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A crisis creates a time when normal problem-solving mechanisms are thrown into disarray. The COVID-19 pandemic plunged individuals and service systems into crisis. While recognising the destructive impact on health and well-being for those involved, the aim of this study was to explore opportunities for change created during a crisis, addressing the question: What has been learnt under COVID-19 about delivering domestic abuse services to perpetrators in the UK and Australia? Documentary analysis (31 documents reviewed in Australia, and 180 searched and analysed in the UK) and interviews (24 interviews with practitioners and policy and practice leads in the UK, and 11 interviews, and one focus group in Australia) were used to explore innovations in responses to perpetrators. Two key shifts in the delivery of services to men who use violence were identified: the pivot to remote delivery; and the emergence of interventions to provide accommodation and support for perpetrators. The study demonstrated that the policy window could open at a time of crisis to support innovative developments. Early evaluations highlighted positive developments. However, further research is needed to understand more fully the implications for safety and accountability.
To address significant variation of sequence lengths of doctoral trajectories, we propose sequence normalisation using the relative duration of episodes. We employ episode data from a panel study of doctorate holders in Germany where doctoral trajectories are measured in single months and differ in length up to several years. Utilising normalised sequences instead of absolute sequences, we are better able to identify typical trajectories. The graphical presentation of the cluster solutions more accurately depicts the underlying processes. Furthermore, it offers the possibility to define reference sequences without a fixed length. Normalising sequences instead of distances thus proves an easily implementable method to compare sequences of different lengths when the identification of patterns is a priority.
In this article, we respond to a critical review of Covering all the Basics: Reforms for a More Just Society, published in this journal (Smith-Carrier, T., Forget, E., Power, E. and Halpenny, C. [2024] ‘Covering all the [welfare] basics’: a critical policy study of the Expert Panel on Basic Income report in British Columbia, Canada, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, XX(XX): 1–27, DOI: 10.1332/17598273Y2024D000000016), by providing what we view as a more accurate description of the findings and arguments in that report. The result, we hope, is an alternative depiction of how a basic income would relate to the search for a more just society.
Thomas Mathiesen’s theories, his activism and his scholarship are needed, important and useful for contemporary researchers concerned with social change and social justice. At this moment in time, when strong social movements and abolitionism are back on the agenda, Mathiesen’s theories can not only be revitalised, but moved forward in the everlasting unfinished fashion. Mathiesen’s work might be of support to researchers and activists confronted with the ‘system members’ as he calls them, to identify the structures of power one is up against and its strategies. His work provides a roadmap of how to handle repressive powers to reach the long-term goal of penal abolition. In this article, I will outline Mathiesen’s central theories of penal abolition as they are connected to political activism, then trace the role of the police in his abolitionism and, finally, I will argue for the relevance and development of Mathiesen’s abolitionist thinking in the contemporary and burgeoning field of transformative justice and police abolitionism. I aim to show the continuing relevance of Mathiesen’s theories for contemporary abolitionist movements and scholarship, and how they contribute to push these theories forward into new areas.
The Italian judicial system is well-known for its substandard performance by comparison with its European peers. In this article, we analyse the implementation of an important reform of the Italian judicial system designed and implemented in the context of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan funded by Next Generation EU. The reform, launched in February 2022, involves the introduction of a new organisational structure (The Office for the Trial) staffed with 16,500 newly appointed judicial assistants, representing an increase of about one third of the total judicial workforce employed in Italy. By leveraging the concepts of policy and organisational learning (OL), we show that variation of the modes of policy learning observed in implementation design is linked with variation in the organisational models adopted by different judicial offices to implement the reform. Then, by connecting organisational models to OL and focusing on the performance of five selected sections within the Court of Appeal of Milan, we show that organisational models informed by reflexivity are associated with better performance than models informed by hierarchy. The study contributes to scholarship on policy and OL, as well as providing a first, albeit limited and exploratory, empirical evaluation of a strategic public sector reform.
