Improving Social Intervention

Changing Social Policy and Social Work Practice through Research

John Gandy, Alex Robertson, Susan Sinclair, John Gandy, Alex Robertson, Susan Sinclair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315301655
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book, first published in 1983, considers the whole problem of how social research can lead to improvement in practice in social policy and social work. In the first section, individual chapters discuss the political context within which research is commissioned and used, through consideration of the politics of comparative research and of the application of research findings to policy-making in the personal social services. The problems of putting policy into practice and using research in a systematic and predictable way for improving situation is also examined. This title will be of interest to students of the Sociology, Education and Social Policy.

Part I

RESEARCH AND POLICY-MAKING

(a) Policy-making and the Political Context of Research

1

COMPARATIVE SOCIAL POLICY AND THE POLITICS OF COMPARISON

Roy Parker

Social researchers are apt to deplore the apparent lack of influence which their work has upon the formulation of policy or upon its practical application. They infer that research plays little or no part in the politics of social policy. This conclusion rests upon two assumptions. First, that only the kinds of studies which they undertake count as research and, secondly, that the influence of research is measured by the extent of its direct application. However, if research is defined more broadly to include modest reviews or the gathering of information and if the indirect political uses to which it may be put are also taken into account, then a different and more complicated picture emerges. This can be illustrated in several ways but I shall do so by reference to international and intra-national comparisons.

I. THE INVESTIGATION OF FOREIGN EXPERIENCE

There is a good deal of evidence that governments investigate the systems and procedures of other countries, particularly when new developments in social policy are under consideration. They do this in a variety of ways, some of which would not generally be classified as social research. Take, for instance, some British committees of enquiry.

The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (Gowers, 1953) was specifically required to look at the position in other countries. A questionnaire was sent to the governments of all the members of the Commonwealth; to eight European nations as well as to the USA and seven of its states. Some of that evidence was used to support and justify the case for the abolition of capital punishment. The Robbins Committee on Higher Education (1963) chose to include a chapter in its report on international comparisons showing, by and large, British backwardness. It concluded that action along the lines it recommended was necessary in order “to avert the danger of a serious relative decline in the country’s standing”. The Finer Committee on One-Parent Families (1974) had a special study of the relevant income maintenance systems in other countries prepared by the International Social Security Association, although in their report the Committee gave little prominence to the results. “We found”, they wrote, “that we needed to use the experience of these countries with a good deal of caution”. More recently the Royal Commission on the National Health Service (Merrison, 1979) also looked at foreign experience, although they went about it differently. No special studies were commissioned; instead, the members and the staff made journeys to Canada, Denmark, Eire, Holland, Sweden, the USA, West Germany and Yugoslavia, amounting in all to 90 separate meetings. It is difficult to be sure what influence this had upon the outcome of their deliberations: more, one suspects, than appears in the report because a good deal of the evidence which they received invoked international comparisons. That being so, the collection of ‘first-hand’ information in the course of their visits would have allowed the commissioners to assess more critically the claims and counter-claims being made about what was done abroad.

What other purposes are served by such committees of enquiry gathering information from abroad? It may enable some members of the enquiry team to modify the views of other members. It may improve the committee’s reputation for thoroughness and open-mindedness and thereby foster the credibility of their advice in general. At the very least the inclusion of comparative material will protect commissioners from the charge that they failed to take account of ‘valuable lessons from abroad’.

Yet some major committees of enquiry pay little or no attention to evidence from other countries. For instance, the Seebohm Committee (1968) decided early in its life not to make visits overseas, even though similar enquiries about the organisation of the personal social services had been instituted in nearby countries like Holland and Denmark. One reason for the decisions may have been the pressure upon the Committee at the outset to report quickly (Hall, 1976); but, unlike the debates about the British health services, those concerning the personal social services had not been conducted in terms of international comparisons – and showed no signs of doing so whilst the committee sat. Almost nobody was advocating reforms along lines similar to what was being done in other countries and, in any case, the unification of services, to which the Committee was asked to direct its attention, had not been achieved elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the Seebohm Report itself, and the reorganisation which followed, did become important reference points in the discussion of policy in other countries like Canada and the United States.

Governments may set about investigating foreign experience in more direct ways rather than leaving it to committees of enquiry. Specific research may be commissioned for the purpose; for example, the United States Department of Justice funded a Glasgow University enquiry into the Scottish children’s hearings system (Martin and Murray, 1981). Or studies may be undertaken internally, especially where there is an international division which possesses the relevant experience. Consider, for instance, the United States social security administration research report on mandating private pensions in Europe (Horlick and Skolnik, 1978) in the preface to which it is pointed out that:

Like other countries, the United States has looked for ways to cope with long-range financing problems of retirement benefits and an aging population. Some of the solutions that have been proposed have existed in Europe for some time … the European experience in the social security field is older than ours, and in studying it we can see which of their solutions might be imitated and which avoided.

This enquiry was not open-ended. It started with proposals which had been before Congress and sought to discover how other countries had fared using schemes similar to those in mind. The same kind of example could be provided by most other countries.

In Britain direct initiatives have been taken by particular departments of state to examine foreign arrangements. For instance, the economic advisor’s office of the Department of Health and Social Security has made on-the-spot enquiries in Canada and the United States into their schemes of private health insurance, no doubt as part of the review of the possible scope for the introduction of something similar in Britain. Likewise, a visit to the USA was arranged by the Department of Education and Science in order to assess the feasibility of inaugurating student loans for higher education. Advisory and consultative bodies, like the Central Policy Review Staff, also utilise comparative material in the analysis of some of the issues which they are required to investigate. For instance, members of the CPRS visited other countries like Canada and France to see how they approached the prevention and treatment of alcoholism.

