Professor Paul Spicker is a writer and commentator on social policy. His published work includes 22 books, several reports and shorter works and nearly a hundred academic papers. A range of work is available on open access on this website. His studies of housing and welfare rights developed from his early career; since then, his research has included studies related to benefit delivery systems, the care of old people, psychiatric patients, housing management and local anti-poverty strategy. He is a consultant on social welfare in practice, and has done work for a range of agencies at local, national and international levels. After teaching at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Dundee, he held the Grampian Chair of Public Policy at Robert Gordon University from 2001-2015. He is now an Emeritus Professor of RGU.
Publications
Paul Spicker’s books have been published in 14 countries and 9
languages. They include:
- Stigma and social welfare, Croom Helm 1984; Seishinshobo (Tokyo) 1987
- Principles of social welfare, Routledge 1988; Democratic Arab Center (Germany) 2017
- Social housing and the social services, Longman 1989
- Poverty and social security, Routledge 1993
- Planning for the needs of people with dementia, (with D S Gordon) Avebury 1997
- Social protection: a bilingual glossary (co-edited with J-P Révauger) MIRE (Paris) 1998
- Social policy in a changing society (with Maurice Mullard), Routledge 1998
- Poverty: an international glossary, co-edited with Sonia Alvarez
Leguizamon and David Gordon, Zed 2007; CLACSO (Buenos Aires), 2009; previous edition Zed, 1999; IPSR Books (Cape Town); University Press (Dhaka); White Lotus (Bangkok). - The welfare state: a general theory, Sage 2000; Keiso Shobo (Japan), 2004; Dionikos (Greece), 2004.
- Policy analysis for practice: applying social policy, Policy Press, 2006; Analiza Politike za Praksu: Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu (Serbia), 2017
- Liberty, equality, fraternity, Policy Press, 2006
- The idea of poverty, Policy Press, 2007; Rawat (New Delhi) 2007; Seikatsushoin (Tokyo), 2008
- The origins of modern welfare, Peter Lang, 2010: Volume 1 and Volume 2
- How social security works, Policy Press 2011
- Reclaiming individualism, Policy Press, 2013
- Social Policy: theory and practice, Policy Press, 2014: Socijalna Politika: teorija i praksa, Belgrade, Univerzitet u Beogradu (trans J Vidojevic, N Perisic), 2014; Polityka spoleczna – teoria and Polityka spoleczna – praktyka, Warszawa: Centrum Rozwoju Zasobów Ludzkich; previous editions Prentice-Hall 1995; Yuhikaku (Tokyo) 2001; Policy Press 2008; Rawat (New Delhi) 2010; Imam Sadiq University of Technology (Tehran), 2013
- What’s wrong with social security benefits?, Policy Press 2017.
- Arguments for welfare, Rowman and Littlefield 2017.
- Thinking collectively, Policy Press 2019.
- The poverty of nations: a relational perspective, Policy Press 2020.
- How to fix the welfare state: some ideas for better social services, Policy Press 2022.
- States and welfare states: government for the people, Policy Press 2022.
There are longer publication lists on Google Scholar and ORCID. Click on the links for more details.
Recent publications and papers
2021
- Austerity and poverty, in B Greve (ed), Handbook on Austerity, Populism and the Welfare State, Edward Elgar.
- Oral evidence to the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, The benefit system in Wales, 3rd November
- Research is not a private matter, ch 3 of R Iphofen and D O’Mathuna (eds) Ethical issues in covert, security and surveillance research, Emerald
- R Iphofen S Kolstoe, K Macnish, P Spicker, D O’Mathúna, Guidance Notes for Reviewers and Policymakers on Covert, Deceptive and Surveillance Research, in R Iphofen and D O’Mathuna (eds) Ethical issues in covert, security and surveillance research, Emerald.
2022
How to fix the welfare state: some ideas for better social services, Policy Press.- One size fits all? The problems of offering ethical guidance to everyone, chapter 2, in R Iphofen, D O’Matuna (eds) Ethical evidence and policymaking, Policy Press.
- Ethical research in public policy, chapter 7 in Iphofen and O’Matuna (eds)
- Fraternity and solidarity: socialist thought and social policy, Hermeneutica, 2022 Nuevo Serie: Fraternità senza terrore, pp 274-292.
- States and welfare states: government for the people, Policy Press.
2023
1. Podcast: Statecraft, with Colin Talbot (a discussion of States and Welfare States).
2. Benefit levels in the UK: Written evidence, House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee.
3. Discretion in overpayment recovery, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law (Open access).
4. The welfare state: a general theory (2023 revised edition, online)
5. The welfare state: a communitarian perspective, paper presented to the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data conference, June 2023
6. The effect of treating public services as commodities. Public Money & Management, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540962.2023.2240641
Also available
The page of Open Access materials in this blog includes previously published books, sample chapters held at the Robert Gordon University‘s repository, and more than a hundred papers and reports. Seven of the books listed above are now available free of charge on open access: three more can be consulted onlne without charge.
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- Stigma and social welfare (1984)
- Principles of social welfare (1989)
- Poverty and social security (1993)
- Social policy in a changing society (written with Maurice Mullard, 1998)
- The welfare state: a general theory (2000; revised edition, 2023)
- Liberty, equality, fraternity (2006)
- Poverty: an international glossary (2007)
- The origins of modern welfare (2010)
There is a web page to complement Social Policy: Theory and Practice.