Social and Public Policy > Poverty and Inequality
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The conditional cash transfer programme (CCT) for poor families was terminated in Mexico in 2019. CCTs seek to fight poverty under a social investment logic by promoting the formation of human capital through the compliance of behavioural conditionalities. The programme – the first of its kind introduced at national level – accomplished several achievements and was maintained and developed by three successive federal administrations. As the backbone of anti-poverty policy for more than two decades, its achievements included delivering positive results to a significant proportion of the population; and triggering the expansion of social policy beyond social insurance. As a result, it was emulated by governments across the globe. A programme of these characteristics would have been expected to generate path dependency and policy stability, yet it was swiftly terminated with practically no opposition. This article applies a framework of historical institutionalism to analyse the feedback effects developed during the duration of the programme from the perspectives of beneficiaries, in order to contribute to the explanation of its termination. The research is based on qualitative empirical data from interviews with former beneficiaries. Our findings show that self-undermining mechanisms linked to a ‘hard’ design and implementation of conditionalities counterbalanced the self-reinforcing mechanisms derived from the benefits supplied by the programme, causing beneficiaries to become apathetic towards its continuity or termination. Conclusions yield theoretical insights that might serve to examine policy feedback in similar contexts, as well as lessons for policymakers regarding the design and implementation of social programmes.
This paper presents learning and insights drawn from the Fulfilling Lives (FL) programme – an eight-year programme funded through the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) and delivered across 12 sites in England. The programme aimed to improve services for people facing multiple disadvantage (MD) and was delivered by 12 partnerships, each led by voluntary sector organisations (VSOs).
The findings were supplemented by interviews carried out with delivery partners, stakeholders and people with lived experience (LE) from one of the 12 projects, Birmingham Changing Futures Together (BCFT). The review and supplementary interviews were conducted as part of a ‘scoping exercise’ designed to help the author shape and refine research questions at the outset of her doctoral study.
The focus of this paper is the involvement of people with LE in the delivery of the NLCF FL programme. The research questions explored the mechanisms used to involve people with LE of MD, the impact that their involvement was found to have on effecting ‘systems change’ and some of the limiting factors to this involvement. The paper sets out the conditions needed to facilitate better involvement and considers what these insights offer for the future design and delivery of services for VSOs seeking to develop their approach to involving people with LE.
RAPAR applies our participatory action research methods to amplify the living experience of families seeking asylum in the UK who are in ‘contingency accommodation’, aka ‘hotels’, and claiming human rights abuses on these sites. From all over the world, these people are without status in the UK and are therefore without recourse to the public funds that are, theoretically, available to everyone living in the UK with status. Their complete legal dependence on the Home Office and its subcontractors to ‘look after’ them and deal with any complaints leads to the question: why would anyone choose to challenge any organisation about human rights violations when that same organisation exercises such profound control over their day to day living reality? The data comprises contemporaneously collected evidence from individual correspondence, questionnaires, semi-structured conversations and case studies with hotel residents. Our preliminary analysis demonstrates considerable failures of statutory bodies in implementing their statutory duties. No evidence of meaningful investigation by any implicated statutory authority, or their privatised sub-contractors, into the human rights violation allegations asserted by hotel residents has been produced. The Local Authorities and the NHS insist that the Home Office is responsible for hotel residents within their boundaries. In turn, the Home Office, including Greater Manchester Police and sub-contractors Serco and Migrant Help, have failed to address the allegations in any transparent way.
We call for immediate action that enables hotel residents to safely protect themselves and stimulates inclusive solution-making, with them, to end these human rights violations.
During the pandemic, governments had to communicate complex scientific and epidemiological concepts in such a way that they could be understood and accepted by the population, and result in behavioural changes that limited or stopped the spread of the virus. The challenge of communicating the risks of COVID-19 was affected by the ways in which it was initially framed. In those countries in which it was framed as a SARS-like disease, there was no need to change and adjust the public health message. From the start, the new virus was presented as a major danger and one that required significant changes in behaviour. In Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand, there was a clear and consistent message engendering public trust. In countries that initially framed COVID-19 as flu-like, such as the UK and US, there were major shifts in messaging, especially in the early stages of the pandemic when it became evident that there was community transmission, that hospital admissions were taking place and deaths were rising rapidly. In some countries, the messaging was further undermined by tensions between populist politicians and public health experts. This tended to undermine trust in public health messaging.
