Policies of citizen involvement in health and social care have given rise to a variety of organisational forms, which address citizens in different capacities and differ in their demands as to the representativeness, performance and competence of those involved. Apparently, the policies draw on different institutional logics. Based on extant studies, partly the author's own research from Norway, this article sheds light on three purposefully selected cases of citizen involvement. Two models of democratic consultation encompass a dominant model of involvement in Norway (advisory bodies of service users) and a model more prevalent in UK (panels of the general public). These are both embedded within a logic of democracy. A third emergent model of involvement is one in which citizens with experience as service users are engaged as workers in service providing organisations. This model resembles an idea of co-production. However, when involvement is organised as user-employment and paid work, the model rather seems rooted within the logic of the market – the labour market of service workers. The rise of this model suggests a shift in institutional embedding of citizen involvement. The analysis of these models provides a framework of distinguishing dimensions between different models of involvement.

In the context of an austere financial climate, local health care budget holders are increasingly expected to make and enact decisions to decommission (reduce or stop providing) services. However, little is currently known about the experiences of those seeking to decommission. This paper presents the first national study of decommissioning in the English National Health Service drawing on multiple methods, including: an interview-based review of the contemporary policy landscape of health care decommissioning; a national online survey of commissioners of health care services responsible for managing and enacting budget allocation decisions locally; and illustrative vignettes provided by those who have led decommissioning activities. Findings are presented and discussed in relation to four themes: national-local relationships; organisational capacity and resources for decommissioning; the extent and nature of decommissioning; and intended outcomes of decommissioning. Whilst it is unlikely that local commissioners will be able to ‘successfully’ implement decommissioning decisions unless aspects of engagement, local context and outcomes are addressed, it remains unclear what ‘success’ looks like in terms of a decommissioning process.

This paper considers the situation of the English voluntary sector in relation to austerity-driven social policies. Existing characterisations are outlined and it is argued that the quantitative evidence used to represent the situation of these organisations to date has been partial because it relies too narrowly on financial resource input measures. We argue that the situation of these organisations needs to be conceptualised in a more holistic way and, to initiate a move in this direction, we identify and explicate two relevant dimensions: the perceived capacity of organisations to rely on volunteers for support (a non-financial resource input); and their perception of the effect of the policy climate in shaping their capacity to flourish, including their ability to perform multiple roles beyond service provision alone. We draw on an original mixed methods empirical study undertaken in England in 2015 to operationalise these dimensions, combining qualitative interviews with national ‘policy community’ members with a large scale on-line survey of social policy charities. We find a complex and variegated situation that, while acknowledging the fundamental importance of financial resource pressures, also points to the salience of the volunteering situation, and to the relevance of the challenging policy climate that these organisations have to navigate.

This study examines the development of anti-domestic-violence policy implementation in an emerging democracy, the country of Georgia. We applied a public policy framework – Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT) – which enabled us to thoroughly examine factors contributing to drawbacks in anti-domestic-violence policy implementation. The CIT framework was enriched by expanding it to the scale of the national anti-domestic-violence policy and placing greater emphasis on the victim. The qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and media reveals that public policy implementers lack motivation, information and power to be able to really implement the anti-domestic-violence policy. The CIT analysis of domestic violence (DV) policies demonstrates that DV problems are further exacerbated by the contextual factors of societal attitudes in terms of gender inequality and social acceptance of DV, which creates unfavorable context for the realisation of the anti-DV policy. In such circumstances, according to the CIT, only symbolic realisation of a policy takes place. The use of CIT as a tool for the implementation of a policy will provide substantial input into its realisation. Based on this theory, it is crucial to increase information, motivation and power of implementers, as well as change the context for the anti-DV policy to be actually implemented.

