What is ‘Evolution’? What is ‘Complexity’? [and How does it inform the study of policymaking?]

by Paul Cairney, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling. Originally published at http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk on 13 May 2013

There is a long history in the social sciences of using the natural sciences as a source of comparison. Much of the comparison is based on little more than the (often very useful) metaphor. There is now an equally important but shorter history of trying to draw more direct parallels; to say that this process in a social system is directly comparable to a process in a natural or living system. The study of evolution provides the potential for that sort of direct comparison, and we can find the use of terms such as ‘complexity’ (or ‘complex systems’) employed partly to that end. However, there are two major obstacles to this sort of direct comparison (and indeed to the use of evolution-based metaphors):

1. We may not agree about the meaning of evolution. For example, when it is used loosely in everyday language, ‘evolution’ tends to refer to a very long term, gradual process of change. However, evolution can also refer to the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which long spells of gradual change are interrupted by relatively short but profound bursts of activity and change. Consequently, the study of evolution is instantly confusing because it can refer to the *opposite of* and/ or the *same thing as* revolution. There are also some other sources of potential confusion about, for example, the nature of evolution (does it necessarily refer to advancement?) and the nature of ‘selection’ (do species simply respond blindly to their environments or help create them?).

2. Some people have really ruined evolution for the rest of us. We can blame so-called ‘social-Darwinism’ for the racist/ sexist idea that some people are more evolved than others. In other words, ‘evolution’ comes with a lot of baggage when we apply it to social science discussions.

This sort of confusion can be found in the study of public policy where evolution can refer to a wide range of things, including:

• the cumulative, long-term development of policy solutions;
• major disruptions in the way that policy makers think about, and try to solve, policy problems;
• the maintenance *or* radical reform of policy-making institutions;
• ‘emergent’ behaviour within complex systems
• the trial-and-error strategies adopted by actors, such as policy entrepreneurs, when adapting to their environment
• the coming together of multiple factors to create the conditions for major policy change (which can be a creative, ‘window of opportunity’ style process, or a destructive, failure-related ‘perfect storm style process).

This range of understandings may not put us off evolutionary discussions completely, but it shows us that we should be super-clear about our meaning of evolution when we seek to make these sorts of comparisons with evolution in nature.

I suppose this has been a roundabout way for me to advertise the fact that I have just published a journal article about this very topic (if you can’t access it, I can send you a *non-final* version or you can try getting it through a free trial). It compares the most prominent theories of politics and policymaking which draw on references to evolution in different ways. For example:

Multiple Streams Analysis (Kingdon) – uses the term ‘policy primeval soup’ to suggest that, although policymaker attention may lurch from one problem to another, problems will not be addressed until policy solutions have evolved sufficiently within a policy community and policymakers have the motive and opportunity to adopt them. ‘Evolution’ describes the *slow progress* of an idea towards acceptability within the policy community.

Punctuated Equilibrium theory (Baumgartner and Jones) – suggests that that ‘incremental’ policy change in most cases is accompanied by ‘seismic’ change in a small number of cases – an outcome consistent with ‘power laws’ found in the natural and social worlds. Kingdon’s picture of slow progress producing partial mutations is replaced by Baumgartner and Jones’ *fast, disruptive, pure mutation* (in some cases).

Then there is complexity theory, which I have discussed in my blog here. The relevance to a discussion of evolution is that complexity theory may help us understand processes in which people, institutions and their environments are interacting constantly to produce rather unpredictable outcomes (or, at least, outcomes may ‘emerge’ locally, in the absence of central control). This might be broken down into three steps:

1. Institutions, as sets of rules and norms, represent ways for people to retain certain ideas and encourage particular forms of behaviours.
2. Complex systems represent (partly) a large number of overlapping and often interdependent institutions.
3. New behaviours and rules arise from the interaction between multiple institutions and the actors involved.

In other words, different ‘worlds’ are in constant collision, producing new ways of thinking and behaviour that ‘emerge’ from these interactions. They are then passed down through the generations, but in an imperfect way, allowing new forms of thinking and behaviour to emerge.

