What’s Wrong with Social Policy and How to Fix It

This book argues that the financial crash of 2008-9 has exposed the disastrous consequences of applying economic theory to the collective life of societies. In seeking to manage social relationships through incentives for individual gain, market-like menus of choices and business-style sets of interlocking contracts, the model adopted by the governments of the UK and USA has subverted the basis for social policy in mutuality and membership. <p> This has been demonstrated by growing inequalities, by failures and scandals in the social services, by the flat-lining of measured well-being (even during the boom years), by increases in a wide range of social problems, and by public disillusion over the effectiveness of policy programmes. In the post-crash world, the political culture needs to enable the expression of collective action for the benefits of interdependence, and to overcome the threats of ecological catastrophe and divisive ideology.<br />Only in this way can social policy be part of an inclusive global movement to restore faith in a politics of social justice.</p> <p> Bill Jordan’s up-to-date, passionate and engaging argument forges convincing links between a wide range of the troubling phenomena in the public life of our times.</p>