Exploring Social Policy

Abstract

Any account of housing as social policy must employ some kind of theoretical framework or lens through which to examine the subject matter. If this framework is not made explicit, and drawn upon consciously, it will remain tacit and may cause confusion. Before beginning our analysis, therefore, we examine a range of competing theoretical interpretations of the place of social policy in capitalist society. That is, we look at some different sets of beliefs about the power structure of modern liberal democracies and at the place of social policy within it.