Within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), policy-oriented learning is understood as a change in policy beliefs. Additional work has noted that belief reinforcement, not just belief change, is also a potential policy learning outcome. Yet, little work has attempted to reconcile how learning could involve both belief change and belief reinforcement. In this article, I propose a policy-oriented learning model where policy beliefs – deep core, policy core, or secondary aspects – are understood as having a distribution with a central tendency (that is, the belief) as well as variance (that is, certainty associated with the belief). With policy beliefs considered as distributions, learning can be understood as changes in beliefs (that is, a change in the central tendency) as well as changes in certainty (that is, variance), and conversely, a decrease in belief uncertainty would constitute belief reinforcement. Using data from a deliberative forum that brought together various stakeholders including experts, natural resource managers, and the public to discuss environmental issues impacting coastal communities, I explore policy-oriented learning as changes in concern regarding several key issues before and after the forum. Additionally, I examine the association between concern following the forum and self-reported learning. I find support for the proposed policy-oriented learning model as shown by significant changes in average concern as well as average variance among participants across several of the issues discussed. In this way, the article makes a theoretical contribution to the ACF literature by testing the use of distributions to assess policy learning.
The links between policy learning and policy innovation seem self-evident. Yet these areas of scholarship have developed independently of each other. The articles in this Special Issue all address some aspect of the learning/innovation relationship. This introduction sets the scene by reviewing how innovation intersects with studies of policy learning. To do this, we explore the three key dimensions which characterise policy innovation, as defined by Sørensen, and its relationship with learning: political leadership, competition and collaboration. Viewed through a learning lens, we discern the interactions between these elements, and how they link forms of learning to innovative policy. Finally, through the lens of this learning/innovation framework, we summarise the contributions of the six articles and propose a future research agenda.
In his recent book Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Rates, Olivier Blanchard argues that when interest rates are low, policymakers can use public debt finance to increase the welfare of a nation. I argue that Blanchard’s model suffers from the “organismic theory of the State” and, as such, reaches dubious conclusions. At its core, an organismic model presumes that politicians can and do make transfers that maximize the welfare of all individuals. While this is, of course, plausible, an individualistic view states that whether government transfers increase welfare for all individuals depends on the political decision-making process of time and place. While some political processes redistribute funds equally, others redistribute unequally—that is, they increase welfare for some but decrease the welfare of others. Blanchard’s organismic model takes this fact for granted. I use the individualistic view to argue that even if interest rates are low, if a political process is one that redistributes unequally, transfers under public debt financing can result in or exacerbate income inequality. To illustrate this point, I show that in the US, increases in public debt financing have increased welfare for some individuals—the low- and upper-income quintiles—but have decreased it for others—the middle-income quintiles.
The social work profession defines itself as one that promotes social change and the liberation of people. In social work practice, there is often a controversy between solving problems and engaging social issues within political, economic and historical realities. The aim of this article is to determine the current landscape of radical social work within the South African context. Findings indicate that radical efforts and responses towards decolonial social work focus on locating social work in social movements, responding to the status quo and confronting neoliberal policies. A radical stance on various issues of gross human rights violations in current affairs must be considered as a critical component of reimagining social work identity in South Africa.
Thomas Mathiesen has been a source of inspiration for research in critical sociology, criminology, and the sociology of law for many decades. Mathiesen’s impact extends far beyond the academic realm, as his action research lives on. This intervention discusses the ongoing influence of Mathiesen’s action research approach, which integrates research, education, and societal impact. This is illustrated through an action research project we conducted in Denmark’s largest marginalised living area, where over 1,000 public housing units are being demolished, affecting approximately 2,500 residents. In the project, we experimented with different outreach legal aid approaches, considering our own positionalities, to gain knowledge about how to establish a legal aid infrastructure that could reach the unreachable. An ethical dilemma we faced was how we could engage with the people without inadvertently naming issues, particularly legal problems, of which they might not be aware. If the residents were unaware of these issues or did not consider them important, could we then inadvertently create and juridify new problems for them? Moreover, this intervention discusses how, in alignment with Mathiesen, we combined legal aid with legal clinical education, that is, training law students to become legal aid workers. We conclude that Mathiesen’s approach remains relevant, and by integrating his action research with decolonial thoughts, new insights may emerge to reach the seemingly unreachable.
