Public Policy to Reduce Inequalities across Europe Hope Versus Reality

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. There is a broad consensus across European states and the EU that social and economic inequality is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yet inequality policy is notoriously complex and contested. This book approaches the issue from two linked perspectives. First, a focus on functional requirements highlights what policymakers think they need to deliver policy successfully, and the gap between their requirements and reality. We identify this gap in relation to the theory and practice of policy learning, and to multiple sectors, to show how it manifests in health, education, and gender equity policies. Second, a focus on territorial politics highlights how the problem is interpreted at different scales, subject to competing demands to take responsibility. This contestation and spread of responsibilities contributes to different policy approaches across spatial scales. We conclude that governments promote many separate equity initiatives, across territories and sectors, without knowing if they are complementary or contradictory. This outcome could reflect the fact that ambiguous policy problems and complex policymaking processes are beyond the full knowledge or control of governments. It could also be part of a strategy to make a rhetorically radical case while knowing that they will translate into safer policies. It allows them to replace debates on values, regarding whose definition of equity matters and which inequalities to tolerate, with more technical discussions of policy processes. Governments may be offering new perspectives on spatial justice or new ways to reduce political attention to inequalities.

1 - Introduction: why do governments struggle to reduce inequalities?
2 - Solving inequalities via policy learning and transfer
3 - Mapping responsibilities to reduce inequalities across the EU
4 - Contesting the scale at which inequalities policies should be solved
5 - Inequalities policies in practice: subnational strategies and choices
6 - Strategies to reduce health inequalities
7 - Strategies to reduce inequalities in education
8 - Strategies to reduce gender inequalities
9 - Conclusion

Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling, UK (@Cairneypaul). His research spans comparisons of policy theories (Understanding Public Policy, 2020), and co-authored accounts of methods associated with key theories (Handbook of Complexity and Public Policy, 2015), international policy processes (Global Tobacco Control, 2012), and comparisons of UK and devolved policymaking (Why Isn't Government More Preventive?, 2020). He uses these insights to explain the use of evidence in policy and policymaking, in books (The Politics of Policy Analysis, 2021; The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making, 2016), articles, and blog posts: Michael Keating is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, British Academy, Academy of Social Sciences and European Academy. He graduated MA from the University of Oxford and PhD from what is now Glasgow Caledonian University. He has taught at universities in the United Kingdom and Canada and the European University Institute. Recent books include Rescaling the European State (OUP 2013) and State and Nation in the United Kingdom (OUP 2021). Sean Kippin is Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Stirling. He is the author of a number of publications covering British political and policymaking institutions, the UK Labour Party, and policy areas such as education and inequalities. He has a PhD in Politics and Public Policy from the University of the West of Scotland, where he also held a succession of teaching roles. Prior to this, he worked for the London School of Economics on the Democratic Audit UK and LSE Politics and Policy Blog projects. Emily St.Denny is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. She has previously worked as a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling, and as a Research Assistant at the Public Policy Institute for Wales (Cardiff University) and at the Center on Constitutional Change (University of Stirling). She specialises in health policy and gender, and in the politics of policymaking in France and the devolved United Kingdom.