Such government sponsored enquiries are by no means new. In the nineteenth century, for example, Poor Law inspectors were despatched to other countries to prepare general reports on their arrangements for dealing with pauperism, or to conduct special studies such as that into the operation of schools for poor children at Mettray and Dusseltal. Some comparative material lay closer at hand. In response to mounting pressure for the extension of boarding-out for Poor Law children in England and Wales, an inspector was sent to make a thorough examination of the system in Scotland where it had been widely employed for many years (Aldgate, 1977). By indicating the dangers as well as the benefits, his report left many questions unresolved, thereby lending support to those who counselled caution.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the office of special inquiries and reports in the Education Department devoted a good deal of its activities to monitoring educational progress and performance abroad: in the year 1896 alone, special reports were published on aspects of educational policy in Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany as well as a detailed analysis of the controversy in Manitoba which had arisen from the attempts of the Catholic minority to have separate schools reinstated after the repeal of the denominational system in 1890 (Education Department, 1897). Similar reports on developments in education in other countries were produced by the United States National Bureau of Education. Its publications for 1891 contained special accounts of secondary education in New Zealand, secondary and technical training in Britain as well as a history and review of the condition of public kindergartens and ecoles gardiennes in several European countries (Education Department, 1897). No doubt the National Bureau in the USA was so actively concerned with foreign examples partly because the evidence they provided offered an additional means through which Federal influence might be brought to bear upon the respective states, at which level responsibility for education was vested.

The collection and analysis of information about other countries is not, of course, the exclusive preserve of governments. Pressure groups or promotional bodies may cite foreign examples and employ comparative statistics in order to justify what they propose. Or the need for a greater priority to be accorded to certain areas of social policy may be urged by reference to comparisons which cast domestic performance in a particularly poor light: what Sweden, France, Germany or Holland do, it will be claimed, ‘puts us to shame’. On the other hand, opponents of a proposal may find it valuable to show that a similar scheme has failed elsewhere. For example, the supposed shortcomings of British socialised medicine have been used to advantage by the opponents of an American national health scheme for many years.

Clearly, therefore, a good deal of information is collected by governments and by others about social policies abroad. Yet relatively little of it appears to be used as a blue-print for making modifications or for shaping new measures at home. Why, after what are sometimes extensive reviews, should the practices of other nations so rarely be adopted – at least as they stand? Do the kinds of enquiries which have been illustrated really serve no purpose, or do they fulfil ends which are more indirect and less obvious?

II. THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

Answers to such questions may be found by considering the politics of comparison; that is, by endeavouring to see how international comparisons are used in the political processes which surround the evolution of domestic policies.

The investigation of foreign schemes may be initiated by those who already have something similar in mind. The evidence from abroad is then intended to make their case more convincing, either by showing that what they propose can work, or by demonstrating that the general direction they want to take is in line with that being followed in other countries with which valid comparisons can be drawn. The aim, therefore, is not to adopt someone else’s system but to accumulate ideological or practical endorsements for a course which has already been chosen. When this is the objective it becomes of the utmost importance which other countries are selected for examination: there needs to be a plausible resemblance in their levels of economic development and a sufficient similarity in the prevailing ideology to avoid the tables being turned by the comparisons being denounced as inappropriate. In any case, it is hardly likely that a conservative administation will choose to advertise the achievements of a socialist state or vice versa; although their revealed shortcomings are another matter.

It is interesting in this respect to see how the social policies or administrative arrangements of disapproved regimes are excluded from comparative analysis. Indeed, certain policies may be played down or ruled out altogether at home because they are associated with, or are seen to be symbolic of, that regime. Take, for instance, the way in which the development of health centres in Britain was retarded under conservative governments partly because of their assumed similarity to the Soviet polyclinics: health centres smacked of socialism (Hall et al., 1975). Likewise, once the Third Reich had adopted eugenist policies as part of its Aryan ideology it became increasingly diffiucult for these kinds of policies – towards the sterilisation of the mentally subnormal for example – to be advocated in Britain, although they had earlier attracted support from various strands of the political spectrum (Searle, 1976).

War, in particular, accentuates the distinctions which are made between approved and disapproved regimes. The upheaval of war creates the opportunity for making new popular comparisons. Certain sharp contrasts – as between allies – come to be more widely known and then regarded as unacceptable; a reaction which it becomes difficult for governments to ignore. There is the example of the way in which the introduction of family allowances in Britain in 1945 was influenced by the different levels of service pay and dependants’ allowances which prevailed amongst the forces of the allied powers. The more generous treatment received by American troops could not be disregarded by a British government intent upon preserving wartime morale in its own forces. Once British servicemen had become accustomed to the more favourable pay and dependants’ benefits which were provided as a result, it became politically difficult to reduce or withdraw them upon demobilisation. Family allowances offered a way of managing that difficulty at comparatively low cost and without making concessions to the claims for wage increases by those returning to civilian occupations (Hall et al., 1975).

Disapproved regimes are not the only ones to be disregarded when comparisons come to be made. There are others which are simply discounted, especially in the third world, on the grounds either that ‘we have nothing to learn from them’ or because dissimilarities are automatically assumed to make comparison a pointless exercise. As a result the possible relevance of experiments in, say, the provision of simpler medicine or community education are never seriously considered. Even when schemes from abroad are extensively reviewed there may also be no intention of applying foreign experience if the main aim is simply to monitor the performance of actual or potential rivals – often in the commercial or military fields.

Yet other studies of overseas experience may be undertaken without any imme...