The relationship between different approaches to the study of social policy making is often ambiguous. An attempt to relate subjectivist approaches to others in order to establish their applicability and relevance to policy making requires the prior clarification of these relationships in the form of a typology. This is used to illustrate ‘category mistakes’ that occur in the literature on policy making as well as to make more explicit the differences and similarities between alternative approaches. The nature of subjectivist approaches is further explored and the limitations of such approaches illustrated in respect of a particular study of policy making. The difficulty of establishing connections between subjectivist accounts of policy making in terms of actors' constructions and meanings, and the tangible outputs of the policy process, is shown as an important problem from this study. The article then turns to the usefulness of subjectivist approaches, especially in testing assertions made about the nature of the policy process by alternative approaches, and concludes with some remarks about the epistemological status of subjectivist accounts.

This article suggests that a central tradition in social administration finds difficulty in accommodating theoretical perspectives which offer a thorough-going critique of the suitability of the state as a vehicle for maximizing welfare. The point is illustrated through consideration of social administration's treatment of marxist work on the problem of how contemporary capitalist welfare states can retain political legitimacy. Two possible solutions to the problem in the work of Marx and subsequent marxists are identified. One stresses the success of the dominant class in persuading the subordinate class of the legitimacy of its power. The other argues that this process is aided by the ideological framework in which it takes place and that this framework of ideas results not only from the activity of the ruling class but also from the experience of everyday life in capitalist society. The former tends to be the version of marxism presented in social administration treatment. It offers a less radical critique because it can be taken to suggest that the main barrier to welfare lies in the individual members of a particular social group who can in principal be defeated in a ‘battle for consciousness’; and not so much in a particular kind of social life, which represents a more profound obstacle.

In late 1975, for the first time in the history of the National Health Service, junior hospital doctors in the United Kingdom took industrial action. Their pay and working conditions were basic issues, but the dispute was complex. The first part of this article describes these complexities – the significant events, and the grievances and their resolution. In the second part the dispute is analysed in terms of its causes, effects and implications, particularly for the medical profession. The ambivalence, confusion and ignorance about the new contract and the question of breaking government pay policy, problems of representation, and conflicts of interests within the profession are highlighted. It is suggested that the significant economic gains of the junior doctors were not achieved by industrial action.

The philosophy and the policies for dealing with both juvenile and adult offenders in England and Wales have undergone a marked change in the last decade with the introduction of both the Children and Young Persons Act, 1969, and the Criminal Justice Act, 1972. The spirit behind the policies embodied in the first of these was intended to move juvenile offenders even further towards the provisions for children and young people in general and away from identification with adult offenders and the criminal process. In spite of this, many similarities remain between the two major innovations which emerged from these two pieces of legislation, which were intermediate treatment and community service. In terms of implementing these policies, however, wide differences have emerged in the speed, ease, and uniformity with which the different provisions have been introduced. Intermediate treatment, after a long struggle, is only just beginning to establish itself as a practical provision for juveniles whilst community service, introduced some years later, has now been fully implemented. This difference raises fundamental issues related to the implementation of certain areas of social policy. Although the failure of the 1969 Act to achieve the impact envisaged by its proponents has been attributed to its being only partially implemented and to lack of finance, amongst other things, comparison with the relatively successful introduction of community service suggests that there may also be important administrative factors underlying this failure which have been hitherto ignored.

This article considers the reasons given for the creation of a no-fault compensation scheme for victims of road accidents. In particular the article examines the work of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury and evaluates its proposals by reference to its analysis of whether preferential treatment for road accidents can be justified. The policy options for the future development of welfare provision for the disabled are thereby thrown into sharp relief: each justification given is of relevance to other accident victims; the political nature of the reform is exposed when considering why one particular group is to be preferred to another; and the rationale supporting the existence of the many regimes of compensation in tort and social security is called into question. The role of Commissions in policy making and the structural limitations upon their deliberations are also discussed. In sum the article provides a case study of what has been called ‘the strain of seeking to justify the different treatment for various categories of misfortune’.2

The article uses a distinction between topic and discipline to argue that social administration, like economics, is characterized by both, but that social administration has the special advantage, in treating the topic of social policy, of being multi-disciplinary. An account is presented of why economics is underrepresented among the disciplines of social administration, and three important contributory roles are outlined for economics to play in the development of social administration.

