Governing welfare reform symbolically: evidence based or iconic policy?

2012

Policy &Amp; Politics

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A palimpsest is a multi-layered text that is reinscribed over time. This article presents policy as analogous to a palimpsest. The analogy highlights change and stasis, policy reinscription and the complexity of judging progress. An ethnographic study of implementation of the UK Sure Start Children"s Centres policy demonstrates how a policy-palimpsest is assembled. Asynchronous time zones are evident as premodern religious beliefs and traditional social structures are in tension with postmodern performativity and "initiativitis". Perceptions of progress depend on how history is interpreted, how policy is framed and how the future is imagined. A local policy-palimpsest reinscribes policy with unintended consequences.

Section: A Real-time Study Of Implementation Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy as palimpsest

2012

Policy &Amp; Politics

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“…This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of project management and policy implementation that took place in the late 2000s in a multi-organisational network located at a UK local authority level and addresses the question: ‘how and why do public policy entrepreneurs engage in creative accountancy when they manage projects?’ Understanding the work that goes into producing accounts for public expenditure is a vital component of democratic legitimacy (Carter, 2011; Peckham, 2014) but use of the term creative accountancy is not meant to imply deliberate deception or fraud. Rather, the aim is to provide sociological insight into how time and money are translated, interpreted and managed creatively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time tactics: Project managing policy implementation in a network

2016

Time & Society

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Projects are ubiquitous throughout the management of public services and the implementation of public policy but implementation processes often remain a ‘black box’. This article argues that technical approaches to project management neglect the role of power. Combining Foucault’s concept of the productive power of governmentality with the notion of timescapes into an analytical lens, the ethnography opens up the black box to reveal how project management functions as a powerful disciplinary technique. I show what escapes the imposed boundaries of the project as, in contrast to rational representations of the linearity of the project life cycle, decisions are retrospectively framed and the past rewritten. Simultaneously, project managers attempt to bring an uncertain future under control, discursively enrolling actors into their visions. Discursive and symbolic meanings of projects link to materiality as resources are represented as plentiful or meagre. Financial year-end exerts a disciplinary force so that time gets compressed and decision making becomes expedient. As resources move between budgets, governmentality is enacted, while budget headings of ‘other’ account for inevitable remaindering. Creative ‘time tactics’ are an adaptive response to achieving externally imposed targets while performing local project success. It turns out that time is at once metaphysical and mundane.

“…(Treasury 2006) In this way, provision of childcare via Sure Start Children's Centres was discursively incorporated into the central government policy frame of tackling child poverty and intertextually linked with the hegemonic discourse of 'work first' (Fairclough 2000;Rose and Miller 2010;Carter 2011;Cantillon and Van Lancker 2013). Local and regionally dispersed policy implementers were invited in and this 'relationship of proximity' (Allen 2003) was used to 'check out' (in an apparent attempt to root out) ideological opposition to the welfare reform agenda.…”

Section: Governing Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Socio-spatial relationships are also relevant as the UK Government administers the 'cash' and 'care' elements of welfare at different spatial scales. Tax credits and welfare benefits are administered on a national basis according to a complex set of rules set by central government, while provision of child welfare, social services (including the protection of vulnerable adults) and education have traditionally been the responsibility of local authorities, that exercise relative autonomy over the provision of family support services (Glendinning and Kemp 2006;Carter 2011). Policy tools and levers (alongside discursive rhetoric) targeted at unemployed parents with pre-school aged children in the United Kingdom have included provision of subsidized childcare, creation of multi-agency Sure Start Children's Centres (modeled on aspects of the US Head Start program) and the use of tax credits to incentivize unemployed parents to move from welfare to work.…”

Section: Policy Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing spaces: a multi-sited ethnography of governing welfare reform at close range and at a distance

Critical Policy Studies

2016

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Governing at a distance has been much discussed in relation to welfare reforms but debates tend toward abstract theorization, neglecting Foucault's instruction to study mundane practices in specific sites. Although sociological concepts of place, positioning and boundaries carry particular resonance for public policy, ethnographic studies are scarce. A multi-sited ethnography of welfare reform reveals how seemingly discrete governance sites turned out to be linked in a complex policy assemblage. Findings suggest that governing at a distance may be ineffective and may necessitate governing at close range, although scales may fold over. Local spaces of network governance may not be autonomous but imbricated with national and local government and broader scales of governance. Apparently inclusive spaces exhibited exclusionary features, with spaces doing representational work that was simultaneously political, material and symbolic. Complex, shifting sociospatial relationships thus influence the uneven development of welfare reform.