This book examines views about what poverty is and what should be done about it. ‘Poverty’ means many different things to different people - for example, material deprivation, lack of money, dependency on benefits, social exclusion or inequality. In “The idea of poverty", Paul Spicker makes a committed argument for a participative, inclusive understanding of the term.
Spicker’s previous work in this field has been described as ‘entertaining and sometimes controversial’, and his new book certainly lives up to this. Some of the book’s ideas are complex and will be of particular interest to academics and others working in the field, but the book has been written mainly for students and the interested general reader. It challenges many of the myths and stereotypes about poverty and the poor, and helps readers to make sense of a wide range of conflicting and contradictory source material.
81© The Policy Press, 2013 • ISSN 0305 5736 Key words: discursive institutionalism • evidence-based policy • health inequalities • ideas Policy & Politics vol 41 no 1 • 81-100 (2013) • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557312X655413 Institutional filters: the translation and re-circulation of ideas about health inequalities within policy Katherine Smith Taking health inequalities in the United Kingdom as a case study, this article adopts a ‘discursive institutionalist’ approach to explore how the organisation of policy-making bodies shapes the relationship
171© The Policy Press, 2012 • ISSN 0305 5736 Key words: public sector • ideas • policy change • Finland Policy & Politics vol 40 no 2 • 171-91 (2012) • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/147084411X581871 The role of ideas and institutional change in Finnish public sector reform Mikko Niemelä and Arttu Saarinen This article explores institutional change and the role of ideas in Finnish public sector reform from the late 1970s to 2007. The main purpose of the study is to explore the ideas advanced in favour of legislative reforms – what have been the objectives behind
From Attlee to the birth of New Labour, and the advent of Corbynism, this book gives a lively account of the ideological developments and dramas in the Labour Party in recent decades.
Batrouni delves into the totemic battles between hard and soft left, examining the destructive and creative elements of key periods of Labour’s ideological exhaustion and ideational confusion.
Providing powerful insights from interviews with some of the most influential thinkers, advisors and MPs in the party, he goes on to examine the phenomenal emergence of Corbynism, the impact of Brexit and what lies ahead for the party.
The decision to mount an armed foreign intervention is one of the most consequential that a US president can take. This book sets out to explain why and when presidents choose to use force.
The book examines decisions to use force throughout the post-Cold War period, via flashpoints including the Balkans, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Middle East. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorizing and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US presidential administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump.
For students, scholars and anyone with an interest in international relations and global security, this book is an original perspective on a defining issue of recent decades.
The idea of civilization recurs frequently in reflections on international politics. However, International Relations academic writings on civilization have failed to acknowledge the major 20th-century analysis that examined the processes through which Europeans came to regard themselves as uniquely civilized – Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization.
This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the significance of Elias’s reflections on civilization for International Relations. It explains the working principles of an Eliasian, or process-sociological, approach to civilization and the global order and demonstrates how the interdependencies between state-formation, colonialism and an emergent international society shaped the European ‘civilizing process’.
Introduction The idea of universal and unconditional basic income, a cash-benefit granted at regular intervals to each individual member of a political community, has gathered increasing attention worldwide. The boom of basic-income-related experiments around the world 1 (De Wispelaere and Forget, forthcoming) indicate that the idea, formerly often dismissed as utopian thinking, is being transformed from a ‘philosophical pipe dream’ ( Van Parijs, 2013 ) into a real policy alternative. Basic income presents a radical alternative to the current ‘means
21 ONE The idea of conservatism Introduction Conservatives, even those who claim to be progressives, are always keen to associate themselves with a set of traditions and values. The Conservative party led by David Cameron is no different in this regard. The 2010 election manifesto (Conservative Party, 2010a) certainly claimed that the Conservatives under David Cameron’s leadership were progressives. However, it also suggested that they were acting in a manner that was entirely consistent with Conservative values and traditions. They were not, the manifesto
TWO Gutting a good idea This chapter presents a critical and analytical history of custody visiting, centring on the policy issues. The story begins in 1980, when Michael Meacher MP made the first proposals for custody visiting. In 1981 the Scarman Report included a recommendation for a statutory scheme of custody visiting, which the government declined to implement. Custody visiting operated from 1984 on a rather haphazard and unofficial basis, and was known as ‘lay visiting’; the current statutory scheme of ‘independent custody visiting’ was initiated in