This article discusses the role of public opinion in the social policy making process. It argues that existing accounts of social policy formation are inadequate in their treatment of public opinion, and inconsistent in their estimation of its importance. It then goes on to examine detailed examples of the role of public opinion in policy making; and finally tests two hypotheses concerning the sources of the demand for social welfare spending on the part of the British electorate.

During the 1970s a complex range of formal planning procedures were developed by central and local government and other public bodies. By the end of the decade there were well over twenty ‘public planning systems’ in operation, each with its own timetable, procedure and information demands. A number of allocation formulae were evolved to distribute cash and capital allocations between geographical areas, and various procedures to improve service coordination were also introduced. Together these innovations have had an important impact on the allocation of social service resources and the implementation of social policies. The first part of the article describes the growth of such planning activities, while the second part seeks to analyse their purposes both in terms of the official accounts and from a rather more critical perspective. It is possible to see these changes as attempts by government to come to terms with the problem of ‘overload’ – the tendency for demands on government for more and better services to outrun its and the economy's capacity to respond. They may be seen as more explicit and centralized rationing procedures which seek to combine a realistic appreciaation of budgetary constraints with responsiveness to varied individual and community needs. Critics see these procedures as attempts to contain public spending by insulating popular demands for improved services in increasingly technical and centralized procedures. The article ends by considering the impact of the new government's public expenditure policy.

This article is concerned with the problem of measuring the outcome of interventions of Local Authority Social Services Departments in the care of the elderly. The focus is upon the intended consequences of such interventions which are more or less explicit within the social welfare paradigm appropriate to such agencies. Seven dimensions upon which the effectiveness of care provision may be assessed are identified, and pertinent literature of measurement relating to these dimensions is examined. It is argued that outcome measurement is as yet at an early stage of development and that the development of a consensus among researchers about the methods of assessment is an important goal towards which the paper is a contribution.

In both Britain and the USA a young person leaving school with few or no qualifications faces great difficulties in obtaining employment. A number of policies have been developed in both countries to help counter some of the problems to which an increasing proportion of young unemployed gives rise. This article examines some of these policies and their underlying assumptions about the causes of youth unemployment. It attempts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of programmes developed by both the training and education services and to see what relevance the more extensive youth policies in the USA may have for the problems and policies nurtured in Britain.

The new social policy demonstrates its theoretical concern with the relations between the welfare services, the economy and the state. This new found political economy of welfare leaves behind the micro-concerns of the Titmuss paradigm. Through a critical re-examination of Titmuss, the article, while welcoming the research programme of the new social policy, urges that the specific strength of the old (especially so far as women are concerned) is not prematurely abandoned. In a period of economic and political crisis, where the state is actively restructuring the provision of welfare, detailed and systematical analyses of the implications of this process for both class and gender are urgently required. The need for work on gender is underlined because of the sex blindness of influential Liberal and Left theoretical writings. It is not that such theorists are unfriendly to feminist work but rather that it stands ‘outside’ their explanation. The need to reconceptualize welfare as a service provided primarily by the paid and unpaid labour of women remains.

Using voluntary blood donation as a case example, the study on which this article is based explored not only the extent, or breadth, of community involvement in social policy behaviours, but also the continuity, or depth, of this commitment. Demographic and motivational data were collected through a postal questionnaire returned by 1,784 persons who had voluntarily donated blood at least once in metropolitan Toronto between 1974 and 1978. An empirical distinction was also drawn between the ‘active’ and the ‘lapsed’ donor.

