In Chapter 13, we provide a preliminary analysis of the policy orientation of the EU’s post-Covid-19 new economic governance (NEG) regime to give policymakers, unionists, and social-movement activists an idea about possible future trajectories of EU governance of employment relations and public services. We do that on the basis of not only the recently adopted EU laws in these two policy areas, such as the decommodifying Minimum Wage Directive, but also EU executives’ post-Covid-19 NEG prescriptions in two areas (employment relations, public services), three public sectors (transport services, water services, healthcare services), and four countries (Germany, Italy, Ireland, Romania). Vertical NEG interventions in national wage policies paradoxically cleared the way for the decommodifying EU Minimum Wage Directive by effectively making wage policy an EU policymaking issue, but, in the area of public services, we see an accentuation of the trend of NEG prescriptions in recent years: more public investments but also much more private sector involvement in the delivery of public services.

Chapter 7 shows that EU leaders had already started in the 1980s to steer the trajectory of national public services in a commodifying direction. The commodifying pressures from direct EU interventions reached a peak in 2004 with the Commission’s draft Services Directive, which failed to become law because of unprecedented transnational protest movements. After the financial crisis however, the EU’s shift to its new economic governance (NEG) regime empowered EU executives to pursue public service commodification by new means. Our analysis reveals that the NEG prescriptions on public services for Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Romania consistently pointed in a commodifying direction, by demanding both a curtailment of public resources for public services and the marketisation of public services. Although our analysis uncovers some decommodifying prescriptions, namely, quantitative ones calling for more investment at the end of the 2010s, they were usually justified with policy rationales subordinated to NEG’s commodification script.

Chapter 4 first reviews earlier studies of the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) regime and discusses the methodological challenges that they pose for the assessment of NEG documents. Earlier studies of NEG policy prescriptions flattened the semantic relationships between the different terms used in them and the power relations between the actors involved in their production. We therefore outline a novel research design that accounts for the links between the policy orientation of NEG prescriptions and the material interests of concrete social groups as well as the hierarchical ordering of NEG prescriptions in larger policy scripts unevenly deployed across countries, time, and policy areas. We address the first point in Chapter 4 and the second in Chapter 5. In 4.2, we identify commodification as the most relevant dimension for analysing the nexus between EU economic governance and labour politics. In 4.3, we operationalise the concepts of commodification and decommodification in employment relations and public services and outline the analytical framework against which we assess the policy orientation of the EU’s NEG prescriptions in the policy areas of employment relations and public services.

Public service reform in the shape of collaborative governance is consistently promoted by statutory actors in Scotland and other high-income countries to help develop high-quality and efficient public services, responsive to peoples needs, but this notion contains a number of weaknesses. This chapter explores the potential of the capabilities approach (CA), conversion factors in particular, to achieve a more effective model for conceptualizing, driving and evaluating how public services operate, drawing on empirical work conducted by What Works Scotland. It argues that the CA provides an ethical framework for evaluating the role and function of public services in safeguarding peoples well-being and social justice, especially for those with fewest resources. Employing data from two research projects in areas of multiple deprivation, the impact of public service interventions is evaluated in terms of conversion factors, and how these shape outcomes for citizens and communities. The concept of structural conversion factors is an innovative response to criticism of the CA, and the chapter argues that this modification allows it to better confront the drivers of social injustice.

Chapter 1 introduces the central puzzle of implementing primary education in northern India, a least likely setting for programmatic service delivery. Despite having the same formal institutions and national policy framework for primary education, implementation varies remarkably across northern Indian states. After reviewing existing explanations, the chapter outlines the main argument, anchored around variation in informal bureaucratic norms, and foreshadows the theoretical contributions to comparative politics and development. It then presents the research design and methods, based on multilevel comparisons in four Indian states (Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar). Using multiple field research methods, I trace the implementation process from state capitals down to the village primary schools, drawing on two and a half years of field research: participant observation inside bureaucracies; village ethnography; and 853 interviews and 103 focus group discussions. I conclude with an overview of the book’s remaining chapters.

Chapter 2 presents the book’s theory connecting differences in bureaucratic norms to variation in the implementation of primary schooling. I first define implementation and operationalize it for the primary education domain. I then present comparative education indicators, showcasing differences in performance across four Indian states. Next, I develop a theory anchored around the ideal types of legalistic and deliberative bureaucracy. I argue that deliberative bureaucracies, which promote flexibility and problem-solving, are more effective since they can adapt policies to local needs and activate participation from marginalized communities. By contrast, legalistic states, which adhere strictly to rules and procedures, implement policies unevenly and tend to benefit privileged groups in society, weakening the engagement of poor communities. I elucidate two mechanisms: collective understanding and behavior of state officials, and societal feedback, which together yield varied mentation patterns and outcomes. I explore the political origins behind the differences in bureaucratic norms. I scope conditions of my theory and contrast it with alternative political explanations for the implementation of public services.

Argued December 14, 1970.Decided June 14, 1971.

Justice BODDIE delivered the opinion of the Court.1

This case arises out of Jackson, Mississippi’s decision to close its public swimming pools rather than integrate them. At issue is whether these closures violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, thereby requiring an order enjoining the pools to be reopened. City officials deny that the closures constitute a badge of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment. They similarly insist that the closures do not violate equal protection because they apply equally to blacks and to whites such that neither group has the benefit of using any municipal pools.

This chapter reviews substance misuse services in the UK in the context of change from market led to community-based approaches and presents what is known about what initiates, supports and sustains the process of recovery, desistance from offending and community re-integration.We also review the impact on service delivery, in a policy environment that has championed peer and mutual aid processes, and parallel this with an initiative deploying a similar model around violence reduction.We conclude with reflections on what the fields of recovery and substance misuse services can offer to the design and delivery of wider public services, and how developing recovery-oriented systems of care can inform the building of flourishing communities in which individual recovery capital is seen to generate and sustain community capital and community connections, that act at an individual level as well as being a preventative early intervention at the level of communities.