‘Mutual obligation’ is a deft political slogan. Morally, it evokes deep-seated intuitions about ‘fair reciprocity’ and the ‘duty of fair play’. It seems an easy slide from those intuitions to ‘mutual obligation’ policies demanding work-for-the-dole. That slide is illegitimate, however. There are many different ways to structure mutual obligation. Workfare policies, such as the Howard government's ‘Mutual Obligation Initiative’ in Australia, pick out only one among many alternative regimes that would answer equally well to our root intuitions about ‘fair reciprocity’. Other ways of structuring mutual obligations within social welfare policy are both more standard and more desirable.

In many industrialised countries information and communication technology (ICT) is now being seen as a ready means through which governments can address issues of social exclusion. Indeed, in the UK this perspective has been quickly translated into a multi-billion pound policy agenda aimed at using ICT for socially inclusive purposes. Yet, beyond rhetorical concerns over bridging the perceived ‘digital divide’ and alleviating disparities between the information ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, little critical consideration has been given to how technology is being used by governments to achieve socially inclusive aims. This paper therefore examines the UK government’s ICT-based social policy drive through official documentation, policy statements and political discourse – considering the ‘problems’ that it sets out to address, the substance of the policies, and the perceived rationales and benefits for doing so. Having explored the official construction of these policies, the paper then examines how well founded this policy framework is in terms of achieving its stated aims of widening access to ICT and effectively facilitating ‘social inclusion’. The paper concludes by developing a critical perspective of such ICT policies which reveals deeper economic rationales informing this ostensibly ‘social’ policy programme.

The broad contours of the move from the old to the new welfare are well established but the changes in social theory which bear on this have been relatively neglected. Also neglected are the links between these theoretical positions and contemporaneous shifts in economic thought. Drawing on the works of Titmuss, Marshall, Putnam and Etzioni, this paper traces how understandings of social cohesion, social provision, responsibility and obligation have shifted over time. It then indicates the relationship between these constructions and parallel developments in economic theory. Here attention is drawn to a fundamental ideological tension between communitarian and neo-classical accounts. It is argued that governments attempt to resolve this tension by projecting notions of moral disintegration onto welfare claimants. Alternatives to the new welfare are canvassed in the final section of the paper.

The main focus of this article is an analysis of whether the opinions of the best-off and worst-off diverge during an economic recession. According to previous studies, economic hardship affects the public's willingness to finance the welfare state but less is known about the kind of cleavages economic problems create between different categories of people. Because Finland suffered the deepest economic recession of the OECD countries during the 1990s it provides an excellent context for this kind of study. The willingness of the better-off to finance benefits important to worse-off people decreased during the research period. Recently many European countries have reformed their social policies to increase selectivism. However, results indicate that this kind of policy can create new, or strengthen existing, cleavages among the public.

In 1996, the US federal government passed welfare reform legislation. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) altered greatly the circumstances under which families can receive public assistance, limiting receipt to 5 years, requiring work after 24 months, and allowing states to impose sanctions and other requirements such as family caps (Greenberg, 1999). Because many countries reforming their social welfare system look to the USA as one possible model, analyses of the effects of US welfare policy on children are of relevance internationally. We find that the population receiving welfare in the USA is highly diverse and that background differences and early experiences explain most of the associations between welfare and poverty and children's outcomes. After taking account of these background differences, we find that children who experienced stable albeit disadvantaged economic conditions did not have worse outcomes than children who were never poor. Nor were children whose families' economic fortunes improved at higher risk for poor outcomes. However, children in families whose financial circumstances declined or fluctuated were more at risk for behavioural problems and scored lower on reading tests than were children who had never been poor.

Mutual obligation – the idea that those who receive assistance in times of need should be required to ‘give something back’ – is the driving force behind the current social security reform agenda in Australia. After more than a decade of intense reform, the Australian Government is considering a reform blueprint based on the recommendations of a Welfare Reform Reference Group. These include proposals to increase mutual obligation requirements on the unemployed and that sole parents and disability support pensioners should be required to demonstrate some form of social or economic participation in return for receiving income support. Results from a national survey of public opinion are used to explore community views on a range of mutual obligation requirements for the unemployed. The analysis indicates that there is support for mutual obligation for the young and long-term unemployed, but not for others, such as the older unemployed, those caring for young children and those with a disability. Most people also see mutual obligation as implying action on the part of government to reduce unemployment and ease the plight of the unemployed.

