The readings listed here have been chosen to complement the text of Social Policy: Theory and Practice.
Almost all the readings are PDF downloads.They have been selected to meet four basic criteria:
Students in universities will usually have a much wider range of options to choose from.The process of selection means that these are not necessarily the leading references in the field, but they are all worth reading, and they generally go further than the text alone.
Social Policy: Theory and Practice can be ordered from the Policy Press's website.
Paul Spicker's blog on social policy issues includes updates on social policy and comments on new developments; his open access page includes links to more than 100 published works, including seven full-length books.
This is a different kind of reading list, which will mainly be of interest to people who have already decided to make their way in academic social policy. It has been selected by identifying all the works relating to Social Policy which have been cited in Google Scholar more than 6000 times. Many of these works have come to form part of the common vocabulary by which the subject is discussed.
The list does not include every influential work in social science, politics or economics; it is confined to texts which relate directly to social policy as well as to the authors' own discipline. Using a count of citations leads to some bias: works are cited more often if they appeal to a range of disciplines, and some of the references are specifically concerned with the USA. By contrast, most of the the leading works in UK social policy - the Poor Law report, the Beveridge report, or Titmuss - don't make the cut. International and American sources have a much greater reach.
Books have far more influence than academic articles; it is worth noting that only four of the texts below come from journals. Martin Powell has run an analysis of the impact of five leading journals: the highest rate of citation on Google Scholar for any single article was under 1200. That article was Arts, W.and Gelissen, J. (2002), Three worlds of welfare capitalism or more? A state-of-the-art report, Journal of European Social Policy, 12, 2: 137-58. Most of the most- cited articles were conceptual rather than research-based. See M Powell, 2016, Citation classics in social policy journals, Social Policy and Administration 50(6) 648-672.
| Published text | Google scholar citations (Jan. 2023) |
| P Freire, The pedagogy of the oppressed, 1970 | 197573 |
| M Foucault, Discipline and punish (Surveiller et punir), 1975 | 141150 |
| R Puttnam, Bowling alone, 2001 | 77832 |
| J Coleman, Social capital in the formation of human capital, American Journal of Sociology 1988 | 61750 |
| G Hardin, The tragedy of the commons, Science 1968 | 52291 |
| G Esping-Andersen The three worlds of welfare capitalism, 1990 | 44657 |
| S Arnstein, A ladder of citizen participation, Journal of the American Town Planning Institute 1969 | 28982 |
| M Friedman, Capitalism and freedom, 1962 | 28167 |
| World Health Organization, Obesity, 2000 | 25648 |
| W Wilson. The truly disadvantaged, 1987 | 24627 |
| M Lipsky, Street level bureaucracy, 1980 | 23969 |
| J Coleman, Equality of educational opportunity, 1966 | 23415 |
| A Sen, Development as freedom, 1999 | 20850 |
| WHO, International classification of functioning, disability and health | 20729 |
| E Goffman, Asylums, Penguin 1961 | 19515 |
| M Foucault, Madness and civilisation (Historie de la folie) 1961 | 17268 |
| S Bowles, H Gintis, Schooling in capitalist America, 1976 | 17152 |
| C Hood, A public management for all seasons?, Public Administration 1991 | 16522 |
| A Sen, Poverty and famines, Oxford 1983 | 16396 |
| A Sen, Inequality re-examined, 1995 | 16098 |
| T Marshall, Citizenship and social class, 1950 | 14803 |
| C Pollitt, G Bouckaert, Public management reform, 2004 | 14283 |
| R Herrnstein, C Murray, The Bell Curve, 1994 | 12889 |
| A Sen, Commodities and capabilities, 1999 | 12988 |
| G Esping-Andersen, 1999, Social foundations of post industrial economies. Oxford University Press | 11565 |
| A Hollingshead, F Redlich, Social class and mental illness, 1958 | 10783 |
| J Habermas, Legitimation crisis, 1975 | 11753 |
| C Jencks, Inequality, 1972 | 8317 |
| P Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom, 1979 | 7397 |
| WHO, World Health Report 2002 | 6897 |
| WHO, World Health Report 2000 | 6872 |
| C Murray, Losing Ground, 1984 | 6829 |
| P Pierson, Dismantling the welfare state?, 1994 | 6570 |
| P Pierson, The new politics of the welfare state, World Politics 1996 | 6348 |
| WHO, World Health Report 2001: Mental illness | 6248 |
Most of these works are available on the internet in PDF format, but I have not been able to establish whether the copies are legitimate.
The inclusion of these works in this list should not be taken to indicate agreement with their content. Some of them are rather badly informed (for example, Foucault on mental illness; consult Kay Jones' Asylums and After for a devasting critique), some of the arguments are very weak (Hardin does not seem to understand the difference between common grazing rights and robbing banks), and one item on this list is offensively racist. They should not be taken on trust.
