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Policy Change in Direct Government Responses to UK Unemployment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Jeremy Moon
Jeremy Moon
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Strathclyde*
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Abstract

This article examines the patterns of policy change in the field of direct responses to unemployment in the UK. After discussing the nature of the policy area, the article proceeds to identify instances of policy innovation, persistence, succession and termination under the headings of Job Creation, Employment Subsidy, Training, and Youth. As this is a relatively new problem for British government there are several cases of policy innovation, but the most striking finding is of a high number of policy successions. Discussion is then focused upon the relevance of a range of factors which might explain the patterns of policy change deduced, suggesting that the most important of these have been (i) ‘symbolic pay offs’ of policy change; (ii) the in-built terminators in most special employment measures; (iii) the nature and strategic position of the unemployment policy community; (iv) changing cabinet objectives. It is concluded, despite the several problems of this form of analysis pin-pointed, that in this study programme changes were generally good indicators of policy change, providing a useful over-view of this important sphere of government policy.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , August 1983 , pp. 301 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

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