Social policy in the European Union has developed rapidly in recent years, following the 2000 Lisbon Summit and the subsequent adoption of National Action Plans on Social Inclusion and a set of common social indicators for all Member States. This paper describes European initiatives and examines the role played by social science research in these developments. It refers specifically to the role of theory and conceptual analysis, to the availability and quality of data, and to policy modelling. It draws lessons from the experience of European social policy for the relationship between research and policy formation.

This article investigates the influence of partnership status on older men's involvement in social organisations, drawing on qualitative research. Men are found to be highly resistant to participation in organisations that cater primarily for the needs of older people. Older divorced and never-married men are more susceptible to social isolation and poor health than married men. This could be ameliorated by membership of such establishments, yet their resistance is the greatest. Policy implications focus on identifying and responding to appropriate provision of organisational and communal activities for ageing men, particularly those who spend their later years without a partner.

Throughout Western highly industrialised countries, there has been a marked shift toward more conservative social policies signalling a dismantling of the welfare state as part of the process of globalisation. This paper examines the aetiology of the (un)employment insurance programme in the Canadian context. Recently, legislators have tightened eligibility rules, lowered earnings replacement rates and altered coverage requirements. While these changes signal a shredding of the social safety net, they differentially impact on certain segments of the population. Despite official pronouncements of fairness, employment insurance changes intensify the subordination women experience in the paid labour force.

This article discusses some of the problems involved in trying to develop gender-sensitive ways of measuring poverty. It argues that what is needed is a way of placing individuals within households and measuring both their contribution to the resources of that household and the extent of their dependence on the resources of others within the household. It is argued that this should involve examining sources as well as levels of income, and by adopting an approach that is dynamic, rather than static. The concept of social exclusion – multi-dimensional, dynamic, local and relational – could provide a way to explore these issues of autonomy and dependency, and their gender dimensions.

Public pensions privatisation in Western Europe has been seen as being part of a broader programme of welfare retrenchment, informed by neoliberal values, that will intensify poverty among future generations of pensioners. Whilst such fears should not be dismissed lightly, we argue that the notion of welfare privatisation is conceptually much broader than the free-market model posited by neoliberalism. Reflecting this, many of the public pensions privatisation initiatives that have been introduced in Western Europe have been informed by its collectivist ideological heritage and, to varying degrees, are consistent with the notion of collective responsibility for needs-satisfaction.European civilisation is underpinned by values Europe's leaders could not give up even if they wanted to; for their roots lie deep and define what it means to be European. (Hutton, 2002: 357)

The paper addresses two dimensions of the debate on social capital – the analytical concept of Robert Putnam and the way it may become interrelated with political concerns debated in public. It is argued that in Putnams' concept two dimensions of social capital – social bonds and civic commitment – are interrelated in a way that suggests that social capital is something like the basis for good policy making. Against this, the open interrelationship between the two is stressed: one does not only need ‘social capital to make democracy work’ (Putnam) but often more democratic politics in order to make social capital work.

This article aims to clarify the meaning of the much-used term ‘empowerment’ in order to contribute to a more theoretically coherent development of policy and practice aimed at facilitating the empowerment of health and social care service users. The liberational and consumerist models of empowerment are highlighted, with the former having a broader emphasis on people's roles within society than the latter. The concept of ‘empowerment as professional practice’ is also critically explored, with the conclusion that professionals can work with people in empowering ways if they recognise and work to address the structural causes of oppression.

This paper is concerned with young people's understanding of the welfare state; who and what is it for, and what is their relation to it? It is argued that such qualitative research into these questions is not common. Exploring these issues increases our knowledge of the presence that ideas and discourses about welfare states have in young people's understanding of the social world. Qualitative approaches such as the one adopted in this paper can tap into meanings and perceptions that young people have in relation to the welfare state that can be glossed over with more quantitative concerns with ‘attitudes’.

This article explores the findings of a research project carried out into the political awareness and attitudes of first year social science undergraduates. The results initially suggested that students generally lacked understanding of, and interest in, political structures and concepts and possessed poor news awareness and information-gathering skills. However, a more complex picture emerged that indicates a degree of engagement through responses to personal, moral and social questions, suggesting some degree of politicisation, yet such issues seem dislocated from their studies. This mixed picture poses serious challenges for social policy teachers seeking to enhance political awareness among their students.

This paper aims to promote greater discussion and debate on the implications and legitimacy of the current UK government policy approach that seeks to nurture voluntary activity by encouraging participation in voluntary groups (formal volunteering) and neglects the cultivation of one-to-one help (informal volunteering). Analysing the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey data on the geographical variations in volunteering, this policy approach is argued to privilege the development of a volunteering culture characteristic of affluent areas and to fail to recognise and value the informal volunteering culture more characteristic of lower-income populations. Why this is the case and how it might be resolved is then considered.

