least in part from the increasing emphasis on the
party leaders in the media, and thus in the eyes of the public, not only at elec-
tion time, but continuously as part of the political debate, a shift that has been
intensified by the increased role of television as a means of communication.
The apparent dominance of prime ministers such as Harold Wilson in the
1960s and 1970s, Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and Tony Blair in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first century, has helped reinforce this
impression.
It is clear that prime ministers can bring significant influence to bear upon
welfare policies. It was Margaret Thatcher’s commitment to New Right ideas,
and her use of right-of-centre think tanks, such as the Adam Smith Institute
and the Institute for Economic Affairs, that encouraged the adoption of poli-
cies such as the ‘right to buy’ council houses, the creation of internal markets
in health and social care, and the use of league tables of performance in educa-
tion. The example of Margaret Thatcher pushing the poll tax through
Parliament against the wishes of her ministerial colleagues and many in her

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party illustrates the power than prime ministers can exert, but her removal
from power in 1990 also serves to demonstrate that even dominant prime
ministers rely upon the support of their Members of Parliament, and if they
lose that they risk being removed from office by their own parties.
One of the characteristics of the Blair governments, much commented
upon, was the strengthening of control through the growth of the Prime
Minister’s Office. However, despite this apparent strengthening, and Blair’s
attempts to define and develop a ‘third way’ (see Chapter 8), in many
respects the government was not dominated by the Prime Minister alone,
but also by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. While the
Prime Minister did make occasional forays into the social policy arena, the
government also saw the Treasury, under Brown, developing an almost
unprecedented role in social policy, ranging from initiatives such as tax
credits, largely designed to help the ‘working poor’, to public service agree-
ments requiring other government departments to establish targets for
delivery of services.
Clearly, with a Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government,
Prime Minister David Cameron is not alone in exercising power and control.
First, he has had to work closely with his Deputy Prime Minister, the leader
of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg. In addition, there is the power and
influence of the Chancellor, the Conservative George Osborne, as well as the
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Liberal Democrat Danny Alexander.
Indeed, these four politicians have been described as the ‘Quad’ of decision-
makers at the heart of the Coalition.

Pressure groups

A central feature of liberal democracies such as the United Kingdom is that

it is often argued that power is widely distributed among different groups
(sometimes called pluralism) and that at any one time there are a variety
of interests competing to influence decision-making. Outside the party
political arena there exists a huge number of pressure or interest groups.
These can usually be differentiated from political parties by the fact that
they generally seek to influence government, rather than to govern them-
selves. They can range in size from small, ad hoc groups, such as those
which sometimes form to campaign against the closures of local schools or
hospitals, or to fight for or against particular local forms of provision, to
the large, well-known groups that feature regularly in the media (see Spotlight
below). Pressure groups are an alternative and important form of participa-
tion, with the memberships of pressure groups far exceeding those of the
political parties.

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SPOTLIGHT
Examples of pressure groups

Cause groups
■ Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) – a cause group which campaigns for
the abolition of poverty among children and young people in the UK and
for the improvement of the lives of low-income families. Its membership
consists of individuals and organisations. It is funded predominantly from
membership subscriptions, sales of CPAG publications, and grants and
donations (see www.cpag.org.uk).
■ Amnesty International UK – a cause group, launched in 1961, with around
265,000 financial supporters in the UK. It works to improve human rights
worldwide. It is funded predominantly through membership
subscriptions, appeals and donations, events and community fundraising,
and from legacies (see www.amnesty.org.uk).
■ Voice For Choice – a cause group that is an example of a national coalition
of organisations, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service,
Abortion Rights, and Education for Choice. It works alongside the All Party
Parliamentary Pro-Choice and Sexual Health Group (see www.vfc.org.uk).

Sectional groups
■ British Medical Association (BMA) – a sectional organisation founded in
1832, the BMA is a professional association of doctors, representing their
interests and providing services for its 128,000 members. It is funded
through membership subscriptions (see www.bma.org.uk).
■ National Union of Teachers (NUT) – a sectional organisation that
represents teachers, the NUT has a membership of 290,000. It is
represented on national education bodies and makes representations to
government on all matters affecting teachers and schools, particularly
education policy at national and local level. It is funded through
membership subscriptions (see www.teachers.org.uk).