To describe these processes as ‘evolutionary’, we really need to use the language of evolution – variation, selection and retention – to describe and explain outcomes. The idea in the natural world is that living things want to do at least two things: (1) pass on their genes; (2) cooperate with others to secure resources and share them out to their kith and kin. The idea in the political world is a bit different and perhaps a bit of a stretch, but here goes:

• The equivalent of passing on genes is passing on ‘memes’, or ideas (beliefs, ways of thinking – as described in the 70s by Richard Dawkins before he moved onto God).
• ‘Variation’ refers to the different rules adopted by different social groups to foster the collective action required to survive.
• ‘Selection’ describes the interaction between people and their environments; particular environments may provide an advantage to some groups over others and encourage certain behaviours (or, at least, some groups may respond by adapting their behaviour to their environment).
• ‘Retention’ describes the ways in which people pass on their genes (memes) to ensure the reproduction of their established rules (we might call them ‘institutions’).

The key difference in the study of evolution and policymaking is the idea of passing on memes through the generations. We think of passing on genes through the generations as a process that takes hundreds, thousands or millions of years. Passing on memes through the ‘policy generations’ is more like the study of fruit flies (months), viruses or bacteria (days or weeks). In other words, ways of thinking, and emerging behaviour, change constantly as people interact with each other, articulating different beliefs and rules and producing new forms of thinking, rules and behaviour as they interact. Big jumps in ways of thinking may be associated with key generational shifts, but that can take place, for example, as one generation of scientists retires or, more quickly still, one generation of experts is replaced (within government circles) by another.

Complexity theory may be used to capture, describe and explain that sort of interaction on a grand scale. We can zoom in to see individuals interacting with each other, or zoom out to observe mass behaviour and the sorts of outcomes that emerge from them. For me, this means that the field is wide open when it comes down to research methods. If we are interested in people understanding this complex process of interaction, we can study those individuals using interviews and/ or various forms of observation. If we are interested in the whole system, we might adopt mathematical models and computer simulations. There is nothing to stop us combining such methods (and more) if we avoid the sort of people that adhere slavishly to one fixed understanding of the world and, therefore, one method to help us understand it.

I don’t hold out much hope of this sort of discussion capturing the public imagination. However, the chances are that this sort of discussion of evolution (and its relationship to complexity theory) is taking place in a wide range of disciplines without much exchange between them. So, if you see a blog like this written by someone else in some other field, please let me know.

Cairney, P. (2013). What is evolutionary theory and how does it inform policy studies?. Policy & Politics, 41(2), 279-298.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2013/00000041/00000002/art00008

LSE Review of Books Awards

Margherita Margiotti, winner of the prize for the most read review in Sociology and Anthropology, sponsored by Policy Press

The LSE Review of Books is a blog founded in April 2012 which aims to review the latest books in social sciences. In its first year it has gained over 4000 readers a week and 10,000 Twitter followers and reviewed many of our books.

I attended the first LSE Review of Books Awards ceremony in London yesterday on behalf of Policy Press. We were pleased to sponsor one of the prizes, which was awarded for the most read review in Sociology and Anthropology. The winner was Margherita Margiotti of the University of Bristol, with a review of The Subject of Anthropology by Henrietta L. Moore.

The Verso Prize for Most-Read Review in Law and Human Rights was won by Tara O’Leary for her review of Criminalisation and advanced marginality by Peter Squires and John Lea, published by us!

You can see a complete list of the winners on the LSE Review of Books Awards website.

The event was an opportunity for publishers to meet the reviewers and share information. We look forward to working with LSE Review of Books in the coming years to see many more of our books reviewed.

Kathryn King

Margaret Thatcher and her legacy on criminology

Emma Wincup

by Emma Wincup, author of Understanding crime and social policy, publishing this month.

I have been reflecting since the death of Thatcher last month why there has been so little discussion of crime issues given the enormous amount of media coverage devoted to analysis of the impact of the policies she pursued. The run-up to her entry into Downing Street is widely cited by criminologists as one of the first General Elections in which law and order issues featured prominently alongside the usual suspects of health, education and the economy. Looking back, 1979 has become a watershed year; one in which the main political parties started to develop their distinctive crime agenda, which has too frequently ended up in a game of leapfrog with parties competing for who can be the toughest on crime.

We can easily look back and identify policies which might have contributed to rising crime rates throughout the 1980s, alongside increasing inequality: unemployment, and it’s devastating effects on communities; restrictions on eligibility for welfare, especially among young people; and reduced access to social housing. There is ample evidence to suggest that reduced welfare spending and unemployment are linked to crime, even though this has always been fiercely contested by the Conservative Party. There are always multiple explanations for rising crime rates, and increased expenditure on policing might be one of them, alongside actual increases in crime. Whilst reduced public expenditure was actively pursued across many areas of public policy throughout the 1980s, state investment in the police increased in the Thatcher years, and was coupled with the granting of greater police powers, most infamously and controversially demonstrated during the Miners’ Strike.

