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Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Paul Spicker's new book takes the three founding principles of the French Revolution - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - and examines how they relate to social policy today. The book considers the political and moral dimensions of a wide range of social policies, and offers a different way of thinking about each subject from the way it is usually analysed. The book is in three main parts, one part devoted to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in turn. Each part explores the elements and dimensions of the key concept, its application to policy, its interrelationship with the other two principles, and how policies have developed to promote the principle in society. The conclusion outlines three models of radical politics, based on the main concepts. Liberty, equality, fraternity is an original, thought-provoking book, addressing perennial themes with many topical examples drawn from policy in practice, and offering distinctive insights into socialist and radical thinking

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Paul Spicker's new book takes the three founding principles of the French Revolution - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - and examines how they relate to social policy today. The book considers the political and moral dimensions of a wide range of social policies, and offers a different way of thinking about each subject from the way it is usually analysed.

The ambiguities of the terms 'austerity' and 'poverty' make it difficult to tie down any firm or clear relationship between the two. The idea of 'austerity' is variously used to refer to economic deflation, the reduction of public debt, the retrenchment of public services, or a change in the balance of public and private provision. 'Poverty' is used at different times refers to deprivation, inequality and social exclusion. Underlying the two fields of discourse, there is an irresistible sense that they must be connected: if the economy is shrinking, or if people are getting less support from the public sphere, then people who have little must be worse off still. However, conflicting interpretations, political spin and the inadequacies of the informational base make it hard to prove that austerity is at the root of these problems, or to offer any firm proof that poverty and austerity are intimately linked.

In this persuasive study, social welfare and policy expert Paul Spicker makes a case for a relational view of poverty. Poverty is much more than a lack of resources. It involves a complex set of social relationships, such as economic disadvantage, insecurity or a lack of rights. These relational elements tell us what poverty is – what it consists of, what poor people are experiencing, and what problems need to be addressed. This book examines poverty in the context of the economy, society and the political community, considering how states can respond to issues of inequality, exclusion and powerlessness. Drawing on examples of social policy in both rich and poor countries, this is an accessible contribution to the debate about the nature of poverty and responses to it.

In this book, well-respected author Paul Spicker lends a complementary voice to his Reclaiming Individualism, reviewing collectivism as a dimension of political discourse. Breaking down his analysis to examine collectivism through substantive, moral and methodological lenses, he reviews a series of arguments for cooperative effort, solidarity and collective responsibility. Taking a dispassionate and methodical approach, the author explores what collectivism means in social policy and what value it offers to the field. This example excerpt is a post-peer review, pre-copyedited version from chapter 1 - Substantive collectivism: collectivism in practice.

AbstractComparative public policy relies heavily on processing quantitative data, typically done by looking for the relationship between variables or by grouping empirical data into categories. In methodological terms, comparative data commonly deal with nations as policy units, and observations are liable to be interconnected, rather than independent. In statistical terms, there are problems in the identification of appropriate data, violations of the assumptions are rife, and there are just not enough nations to be able to make comparisons sensibly in these terms.The 'dependent variable' problem relates to the definition, operationalization and measurement of key variables, but the problems of comparison go deeper than that. The real dependent variable problem is whether it makes sense to look for a dependent variable at all. The evidence is always equivocal; a methodology that attempts to bracket off disparate influences cannot be valid; and attempting to apply general principles across different circumstances and conditions is inconsistent with what we know about policy development. Quantitative methods offer ways to sort and systematize information, but they do not provide a basis for generalization.

This book is about social policy and administration, which is a field of study mainly concerned with 'social welfare' and the 'social services'. Social policy is not a self-contained academic discipline. The book attempts to draw material together and to offer insights into a set of problems from a variety of perspectives. The source material has been taken from politics, sociology, philosophy and economics, as well as from the literature on social policy in its own right; there are occasional references to work from history, psychology, anthropology or law. But it is not possible to deal with each topic in depth in a way that would satisfy the demands of each discipline, and usually it is not even desirable. In its original form, the material may have been only obliquely relevant to social policy; the point that is of interest is how it reflects on the issues in the study of social welfare. For that very reason, the book should be of some value to people who approach it from variousdisciplines. It will not give them a comprehensive statement of the debate in their own subject, but it should offer an insight into other areas of study which can be applied to their own particular interests, and a range of illustrations from the field of social welfare. This is an Arabic translation of the author's original book SPICKER, P. 2013. Principles of social welfare: an introcution to thinking about the welfare state. Aberdeen: Paul Spicker.

Comparative public policy relies heavily on processing quantitative data, typically done by looking for the relationship between variables or by grouping empirical data into categories. In methodological terms, comparative data commonly deal with nations as policy units, and observations are liable to be interconnected, rather than independent. In statistical terms, there are problems in the identification of appropriate data, violations of the assumptions are rife, and there are just not enough nations to be able to make comparisons sensibly in these terms. The 'dependent variable' problem relates to the definition, operationalization and measurement of key variables, but the problems of comparison go deeper than that. The real dependent variable problem is whether it makes sense to look for a dependent variable at all. The evidence is always equivocal; a methodology that attempts to bracket off disparate influences cannot be valid; and attempting to apply general principles across different circumstances and conditions is inconsistent with what we know about policy development. Quantitative methods offer ways to sort and systematize information, but they do not provide a basis for generalization.

This book makes the case for the welfare state. Nearly every government in the developed world offers some form of social protection, and measures to improve the social and economic well-being of its citizens. However, the provision of welfare is under attack. The critics argue that welfare states are illegitimate, that things are best left to the market, and that welfare has bad effects on the people who receive it. If we need to be reminded why we ought to have welfare, it is because so many people have come think that we should not. This chapter presents 26 reasons for the provision of welfare. The file for this record represents only a sample chapter from the whole work, which is available for purchase from the publisher.

Professor Paul Spicker analyses the planned devolution of social security powers to the Scottish Parliament in the Scotland Bill and argues: The reforms have been represented as giving Scotland 'one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world.' That is debatable. In any federal system, powers lie by default with the states, not with central government. It is open to the states (and sometimes to local governments) to experiment and to innovate. Scotland will not be able to do this. Everything the Scottish Parliament does will have to be done with an eye to what is happening elsewhere in benefits, and they will be subject to continued direction, and control of resources, from central government. However, there will be things they can do, and those things will be worth doing.

The author author was approached by the Clerks of the committee to comment on the Scotland Bill and Fiscal Framework, since the publication of the Committee's Interim Report published in May 2015. This is his written submission.

Pending agreement between the Scottish and UK Governments, and the completion of the relevant Parliamentary processes, Scotland is set to gain significant new powers over aspects of the social security system. In order to help Poverty Alliance members better understand what these changes are and how they may be used Paul Spicker, Emeritus Professor at Robert Gordon University, has produced this short briefing. This briefing paper is part of the process to allow Poverty Alliance members determine the priorities for our network in relation to new social security powers in the years to come.