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Neoliberal reforms have seen a radical shift in government thinking about social citizenship rights around the world. But have they had a similarly significant impact on public support for these rights? This book traces public views on social citizenship across three decades through attitudinal data from New Zealand, the UK, and Australia. It argues that support for some aspects of social citizenship slipped more significantly under some political regimes than others, and that limited public resistance following the financial crisis of 2008-2009 further suggests the public accepted these neoliberal values

This unique book traces public views on social citizenship across three decades through attitudinal data from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia. It will be valuable for academics and students in sociology, social policy, and political science.

Commissioning agencies and social impact bonds are two examples of New Zealand's shift towards payment-for-outcomes funding mechanisms over the last decade, as the government attempted to improve both policy innovation and social outcomes. This article highlights that although the commissioning agencies have been more successful than social impact bonds, neither has completely achieved these goals of innovation and improved outcomes. This is particularly concerning given Indigenous Māori are disproportionately impacted by both policies. Discussion concludes by highlighting some of the problems associated with applying a payment-for-outcomes model to Indigenous Peoples, given these funding mechanisms are becoming increasingly popular in other settler nation states.

Commissioning agencies and social impact bonds are two examples of New Zealand's shift towards payment-for-outcomes funding mechanisms over the last decade, as the government attempted to improve both policy innovation and social outcomes. This article highlights that although the commissioning agencies have been more successful than social impact bonds, neither has completely achieved these goals of innovation and improved outcomes. This is particularly concerning given Indigenous Māori are disproportionately impacted by both policies. Discussion concludes by highlighting some of the problems associated with applying a payment-for-outcomes model to Indigenous Peoples, given these funding mechanisms are becoming increasingly popular in other settler nation states.

Income management, which reduces the control that benefit recipients have over social security income by quarantining a percentage for approved expenses, was introduced in both Australia and New Zealand in the late 2000s. In Australia, income management explicitly targeted Indigenous communities, being initiated as part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response in 2007, then later extended to other benefit recipients. In New Zealand, all 16- and 17-year-old benefit recipients and 18-year-old parents on a benefit became subject to income management in 2012 as a means to inhibit future 'welfare dependency' amongst young people. Despite the absence of an explicitly racialised framing in New Zealand, this article contends that both income management programmes represent a form of institutional racism, disproportionately affecting Indigenous peoples and significantly limiting Indigenous opportunities for self-determination.

AbstractNeo‐liberalism represents a significant and enduring shift in the politics shaping social policy. Although frequently ascribed a hegemonic, all‐powerful status that focuses our attention on the coherence found in neo‐liberal policies, this article builds on scholarly work highlighting variegation in the neo‐liberal project across different policy areas, national settings and time periods. Specifically, it employs Peck's and Tickell's (2002) view that neo‐liberalism has gone through multiple phases in response to both external and internal crises as an entry point for studying neo‐liberalism's impact on public support for the welfare state. Drawing upon New Zealand and British attitudinal data, the article argues that public reactions to an early period of retrenchment ('roll‐back' neo‐liberalism) differ from those reported in the 'roll‐out' or embedding phase of neo‐liberalism implemented by Third Way Labour Governments in both countries. Indeed, continuing public support in many policy areas arguably contributed to the internal crisis that provoked an adaptation to the neo‐liberal project. The article further explores public support for the welfare state following the external crisis provoked by the financial meltdown of 2008–09 asking whether New Zealand and British attitudes showed signs of resisting austerity measures or whether they, instead, indicated a third, 'roll‐over' period of neo‐liberalism where the public accepted not only a neo‐liberal economic agenda but also the need for further retrenchment of the welfare state. Conclusions about the politics of social policy at the level of public opinion offer both good and bad news for welfare state advocates.

The last 30 years has seen significant change in social policy regarding indigenous peoples living in advanced welfare states. However, such change has not been uniform even in 'liberal' welfare states where the recognitive claims of indigenous peoples have been most widely endorsed by governments. This article proposes a tentative framework for qualitatively analysing these divergences in indigenous social policy cross-nationally, using the example of indigenous capacity building initiatives from New Zealand and Australia to demonstrate its utility. It is argued that, in combining an emphasis on institutions, interests and ideas, the framework may offer a way to answer both traditional welfare questions — do welfare regimes matter? — as well as recent ones emerging in many European countries about the best balance between recognition and redistribution.

International empirical evidence, including that from Australia, suggests that neoliberal reform has not changed public attitudes towards the social rights of citizenship as much as one might predict. But do these international findings hold true for New Zealand, whose institutions were more rapidly transformed by neoliberal reform than similar countries? Drawing upon public opinion data regarding economic protectionism and the welfare state over the past two decades, this paper argues that while some significant changes have emerged there is no overwhelming evidence of a paradigmatic shift in public attitudes towards social citizenship rights as a result of New Zealand's neoliberal reform. Indeed, New Zealand's experience appears as ambiguous and ambivalent as that of Australia, albeit different policy and historical settings have produced some differences in public attitudes.

Using New Zealand and Australian examples, this article provides evidence that neoliberalism is both coherent and diverse. An analysis of government initiatives focused on 'improving government performance' regarding indigenous outcomes and indigenous 'capacity building' illustrates how 'performance management' has legitimated and extended neoliberalism in both countries. However, instabilities contained within a performance management discourse provide spaces for contestation that may ultimately lead to further reform and reorientation. Furthermore, the particular sociopolitical contexts of each country have ensured that the forms of neoliberalism being embedded in the 21st century are highly complex, indigenised hybrids rather than a one-size-fits-all formula.

Abstract In discourse around disability there has been a shift away from a 'medical model', which perceives disability as an individual problem to be 'cured' or contained, towards a 'social model'. The latter focuses on the relationship between people with disabilities and their social environment, locating the required interventions within the realm of social policy and institutional practice. Drawing upon a small qualitative study conducted in Melbourne, this article argues that recent plans by the Australian government to introduce mutual obligation requirements for recipients of the Disability Support Pension (DSP) sit in tension with this shift from the medical to the social models of disability. Mutual obligation is based on the assumption that income support recipients need to be taught how to be more 'self‐reliant', to 'participate' in society more fully and to become 'active', rather than 'passive', citizens. This language appears to overlap with that used to articulate a social model, which places emphasis on participation in the community and attempts a shift away from reliance on the medical profession. However, examples from interviews conducted with current and former DSP recipients demonstrate that, in practice, mutual obligation is likely to reinforce a medical model of disability, frame DSP recipients as 'conditional' citizens and ignore the obligations of the state and society regarding access and inclusiveness for people with disabilities.

Existing literature, which has emerged largely from Europe and Britain, suggests that the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion are fundamentally limited when accounting for 'difference'. This paper extends this literature by considering the way in which a social exclusion/inclusion discourse has played out in a 'white settler' society where the 'difference' embodied by the highly 'excluded' indigenous population is a central concern for social policy. The paper argues that the goal of an 'inclusive society', which has framed New Zealand social policy since 1999, promotes an equal opportunity approach that sits in tension with the specific needs and rights of MØaori as indigenous peoples and partners in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The ambiguous consequences of this goal highlight the need for settler societies to develop policy that reflects their own socio-political circumstances, rather than simply adopt policy discourses that are popular internationally.