The COVID-19 pandemic was inextricably linked to risk. The emergence of a new highly infectious and lethal virus from Wuhan in late 2019 created uncertainty, and policy makers sought to assess the risk it presented. The concept of risk shaped the experience of the pandemic in different ways. With initially limited evidence available, the ways in which policy makers framed the new disease shaped the responses they adopted, whether zero-COVID versus wait and see. Once community transmission was established, measures to limit harm were shaped by risk categorisation and risk work in hospitals. While policy makers claimed to be following the science in their decision making, risk issues were contested within scientific communities and outside, given the lack of consensus and transparency. Policy makers have argued that a proper inquiry cannot take place until the pandemic is over. This has not stopped inquiries being set up. In countries with high infection and death rates, such as the US, UK and Brazil, inquiries have blamed policy makers for failing to recognise the risks of SARS-CoV-2 and for failing to take and communicate timely action.
The development of different forms of media enables individuals to access a range of competing sources of information. Individuals have to decide which sources they trust. Social media can provide forums within which ‘networked publics’ can interact. While such forums can be open, interactive and egalitarian, they can also be dominated by individuals who accumulate a substantial following, so-called influencers. When such influencers are politicians, social media take on some of the characteristics of a social movement in which a charismatic leader communicates with his or her followers. In the US, Donald Trump used social media, especially Twitter, to create and connect with his supporters. Conspiracy theorists take some of the reasonable doubts about contemporary science and technology, extend them and weave them into theories that deny the benevolent motives of governments and experts or express the view that conventional therapies such as vaccination are harmful, for example. In seeking to refute conspiracy theories, government agencies seldom address the reasonable doubts raised about science and technology. During the pandemic, social media facilitated the spread of conspiracy theories. Individuals were cut off from their normal social networks and sources of reality, and as many experienced increased anxiety and uncertainty, pursuing conspiracies could be a satisfying pastime.
One of the key role of governments in modern democratic societies is to protect their citizens by identifying and mitigating the risks they are exposed to. To provide such protection, the government needs to draw on experts’ knowledge. In normal times, this process tends to take place behind closed doors and attracts relatively little attention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, experts took on a more prominent and public role. In making decisions that impacted on the lives of all citizens, politicians claimed to be ‘following the science’, and called on experts to legitimate these decisions by endorsing them in public, at televised briefings, for example. The relationship between science, policy and risk management in the pandemic was complex. The acceptance of scientific knowledge by policy makers and in the wider community was shaped by the social standing of the scientists and the extent to which their ‘knowledge’ fitted within pre-existing knowledge and perceptions. ‘Following the science’ implies that scientific knowledge provides an objective representation of the physical world and that rational action can be based on such action. Scientific knowledge can and is contested, and policy makers made political decisions about which scientists and institutions they will listen to.
Analysing risk is generally seen as a way of predicting and managing the future, but it can also be used to explain what went wrong in the past. When there is a major disaster with a large loss of life and/or an existential threat to society, then there is pressure to investigate. Inquiries provide a mechanism for investigating the causes of disasters, identifying why risk was poorly managed and attributing blame for failures. Inquiries are a way of neutralising criticism of failures to respond effectively to risk. By appointing independent authoritative experts to investigate their actions, agencies can acknowledge their failures and shortcomings, make amends to those harmed, and demonstrate a willingness to learn lessons and avoid making the same mistakes again. They can also redress reputational damage. While COVID-19 was still spreading round the globe, the actions and inactions of governments were already coming under scrutiny and becoming subject to inquiries, especially by legislatures in democratic countries that have a duty to oversee the executive. Political leaders were aware of such scrutiny, and responded by seeking to present their actions in the best possible light or by trying to deflect blame.
All societies need to manage the uncertainties of the future and account for the misfortunes of the past. In pre-modern societies, religious and supernatural beliefs provided the basis for prediction of the future and allocation of blame for misfortunes. In modern high-income countries with developed health-care systems, such beliefs have been (partially) replaced by the use of rationality, especially risk, making it possible for human actions to be based on reason and evidence. In the late 20th century, social scientists have developed more critical awareness of the ways in which risk is embedded in key social processes and influences social relations and interactions. This more critical approach is evident in Beck and Giddens’s analyses of the key features of late modern societies or the so-called Risk Society; it is also an important element in Douglas’s cultural theory and forms part of Foucault’s analysis of power or governmentality in modern societies. The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for us to examine the ways in which policy makers use risk to make sense of and manage the uncertainties created by the new virus and to reflect on the ways in which gauging risk provides insights into the development of contemporary societies.
The past 30 years have seen risk become a major field of study, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic positioning it at the centre of public awareness, yet there is limited understanding of how risk can and should be used in policy making.
This book provides an accessible guide to the key elements of risk in policy making, including its role in rhetoric to legitimise decisions and choices.
Using risk as a framework, it examines how policy makers in a range of countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and explains why some were more successful than others.
