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This chapter begins with an overview of the rationale behind this book. It goes on to discuss the intellectual and policy debates that form the context within which the studies in the book were developed, and then highlights the specific contributions of these studies. It explains the links between unemployment and marginalisation, policy interventions to reduce the risks of marginalisation, and the failure of policies to provide labour market protection for the most vulnerable.

This chapter shows in four ways that processes within policy bureaucracies are not just mere subordinate acts. Instructions from superiors are rarely specific enough and this delegation issue is the first subject tackled. Policy officials also have to deal with cross-cutting unforeseen issues that may arise. The third perspective examines their ‘detailing’ task which affects the whole shape of the policy. Last to be discussed is that the policy officials' work can emerge into significant strategic policy initiatives. The basis to the United Kingdom's angle on policymaking is shown in this chapter as well as implementations on human rights issues and Europe in general. However, the book does not claim that civil servants shape policy themselves, but instead that they exercise a sense of discretion without necessarily shaping things the way they personally want to.

This chapter discusses policy initiatives for family carers of people with terminal illness. It focuses on the situation in England but provides some comparison of innovative approaches in other countries including Canada, Australia, and European member states. It suggests that policies for family carers must take into account the heterogeneity of terminal conditions and uncertainties in the timing and progression of the last stages in life, and that policy provisions should be extended into such areas as bereavement benefits.

This chapter describes the evolution of the Sustainable Health Action Research Programme (SHARP) initiative for tackling health inequalities in Wales. It highlights the ways in which this differs from previous policy initiatives and explores the origins and rationale for SHARP as a contribution to policy implementation and development. The chapter discusses the seven projects that emerged from the selection process to be funded under SHARP.

Significant changes are occurring within the federal Public Service with respect to the conditions under which policy is developed, implemented and assessed. There has been a shift to more targeted and discrete new public management (NPM) initiatives aimed at specific and incremental changes. This chapter highlights several important changes, challenges and initiatives in federal policy processes that purport to enhance innovation and creativity, while preserving ministerial responsibility. It concludes that while there is a drive to greater flexibility in policy processes, there remain important systemic and cultural barriers to achieving innovation that will take sustained leadership to overcome, including a stubborn obsession with bureaucratic accountability; shifting policy resources and competencies; adherence to error-free government; an unwillingness to open the policy process to external actors; and increased central coordination of policy priorities.

This chapter tries to determine the financial pressures being faced by the government. It focuses on the areas that have enjoyed fiscal commitments by successive parties in power. The chapter studies the financial trends present in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and presents an exploratory analysis of the underlying politics of these trends. It looks at the brief history of the public finances in Tamil Nadu, and identifies the two major policy initiatives using the budgetary allocations as an indicator. The first policy initiative is the Noon Meal Scheme (NMS), one of the most famous pro-poor interventions in India. This intervention shows a rising trend of an increasing number of feeding centres across the country, leading to the increasing number of children who benefit from these feeding centres. The second policy initiative is irrigation, which shows an increase in public expenditure in this sector.

This chapter examines various European Community initiatives which have been adopted with a view to guaranteeing and promoting the security of energy supply. It explains that this concept includes not only physical and technical security in terms of access to resources, but also reliability, affordability, and continuity of supply. It argues that despite or even because of market integration, security of supply concerns remain paramount. It adds that as a result of legislative harmonisation, in particular following the entry into force of the new Electricity and Gas Directives, it may well be that member states will be required to pursue their energy policy objectives in relation to supply security and reliability through specific kinds of instrument. It examines the issue of the division of competences between the Community policy initiatives in the energy sector, which have a close bearing on security of supply, and discusses recent legislative measures.

Italy is considered to be a warm supporter of the European integration policies. Although the positive attitude of Italian towards the EU has declined in recent years, it remains high enough to allow justifying and legitimising domestic strategies of state modernisation through pointing towards EU membership imperatives. Paradigmatic in this regard is the sequence of reforms in the 1990s that allowed Italy to enter the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) through the main door. However, Italy's implementation is still poor and its participation in the day-to-day EU-level decision making is generally random. This chapter discusses Italy's official response to various recent social policy initiatives, and its tendency to depend on the voluntarism of civil servants commanding few organisational resources and lacking political guidelines on which to orient their actions. However, in some cases, Italy has responded to social policy initiatives by either criticising them or influencing them at the EU level. This response has occurred when the planned initiatives were against the government's domestic policy agenda or when they could be exploited to promote or legitimise this agenda. Whether this type of response signifies a change in the path of Italy's participation in the EU social policy or merely implies a cynical attitude on the part of the government that ruled Italy for the first half of the current decade forms the focus of the concluding section.