Welfare states increasingly activate citizens in the provision of care and welfare services, expecting them to take over certain parts of professional work. The consequences of this ‘volunteer responsibilisation’ for front-line workers’ professionalism have not been studied extensively. Professionalism may be pointed in another direction, from professional self-control or organisational forms of control based on management criteria toward forms of embedded control in which professional work is defined in interaction with all kinds of ‘outsiders’, including volunteers. In this paper we analyse how front-line workers cope with such shifts in care and welfare provision. We find that they move away from frail volunteers, move toward vigorous volunteers, and move against policy makers.

The Chinese government has recently expanded the scope of urban social insurance programmes. However, social protection for the labour force of the urban informal sector, which reaches about half the number of urban workers, lags significantly behind. This under-coverage may be due to institutional constraints, particularly the household registration system hukou, and self-selection behaviour related to the limited benefits of social insurance. Drawing on a recent nationwide individual-level survey and city-level statistics, this study examines these two explanations for the under-enrolment on the social insurance programme. First, results suggest that hukou and the intergovernmental fiscal system are major institutional constraints. Second, self-selection behaviour in programme enrolment is verified. Employers in the informal sector are likely to opt out of social insurance. More importantly, employers in the informal sector, with rural or non-local hukou, are likely to opt out of social insurance, which suggests that self-selection behaviour is constrained by institutions. Such findings have important implications for broad theoretical and policy debates on universal social protection.

This study addresses the Islamic Movement in Israel. Hitherto studied almost exclusively from the political perspective, this article sheds light on its social roles as a provider of welfare services to the Palestinian population. It does so by analysing its unique Independent Community (IC) concept, which calls for self-reliance in welfare service provision. Despite its importance, the concept, which applies to all spheres of life and is relevant to other indigenous minorities, has received relatively little attention in the literature. The present study, which is part of the ‘religious turn’ in welfare state literature, addresses this gap by describing IC and its development, and by explaining how the concept developed in the context of the Palestinian population's social discrimination and exclusion.

Based on findings from various archival sources and interviews with movement leaders, the article concludes that the concept of IC is a response to discriminatory and exclusionary welfare policies. Together with the broader local and global process of welfare state retrenchment, this created a vacuum that proved fertile ground for the emergence of IC, calling for a reshaping of Israel's social policies and the role played by the welfare state vis-à-vis faith-based organizations that represent indigenous minorities.

The aim of this article is to investigate the argument that choice and competition will unleash entrepreneurial innovation in free schools. Free schools were introduced as a subset of the Academies by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government, following the general election in 2010. The government made it possible for non-state providers to set up their own independent, state-funded schools in order to create more choice, competition and innovation. We conclude that a higher level of substantive innovation is taking place in regards to management practices than in respect of curriculum and pedagogical practices. Innovation in curriculum and pedagogical practices is very limited. Creating a free school offer that seems to differ from other schools appears to be done through marketing and branding rather than innovation. We argue that parents, OFSTED, and the relative isolation of free schools constrain innovation from taking place.

In recent years, various pro-natalist policies have been adopted in Singapore and other high-income Asian countries with low fertility, aiming at raising fertility rates. Previous studies were mainly focused on the impact or outcome of the policies. This paper, however, aims to identify the most influential groups in determining Singapore's total fertility rate (TFR) and evaluate the targeting of pro-natalist measures adopted by the government. We first reveal the changing age-parity-and-marital-status composition of women at childbearing age, and further conduct an elasticity analysis to assess the roles of different subgroups of women in changing the TFR. Our results show that compared to other groups, the 20–29-year-old single women and the married childless women aged 30–34 (‘married’ throughout this paper includes women who are or have been married) are more influential in determining the TFR and should be the potential pro-natalist target groups. However, Singapore's pro-natalist policies are more in favour of third and higher-order births. Such mismatch indicates that, if more efforts are devoted to facilitating marriage and first births in these potential groups, the TFR may be increased effectively. In order to achieve a long-term and significant fertility reversal, it calls for a long-term and integrated policy package.

