Modernising the Welfare State
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Policy Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9781847423665 |
| Open Library | OL27328383W |
| Total publications | 18 |
| Coverage period | 2008 - 2018 |
| Language | EN |
| Impact factor | 1 |
This timely book explores how changing territorial politics are impacting on social citizenship rights across the UK.
The conditional welfare state
Background: Cognitive Muscular TherapyTM (CMT) is an integrated behavioural intervention developed for knee osteoarthritis.CMT teaches patients to reconceptualise the condition, integrates muscle biofeedback and aims to reduce muscle overactivity, both in response to pain and during daily activities.This nested qualitative study explored patient and physiotherapist perspectives and experiences of CMT.Methods: Five physiotherapists were trained to…
Conclusion
This chapter revisits the analytical framework of Chapter One of modernisation and orders of change in order to summarise the material presented. It examines views of the Blair legacy, summarises the evidence of the type and extent of change in the welfare state, places this material in a wider context, and concludes by considering whether we have a new political consensus of ‘Camerownism’ (Cameron/Brown).
Social security and welfare reform
This chapter reviews New Labour’s social security and welfare reform policies. Blair achieved a ‘paradigm shift’ by putting ‘poverty’ back on the policy agenda. His pledge to eradicate child poverty was a major turning point in welfare reform, although the failure to achieve even the interim targets in poverty reduction may come back to haunt his successor(s). The emphasis on poverty was a radical departure from the previous governments, but the …
The NHS after 10 years of New Labour
This chapter reviews New Labour’s health policy, focusing on the modernization of the NHS. New Labour has influenced levels of NHS expenditure for the future by its financial settlements for the NHS since 2000. In turn, it has been influenced by neoliberal (originally Conservative) ideas for running the NHS. New Labour had stronger public health pretensions in 1997 but lost much of the impetus through destabilising and marginalising the public he…
Social care under Blair
From a lukewarm beginning, New Labour’s social care policy has come to the boil, with the changes introduced symbolic of their ambiguous approach to public policy – full of rhetoric on individual empowerment, but relentless in the unshackling of private capital to develop services. This chapter looks at what, and how much, has changed in social care over the Blair years. It considers whether policy development reflects modernisation as conceptual…
The stages of New Labour
This chapter examines the extent of change that has taken place since 1997. The key policy question is whether Labour’s approach to public reform represents an approach with a new hierarchy of goals in place, a new policy ‘paradigm’, or, instead, a variant of the Conservative approach that preceded it. Can Labour policy be divided into a series of stages or moments that show changes in Labour’s approach? Labour’s approach to public reform appears…
Education
This chapter reviews New Labour’s education policy. Blair’s commitment to education has resulted in three dimensions or strands that have contributed to the modernisation of education – an early years curriculum, a diversification of schools, and a reprofessionalisation of teaching. Introduced to widen state provision in respect of age and to meet the wider needs of its pupils, the first two dimensions of an early years curriculum and the introdu…
Choice in public services
This chapter explores New Labour’s approach to choice at each of Hall’s three levels, and considers how 6 and Peck’s themes of modernisation are manifest in detailed policy settings. It also examines changes over Blair’s two-and-a-half terms as Prime Minister and between different public services. The chapter highlights the government’s growing fascination with choice, and the tendency to offer distinctive models of choice to different welfare us…
Social Democratic reforms of the welfare state
Social Democrats regained power in the UK and Germany in the late 1990s, after long periods spent in opposition. This chapter takes stock of welfare state reforms in both countries and aims to answer whether, and how far, 10 years of Social Democratic governments have left their modern imprints on the institutional set-up of the welfare state, based on Hall’s categorisations of change. It briefly sketches out the socioeconomic conditions and inst…
Index
Social investment
This chapter assesses the nature and scope of changes to the welfare state in relation to the ‘social investment’ turn. It argues that Tony Blair’s New Labour governments recalibrated welfare state priorities, programmes, and expenditures, both as a response to social risk and to promote economic competitiveness, through an embrace of social investment discourses and practices. While social investment, at its core, is all about activation (that i…
Introduction
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine the main changes to the welfare state since New Labour came to power in 1997, updating existing accounts, as they tend to focus on the first term of government up to 2001. The main focus of the book, however, is to examine the degree of change that has occurred in the welfare state – the book’s analytical template is New Labour’s modernization of the welfare sta…
The conditional welfare state
Risk and the Blair legacy
This chapter examines risk scenarios that have been structured into New Labour policy discourses since 1997. It argues that the approach taken to risk by New Labour, although complex and sometimes contradictory, can be understood as a feature of late modernity. New Labour, like all governments in advanced capitalist societies, is experiencing and responding to processes of ‘reflexive modernisation’. The work of 6 and Peck will be utilised to iden…
Going private?
Chapter One provided a comprehensive taxonomy of the ways in which the term ‘modernisation’ in the Blair years was deployed by the government and understood by those who sought to analyse it in action. This chapter focuses on just one of those conceptual categories, the sense in which modernisation has been used to mean a preference for, and a replacement by, private sector means and methods for those utilised in and by the public sector. In doin…
Controlling crime and disorder
This chapter reviews New Labour’s crime policy. The Labour government, under Tony Blair, concerned itself with more fundamental ‘third order change’ or ‘paradigm shifts’. From the first utterance of the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ mantra, Labour made it very clear that crime and law and order would be headline priorities. These ‘paradigm shifts’ that Blair presided over were dominated by politicians in an effort to respond to w…
Housing policy
This chapter reviews New Labour’s housing policy, in which three phases can be identified. In the first phase the dearth of specific housing commitments in New Labour’s 1997 manifesto produced a vacuum in housing policy until the publication in 2000 of the housing Green Paper Quality and choice: A decent home for all, with its emphasis on supply diversity and choice and the application of ‘new public sector management’. In stage three, a new emph…
Modernising the Welfare State
No prominent publications on this page.
