Dialogue Signposts
Wolfson Research Institute and School of Applied Social Sciences Guest Lecture by Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby - 15th June 2012
(23 April 2012)
The Wolfson Research Institute and the School of Applied Social Sciences are delighted to welcome Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby, Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent to deliver an exciting guest lecture entitled 'The real reasons why the Coalition is cutting the welfare state so hard'.
Venue
Calman Learning Centre, Durham University Science Site
Timings
Please register for this event on the following web page: http://www.dur.ac.uk/wolfson.institute/events/petertaylorgooby
Abstract
Coalition public policy is directed at reducing the budget deficit, perhaps to zero by 2017. Unprecedented cutbacks are accompanied by major restructuring of most areas of public policy. Such a programme involves major economic, political and social risks. Why would a government, particularly a Coalition, pursue such a path?
This paper seeks to explain why the government acts as it does, and why opposition parties find it so hard to develop an adequate counter-programme.
Biography
Peter Taylor-Gooby, FBA, FRSA, AcSS, is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent, Chair of the British Academy programmes on New Paradigms in Public Policy and on Nudge and Public Policy and of the HEFCE REF Social Work and Social Policy Panel. He directed the ESRC Social Contexts and Responses to Risk and Economic Beliefs and Behaviour and the EU Welfare Reform and the Management of Societal Change and Subsidiarity and Convergence programmes and the HEFCE Social Work and Social Policy RAE Panel. He has contributed to a number of Downing Street and Treasury roundtables. He co-directs the Risk Research Centre at Beijing Normal University. Recent books include: 'Reframing Social Citizenship', 'Risk in Social Science' (with Jens Zinn),'Ideas and the Welfare State', and 'New Risks, New Welfare'. He is currently researching social cohesion, supported by a Leverhulme Fellowship.