The European Commission in Brussels ran a Poverty Programme of action projects and cross-national studies from 1975–80. An evaluation agency was set up by the Commission and carried out an evaluation of the Programme during 1979–80. This paper draws upon the experiences of that exercise in order to examine the concept and the practical implementation of a cross-national evaluation. It explores the political context of evaluation and the dilemmas and obstacles this poses for the evaluator. An evaluation exercise is an intrusion into the existing pattern of relationships among the various participants in the programme concerned. They will typically see it as an attempt at improved scrutiny and political control by its instigators – and the evaluator will therefore face a diplomatic as well as a technical task, particular vis-à-vis those participants upon whom he is dependent for the preparation of his report. This diplomacy will not take place in a vacuum, however, and its course will depend crucially upon the wider political context within which the future of the programme is being decided.

The approved societies, who were charged with the administration of health insurance in Britain, have long been blamed for the failure of the scheme to expand its coverage or scope in the interwar period. This paper takes a closer look at the administrative process and argues that societies were more vulnerable to central regulation than is commonly thought and were unable to resist cuts in public subsidies and extensions in liability introduced at their expense. They provided a convenient scapegoat for policies emanating primarily from the economic orthodoxy subscribed to by both government and the Treasury, modified to protect the unemployed during the slump. Health insurance policy was dominated to a large extent by the Government Actuary, who aimed to guarantee the cost effectiveness of the scheme. This paper also shows how administrative definitions and practices affected the classification of claimants to state social insurance at this time. It re-establishes the major weaknesses of the system, arguing that – in the light of recent discussions about reviving a system of national health insurance – we have much to learn from looking again at the experience of the interwar period.

This article examines the administrative response to one of the less obvious consequences of the depression of the 1930s: the rapid increase in the number of vagrants. Statistics and other evidence suggest a positive correlation between unemployment and vagrancy (measured by admissions to the poor law casual wards). Officials appear to have been unwilling to acknowledge this relationship. Yet, during this period, greater emphasis began to be placed on the rehabilitation of the vagrant, as opposed to the deterrence characteristic of the poor law. This was presented as a significant measure of reform – although, in practice, little change took place at this time. Research into departmental records, however, shows that this review of the treatment of the vagrant was a response to a process which had its roots in financial and administrative priorities.

Considerable debate has taken place as to the nature of social need and ways in which it can best be identified in individual people, but little attention has focussed on the way assessments of need are used in the process of policy formation. The article takes Jonathan Bradshaw's commonly quoted taxonomy of social need and assesses its strengths and weaknesses for use in a practical policy making setting, that of assessment of need for sheltered housing for elderly people by a district housing authority. Some fundamental problems associated with Bradshaw's approach are then discussed, together with those arising from use of a term such as need in the process of policy formation.