The real impact of her crime control policies were witnessed after she had left office. Widespread privatisation is the most obvious: criminal justice functions were put out to tender after the use of private sector companies had been tested elsewhere, most notably in health. If we take, for example, the current proposals to contract out probation supervision for all but the most risky offenders, or the widespread introduction of payment-by-results schemes through criminal justice, we can attribute much of this to the legacy of Thatcher. Radical changes in the financing and delivery of public services are, of course, not peculiar to the crime control functions of the state.

I still haven’t come up with an explanation for the neglect of crime issues in the media. It might be because much of the media coverage has been anti-Thatcher, and, whilst many of Margaret Thatcher’s policies are deeply troubling for those with academic interests in crime or who work within criminal justice, there were occasional glimpses of an alternative vision of criminal justice which many academics and professionals would support. Part of her legacy was to pave the way for the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, reserving custody for only the most serious offenders. The agenda which drove this was probably a desire to reduce state expenditure rather than a commitment to reduce the use of imprisonment in itself, but, had it been allowed time to bed down, we might not see almost 84,000 people locked up in custody in 2013.

Understanding crime and social policy is available with 20% discount from www.policypress.co.uk

A wider debate on how Europe shapes British policy making is now needed

Janice Morphet

This article was originally posted at the LSE’s EUROPP – European Politics and Policy blog on 2 May 2013

The UK’s forty-year relationship with the EU and its predecessors has seen a significant integration of EU policies into the UK’s institutional culture. Janice Morphet looks at how the UK has implemented EU legislation in recent decades, finding that there has been little public discussion of their potential implications. She argues that it may now be time to promote a more engaged discussion and debate on how the EU shapes UK public policy.

Since 1972, it has been difficult to have a conversation about the pooling of the UK’s powers within the EU. While the lead up to joining the EU saw a strong and coordinated campaign for membership, the 1975 referendum on ‘staying in’ may have created a continuing uncertainty in the relationship which can be characterised as ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But over the following forty years, why has this position persisted? And what effects has it had?

The UK joined the EU with its head not with its heart. Changes in world trade and the growing European market meant a re-evaluation of the UK’s position. Whilst an Atlanticist longing remained for some British politicians, it was clear that the US defined the UK as being the friend in the EU not the partner outside it. Once a member, the UK retained its post-war position, assuming leadership and policy transfer without revising its focus of attention or its negotiating methods to suit the emerging institutional culture. Whitehall absorbed the processes of developing EU policy within its own internal methods, welcoming praise from other member states for internal coordination and overlooking their cultural practices of negotiation.

Whilst Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, was associated with exposing the public sector to competition – resulting in ‘privatisation’, this was not in the 1979 Conservative manifesto. Rather it was a GATT agenda that the Labour Cabinet had agreed in 1976 and an issue where EU member states then negotiated individually. But it was Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, who understood how the objectives of ‘ever closer union’ and Thatcher’s marketisation could be brought together, through the means of the creation of the Single Market.

Delors laid his plans skilfully. Firstly the process of developing the Single Market was put in the hands of the UK Commissioner, Arthur Cockfield, a former Secretary of State for Trade. Secondly, he gave him full backing to roam over the whole of the EU’s policies in support of an integrated approach. Thirdly, Delors adopted an artificial date – of 1992 – for the single market to be implemented – a date that coincided with the UK’s Presidency of the Council.

In 1986, the UK was in the midst of opening the public sector to competition. The Single Market was regarded as a vehicle to enhance the potential for both competiton and expansion. The UK failed to recognise that the single market would require wider regulatory reform crossing many areas of public policy. These included the environment, population mobility, transfer of professional qualifications, transport, employment rights, finance and regulatory reform. As Cockfield found, the Prime Minister did not understand the nature of the UK’s EU membership and its implications. Further, he found that during the negotiations, Parliament was kept at a distance, knew little and seemed to care less about the Single European Act, in ways that fundamentally alarmed him.

It was no surprise, then, to find that the implications of the Single Market came as a jolt to Whitehall and Westminster. The old assumptions, for example, that the UK’s environmental standards were equal to or better than those in other member states took a sharp knock as EU legislation was poorly implemented or misunderstood. The Whitehall machine responded with a language of distancing and denial. As Whitehall and Westminster were involved in discussions on the increasing swathes of legislation required to implement the Single Market, there was talk of this being advisory or aspirational rather than agreed commitments.