Conclusion
This chapter revisits the analytical framework of Chapter One of modernisation and orders of change in order to summarise the material presented. It examines views of the Blair legacy, summarises the evidence of the type and extent of change in the welfare state, places this material in a wider context, and concludes by considering whether we have a new political consensus of ‘Camerownism’ (Cameron/Brown).
Social security and welfare reform
This chapter reviews New Labour’s social security and welfare reform policies. Blair achieved a ‘paradigm shift’ by putting ‘poverty’ back on the policy agenda. His pledge to eradicate child poverty was a major turning point in welfare reform, although the failure to achieve even the interim targets in poverty reduction may come back to haunt his successor(s). The emphasis on poverty was a radical departure from the previous governments, but the …
The NHS after 10 years of New Labour
This chapter reviews New Labour’s health policy, focusing on the modernization of the NHS. New Labour has influenced levels of NHS expenditure for the future by its financial settlements for the NHS since 2000. In turn, it has been influenced by neoliberal (originally Conservative) ideas for running the NHS. New Labour had stronger public health pretensions in 1997 but lost much of the impetus through destabilising and marginalising the public he…
Social care under Blair
From a lukewarm beginning, New Labour’s social care policy has come to the boil, with the changes introduced symbolic of their ambiguous approach to public policy – full of rhetoric on individual empowerment, but relentless in the unshackling of private capital to develop services. This chapter looks at what, and how much, has changed in social care over the Blair years. It considers whether policy development reflects modernisation as conceptual…
The stages of New Labour
This chapter examines the extent of change that has taken place since 1997. The key policy question is whether Labour’s approach to public reform represents an approach with a new hierarchy of goals in place, a new policy ‘paradigm’, or, instead, a variant of the Conservative approach that preceded it. Can Labour policy be divided into a series of stages or moments that show changes in Labour’s approach? Labour’s approach to public reform appears…
Education
This chapter reviews New Labour’s education policy. Blair’s commitment to education has resulted in three dimensions or strands that have contributed to the modernisation of education – an early years curriculum, a diversification of schools, and a reprofessionalisation of teaching. Introduced to widen state provision in respect of age and to meet the wider needs of its pupils, the first two dimensions of an early years curriculum and the introdu…
Choice in public services
This chapter explores New Labour’s approach to choice at each of Hall’s three levels, and considers how 6 and Peck’s themes of modernisation are manifest in detailed policy settings. It also examines changes over Blair’s two-and-a-half terms as Prime Minister and between different public services. The chapter highlights the government’s growing fascination with choice, and the tendency to offer distinctive models of choice to different welfare us…
Social Democratic reforms of the welfare state
Social Democrats regained power in the UK and Germany in the late 1990s, after long periods spent in opposition. This chapter takes stock of welfare state reforms in both countries and aims to answer whether, and how far, 10 years of Social Democratic governments have left their modern imprints on the institutional set-up of the welfare state, based on Hall’s categorisations of change. It briefly sketches out the socioeconomic conditions and inst…
Index
Social investment
This chapter assesses the nature and scope of changes to the welfare state in relation to the ‘social investment’ turn. It argues that Tony Blair’s New Labour governments recalibrated welfare state priorities, programmes, and expenditures, both as a response to social risk and to promote economic competitiveness, through an embrace of social investment discourses and practices. While social investment, at its core, is all about activation (that i…
Introduction
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine the main changes to the welfare state since New Labour came to power in 1997, updating existing accounts, as they tend to focus on the first term of government up to 2001. The main focus of the book, however, is to examine the degree of change that has occurred in the welfare state – the book’s analytical template is New Labour’s modernization of the welfare sta…
The conditional welfare state
Risk and the Blair legacy
This chapter examines risk scenarios that have been structured into New Labour policy discourses since 1997. It argues that the approach taken to risk by New Labour, although complex and sometimes contradictory, can be understood as a feature of late modernity. New Labour, like all governments in advanced capitalist societies, is experiencing and responding to processes of ‘reflexive modernisation’. The work of 6 and Peck will be utilised to iden…
Going private?
Chapter One provided a comprehensive taxonomy of the ways in which the term ‘modernisation’ in the Blair years was deployed by the government and understood by those who sought to analyse it in action. This chapter focuses on just one of those conceptual categories, the sense in which modernisation has been used to mean a preference for, and a replacement by, private sector means and methods for those utilised in and by the public sector. In doin…
Controlling crime and disorder
This chapter reviews New Labour’s crime policy. The Labour government, under Tony Blair, concerned itself with more fundamental ‘third order change’ or ‘paradigm shifts’. From the first utterance of the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ mantra, Labour made it very clear that crime and law and order would be headline priorities. These ‘paradigm shifts’ that Blair presided over were dominated by politicians in an effort to respond to w…
Housing policy
This chapter reviews New Labour’s housing policy, in which three phases can be identified. In the first phase the dearth of specific housing commitments in New Labour’s 1997 manifesto produced a vacuum in housing policy until the publication in 2000 of the housing Green Paper Quality and choice: A decent home for all, with its emphasis on supply diversity and choice and the application of ‘new public sector management’. In stage three, a new emph…
Modernising the Welfare State
The conditional welfare state
Background: Cognitive Muscular TherapyTM (CMT) is an integrated behavioural intervention developed for knee osteoarthritis.CMT teaches patients to reconceptualise the condition, integrates muscle biofeedback and aims to reduce muscle overactivity, both in response to pain and during daily activities.This nested qualitative study explored patient and physiotherapist perspectives and experiences of CMT.Methods: Five physiotherapists were trained to…