The circumstances which favoured the expansion of state welfare in the post-war ‘golden age’ – secure growth, full employment, moderate welfare needs and national politico-economic autonomy – have been reversed in the ‘silver age’ of labour market restructuring, demographic transition and economic globalisation. Most researchers argue that the European welfare settlement is (so far) surprisingly resilient in the face of current challenges. This article argues that analysis of welfare states has been approached from two basic directions – quantitative analysis and comparative case study – and that each approach has its merits and difficulties. Using the example of pensions policy it show that quantitative methods tend to produce findings which place greater emphasis on continuity and resilience, while case studies focus attention more on political processes. The latter approach is likely to provide greater insight into shifts that may lead to new policy directions in the immediate future. The picture presented by the quantitative method tends to predominate in comparative cross-national studies of the response of welfare states to current pressures, and this may overemphasise stability and resilience against discontinuity and change.

This article describes trends in Dutch (un)employment from the 1980s onwards, it reviews activation measures that were taken in the field of social security and labour market policies, and it critically discusses the successfulness of these measures. It concludes that it may not be justified to attribute the ‘Dutch miracle’ – the recent decrease in unemployment and the explosive growth of employment – directly to the measures taken, and that activation policies have endangered social rights and citizenship, especially of those groups which traditionally are most vulnerable. The ‘Dutch miracle’ is further put into the perspective of a small employment growth in terms of the total of hours worked annually, the large proportion of part-time employment, and the large degree of hidden unemployment. If a future recession hits the Netherlands, the miracle will turn into a nightmare for many due to the significant overall loss of social protection.

Over the last twenty years, policy-makers have placed increasing emphasis on individual planning, particularly in relation to pensions. Planning for one's own future, and that of one's family, is increasingly upheld as a morally responsible activity. This article explores the assumptions made by policy-makers in this area. It begins with a discussion of how the rhetoric from policy-makers and policy-commentators makes considerable reference to individual planning and responsibility. The policies themselves, however, sometimes act as disincentives to make private provision and do relatively little to provide security for people's future retirement. The article then draws on empirical research including recent qualitative findings to emphasise the limited nature of private pension planning and the constraints people face in relation to this activity.

The paper explores the relevance of recent theorising around the body for the discipline of social policy. It aims to show how such work opens up new ways of thinking within the core areas of social policy as well as proposing new subjects for social policy consideration, arguing that the common image of the body as an absent presence that has been characteristic of sociological accounts in the recent past still applies in relation to social policy, but that considerable gains can be made from incorporating this new theorising and new subject matter into the scope of the subject. It explores this by means of six areas of relevance: health care, community care, disability, no-power consumption, as well as cross-cutting themes of age, ‘race’, gender, sexuality.

Although the policy network approach has moved to the forefront of the debates around the formulation and development of policy, there is a paucity of methodological and reflexive literature which explores how policy networks and the actors within these arenas are actually studied. Researching powerful individuals within such networks generates a unique set of dilemmas and complexities for the researcher. Drawing on my experiences of researching the policy networks involved in the development of prison drugs policy, this paper provides a methodological and reflexive account of the key processes and issues involved in my research. In particular, it explores the political dimensions of the research problem and the importance of switching the research gaze from the ‘objects’ of policy to those who are in the powerful positions of ‘making’ policy. In order to understand the interactions within the policy process, it is argued that the qualitative approach offers distinct advantages in studying policy networks. The paper examines my attempts to uncover and understand the role and influence of policy networks in the development of prison drugs policy and the ways in which I grappled with the dilemmas of access, knowledge and power which emerged during the course of the fieldwork. Although the importance of transparent methodologies and reflexivity are highlighted, the paper concludes by suggesting that the resistance on the part of researchers to providing such accounts is related to the pressures and constraints of the current academic climate.

