What Ever Happened to Home Ownership and Asset-based Welfare?  

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Richard Ronald (University of Amsterdam), Christian Lennartz (University of Amsterdam, and Justin Kadi (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)

An extended version of this post was originally published  on 3 January 2017 in the Policy Briefing section of Discover Society which is provided in collaboration with the journal Policy & Politics. The original post is available at  http://discoversociety.org/category/policy-briefing/.

Owning your own home has long been recognized as a form of asset-based welfare in policy terms. Historic growth in home ownership and house prices has advanced the assumption that housing equity fulfils a welfare function by acting as a store of wealth or even a reserve of cash. However, as Richard Ronald argues, a clear consequence of this policy has been to widen the gap between rich and poor families, as well as between young and old, with access to housing and housing wealth becoming a critical dimension of social inequality, especially since the last financial crisis.  Continue reading →

The UK government is pro-fracking and the Swiss authorities are against, so why is there very little difference in policy outcomes between the two? ask Paul Cairney (University of Stirling), Karin Ingold (University of Bern) and Manuel Fischer (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)

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At first glance, UK and Swiss fracking policy and policymaking seem very different. The UK government centralises policymaking and can impose policy from the top down, while in Switzerland many veto points  exist in its so-called  ‘consensus’ democracy. The UK government is pro-fracking, while Swiss authorities have come out against it. So it is striking that there seems to be very little  difference in their policy outcomes. Why, if the UK government has stated its position as ‘all out for shale’, has there been limited commercial development and very little challenge to policymaking done at regional rather than national level? Why is policy and policymaking surprisingly similar in the UK and Switzerland?   Continue reading →

Free access to Policy & Politics’ most popular articles in 2016

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sarah-brown-from-ecprMessage from Sarah Brown, Journal Manager

To celebrate our most popular articles in 2016, you can access them free of charge throughout December and January from the links below.

Our most highly cited and recent articles this year have ranged from research articles such as rethinking depoliticisation: beyond the governmental  which reflects on a reappraisal of depoliticisation, offering a conceptual horizon beyond a fairly narrow state-centric approach; to an in-depth analysis of behavioural change mechanisms such as nudge set against the political context of neoliberalism in the politics of behaviour change: nudge, neoliberalism and the state; to two different case studies examining different aspects of their respective policies and politics: one on the water sector offering a critical evaluation of policy translation across countries entitled rethinking the travel of ideas, and one offering a new framework that both measures and explains policy change within the context of institutional change entitled measuring and explaining policy paradigm change.

Take some time out to catch up on our most read articles of 2016: Continue reading →

Politicising science: necessary, not evil

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warren-hartleyWarren Pearce & Sarah Hartley

Depoliticisation is a key trend identified in the political science literature in recent years, succinctly defined by Flinders and Wood as “the narrowing of the boundaries of democratic politics”. Henrik Bang identifies “big politics” as a root cause of depoliticisation, where ‘star quality’ politicians, academics and others dominate the public debate, squeezing out the less powerful and eroding the links between authority and the public. If citizens feel constrained by such parameters of politics, then perhaps it is unsurprising when they vote for radical options such as leaving the European Union or electing Donald Trump to the US presidency. So here, depoliticisation is a means of suppressing debate, only for it to erupt at a later point in the political process. Continue reading →

How should public sector policymakers understand the social value of socially innovative services?

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christopher-daysonChristopher Dayson, Sheffield Hallam University

Social innovations provide new ways of addressing entrenched social problems that are more effective, sustainable or fair than existing ways of working. They create value for society as a whole rather than for private individuals. Public sector policymakers like the idea of social innovation because it offers them new and exciting ways to support people with multiple and complex needs in ways that can also save money: a combination that is increasingly referred to as ‘social value’. This is important because, since 2012, social value has been enshrined in law through the Public Services (Social Value) Act which requires public bodies to take account of economic, social and environmental well-being impacts when commissioning and procuring services. However, and despite its legal status, social value remains something of a fuzzy concept and there is very little good quality evidence about the types of value that social innovation leads to and how this is understood by policy makers.

Our research, summarised in our recent Policy & Politics article entitled Evaluating social innovations and their contribution to social value, explored one prominent area of social innovation – social prescribing – to identify the broad range of social value that can result from a socially innovative pilot project. Continue reading →

Scientific evidence in referendum campaigns: politicisation or enrichment?

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Digital Printing SystemCaroline Schlaufer

An extended version of this post was originally published  in the Policy Briefing section of Discover Society which is provided in collaboration with the journal Policy & Politics. The original post is available at http://discoversociety.org/category/policy-briefing/.

Referendums are increasingly used worldwide to allow citizens to directly decide about important policy issues. However, there is growing concern about whether citizens are properly informed when they make their choice in these usually complex referendum questions. For example, many commentators and editorials have argued in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum that facts and scientific evidence was politicised and not correctly used during the referendum campaign. Citizens, so it is argued, had made their decisions based on twisted facts.

