Social and Public Policy - All titles

Experts review the leading social policy scholarship from the past year in this comprehensive volume. Published in association with the Social Policy Association, this volume addresses current issues and critical debates throughout the international social policy field.

Drawing on first-hand accounts from those living under the systems, this novel study explores the impact of Australia and New Zealand’s income management policies and asks whether they have caused more harm than good.

This book synthesises the challenges of researching everyday life for families on low incomes during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve future policy and practice.

Christopher O’Leary provides a fresh perspective on prosocial working choices in this first substantive critique of Public Service Motivation. The book reviews concepts of PSM and research to date and explores the rationales and aims of public and third sector workers before proposing alternative theories for people’s motivations to serve.

Offering a much-needed analysis of the overlooked crisis of food poverty in Ireland, this book brings together the complex picture emerging from interviews with users of food aid, explores the international landscape of food poverty and what action should be taken.

Welfare states are a major feature of many societies. This book draws on qualitative interviews with people receiving various working age welfare payments in Ireland to analyse welfare conditionality and explore stigma, social reciprocity and the notions of the deserving and undeserving poor.

This expert-led review of policy analysis in Spain is the first systematic study to provide a comprehensive overview of how policy actors generate information for the policy-making process.

Drawing on interviews with key international informants across 16 countries, this book examines how child support systems often fail to transfer payments from separated fathers to mothers and their children. It identifies how the gender order is entrenched through child support failure and offers possibilities for feminist reform.

Drawing on fieldwork from the UK, France and Germany, this volume addresses the relationship between trust and transparency in the context of multi-level governance.

This book tackles the prevailing contradiction within policy analysis, that rigorous thought should be uncontaminated by values, despite policy analysis being inherently values based. In resolving the issue, this book provides a new, solid foundation for policy analysis.

With case studies from around the world, this accessible book explores the methodological complexities of research into voluntary action, charitable behaviour and participation in voluntary organisations.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume examines flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India