So the UK was hoist on its own petard as further areas of policy were pooled but no open discussions about the potential implications of Treaties and their subsequent programmes of legislation were undertaken in the media – a topic that is a current consideration for the House of Commons Select Committee on European Scrutiny. A major interest for Westminster and Whitehall became how could the pooled policy agreements be implemented under the cover of domestic policy? A number of policy orphans appeared – such as the creation of the Government Offices of the Regions to give a nod towards applying the principle of subsidiarity introduced in the Treaty on European Union in 1992. This was followed by their abolition in 2010 as the subsidiarity principle reached its full expression in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.

In the EU, the programmed approach is important, giving enough ‘wriggle room’ for all member states to implement any reforms required over more than one government’s term. This approach has been adopted since 1992 in the UK with the introduction of Spending Reviews that mirror EU budget periods and are useful policy vehicles for incorporating the ‘new’ without openly discussing their provenance. Nevertheless, the UK still characterises its approach through machinery of government steps rather EU flows. As Gisela Stuart MP recently said in evidence to the EU Scrutiny Select Committee ‘whenever the Government comes in, you wipe the slate clean and you start anew. The European Commission has no similar process’.

So what effects has this longstanding approach had? Although a key issue is a lack of public understanding of the current UK’s pooled policy objectives and agendas within the EU, there is a more disquieting concern that there is a lack of appreciation of these processes across the wider academic and policy communities in civil society. It is hard to have discussions on those policies which the UK develops and implements through its EU membership if there is no common discourse that stretches back over 40 years. Ministers and civil servants are negotiating today what will be implemented in 2020, whilst tomorrow they will be discussing how to implement what was agreed five or ten years ago. Unlike other member states, these jobs are not regarded as necessary stages in a high-flying career but a specialist backwater. Is it time to make good this deficit and engage in these policy discussions from an informed perspective?

Janice Morphet’s new book How the EU shapes British public policy is available with 20% discount from www.policypress.co.uk

How the Thatcher years marked a turning point for social work

Margaret Thatcher
© Newsfocus1 | Dreamstime.com

Originally posted by Andy McNicoll on the Community Care Social Work Blog on 1 May 2013.

Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure who oversaw profound changes to both social work and the welfare state during her 15 years as leader of the Conservative Party, writes social worker Steve Rogowski.

What was Margaret Thatcher’s legacy for social work? The social work profession actually remained relatively unscathed during the early years of her premiership. In fact, progress was made in relation to community social work and youth justice.

For example, diversion from the youth justice system and alternatives to incarceration were key factors in the decline in recorded youth crime in the 1980s. It remains, in my view, the most significant evidenced-based social work achievement.

However, the Children Act 1989 – introduced a year prior to Thatcher being replaced by John Major amid opposition to her controversial ‘poll tax’ – marked a significant turning point for children’s social work. The Act resulted in a move from a concern with child welfare to one of child protection, often involving authoritarian interventions.

Meanwhile in adult social care, the introduction of care management under the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 saw direct, relationship-based work with adult users replaced with bureaucracy aimed at rationing resources.

It was the beginning of a shift in social work that was subsequently accelerated by Tony Blair’s New Labour government – an administration that embraced Thatcher’s ‘free market’ ideology.

Under New Labour the BA social work degree was introduced but was underpinned by a preoccupation with producing a reliable and compliant workforce to work at the will of managers.

Social work as a distinct profession gradually became subsumed under the more general banner of ‘social care’. The Central Council for the Education and Training in Social Work was replaced by the General Social Care Council. The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) led to the demise of the National Institute of Social Work.

New multi-agency bodies were created, including Youth Offending Teams, where the influence of social work declined. Social work was also absent from any real role in relation to Sure Start and the Children’s Fund.

The death of Victoria Climbie in 2000 led to the supposed integration of health, education, social services/care and others, and the demise of social services departments.

‘Modernisation’ of children and families work meant increased bureaucratisation and control of the social work task. It also saw a move a move away from preventative work – now it’s the case that unless there are child protection concerns, children and families are unlikely to be offered social work help.

Children and young people who are asylum seeking or refugees, those with mental health issues and disabilities all fared less well under New Labour. For instance, practice with asylum seeking and refugee children became narrow and negative in relation to immigration control.

Ironically, any positives for social work emerged from the fallout of the tragedy of Baby Peter’s death.

The Social Work Task Force acknowledged that practitioners spent too much time on computers and bureaucracy. This was confirmed by the subsequent Social Work Reform Board and Munro Review, with both arguing for less bureaucracy and more scope for professional judgement.