The aim of this paper is to study the Hong Kong government's attempt to promote residualism and market principles in medical services through changing its fee and charge policy, strengthening the principle of selectivity at the expense of the universalist principle and proposing compulsory saving measures. It is argued that these reform measures are related to the government's mixed attitude towards medical services – that is, whilst providing medical services in response to political demands and the requirements of capitalism, the government wants to reduce the challenges these services pose to capitalism and its financial policy.

This paper, the first of a new series of ‘Briefing’ papers, describes the challenges encountered by the transition from state-socialism to what may be broadly described as a capitalist social democracy in one Central and Easter European country, Hungary. It considers the policy responses to a variety of challenges in the social security, employment and social welfare fields faced with a wave of impoverishment that followed the disintegration of state socialism from the late 1980s.

In most developed and developing nations individuals are actively being encouraged to save towards retirement via a plethora of savings mechanisms. In Malaysia, the reliance on individual savings through the Employees Provident Fund has costly implications for those in low paid, insecure employment, women and those working in the informal sector. Focussing on Malaysia, this paper seeks to present the pitfalls of such over reliance on the provident fund mechanism, which allows early access to savings and diverts members' contributions to subsidiary accounts. In conclusion, the paper suggests paths of reform which would, at the very least, lessen the growing threat of poverty and social exclusion amongst older Malaysians.

In 1996, the USA became the first major democracy to eliminate individual entitlement to the social safety net. The reforms introduced in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act are briefly outlined in this editorial article, which, drawing on the papers assembled in this themed section, considers the consequences of the legislation, both positive and negative, and seeks to explain why the new policy regime seems likely to prove resilient.

When the European Economic Community was established in 1957, the six founding member states (Belgium, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands) had a shared interest, though each for their own reasons, in ensuring that provisions to promote the harmonisation of national social protection systems figured in the treaties. Progressively, and as membership of the Community expanded and diversified, the social dimension came to be accepted as a legitimate, albeit contested and subordinate, component in European law and policy. Whereas the social protection systems of the six original member states could be considered as variants of the continental model of welfare, the new waves of membership in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s brought different conceptions of social protection, making harmonisation ever-more difficult to achieve. Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom in the second wave were characterised by their universal welfare systems. Greece, Portugal and Spain in the third wave had less developed, minimalist provision for social protection. In the fourth wave, Austria was closer to the founding member states, whereas Finland and Sweden represented the Nordic model with their universalist system based on social democratic criteria.

In constructing this edition in the role as ‘guest editors’ Alan Aldridge and I believe that the theme of consumerism to be both stimulating and timely for social policy. The implications of consumerism – as a political ideology, as a set of social movements, and as the values of a consumer society – are being felt in a wide range of policy areas. Within social policy analysis, consumerism, along with welfarism, clientism and privatism has been advanced as one of the four key elements in the provision of and public orientation towards welfare services. Within sociology, there has been a rapid growth of books and journal articles addressing consumption as a key concept in the analysis of contemporary culture. One manifestation of this is the recent launch of the international Journal of Consumer Culture.

In line with calls from the European Commission for greater involvement of non-governmental organisations in the policy process, this article draws on research across EU member and applicant states to investigate the potential for enhancing cooperation between political and civil society actors in family policy formulation. The authors argue that the role of civil society is highly differentiated between countries, due to three key factors: party ideology, political culture and political transitions, which determine the capacity for improving alliances. Structural barriers to development may prevent the Commission's advocacy of closer cooperation between policy actors from being successful in the shorter term.

The concept of consumerism has multiple meanings, many of which are heavily value-laden; similarly, there are conflicting stereotypes of ‘the consumer’. After exploring the key dimensions of debates about consumerism and the consumer, this paper addresses some paradoxical consequences of the discourse of consumer empowerment in the field of health promotion and specifically in the ‘new public health’ movement.

This article describes the 1996 reform of US welfare and reviews its consequences, concluding that the evidence so far is encouraging, but that the full effects of reform are still unknown. It demonstrates how much the essential character of US welfare has altered: the emphasis on changing behaviour rather than making cash payments; the shift in responsibility from federal government to frontline administrators; the move to discretionary rather than rights based decision-making; and the stress on performance rather than on process. Finally, it notes that the language of political debate takes little account of what has already been achieved.

Social capital has become a key concept in Government policy-making and in academic circles. Broadly, social capital concerns norms and networks: the values people hold and the resources that they can access, which both result in and are the result of collective and socially negotiated ties and relationships. Where people share a sense of identity, hold similar values, trust each other and reciprocally do things for each other, then this is felt to have an impact on the social, political and economic nature of the society in which we live. Across the political spectrum, there are concerns that levels of social capital are being eroded in contemporary society.