From the 1820s an ever present feature of most British ports has been the voluntary societies, little- studied before, offering spiritual and social welfare support to serving seafarers. The perspective taken in this study is that although there were numerous individual societies voluntary effort for seafarers constitutes a single movement. The continued existence of many societies well into the twentieth century suggests that the movement should be examined longitudinally in order to assess its contribution in relation to the changing context in which such welfare operated. To establish the internal operations of seamen's missions and. sailors' homes. the records of a selprtirnn nflarge and small societies quantifiable data as well as Particular attention has been target population - seafarers using contemporary sources; using public records, and to changing religious context has that of of social policy, a welfare state. have been examined for other forms of evidence. paid to the nature of the - and the situation in port, to involvement of the State the industrial context. The been examined closely, as has s it progressed towards the The study reveals the considerable voluntary effort which contributed to the movement, confirming the wide coverage of British ports which was achieved and the extent to which it was able to match the growing numbers of seafarers. The product of evangelical interest in the well-being of others, there was particular concern for rescuing the seafarer from the evils of port districts, especially crimping. Though to many seafarers. marginal in religious terms, seafarers' charities were more significant in social terms as the sole providers of social support throughout much of the period of this study. Although some local societies survived to the 1970s, by the 1890s the movement had changed from a mass of local societies to domination by the branch networks of a few national societies. Apart from control of seafaring employment, State intervention was not significant in seafaring welfare except in the 1940s, while the role of the shipping industry was small. The decline of the movement in Britain was linked with the effects of inflation, changing patterns of seafaring and the decline of the British shipping industry. In the broader religious and social welfare contexts, seamen's missions and homes were typical products of the nineteenth century and in their evolution to 1970 paralleled closely developments in religion and social welfare in Britain.

Two specific shifts have occurred in the sectoral bases of welfare provision in the UK since the last war. The first involved in establishment of collective state provision whilst the second has involved a significant expansion of owner occupation. These developments have been interpreted at various times as signifying substantial changes in the nature of British society, particularly in the way that they are alleged to have attenuated class based social divisions and patterns of consciousness. In contemporary debates, owner occupation is alleged to have generated a conservative domestic oriented attitudinal disposition among manual households. Further, such households are held to be profoundly disaffected from state welfare as a result of their experiences as clients in this sector. The Plymouth study, which is reported below, was concerned with public attitudes to welfare. More specifically, its aim was to generate a data base which would enable the relative significance of sectoral patterns of welfare and household class as factors which influence the pattern of public attitudes to issues in social policy to be assessed. This aim was implemented by administering a structured questionnaire to a sample of 150 households in Plymouth. Subsequent empirical and conceptual analyses generated three conclusions. First, people are dissatisfied with the experience of state welfare but it is the distributive impact of welfare which is of the greatest significance in the calculations of the average household. Second, sectoral patterns of welfare do influence public perceptions of issues in social policy, but in a modest and specific way. Third, household class remains the most significant determinant of access to welfare, public or private, and because of this, the most significant influence on the pattern of public attitudes to welfare.

The evolution of welfare feeding in the United Kingdom is investigated within the framework of the development of the Welfare State. Welfare feeding, including the nutritional role of meals, is then evaluated looking at two examples of welfare provision, feeding in schools as an example of provision for the young and meals-on-wheels as an example of provision for the elderly. The nutritional role of both school meals and meals-on-wheels are considered in the light of nutritional requirements, contemporary dietary views and the feeding behaviour of the young and elderly. Whilst research suggests that school meals make a more significant contribution to the diet than alternative sources of lunch there is evidence that the nutritional value of both school meals and meals-on-wheels are variable and that in some cases they have not provided expected levels of nutrients. There are thus clear requirements for some form of nutritional standards for both school meals and meals-on-wheels. The uptake of school meals is a function of pupils perceptions of lunchtime feeding. An attitude based approach using a Likert Scale was developed to identify what children perceive as important in the school feeding environment. A core group of problem areas were identified as relevant for all groups of pupils and more specific factors were identified for each sub-group. It was established that the attitude measurement tool was appropriate in the prediction of feeding behaviour. The transportation of meals was investigated in terms of the requirements of the meals-on-wheels service. Alternative delivery systems were evaluated and those most appropriate to the meals-on-wheels service were identified. Insulated systems are appropriate for deliveries of up to 90 minutes whilst the best of the heated delivery systems are appropriate for up to 3.5 hours.

