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.

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.

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.

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.

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.