ABSTRACT
The contributors to this book illustrate well the diverse intellectual backgrounds brought to bear on welfare and policy issues. We can see links with social administration, political science and management studies, as well as with sociology and economics. Indeed many papers, as indeed much of the research literature in welfare and policy, demonstrate a hybrid quality in their intellectual antecedents. We also see a diversity of approach to the methodology of policy analysis — the qualitative and quantitative of course — but also differences in the starting point the writer takes, the deductive and the interpretive traditions are evident here. Contributors also show how valid it can be to locate agendas and issues in the broad context of whole systems, or to focus on the specifics of policy in one area.
