Public policy and the policy process
Why We Need Welfare
Collective Action for the Common Good
Explains the challenges that collective welfare faces, and explores the complexities involved in delivering it, including debates about who benefits from welfare and how and where it is delivered.
Challenging choices
Ideology, consumerism and policy
This lively and topical book provides a critique of choice in contemporary society and policy. Having choices empowers us, but constant extension of choice overwhelms us. In a concise and readable style, the author considers whether choice enhances or burdens our lives, and questions the blithe assumption that more choice is always for the better.
Contract or trust?
The role of compacts in local governance
This report is the first evaluation of the structural means by which the meaning of partnership is being operationalised at local level, through the development of local compacts. Using detailed case studies of the development of compacts, the report highlights some of the major barriers to, and key lessons for, effective partnership working
Substance Not Spin
An Insider's View of Success and Failure in Government
Based on his personal experience at the heart of government and the voluntary sector, Nick Raynsford, a former MP, Minister and campaigner, explores making and implementing policy and legislation. He gives an ‘insider’s view’ on a range of events, some not previously made public, making a fascinating bridge across the policy and practice divide.
Moving pictures
Realities of voluntary action
This book will improve understanding of how voluntary organisations are structured and evolve, and how they respond to opportunities and constraints. Drawing on case studies with eight UK organisations, it addresses the key dilemmas of voluntary action and explores how these are experienced and managed within particular organisations.
Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK
State of the Nation
50 years on from the Race Relations Act of 1968, this ‘state of the nation’ book provides an overview and commentary on how things currently stand in a wide range of sectors of society.
Forgotten Wives
How Women Get Written Out of History
Forgotten Wives examines how marriage has contributed to the active ‘disremembering’ of women’s achievements. Ann Oakley uses case studies of four women married to well-known men to ask questions about gender inequality and contributes a fresh vision of how the welfare state developed in the early 20th century.
Too Much Stuff
Capitalism in Crisis
We now enjoy the highest living standard in history yet spend more of our income on pointless luxury. Instead, we should tax more in order to invest much more in societal needs, which will in turn reinvigorate the economy and reduce economic inequality and environmental degradation.
The Crosland legacy
The Future of British Social Democracy
Patrick Diamond considers a wide range of Anthony Crosland’s writings, relating his ideas to ideological debates taking place within today’s Labour Party on egalitarian social democracy, electoral strategy, the European question, and the importance of progressive liberalism on the British centre-left.
Back to the Future of Socialism
Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism (1956) provided a creed for governments of the centre left. Now Peter Hain revisits this classic text and presents a stimulating political prospectus for today. It should be read by everyone interested in the future of the left.
Why We Can't Afford the Rich
Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.
Culture and Values at the Heart of Policy Making
An Insider’s Guide
This illuminating study sets out why policy makers need to take culture seriously, how culture and values shape the political system and presents essential, practical recommendations for what governments should do differently.