This handbook provides a survey of the American welfare state. It offers an historical overview of U.S. social policy from the colonial era to the present, a discussion of available theoretical perspectives on it, an analysis of social programmes, and on overview of the U.S. welfare state's consequences for poverty, inequality, and citizenship.

Public administration plays an integral role at every stage of social policy creation and execution. Program operators' management decisions shape policymakers' perceptions of what can and should be accomplished through social programs, while public administrators wield considerable power to mobilize tangible and intangible resources and fill gaps in policy designs. Furthermore, the cumulative effects of public administrators' daily activities directly influence outcomes for program participants, and may shift policy itself. Location also matters to social policy, as those same administrators are expected to innovate continuously in response to shifting local and national conditions, including changes in budgetary allocations, client needs and capacities, and public attitudes. This Handbook will aim to capture what is being learned across six geographical regions: Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. and Canada. Specifically, each regional section will contain 6-10 chapters canvassing a particular set of promising practices or emerging challenges at the regional or sub-regional level, in addition to a brief overview written by the section editor. The regional sections will be flanked by integrative chapters. As a whole, the volume contains 65 chapters.

In Inequality in US Social Policy: An Historic Analysis, Bryan Warde illuminates the pervasive and powerful role that social inequality based on race and ethnicity, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation, class, and disability plays and has historically played in informing social policy. Using critical race theory and other structural oppression theoretical frameworks, this book examines social inequalities as they relate to social welfare, education, housing, employment, health care, and child welfare, immigration, and criminal justice. This book will help social work students better understand the origins of inequalities that their clients face.

This is the comprehensively-revised second edition of a volume that was welcomed at its first appearance as 'the most authoritative survey and critique of the welfare state yet published'. Its fifty-one chapters have been written by acknowledged experts in the field from across Europe, Australia, and North America. Some chapters are brand new; all have been systematically revised, and they are right up to date. The first seven sections of the book cover the themes of Ethics, History, Approaches, Inputs and Actors, Policies, Policy Outcomes, and Worlds of Welfare. A final chapter is devoted to the future of welfare and well-being under the imperatives of climate change. Every chapter is written in a way that is both comprehensive and succinct, introducing the novice reader to the essentials of what is going on while providing new insights for the more experienced researcher. Wherever appropriate, the handbook brings the very latest empirical evidence to bear. It is a book that is thoroughly comparative in every way. The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, second edition, is a comprehensible and comprehensive survey of everything that it is important to know about the welfare state in these troubled times. It is an indispensable source for everyone who wants to know what is really going on now, and what is likely to happen next.

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.

This comprehensive Handbook provides a unique overview of the key issues and challenges facing society and social policy in the twenty-first century, discussing how welfare is conceptualised, organised and delivered in contemporary global society. Chapters engage with specific areas of social policy as well as with the social divisions and institutional infrastructures that underpin them. The Handbook also considers how social policy should respond to the challenges posed by austerity, human migration and the climate crisis.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics, and it shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies.

Providing a state of the art overview, this comprehensive Handbook is an essential introduction to the subject of Gender and Social Policy. Bringing together original contributions and research from leading researchers it covers the theoretical perspectives of the field, the central policy terrain of gender inequalities of income, employment and care, and family policy. Examining gender and social policy at both the regional and national level, the Handbook is an excellent resource for advanced students and scholars of sociology, political science, women’s studies, policy studies as well as practitioners seeking to understand how gender shapes the contours of social policy and politics.

Scholars working in or sympathetic to American political development (APD) share a commitment to accurately understanding the history of American politics - and thus they question stylized facts about America's political evolution. Like other approaches to American politics, APD prizes analytical rigor, data collection, the development and testing of theory, and the generation of provocative hypotheses. Much APD scholarship indeed overlaps with the American politics subfield and its many well developed literatures on specific institutions or processes (for example Congress, judicial politics, or party competition), specific policy domains (welfare policy, immigration), the foundations of (in)equality in American politics (the distribution of wealth and income, race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender orientation), public law, and governance and representation. What distinguishes APD is careful, systematic thought about the ways that political processes, civic ideals, the political construction of social divisions, patterns of identity formation, the making and implementation of public policies, contestation over (and via) the Constitution, and other formal and informal institutions and processes evolve over time - and whether (and how) they alter, compromise, or sustain the American liberal democratic regime. APD scholars identify, in short, the histories that constitute American politics. They ask: what familiar or unfamiliar elements of the American past illuminate the present? Are contemporary phenomena that appear new or surprising prefigured in ways that an APD approach can bring to the fore? If a contemporary phenomenon is unprecedented then how might an accurate understanding of the evolution of American politics unlock its significance? Featuring contributions from leading academics in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development provides an authoritative and accessible analysis of the study of American political development.

This collection of essays by twenty-nine distinguished scholars provides readers with a complete overview of American politics and policy that can be found in any single volume. These essays reveal that American politics historically is volatile, not given easily to civility, and polarizing; at the same time, they explore important political developments in addressing real issues confronting the nation and the world.