This paper, drawing on fieldwork carried out in Bulgaria in 1997, examines the impact of Roma/Gypsies and the NGO sector on Bulgarian social policy-making between 1989 and 1997. NGOs emerged during this period as important actors in the field of social policy. They were seen as agents of civil society and as having scope to fill in gaps left by inadequate state welfare. However, a number of problems have also been identified, in terms of limited scope for participation and for long-term development. The paper explores both outside and inside forces that shaped NGO development and in turn social policy-making in Bulgaria in the period 1989–97. The case study of a Roma/Gypsy led NGO reveals this interplay of forces and shows how international, national and local social policy frameworks are both fundamental to and shaped by such NGO activities.

There has been a raft of policy changes in the UK that are intended to help low-income families engage with the labour market. Drawing in part upon the findings of a small-scale qualitative study of the experiences of low-income working families, this article infers that the secular trend to working parenthood may, as matters stand, be experienced rather differently by secure middle-class families than by poor families. It may be that the former will benefit from policies to improve access to formal childcare, career breaks and time off when needed. The latter are more likely to remain dependent on informal childcare from other family members or friends and receive minimal concessions granted by reluctant employers. While benefits such as working families tax credit will help to secure the material needs of low-income working families, low-paid employment will remain no less precarious and it is possible that the insecurity experienced by low-income working families will increase.

This article is based on a unique empirical investigation of the contribution that informal childcare – relatives, friends or neighbours looking after children, usually on an unpaid basis – makes in allowing parents to go out to work. There has been little research on either the use of such complementary childcare by parents, or of the carers who undertake it, and this is a review of a two-stage investigation of both. One of the earliest initiatives of the Labour government elected in 1997 was to put a National Childcare Strategy in place. The strategy recognised the importance of childcare both for the development of children and in enabling parents – particularly mothers – to go out to work. To date, however, childcare needs and provision have been assessed almost entirely in terms of formal childcare. A clear understanding of why working parents use complementary childcare (particularly from grandparents) is essential for any childcare policy that hopes to be attuned to what families actually want. The article argues that policy makers, lured by a simplistic vision of economic vitality into adopting a behavioural paradigm from economics – in which parents are assumed to respond to purely financial incentives – are likely to find themselves distracted from important issues of the social well-being of working families with children. Childcare needs are related to dramatic changes in women's labour market participation over recent years, where the largest increase in female employment has been among mothers of children under the age of five. Neither mothers nor fathers may be in a position to provide the desired amount of childcare inside the nuclear household. This situation gives rise to the possibility of a ‘childcare deficit’. In failing to acknowledge and underpin the value which parents place upon complementary forms of childcare, policy makers are in danger of committing themselves to institutional arrangements which may make that deficit worse in the longer term.

This article examines claims that social housing allocations policies can, on the one hand, contribute to and on the other, counter, social exclusion. In setting the scene, the paper investigates connections between housing processes and social exclusion and describes the development of social housing allocations systems over the past few decades. Drawing on evidence from two recently completed national studies in England and Scotland it shows that allocation policies contribute to social exclusion in three main ways. First, a large proportion of social landlords restrict eligibility for social housing thereby contributing directly to exclusion. Second, mechanisms within allocation systems continue to segregate the most excluded to the worst residential areas. Third, through the 1990s allocation policies became increasingly coercive, so reducing or eliminating tenant choice over their own housing in distinct contrast to the choice that is available in the private market. The paper then reviews the dilemmas faced by policy-makers: whilst aspects of allocations contribute to social exclusion at the individual level, they may be justified by their role in promoting sustainable residential communities. Although there are hopes that the ‘choice-based’ approaches to lettings which emerged in the late 1990s can both boost community sustainability and counter the disabling impact of coercive approaches, the article suggests it is unlikely that such methods can significantly enhance social inclusion as long as social housing remains a housing sector of last resort, with in-built disadvantages.

