ABSTRACT
For this author, taken together, the Deakin and Dahrendorf analyses collectively involve a higher degree of plausibility than the other three approaches examined To a significantly greater extent those other perspectives, their accounts seem to resonate with the materials reviewed in the course of writing this book. Each could point to aspects of the evidence that has been assembled here in support of their diagnosis. For example, a liberal sceptic could point to the ways in which horizontal implementation has sometimes involved real and enduring tensions between electoral imperatives and the more measured and gradualist approaches that are often characteristic of organized civil society. Imperatives to be seen to ‘deliver’, and quickly, have clearly trumped voluntary sector aspirations for more inclusiveness, time and closer attention to detail. The sceptic could also align themselves with those who point to claimed deleterious effects on the voluntary sector’s social capital, following the development of linkages with the state which are perceived to represent dysfunctional institutionalization. At the vertical field level, most ammunition for his worries about an overbearing and centralizing state would be found by pointing to the accounts of those experts we already labelled as sceptics in social care. There is an apparent affinity with their concerns about the implications of escalating institutional and regulatory elaboration, and its supposedly deleterious effects on innovative and expressive roles. From a comparative perspective, ultimately the British constitutional settlement has, of course, made these policy shifts easier.