Workfare increases requirements on welfare claimants: a major shift in UK social welfare policy post-1980s. Political, academic and cultural debates surround the ethical basis, and practical operations, of workfare schemes. Moreover, the UK government has claimed that workfare provides value for money in an age of austerity, ‘help and support’ for the long-term unemployed, and ‘incentives’ for increased claimant job-seeking. This article presents results gathered from sociological research into the UK's ‘Work Programme’ workfare scheme in order to contextualise these debates and contribute to wider academic and social policy workfare analyses. It finds a complex picture: a largely pointless scheme, resented by many participants, but providing a basic social service for some others.

Volunteering is an under-studied yet potentially beneficial avenue for immigrant integration. Whereas past research has provided important insights into the benefits of immigrant volunteering, it has been frequently based on convenience samples. This paper contributes to the literature on immigrant volunteering on two levels. First, we test less explored questions: the differences between immigrant and native-born volunteers on several volunteer indicators, and the contextual factors (cultural, social, and organisational) associated with immigrants’ proclivity to volunteer. Second, we rely on a representative sample of the German population, and use propensity score matching to strengthen the robustness of our analysis. Findings suggest that, although native-born individuals display higher rates of volunteering than immigrants, they do not significantly differ on most indicators once immigrants become volunteers. Furthermore, time since migration, social networks and organisational membership are significant drivers of immigrant volunteering. Our findings are a signal for policymakers because social policies could better address contextual and organisational barriers.

Service providers in Western welfare states have to engage with an increasingly differentiated citizenry. The arrival of new migrant communities triggers debates, negotiations and struggles over the needs of these communities and how service providers can engage with them. In this paper, we look at these processes of developing local social inclusion policies that target migrant communities through the perspective of Nancy Fraser's ‘politics of need interpretation’. More specifically, we analyse Roma engagement strategies in Manchester. We do so by reconstructing how the presence of Romanian Roma emerged as a public issue leading to various engagement strategies and how different actors competed over the interpretation of the needs of the Roma community and the best ways to respond to them. We use Fraser's notion of ‘parity of participation’ to draw attention to the position of the Roma community itself in the process of interpreting needs.

In pension systems characterized by low or moderate state benefits, reliance on voluntary private pensions creates a dualism of access to adequate retirement income. This dualism is expected to persist over time. Yet while some private-heavy pension systems continue to rely on dualising voluntarism, since the 1980s most have introduced regulatory reforms to make private pensions more encompassing. This paper uses fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to identify three paths to the regulatory extension of private pension coverage – collective self-regulation, top-down regulation in Continental Europe, and top-down regulation in Anglophone countries. A case study of the UK then shows how it is that unions have been able to bring about more encompassing private pensions in Anglophone countries, despite strong employer opposition, weak formal influence in policymaking, and a weak institutional capacity for collective self-regulation.

Activation reforms targeted at single parents simultaneously construct them as a legitimate target for activation policy and subject them to new obligations to engage in paid work or education/training. The social policy literature has established that the work of ‘making-up’ target groups occurs at the street level as well as in government legislation. The street level has become even more significant in recent years as there has been a shift towards establishing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programmes and organising these around the principles of performance pay and process flexibility. However, what is largely missing from the existing literature is an analysis of how contract conditions, together with individuals' activation obligations, shape how they are targeted at the street level. Drawing on a study conducted over eight years with agencies in Australia's quasi-market for employment services, this paper argues that the changes to the contracts for governing this market changed how Australian single mothers were targeted by employment services. Over time there was a shift away from making-up single-parent clients as a distinct, vulnerable target group and a shift towards viewing them in terms of risk categories described within the agencies’ contracts.

The relationship between Holyrood and Westminster is an evolving one where there is some evidence of policy divergence. Underpinning policy approaches are different views of social citizenship, with the Holyrood approach maintaining elements of the post-1945 welfare settlement. The place of refugees and asylum seekers within these differing approaches is currently underexplored. This article looks at the Scottish and UK Governments’ views of social rights and how they apply to asylum seekers and refugees. It suggests that despite refugee ‘policy’ being at least partly reserved, the Scottish Government has been able to take a different approach from that of Westminster, an approach underpinned by these differing welfare outlooks.

