基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2009. Analysis and critique of the main direction in current social policy reform.
Full Description
Throughout the world, governments are restructuring social and welfare provision to give a stronger role to opportunity, aspiration and individual responsibility, and to competition, markets and consumer choice. This approach centres on a logic of individual rational action: people are the best judges of what serves their own interests and government should give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The UK has gone further than any other major European country in reform and provides a useful object lesson.
This book analyses the pressures on social citizenship from changes in work and the family, political actors, population ageing, and the processes within government in the relentless international process of globalization that have shaped the response. It examines the various social science approaches to agency and argues that the logic of rational action is able to explain how reciprocity arises and is sustained but offers a weak foundation for social inclusion and social trust. It will only sustain part of the welfare state. A detailed assessment of empirical evidence shows how the outcomes of the new policy framework correspond to its theoretical strengths and limitations. Reforms have achieved considerable success in delivering mass services efficiently. They are much less successful in redistributing to more vulnerable low income groups and in maintaining public trust in the structure of provision.
The risk is that mistrustful and disquieted voters may be unwilling to support high spending on health care, pensions and other benefits at a time when they are most needed. In short, the reform programme was undertaken for excellent reasons in a difficult international context, but risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Contents
PART I SUSTAINING SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP IN DIFFICULT TIMES ; 1. Social Citizenship Under Pressure ; 2. Globalisation: New Constraints on Policy-Making ; 3. The Response of Government ; PART II INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF REFORM ; 4. The Assumptive World of Welfare State Reform ; 5. Individual Choice and Social Order ; 6. Rational Actors and Social Citizenship ; PART III A CASE-STUDY: THE UK AS OBJECT LESSON ; 7. Putting the Theory into Practice: the UK Experience ; 8. The NHS Reforms as a Response to First-Order Challenges ; 9. Second-Order Challenges: Disenchantment, Disquiet and Mistrust ; PART IV CONCLUSIONS: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF RATIONAL ACTOR APPROACHES ; 10. Globalisation, Inequality and Diversity ; 11. Welfare Under Altered Circumstances ; Bibliography ; Index