While pressure groups can be characterised in a number of ways, it is perhaps

useful to consider them as ‘cause’ and ‘sectional’ groups, as illustrated above:

■ Cause groups – those organisations that seek to promote causes based upon
particular values or beliefs, such as Child Poverty Action Group, Age
Concern, Fathers 4 Justice, and Shelter. It is this category that would
normally include the ad hoc groups mentioned above.
■ Sectional groups – those bodies that represent the interests of particular
groups in society, such as trade unions, or professional organisations, such
as the British Medical Association or the British Association of Social
Workers.

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Groups are also often described as ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’, a terminology that

refers to the nature of their relationship with government. Insider groups are
those that are seen by government as legitimate, are regularly consulted, and
which are most likely to have their voices heard. An example might be Child
Poverty Action Group. Outsider groups do not have, or in some cases do not
wish to have, a close relationship with officials and policy-makers. The gay
rights group OutRage is one such example.
In relation to social policy, it is apparent that there are a host of pressure
groups that campaign on a wide variety of issues at both central and sub-
central government levels. Following the 1997 general election, the emphasis
on ‘partnership’ under Labour appeared to offer a better prospect for consul-
tation and partnership with regard to policy-making and implementation for
some groups, although the extent to which this occurred in practice was some-
times questionable. Indeed, it is difficult to assess the impact of pressure
groups on social policy as their influence may vary with a variety of factors,
including the proximity of their ideas to governments’ policy proposals, the
resources available to the group, the acceptability of their views to the media
and the public, and the external economic and political environment. The
cause group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) might be seen as successful
in working towards eliminating the harms caused by tobacco. It has
campaigned to ban tobacco advertising, which is now illegal in the UK, and
workplace smoking bans have been implemented in Scotland (March 2006),
Wales and Northern Ireland (April 2007), and England (July 2007). But,
despite the undoubted success of ASH in working towards this, other factors
and pressure groups, including, for example, the British Medical Association,
will also have played a role in this achievement, serving to underline the diffi-
culty in assessing the precise impact of particular factors and groups. Easton’s
(1965) black box model (a simplified model is shown in Figure 3.1) illustrates
how ideas from the wider environment can become inputs (such as demands
from parties, the media, and pressure groups), which in turn are changed by
demands from within the political system, and may become policy outputs
and outcomes.
Despite the complexity and range of factors that influence policy-making,
the continued existence and activities of pressure groups in the social policy
field clearly requires some consideration of their role.

The media

The media has become a key part of British society. Together, newspapers,
magazines, radio, television, and the Internet provide us with a myriad of
sources of information. However, it is important to recognise that the role of
the media is not confined to the provision of information – it also has the
potential to influence the way in which we interpret issues and debates, and
perhaps even set the agenda for decision-makers and influence decisions
themselves.

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Inputs
The pollcy praceaa Outcomea
Needsand
Govemment Policies
demands

Figure 3.1 The black box approach to policy-making

Source: Ham and Hill (1993)

Despite the potential importance of the media to social policy, there has
been limited research into this relationship. There remain a number of impor-
tant questions, including: What is the role of the media in setting the agenda?
What influence does the media have upon those who make policies? And what
might this tell us about the exercise of power in contemporary society?
A good example of media coverage of social issues is Cohen’s (2002) study
of Mods and Rockers in the 1960s, which highlighted the role of the media in
creating and amplifying what he termed ‘folk devils’ and ‘moral panics’.
Cohen (2002, p. 1) argued:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic.
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined
as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised
and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned
by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially
accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions . . . Sometimes
the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective
memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and
might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the
way the society conceives itself.

From roughly the same period, another well-known example of the role of
the media is that of the television drama, Cathy Come Home, which has
frequently been credited with leading to the creation of the charity Shelter,
and having a substantial impact on the issue of homelessness and the intro-
duction of legislation in the 1970s. Other examples of media coverage and
involvement range from portraying increased immigration to the UK as a
threat to society (including in respect of crime and jobs), the effects of designer
drugs such as ecstasy, campaigns to name and shame paedophiles, and, more
recently, the depiction of the recipients of welfare benefits as ‘benefit
scroungers’. Given the variety of media and the complexity of their roles and
influences, the remainder of this section seeks to provide some framework

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