The optimal balance between central governmental authority and the degree of autonomy of local public bodies is an enduring issue in public policy. The UK National Health Service is no exception, with NHS history, in part at least, a history of repeated cycles of centralisation and decentralisation of decision-making power. Most recently, a significant reorganisation of the NHS in 2012–13 was built around the creation of new and supposedly more autonomous commissioning organisations (Clinical Commissioning Groups – CCGs). Using Bossert's (1998) concept of ‘decision space’, we explored the experiences of local commissioners as they took on their new responsibilities. We interviewed commissioning staff from all of the CCGs in two regional health care ‘economies’, exploring their perceptions of autonomy and their experiences over time. We found significant early enthusiasm for, and perceptions of, increased autonomy tempered in the vertical dimension by increasingly onerous and prescriptive monitoring regimes, and in the horizontal dimension by the proliferation of overlapping networks, inter-organisational groups and relationships. We propose that, whatever the balance between central and local control that is adopted, complex public services require some sort of meso-level oversight from organisations able to ‘hold the ring’ between competing interests and to take a regional view of the needs of the local health system. This suggests that local organisational autonomy in such services will always be constrained.

The social risk literature examines the extent to which states have provided social protection against the ‘old’ social risks of the post-war era and the ‘new’ social risks affecting post-industrial capitalist states. In this paper the contingency of the provision of informal care to people aged 65 and over is discussed. The paper deconstructs the concept of social risk to determine the characteristics and processes which contribute to states recognising specific contingencies as social risks which require social protection. This conceptualisation is applied to make the case that care-related risks associated with the informal care of older people should be recognised and treated as social risks by states. Data from a qualitative study of the English care policy system provide empirical evidence that informal care-related risks are recognised, but not treated, as social risks in England. The findings reveal informal carers, and the older people they care for, receive inadequate and inconsistent statutory protection against the poverty and welfare risks they face. Furthermore the design and operationalisation of the English care policy system generates risks for care relationships.

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has moved rapidly up the British political agenda in recent years, with support from the Green Party, the Royal Society of Arts, and left-wing writers such as Paul Mason. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has set up a working group to examine its implications, and four Scottish councils are hoping to launch pilot schemes. Contemporary British interest in UBI forms part of a lively global debate about automation, inequality and precarious labour, but it also draws on a long history of proposals for tax-benefit reform within UK social policy. This article identifies five waves of enthusiasm for basic income in Britain over the past century and highlights patterns of continuity and change. It shows that interest in the proposal has been greatest at times of pessimism about the future of the labour market, though concerns about the ethics and affordability of unconditional payments have always been difficult to shake. Advocates of UBI have also struggled to reconcile the technocratic approach of its Conservative and Liberal supporters with the transformative ambitions of the radical left. It remains to be seen whether the recent growth of left-wing support for UBI will improve its prospects of implementation.

Stability is one of the most crucial elements of social security systems. Although the United States is famous – some might say notorious – for drastic changes to its socio-economic structure (including its welfare programmes), its Social Security is the most secure and unchanged public pension programme among major Western countries. In the restructuring age of welfare states, public pensions have been reformed several times in Japan and various European countries, with an overhaul of benefits and taxes. However, Social Security in the US has not undergone such reforms in the three decades since the Social Security Act was amended in 1983, but has experienced relatively better financial conditions. This paper investigates the extent to which Social Security has remained stable during a time when welfare states are going through a crisis. The comparative analysis for stability consists of three steps: (1) a simple evaluation of the frequency of reforms among six countries; (2) a comparison of the scales of parametric adjustment and components of structural reform; and (3) confirming current financial sustainability to check for ‘false stability’ using individual government reports. This paper also studies stability factors, including an institutional design that is durable in this changing environment.