The frontline delivery of welfare-to-work services for the unemployed has changed significantly over the past ten years in response to structural and ideological pressures. Using benchmark data collected ten years ago, the Activating States project aims to analyse whether and how the activation of welfare clients has changed these services. This analysis will provide a...

In this background paper for next year’s conference on Governments and Communities in Partnership: From Theory to Practice, Mark Considine examines whether the end of the old rigidities in bureaucratic and institutional thinking has something really new to say to researchers, practitioners and citizens. Further details information about Governments and Communities in Partnership: From Theory...

This is the background paper by Stephen Ziguras, Mark Considine, Linda Hancock and Brian Howe for this week's conference, From Risk to Opportunity: Labour Markets in Transition, which is part of a project exploring new institutional arrangements in the area of social policy to cope with structural change in both labour markets and household formation...