Welfare states are highly innovative when it comes to dealing with care. The range of policies in place across nations is striking as is the degree to which making provision for care cuts across long-standing principles of social provision. This article focuses on care as a policy good, identifying care as an inherently social activity and linking it with different manifestations in and anticipated outcomes of public policy. Care is developed here as one of the key activities connecting state and society. Making provision for care, it is argued, affects a whole series of societal settlements. A consideration of a number of such settlements helps to identify factors which must be taken into account when we assay the relationship between public policy, care and society. The following are primary considerations: choices around receiving care, the choice to give care, gender equity, the legitimising of care, the welfare mix, public as against private expenditure, the demand for and supply of paid and unpaid labour. Having considered some of the main variations which are to be found in European welfare states' handling of care, the article goes on to conjecture about possible outcomes of a range of policy responses on the basis of the above considerations. All provisions have particular strengths and weaknesses but ‘quality’, understood in a broad sense, is elusive to any single measure.

The concept of welfare regimes has become a centerpiece of comparative welfare research. Most criticism of the concept thus far has focused on whether this or that country fits a particular regime type or deserves its own regime category. This article offers a more radical critique of this concept. It argues that most countries practice a disjointed set of welfare policies due to the following typical features of welfare policymaking: (1) the cumulative nature of welfare policies, (2) the diverse histories of policies in different welfare fields, (3) the involvement of different sets of policy actors, (4) variations in the policymaking process, and (5) the influence of foreign models. It concludes that few national welfare systems are likely to exhibit the internal consistency necessary to validate the regime concept, and that policy-specific comparisons may be a more promising avenue for comparative research.

The label ‘modernisation’, originally coined to signify reform within the Labour Party, has since 1997 increasingly been used as a descriptor of various facets of public policy. This paper addresses three questions, all in the context of health policy. What (if anything) is the impact of the notion of modernisation on NHS medical labour process, what is its substantive content, and how might we explain its rise to prominence? On the first question, I suggest that a model of medicine (which I term ‘scientific-bureaucratic medicine’) is being developed that embodies many of the specific characteristics of Fordist labour processes. On the second question, I suggest that ‘modernisation’ denotes a philosophy towards the governance of the NHS which entails the distinctive characteristics of the project which social theorists have termed ‘modernity’. The third question has particular significance in a social context (variously termed ‘late modernity’ or ‘postmodernity’) generally thought of as characterised by trends towards postFordist labour processes. I tentatively suggest that scientific-bureaucratic medicine can be viewed as the state's (not necessarily successful) strategy for coping with radical consumerism and changing perceptions of risk and expertise in the context of health and medicine.

The passing of the Carers (Recognition and Services Act) 1995 was a step forward in trying to ensure that people who provide informal care to disabled, sick or elderly relatives or friends are properly recognised and properly supported. The Carers Act gave informal carers the right to an assessment of their own needs, and this article is based on a study into the impact of the legislation in four local authority social services departments. It is argued that the vision of supporters of the Carers Act, namely to achieve real benefits for many carers, has yet to be realised. The analysis draws on Klein et al.’s (1996) framework of service rationing strategies to demonstrate that decisions about priority setting and different forms of rationing of social care took place at three different levels: national government, local authority and front-line practitioner. Evidence is presented to show that some carers chose to impose rationing on themselves by reducing their demands. The article concludes with comments on the implications of rationing decisions for policy and practice.

Teenage pregnancy rates are extremely high in the UK and extremely low in The Netherlands. Sex education is acknowledged to be a determining factor. While it is by no means the most important factor, it provides a useful comparative lens through which to examine the very different approaches of the British and Dutch to policy-making in this sensitive area.

The issue of sex education is controversial in both the UK and The Netherlands, but while the political debate has been fierce in the UK it has been largely absent in The Netherlands. Our research used documentary sources and interviews to investigate the recent history of policy-making on sex education at the central government level; compared a selection of key texts used in secondary schools; and drew on exploratory fieldwork in three English and three Dutch secondary schools. We find that the approach to the issue is in large part determined by the struggle over ideas in respect of the wider issues of change in the family and sexuality. We suggest that the adversarial nature of the politics of sex education in England and Wales results in a message that lacks coherence, which is in turn reflected in what happens in the classroom. We do not advocate any simple attempt at ‘policy borrowing’, but rather highlight the importance of understanding the differences in the nature and conduct of the debate.