The study found that while certain sectors of society were probably disproportionately represented among those who chose to undertake voluntary social behaviours, the continuity of these actions could not be statistically associated with demographic or socio-economic variables. However, it did find that donors initially motivated by ‘external’ considerations such as convenience of location were more likely to lapse, while those for whom moral considerations and a sense of community were most important were more likely to continue as active donors.

The general conclusion suggests that manipulating the context may be useful to broaden the initial participatory base in voluntary actions, but to produce continuity in this involvement the challenge must be phrased in moral language.

The enormous growth of state expenditure in advanced industrial societies during the thirty years after the second world war is widely acknowledged and many attempts have been made to account for the phenomenon. Most of these explanations, however, either isolate specific factors or are applicable at a very high level of generality and so make it difficult to develop a wider understanding of the growth of the modern welfare state. This article is predicated upon the assumption that one way to overcome this difficulty is to identify, and evaluate the importance of, the different factors which have stimulated the growth of specific programmes rather than aggregate expenditures. It examines the growth of state spending on national insurance pensions in the United Kingdom between 1951 and 1978, therefore, because this is the most expensive of all social programmes. The primary purpose of the article is to identify, discuss and assess the relative importance of the most important causal factors which account for the growth of spending on pensions. This analysis is based upon the decomposition of the growth into its most important constituent parts. An attempt is also made to employ multiple regression to investigate changes in the real rate of basic pension, but the conclusion reached in this particular case is that it is a poor substitute for historical case studies. Finally, some speculative thoughts are advanced about possible future trends in spending on basic state pensions.

Singapore and Hong Kong are two of the most advanced industrial countries in east and south-east Asia. Comparisons between them have often been made, and this article takes their social security systems as a subject for examination. It begins with a brief discussion of the social, economic and political structures of Singapore and Hong Kong, identifying their similarities and differences; this is followed by a comparison of their existing social security provisions and the functions they perform in the two societies. It is found that, while Singapore and Hong Kong are now both affluent enough to provide their workers with comprehensive income protection, industrialization in the two cities has not brought a corresponding development in their social security systems. Other considerations seem to be more important than the need for such measures.

The article discusses the evolution of Newfoundland's health care system from the turn of the century to the present. During this time there were considerable changes in social conditions, political arrangements and the availability of public monies, all of which influenced the structure of the health care sector. In general terms, Newfoundland's health care system shifted from one involving low expenditures and many British type institutions to one involving high expenditures and American type institutions. The evidence suggests that the changes have been particularly beneficial for Newfoundland's merchant class, including the doctors and dentists, although some benefits have also accrued to patients and fishermen.

Social security and income maintenance

Much unfinished social security business was completed or continued in August. Sir Arthur Armitage, Professor of Law and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manchester, was appointed Chairman of the Social Security Advisory Committee, which took the place of the Supplementary Benefits Commission (SBC), and the National Insurance Advisory Committee under the Social Security Act 1980.

The first part of this article explores the ways in which the term ‘prevention’ is utilized in the field of the personal social services. The conclusion is reached that, unlike its legitimate use in the physical world, the term is intellectually confused when applied to social services. In Part Two it is argued that this confusion has unanticipated and damaging consequences. It leads to an unfair deal for clients, to confusion and status differentials for staff, and an increase in the social control apparatus of public agencies. It is suggested that the abandonment of ‘pseudo-prevention’ may lead to the clarification and explication of more defensible boundaries based on the analysis of problems rather than the attainment of ideal states.

This article adopts a case study approach to examine the contribution of social science research to health policy. It concentrates exclusively on the recent Royal Commission on the National Health Service. After describing its background and modus operandi the paper goes on to assess the Report's utilization of social science research, both in its diagnosis and recommendations. This assessment suggests that while the Commissioners made relatively little use of research-based evidence in their diagnosis, their recommendations provide the basis for a substantial increase in the contribution of social sicentists, particularly in the field of health services evaluation.