This chapter discusses the policy and regulatory initiatives that were carried out in India so far. It includes those initiatives that were adapted since the telecom sector was liberalized, shortly after the 1994 National Telecom Policy and 1999 New Telecom Policy were introduced. It talks about the role played by the telecom tribunals and the telecom regulator in handling the current and potential areas of disputes. Some examples of dispute areas located in the telecom sector and the resolution methods that were adopted by the telecom tribunal and regulatory body are studied, along with the policy for economic liberalization of 1991. The chapter also reviews how the different regulatory initiatives of the various areas of telecom services helped in lessening the scope and incidence of disputes.

A country's social policy reflects its values, hence identifying its ideological framework is important in determining, understanding, and anticipating a country's position on social policy. In the United Kingdom, belief in the autonomy of the individual, the need to protect and assist the vulnerable, and a focus on economic growth to provide opportunity for all defines the role of government. It is through this framework that the UK considers domestic and European Community policies. This chapter discusses European social policy from the UK perspective. The first section discusses some of the fundamental differences between the European social model and the UK social model, and discusses how these stimulate and affect the UK's basic attitudes towards European policy. The second section describes the recent changes and reforms in the UK policy and then discusses how the European and other international models have influenced its changes and reforms. The last section summarises the national responses to EU social policy initiatives.

This chapter discusses what has changed and what has remained the same in the National Health Service (NHS). It enumerates the crucial developments that have occurred in the NHS since 1997 and highlights key features of the development of consumerist rhetoric. The chapter also considers how changing times and policy initiatives impact on palliative care and how user involvement developed here. It concludes with a consideration of whether the new NHS constitutes an opportunity or a threat for the capacity of palliative care to maximize its achievements and overcome its challenges.

This chapter reviews the latest series of policies that were designed to ‘transform’ the National Health Service, and places them in the context of the evolving approach of Labour to health service reform since 1997. It is pointed out that no major health policy initiatives were introduced in 2004, and that no significant shifts in government strategy were observed.

Since property rights give importance to certain concepts such as designing and providing ‘incentive’ payment schemes to advocate the provision of various services for the environment and how such services also promote what others would refer to as ‘environmental stewardship’, property rights have a major role in hastening the approval and implementation of new policy initiatives that are likely to impose benefits on the environment. While the reform process called Agenda 2000 has asserted how the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is now rooted on various principles of sustainability, new models of property rights that promote initiatives for environmental policy and nature conservation are required for employing such reforms. To be able to understand how property rights may be linked with environmental regulation, this chapter looks into various legal and economic property rights models and analyzes how the legal and social frameworks for land property rights have evolved.

This chapter focuses on public policies that impact the processes of integration. Although the chapter stresses some of the most controversial and negative immigration policies at the federal, state, and local levels, it is important to point out that California and especially the city and county of Los Angeles present a more favorable stance toward immigrants than many other regions of the United States. Indeed, not all the local and state policies and ordinances are negative; several initiatives serve the goal of integration for immigrants. It is also worth stressing that the positive aspects of policy initiatives—such as those combating wage theft or those defending the rights of domestic workers and day laborers—are intimately tied to the capacity of immigrant workers to organize and demand respect for their rights, and to the backing provided by the civil organizations that support these initiatives.

This section provides an introduction to the intellectual history of the cycle speech and the Transmitted Deprivation Research Programme of the 1970s. It explores their relevance to current policy initiatives on child poverty, antisocial behaviour, and social exclusion. It notes that Keith Joseph's theme had been that of a hypothesis of a ‘cycle of deprivation’ while Tony Blair's was that of a new government stance on social exclusion. It observes that despite the passage of thirty-four years, the fact that one speech was given by a Conservative minister, the other by a Labour prime minister, and inevitable difference in language, the content is remarkably similar. It notes that in all of the recent debate, the rhetoric of a cycle of deprivation, and of intergenerational continuities, has been ever present.