Social Policy, Social Administration and the Social Construction of Welfare

Teaching and research in social administration have been dominated by the study of the public social services. Some of the limitations of this approach have been exposed by the perpetuation and growth of inequality in welfare state societies. Existing conceptions of social policy do not provide an adequate framework for the study of the social production and exploitation of inequality. The tendency to equate social policy with the institutionalized welfare state has reinforced the insular tendencies in British social administration, overemphasized the importance of government in the distribution of resources and fostered a false image of the benevolent state as the embodiment of welfare principles. Alternative definitions of social policy are needed to ensure that the analysis of welfare is more comprehensive than that carried out so far within the framework of social administration. It is argued that the essential aspect of social policies are their distributional implications or outcomes. Social policies may be made implicitly or explicitly, by a wide range of social institutions and groups, including the state. The task of social policy analysis is to evaluate the distributional impact of existing policies and proposals and the rationales underlying them. In such analyses attention will be focussed less on the problems of individuals or clients, than on the behaviour of organizations, professions and classes in order to balance descriptions of the institutional framework through which the welfare state is administered with analysis of the social production and maintenance of inequality. Unless social policy teaching and research adapts its tools and methods to take account of these social factors it is likely to become increasingly detached from the real world of social welfare.