The provision of social services in Australia has changed dramatically in recent decades, raising a range of important questions about financial and democratic accountability: 'who benefits', 'who suffers' and 'who decides'. This book explores these developments through rich case studies of a diverse set of social policy domains. The case studies demonstrate a range of effects of marketisation, including the impact on the experience of consumer engagement with social service systems, on the distribution of social advantage and disadvantage, and on the democratic steering of social policy.

The 1990s have seen dramatic restructuring of state social provision in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This has occurred largely because of the rise of market liberalism, which challenges the role of the state. This important book examines the impact of changes in social policy regimes on gender roles and relations. Structured thematically and systematically comparative, it analyses three key policy areas: labor markets, income maintenance and reproductive rights. Largely driven by issues of equality, it considers the role of the state as a site for gender and sexual politics at a time when primacy is given to the market, developing an argument about social citizenship in the process. Eminent scholars in the field, Julia O'Connor, Ann Orloff and Sheila Shaver make a landmark contribution to debates about social policy and gender relations in this era of economic restructuring and deregulation.

Social policy encompasses the study of social needs, policy development and administrative arrangements aimed at improving citizen wellbeing and redressing disadvantage. Australian Social Policy and the Human Services introduces readers to the mechanisms of policy development, implementation and evaluation. This third edition emphasises the complexity of practice, examining the links and gaps between policy development and implementation and encouraging readers to develop a critical approach to practice. The text now includes an overview of Australia's political system and has been expanded significantly to cover contemporary issues across several policy domains, including changes in labour market structure, homelessness, mental health and disability, child protection and family violence, education policy, Indigenous initiatives, conceptualisations of citizenship, and the rights of diverse groups and populations. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Australian Social Policy and the Human Services is an indispensable resource for students and practitioners alike.

This book addresses the ways in which individualised, market-based models of disability support provision have been mobilised in and across different countries through cross-national investigation of individualised funding (IF) as an object of neoliberal policy mobility. Combining rich theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives with extensive empirical research, the book provides a timely examination of the policy processes and mechanisms driving the spread of IF amongst countries at the forefront of disability policy reform. It is argued that IF’s mobility is not attributable to neoliberalism alone but to the complex intersections between neoliberal and emancipatory agendas and to the transnational networks that have blended the two agendas in new ways in different institutional contexts. The book shows how disability rights struggles have synchronised with neoliberal agendas, which explains IF’s propensity to move and mutate between different jurisdictions. Featuring first-hand accounts of the activists and advocates engaged in these struggles, the book illuminates the consequences and risks of the dangerous liaisons and political trade-offs that seemed necessary to get individualised funding on the policy agenda for disabled people. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in disability studies, social policy, sociology and political science more generally.

This book provides a genealogical study of Australian agricultural restructuring, focusing on the case study of wheat export market deregulation. This policy shift was implemented in 2008, ending 60 years of statutory wheat marketing. At the time, policy makers claimed that market liberalisation would empower individual growers, providing them with choice and freedom through uninhibited participation in markets. However, regional wheat markets have become concentrated, and are increasingly controlled by a small number of transnational agribusiness firms, which have been increasingly active in setting the policy agenda in Australian agriculture. The book delves into the discursive construction of policy truths such as efficiency, competition, and the consumer, to understand how this shift was made possible, whose interests have been served, and what the implications of this shift have been. This book focuses on the machinations which contributed to this shift by examining the construction of knowledge, values and identities, which have helped to make the transition from the public to the private appear as a logical, common sense solution to the challenges facing Australian agriculture. The author shows how governmental technologies such as audit, cost-benefit analysis, performance objectives and the consumer were used to make this reality operable. In doing so, he argues that this shift should be viewed as part of the broader restructuring of Australian society, which has facilitated the transference of economic and policy making power from the public to the private.

Social policy affects everyone and is everyone's business. Even if you do not receive welfare payments, directly or indirectly you benefit from government servides and funding. Yet how are policies and programs actually developed? Can social policy help us create a more just society? This book offers an introduction to the theory and practice of social policy making in Australia. Using detailed case studies, it covers: * the ideas and values which inform the social policy process * how different groups can influence policy making * how social policy making takes place in social and political organisations * the political nature of policy making Making Social Policy in Australia is the most up to date introduction to Australian social policy currently available, and is essential reading for students and practitioners in human and community service work and government. Tony Dalton, Mary Draper and John Wiseman lecture in Social Work and Social Sciences at Rmit, Melbourne; Wendy Weeks lectures in Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Melbourne and is author (in collaboration) of Women Working Together: Lessons from feminist women's services. Each of the authors has been involved in policy debate and development for many years.

Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare, and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. Medicare was entrenched alongside privatization. How do we understand this contradictory politics, and what opportunities are there to advance equality? This book takes the three big drivers of inequality – conditionality of benefits, marketisation of services and financialisation of the life course– to explore how inequality has been contested. Alongside the rise of the market, it reveals the building blocks of a more egalitarian order and opportunities for new models of solidarity based on an ethic of care.

This collection presents a critical dialogue on managerialist forms of government between philosophy, political thought, organisational and management theory. The volume brings together essays that are concerned with technologies of government that are articulated as different iterations of managerialism. The hallmark of managerialist discourse is value, considered as a quantifiable abstraction, where the intention is to always ‘add value’. The central question addressed here by a team of international expert authors from across a range of disciplines is this: in what ways has this abstraction of value impacted on the substantive work and ethical integrity of government and the public sector, and, more broadly, of the professions (including that of management itself)? Has it displaced this work, or simply recast it? The volume addresses audiences in social sciences, philosophy, management, business, and organisational studies.

This volume represents the beginning of a 'cross pollination' of different social scientific disciplines, bridging the boundaries between national and disciplinary epistemic communities in the worlds of European welfare markets. It maps the common ground and uncovers new research directions for the future study of actors, policies and institutions shaping the growth and dynamics of European welfare markets. The book defines welfare markets as politically shaped, regulated and state supported markets that provide social goods and services through the competitive activities of non-state actors. The chapters focus on what happens after states have initiated welfare markets, with equal weight given to the analysis of the agency of state actors and non-state actors in the contraction, stabilisation, and disruption of welfare markets. By focusing the analysis on two cases of welfare markets, private pensions and home-based domestic/care work, the contributions explore and compare the dynamics of different types of markets. The research will be of use to sociologists and scholars of social policy interested in the social dimension of welfare markets, political scientists and political economists, as well as diverse epistemic communities across the social sciences. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.