Another of Margaret Thatcher’s legacies that we see the impact of every day as social workers is the way she changed the welfare state. During her 15 years in power, Thatcher oversaw cuts to social security benefits, housing and education. Council houses were sold off and curbs on the power of trade unions culminated in the defeat of the miners.

Private and voluntary sector involvement in health, education, housing and employment services was encouraged. Entitlement to benefits and services became more conditional, with a ‘modern’ welfare state working with the grain of market imperatives, rather than tackling embedded class inequalities.

This approach was broadly continued by the governments that succeeded Thatcher’s. We are currently seeing David Cameron’s coalition using the global financial and economic crisis (which is directly linked to the free market ideology Thatcher promoted) to impose severe cuts to public services.

People in difficulty must rely on themselves, family, friends or charity (food banks are a prime example) rather than the state through social work.

As well as having a reduced role, social work with children and families involves the aforementioned authoritarian turn – parents told to change their behaviour/lifestyle or face losing their children via adoption to middle class families.

These issues mean that for social workers, critical practice is essential. This involves quiet challenges to managerial diktats and allows critical engagement with the issues at the root of social injustice, the widening inequalities in society.

As practitioners we must work individually with users as well as collectively (through our professional bodies, trade unions, political parties) to challenge an approach that, 34 years on from Margaret Thatcher’s election as Britain’s first female prime minister, still drives policies that promote inequality and damage those in need.

Steve Rogowski is a social worker and author of Critical social work with children and families, available with 20% discount at www.policypress.co.uk.

Critical and radical social work: an introduction

Iain Ferguson and Michael Lavalette

The initial idea for the journal developed out of our experience at the International Association of Schools of Social Work/International Federation of Social Work joint world congress in Hong Kong in 2010. In the pre-conference period, ourselves as members of the Social Work Action Network (SWAN) in Britain along with a number of other members approached the conference organisers with a proposal to run a series of plenary events at the conference. We were given three linked sessions, framed around the topics ‘social work and neoliberalism’, ‘social work and war’ and ‘debating social work futures’. At the end of May 2010, just before we left for Hong Kong, the Israeli Defence Forces boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in international waters. The ship was part of the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was taking food and medicine to people in Gaza. As a result of the attack, nine people died. As an ‘action’ network, we decided that we would run an additional fringe meeting at the congress on the occupation of Palestine.

Each of the sessions was a success. All four events were packed out and, more importantly, each provided space for people to think about and debate the nature of modern social work and, in the case of the Palestine meeting, to start to think about how social work values should shape our collective response to war, occupation and state crime. Indeed, as a direct result of the fringe meeting, a motion was submitted to the general meeting of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, raising our concerns at the attack on the Mavi Marmara – the first time any of the international social work bodies had taken such a stance on the Palestinian question.

The Hong Kong congress was notable for something else. In addition to the events within the congress, we were also invited to speak at three meetings organised by social welfare workers, their trade union and service users. Iain Ferguson spoke to 100 practitioners and students at the Baptist University on the impact of neoliberalism on social work; Iain Ferguson and Michael Lavalette were invited to speak to 40 young social workers about the relevance of Marxism to radical social work practice; and Michael Lavalette and Vasilios Ioakimidis were invited to speak about the situation in Palestine in a meeting in Kowloon.

The week convinced us of several things. First, that neoliberalism was having a dramatic effect on social work across the globe. The meeting at the Baptist University, and the session within the congress had contributions from people from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Greece, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa and the United States (US) and from across Latin America and Central Africa. The impact of neoliberalism, the growth of inequality and poverty, the privatisation of public services and the way(s) that neoliberal regimes were restricting social work practice were common – and yet there was a feeling in the meetings that these issues were not being articulated fully and adequately within the social work literature.

Second, there was a clear thirst for debate. The people who took part in the various sessions were engaged in a range of social movements in their countries of origin.They were consciously critical and radical social workers trying to apply a range of perspectives to their working lives. The evidence of the congress was that critical and radical social work is alive and well and is an international phenomenon.

Third, the meetings called by the young practitioners were crucial. Too often the claim is made that critical and radical social work is a luxury that is afforded to academics and social work educators, but has no practice relevance. This was always a lazy claim. The radical social work movement of the late 1970s in Britain had a strong base within social work practice and the trades union movement (Weinstein, 2011) – as indeed had the radical social workers of a previous generation within the rank and file movement in the US in the 1930s (Reisch and Andrews, 2002). The meetings with the workers in Hong Kong confirmed that there are significant numbers of practitioners across the globe looking for critical and radical ideas to help explain the problems that social workers and service users face and offer a guide to practice.

