Through case-study research, Majka Ryan offers a systematic microanalysis of discretion in a specific context of residence-based welfare conditionality derived from the labour movement directive 2004/38/EC. The latter is utilised in the coordination of social security benefits for mobile EU citizens across Europe. Ryan reveals that in Ireland and other jurisdictions, official rights, be they supranational or local, when translated into practice are shaped by different political, organisational and decision-making actors, consequently leading to an uneven distribution of substantive rights and unequal outcomes for different groups of people, disproportionately affecting those who must prove their deservingness. This book evidences how residence-based welfare conditions create a context where power is exercised freely by street-level decision-makers and illustrates how that power affects different groups in society, and consequently, how through those practices, the hegemonic discourses around legitimacy of access to public resources are reproduced.

Discretion has re-emerged as an issue of central importance for welfare professionals over the last two decades in the face of an intensification of management culture across the public sector. This book presents an innovative framework for the analysis of discretion, offering three accounts of the managerial role - the domination model, the street level model and the author's alternative discursive perspective. These different regimes of discretion are examined through a case study within a social services department, comparing and contrasting social work discretion in an Older Persons Team and a Mental Health Team. This innovative, theoretical and empirical analysis will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers in social work and related disciplines including social policy, public administration and organizational studies, as well as professionals in social work, health and education.

Issues in Sociology and Social Work Research and Application: 2013 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ book that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Social Work. The editors have built Issues in Sociology and Social Work Research and Application: 2013 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Social Work in this book to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Sociology and Social Work Research and Application: 2013 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

As the recession worsens, more and more Americans must turn to welfare to make ends meet. Once inside the agency, the newly jobless will face a bureaucracy that has undergone massive change since the advent of welfare reform in 1996. A behind-the-scenes look at bureaucracy’s human face, The New Welfare Bureaucrats is a compelling study of welfare officers and how they navigate the increasingly tangled political and emotional terrain of their jobs. Celeste Watkins-Hayes here reveals how welfare reform engendered a shift in focus for caseworkers from simply providing monetary aid to the much more complex process of helping recipients find work. Now both more intimately involved in their clients’ lives and wielding greater power over their well-being, welfare officers’ racial, class, and professional identities have become increasingly important factors in their work. Based on the author’s extensive fieldwork in two very different communities in the northeast, The New Welfare Bureaucrats is a boon to anyone looking to understand the impact of the institutional and policy changes wrought by welfare reform as well as the subtle social dynamics that shape the way welfare is meted out at the individual level.

When the objectives of public policy programmes have been formulated and decided upon, implementation seems just a matter of following instructions. However, it is underway to the realization of those objectives that public policies get their final substance and form. Crucial is what happens in and around the encounter between public officials and individual citizens at the street level of government bureaucracy. This Research Handbook addresses the state of the art while providing a systematic exploration of the theoretical and methodological issues apparent in the study of street-level bureaucracy and how to deal with them.

The book deals with the role of the international level in securing or supplementing national welfare functions. The authors evaluate the role of international labour law, social rights as human rights, the World Trade Organisation, non-governmental organisations and international taxation law, in the effort to maintain and promote welfare rights and the welfare state. The functions of national migration law and of social security law are analysed in case studies.

This Handbook is the world′s first generic major reference work to provide an authoritative guide to the theory, method, and values of social work in one volume. Drawn from an international field of excellence, the contributors each offer a critical analysis of their individual area of expertise. The result is this invaluable resource collection that not only reflects upon the condition of social work today but also looks to future developments. Split into seven parts, the Handbook investigates: - Policy dimensions - Practice - Perspectives - Values and ethics - The context of social work - Research - Future challenges It is essential reading for all students, practitioners, researchers, and academics engaged in social work.

Fifteen years in the making, Hyperpolitics is an interactive dictionary offering a wholly original approach for understanding and working with the most central concepts in political science. Designed and authored by two of the discipline’s most distinguished scholars, its purpose is to provide its readers with fresh critical insights about what informs these political concepts, as well as a method by which readers—and especially students—can unpack and reconstruct them on their own. International in scope, Hyperpolitics draws upon a global vocabulary in order to turn complex ideas into an innovative teaching aid. Its companion open access website (www.hyperpolitics.net) has already been widely acknowledged in the fields of education and political science and will continue to serve as a formidable hub for the book’s audience. Much more than a dictionary and enhanced by dynamic graphics, Hyperpolitics introduces an ingenious means of understanding complicated concepts that will be an invaluable tool for scholars and students alike.

This exploration of the political and policy-making roles of public bureaucracies offers comparative analysis of the effects of politics on bureaucracy including international case studies on North America, Western and Eastern European and Asian countries; discussion of how governments have been developing strategies to enhance co-ordination and coherence across their programmes; analysis of the use of performance management in public administration; and revision and updating to take into account new literature that has emerged in recent years, including a discussion of E-Governance and analysis of 'new public management'.

One of the major dilemmas facing the administrative state in the United States today is discerning how best to harness for public purposes the dynamism of markets, the passion and commitment of nonprofit and volunteer organizations, and the public-interest-oriented expertise of the career civil service. Researchers across a variety of disciplines, fields, and subfields have independently investigated aspects of the formidable challenges, choices, and opportunities this dilemma poses for governance, democratic constitutionalism, and theory building. This literature is vast, affords multiple and conflicting perspectives, is methodologically diverse, and is fragmented. The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy affords readers an uncommon overview and integration of this eclectic body of knowledge as adduced by many of its most respected researchers. Each of the chapters identifies major issues and trends, critically takes stock of the state of knowledge, and ponders where future research is most promising. Unprecedented in scope, methodological diversity, scholarly viewpoint, and substantive integration, this volume is invaluable for assessing where the study of American bureaucracy stands at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and where leading scholars think it should go in the future. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III