However, in the context of a referendum campaign, facts, data and scientific evidence are always used politically. In other word, politicians, interest groups and governments always select those findings and data that fit their position and interpret scientific evidence in accordance with their political conviction. So yes, scientific evidence is politicized in referendum campaigns, but is this necessarily a bad thing? Based on the findings of a multiyear research project on the political use of scientific evidence in Swiss direct-democratic campaigns, I argue that scientific evidence, even when politically used, has the potential to enrich a referendum campaign in several ways. Continue reading →

Five things that explain Donald Trump’s stunning presidential election victory

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Anthony J. Gaughan, Professor of Law, Drake University

This post was originally published on The Conversation on 9 November 2016. The original post is available at: https://theconversation.com/five-things-that-explain-donald-trumps-stunning-presidential-election-victory-66891.

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Trump supporters celebrate on Nov. 8, 2016. John Locher/AP

A populist wave that began with Brexit in June reached the United States in stunning fashion on Tuesday night. In one of the biggest upsets in American political history, Donald Trump won a truly historic victory in the U.S. presidential election.

Trump’s remarkably decisive win stunned most political pundits, myself included. Throughout the campaign, Trump seemed to have a polling ceiling of about 44 percent and he consistently had the highest unfavorability rating of any major party nominee in history. Accordingly, months ago I predicted that Clinton would easily beat Trump.

Then, at the beginning of October, the uproar over Trump’s lewd and offensive remarks on the “Access Hollywood” videotape, combined with the escalating number of women who accused Trump of sexual assault, seemed to finish off his campaign. Right up until Tuesday afternoon, therefore, a comfortable victory for Clinton seemed like a foregone conclusion.

But I was dead wrong. Trump won a sweeping victory in the presidential race. His night began with critical victories in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, three states essential to his path to 270 electoral votes. As the night wore on, Clinton’s “blue wall” collapsed amid a red tide that swept across the country from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. The blue states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa fell to Trump like dominoes. The election returns made clear that Trump would carry over 300 electoral votes, more than enough to win the presidency.

It’s extremely early to draw conclusions about the 2016 election results, but here are five factors that at least partially explain what happened. Continue reading →

Undermining needs-based social security

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alexmarsh-300x168An extended version of this post was originally published on 3 November 2016 on the blog of the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. The original post is available at http://policystudies.blogs.ilrt.org/. 

Alex Marsh, Chair of the Policy & Politics Management Board and also Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bristol and a leading academic on housing, anticipates some consequences of Monday’s roll out of the Coalition’s policy to lower the cap on benefits. It doesn’t make optimistic reading…

Undermining needs-based social security
We are about to see one of the welfare policies of the late, only occasionally lamented Coalition government bear particularly ugly fruit. Next Monday the process of lowering the Overall Benefit Cap (OBC) from £26,000 per year begins. Over the coming months the policy will be rolled out across the country, with the cap being reduced to £20,000 outside London and £23,000 in London. Continue reading →

Who knows best? Understanding older people’s experience of emergency hospital admission

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glasby-littlechildJon Glasby and Rosemary Littlechild

An extended version of this post was originally published on 4 October 2016 in the Policy Briefing section of Discover Society which is provided in collaboration with the journal Policy & Politics. The original post is available at http://discoversociety.org/2016/10/04/policy-briefing-who-knows-best-understanding-older-peoples-experience-of-emergency-hospital-admission/.

Every year, the NHS experiences more than 2 million unplanned hospital admissions for people over 65 (accounting for 68 per cent of hospital emergency bed days and the use of more than 51,000 acute beds at any one time).  With an ageing population and a challenging financial context, such pressures show no sign of abating – and the NHS is having to find ways of reducing emergency hospital admissions (in situations where care can be provided as effectively elsewhere).  Often, the assumption in policy and media debates seems to be that potentially large numbers of older people are admitted to hospital without really needing the services provided there, but because there is nowhere else for them to go or because other services are not operating effectively.    Continue reading →

Tightrope walking: The future of political science

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MFlinders-new-smallMatthew Flinders

This blog post was originally published on the OUPblog on 2 October 2016. The original post can be accessed at:  http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/future-political-science-impact-phase/

Imagine standing at the edge of a precipice. A combination of forces are pushing at your back, biting at your heels and generally forcing you to step into an unknown space. A long thin tightrope without any apparent ending stretches out in front of you and appears to offer your only lifeline. Doing nothing and standing still is not an option. You lift up your left foot and gingerly step out….

Such dramatic prose is rarely associated with the study of politics but it strikes me that the notion of being forced to walk a tightrope is strangely apt at the present time. Having spent the last three weeks travelling around Western Europe and contributing to debates and discussions about the future of political science it seems that, from Manchester to Milan, and from Prague to Porto, the discipline finds itself on the cusp of a distinctive new phase in its history.

Let us, for the sake of simplicity, refer to this as ‘the impact phase’ and define it as being marked by the imposition of external requirements to demonstrate the relevance and direct effects of scholarship beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room. What my recent travels have revealed is that although ‘the impact phase’ has emerged very rapidly and aggressively in the United Kingdom, it is emerging— albeit in a softer, less instrumental, ‘impact-lite’ version — as a key issue in a host of countries. Moreover, those countries are well aware of the UK’s historical role as a testing ground for New Public Management inspired reforms within higher education that frequently ripple-out across the world. Continue reading →