Fourth, the Hong Kong meetings engaged practitioners but also some service users. As has been our experience of organising the SWAN in Britain, the assault of neoliberalism (and more recently the impact of austerity) is creating a space where social worker service users and social work academics and practitioners can meet, as equals, to discuss shared and common problems. The welfare service movements have established a strong and powerful voice within many societies and there is much that social workers (academics and practitioners) can learn from a full engagement with the concerns and activities of such movements.

In the aftermath of the congress we approached The Policy Press to discuss our idea: that the new movement of critical and radical social workers needed a journal to provide the space for theoretical development, and for ideas and critique to develop. The Policy Press was delighted because it had noticed something important for its work: its expanding list of radical social work books were selling very well and it was interested in expanding into the radical social work ‘market’.

Of course, for any journal to be relevant and establish itself within the social work community it needs to be clear as to its purpose, its rationale and its audience. Thus, the general aims of the journal are:

• to analyse developments in welfare regimes across the globe from a critical/radical perspective and to assess the implications of these developments for social work and social care;
• to develop the critical/radical theoretical base within social work and social care;
• to provide a forum for dialogue and debate between critical/radical practitioners, academics, service users and movement activists;
• to report on the activities of social welfare movements and the struggles of social workers to shape new, more challenging forms of practice.

The journal is aimed at social work and social policy academics, postgraduate students, social work and social care practitioners and service users. While issues concerning the theory and practice of professional social work will be one of the journal’s areas of concern, the journal will adopt a broad definition of social work to include a variety of forms of popular welfare, non-professional services and forms of care and will address both the wider political and economic context of social work and social care as well as specific forms of practice.

To this end, we envisage the journal having a number of discrete sections. First, in each issue of the journal, there will be five or six articles that engage with theoretical or relevant practice-based issues from a critical or radical social work perspective. These will be academic articles as normally understood. Second, each issue will carry a section devoted to either ‘voices from the frontline’ or ‘radical pioneers’. The ‘Voices from the frontline’ section will allow practitioners, those involved in social movement activity or service users to write a short opinion or reflective piece of broader concern to social workers. The ‘Radical pioneers’ section will appear occasionally and will present new takes on, or descriptions of, the life and times of people in the critical and radical tradition. Our suspicion is that, across the globe, there are activist social workers and pioneers who have been marginalised or hidden within social work’s history and we would like to use this section to ‘rediscover’ their ideas and practice. Finally, there will be a book review section.

We would like to formally invite contributions from academics, practitioners, service users and social movement activists to any of the above-named sections.

To find out more about Critical and Radical Social Work, including how to sign up for a free trial,  visit http://www.policypress.co.uk/journals_crsw.asp

 

Choice, markets and welfare

Paul Spicker

by Paul Spicker, author of Reclaiming individualism, published today

Having ‘choice’ is assumed to be part of welfare, but when people write about it they may be referring to very different things. Part of the arguments for ‘choice’ are arguments for self-determination and freedom of action; those may not be enough to be sure of people’s welfare, but they are certainly important. In economic theory, however, choice is about something quite different – the selection of preferred options from a limited basket of goods. Choice in the second sense tells us very little about choice in the first.

Markets offer some choice, but they only go so far. In the first place, things that are being chosen have to be capable of being treated as commodities. Second, because commodities are scarce, people have to decide what they are ready to forego, as well as what they want. Third, producers have choices, too. They can decide what to provide, and who to provide it to. Producers compete, and they become ‘efficient’, because they are selective. There is often ‘adverse selection’; people who are isolated, poor or who have particular needs may not be served. The argument that markets provide choices, and that choices guarantee well-being, is contingent at best, and this is not always good enough to protect the situation of individuals. Markets might work, and they might not.

Individualisation and personalisation, similarly, are not necessarily good ways to improve individual welfare. There are some circumstances where policies ought to be tailored to the individual, usually after more general services and facilities are put in place. There are others where people need a common foundation of services and facilities, such as schools and hospitals. Where there is no road, the answer is not to issue everyone with boots.

Where governments claim to work for people as individuals, they need to engage with a wide range of activity promoting and safeguarding their welfare. Markets are not enough. Reclaiming individualism makes the case for taking individualism as a focus for actions to protect rights, extending basic security and empowering people as citizens.

Reclaiming individualism is available with 20% discount at www.policypress.co.uk