This dissertation focuses on Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars and their attempts to secure symbolic and material recognition from the state after losing a series of wars. My main goal is to examine some of the main features of Serbia’s welfare system and to explore the ways in which war veterans negotiated their entitlements and secured access to social care. On a different level, I analyse Serbia’s transformation from a socialist society to a free market economy – a process in which a large part of the veteran population seems to have been caught in the middle, between warfare and welfare. I raised the following questions: (1) in what ways did the Serbian state provide for the population of war veterans, (2) what was the role of VAs in this process, (3) how did the interplay between actors and their position within the local political and economic landscape influence veterans’ prospects for social recognition and access to care, and (4) how did war veterans justify their demands and in what ways did they reproduce or transform the official rhetoric that validated or challenged their privileged position? Therefore, this study is an analysis of the predicaments of Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars and the ways in which they were constructed, articulated and mobilised as a discourse and tool to differentiate and bestow a particular social group with particular rights to state resources. This was occurring in what I described as zones of ambiguities and unsolved contradictions due to the fact that two decades after post-Yugoslav wars, Serbia still had no official records about the exact number of killed and missing persons, or about the size of its veteran population. This also means that the state officialdom had no information about postwar living conditions of a large portion of its population, which impacted veterans’ and other people’s ideas about nationality, the state and their rights as Serbian citizens. Veterans voiced their discontent with the state and wider society through what I have observed as narratives of multiple lacks and losses that pointed to particular sites of ‘injury’ that affected their sense of dignity. In the process of making their claims for status recognition they competed with other groups in Serbian civil society over their respective positions in a hierarchy of victims in need of state protection. This could be described as a paradoxical process in which subjects seem to oppose the state while replicating forms of state power to gain recognition. I analyse the practices through which war veterans consolidated and communicated their demands for recognition as well as the responses by the Serbian state and society to those demands while, following Foucault, treating both acts as techniques of government and exercises in governmentality.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze local Corporate Social Responsibility and how this relates to local political priorities in Denver, Colorado to provide insights both in the US context but also in the midst of the Swedish debate regarding the role of private provision of welfare. The research questions are threefold: 1. Are private engagements addressing welfare issues as identified by the public sector?, 2. What is the interaction between public and private sector in social engagements in Denver? and 3. What expressions of a governance network prevails in the cross-sector interactions in social provisions in this case study? The empirical material used in this case study consist of data collected by conducting semi-structured interviews from Denver-based corporations and individuals working for the City and County of Denver. Theories of governance; network governance and interactive governance have been applied in structuring and in the analysis of the empirical data. The results indicate that due to the internal incapacity as a result of the fiscal- and spending restrictions of the public sector in the provision of social services, the public sector lacks the capacity in providing social services for the constituents. This has opened up for a need of nontraditional governance solutions which includes a dependence of private-sector provision of welfare. Furthermore, there are expressions which indicate that CSR does play a role in the local provision of social services by filling the gap of provision which is left as a result of the institutional incapacity of the public sector. However, there are indicators of large variations in the connectedness of the linkages within the network, varying from close connections and comanagement between CSR and public initiatives to activities expressed as the self-governance of corporations in the provision of social services, making top-down goal sharing such as incentives crucial for the public sector to get corporations to address local priorities. Keywords: governance, interactive governance, network governance, welfare provision, cross-sector, CSR

After the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Ireland’s neoliberal housing policy turned again to housing financialisation as focus lay upon the attraction of corporate investors in order to revive the housing market. The result was a swift return to housing price rises but this came with ever growing homelessness and housing precarity as REITs and other corporate investors' influence on the housing market grew. Affordability has become a common framing as one of the key issues which Ireland’s housing system is currently facing, by the state and researchers alike. However, much of this research frames housing issues and policies as being objectively defined. Social constructionism holds that housing issues and policy are heavily subjective, where material conditions are subjectively negotiated among competing narratives steeped in ideology and vested interests in an attempt to create a dominant narrative. This research, building upon a social constructionism approach, has analysed the negotiated process within the affordability discourse of Ireland. The key findings are that the state’s affordability narrative remains heavily linked to a commodified, private sector led housing provision which holds to its traditional liberal welfare regime. This narrative is reflected in the private sector’s narrative, which frames the state as a facilitator of the efficient private sector, which within a housing system free of state barriers, can create affordability. However, as more and more face into greater housing precarity as unaffordability grows, a counter narrative framing state built public housing, supported by the non-profit sector as key to reducing the reliance on a greedy private sector and in so doing, achieving affordability. As this movement grows, spearheaded by the increasing threat of Sinn Féin to parliamentary power and the growth of the trade union led Raise the Roof campaign movement, this counter narrative has grown in power. Although limited, there has been a shift in the state’s narrative which reflects that of the counter narrative where the state frames the need for a greater direct state role in affordable housing provision and state intervention as a control mechanism on the negative effects of the profit motive of the private sector. Although this can not be said to be a shift in welfare regime, it highlights the negotiated process of narratives within affordability discourse.

This thesis seeks to explain the evolution of non-state welfare provision in the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping and his recent predecessors. In particular, it examines the emergence, spread and institutionalization of a policy of government contracting services to non-governmental organizational (NGOs) and related political dynamics at the national, local, and state-NGO interaction levels. This thesis makes several theoretical claims regarding the causes and process of institutional change and the political implications of these transformations. I contend that decentralization, international influences, and authoritarian consolidation have combined to produce gradual institutional change characterized by processes of layering, conversion, and drift. These incremental changes have led to local institutional frameworks and practices of government contracting that remain incomplete and beset by unequal power dynamics between party-state and NGO actors. Notwithstanding the intent to increase the supply of services and promote state-NGO collaboration at local levels, purchase-of-service contracting policies are inseparable from strategies of political control, consent making, and governing techniques deployed by the ruling party-state. This dissertation reveals the presence of informal rules and power relations between purchasers and regulators (local governments) and service providers (NGOs) behind the façade of increasingly institutionalized state-NGO partnerships and of market-based standardized bidding competition processes. In this context, NGOs have adopted mitigating and adaptive strategies in order to cope with new opportunities and constraints. This thesis draws on interviews with NGO leaders and subject matter experts conducted during fieldwork in Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing. It also leverages policy documents, media sources, and an extensive review of distinct bodies of scholarly literature.

Extensive sources have been reviewed and analysed to piece together for the first time a detailed academic study of civilian evacuation to Devon viewed against the national backdrop. The primary focus of this thesis is the large number of unaccompanied children who were officially evacuated to the County under the auspices of the Government Evacuation Scheme during the Second World War. However, Chapter Six discusses the evacuation of mothers and accompanying children, unofficial (private) evacuees and private school parties. The majority of evacuated children arriving in Devon originated from the London area and southeastern counties. In addition large numbers of children were also evacuated to the County from Bristol and within the County from Plymouth (Devon) during 1941 and briefly from Exeter in May 1942. Each of the three national evacuation waves is considered individually throughout the text as they are quite distinct in complexion, a fact frequently ignored in generalised accounts which tend to focus on reaction to the initial wave. This thesis argues that: 1. lack of regional and local research has resulted in evacuation largely being viewed in generalised and stereotypical terms without due regard for the socioeconomic and geopolitical variance between those areas involved or the particular localised features of the evacuation process 2. the acclimatisation of evacuated children was particularly successful in Devon and drift back less than the national average 3. local evidence supports the argument that contemporary national reports of impoverished, dirty and ill mannered evacuees were frequently exaggerated 4. evacuation was central in accelerating postwar reform in areas of education, child care and welfare The civilian evacuation during World War Two was a remarkable event in the history of modern Britain. Interest in the subject has recently increased but there is enormous scope and need for further research both to broaden our understanding of the nature and impact of evacuation and to test entrenched views. The over-arching aim of this thesis is to contribute to this exploration.