To cope with austerity, local councils were encouraged to pool resources and share back-office administration (e.g. legal counsel and internal audit). Was this type of collaboration worth it? Thomas Elston and Ruth Dixon find no evidence that sharing administration or tax services has helped councils manage budget cuts.
Whether by historical standards, or compared with other parts of the public sector, […]
While the mandatory pay gap reporting regulations introduced in 2016 have led to some shocking revelations, their scope needs to be broadened as well as deepened, argues Susan Milner. She writes that the pace of change is slow, while labour market changes mean that more and more women remain trapped in low-paid, low-hours employment.
On 4 April, the second round […]
Does the ownership of economic assets matter for how people vote? Drawing on new research, Timothy Hellwig and Ian McAllister find the answer is yes. They argue that by changing their policy positions, parties can shape the influence of asset ownership on voter decisions.
The politics of asset ownership have received much attention in the aftermath of the Great Recession […]
Looking at low income household indebtedness in austerity Britain, Hulya Dagdeviren and Jiayi Balasuriya find that the poorest households have experienced the greatest growth in unsecured debt to income ratio. More importantly, unlike the pre-crisis period when debt reflected a desire ‘to keep up with the Joneses’, in recent years there has been a rise in debt for essential […]
Is austerity a ‘dream come true’ for neoliberals, or did the global financial crisis force policymakers to question neoliberalism’s core principles and change direction? Focusing on speeches by members of the International Monetary Fund, Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving find little to suggest that the fundamental assumptions of neoliberalism have been displaced.
It is now over ten years since the […]
Simon Parker looks at the government’s response to civil disorder in Liverpool in the 1980s and specifically at the policy of “managed decline”. This, he explains, involved the abandonment of a damaged part of the city in order to preserve the healthy remainder. Such strategies still influence policy circles, and therefore remain a threat.
Alone, every night … I would […]
Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin explain how Britain has become less mobile, particularly at the top and bottom of society.
One David was born in a terraced house in East London, his father a kitchen fitter, his mother a hairdresser. The other David grew up in an idyllic village in the English countryside, his father a stockbroker, his mother […]
“The secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power”: the effect of anti-immigration rhetoric
‘It’s Westminster’s fault’. Political identities and blame attribution in devolved systems
Brexit was not the voice of the working class nor of the uneducated – it was of the squeezed middle
We need to talk about policy failure – and how to avoid it
To explain why socialism is still attractive, we must look at why liberalism is not
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit and the lived experience of benefit claimants
The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit and the lived experience of benefit claimants
Kate Summers and David Young challenge the assumed simplicity of Universal Credit by focusing on its single monthly payment design. They draw on two empirical studies of means-tested benefit claimants in order to explain how short-termism is a crucial tool for those managing social security benefits.
At its heart, Universal Credit is very simple
Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions […]