Why sociolgists may not influence social policy

Question 1

para 1

Answer 1

policy-making is due to a clash of ideologies
- Research that comes from a social democratic perspective, for example, research into poverty or the impacts of austerity
unlikely to inform the decision making of right wing or neo-liberal governments, whose prime objective is to reduce social spending, increase personal responsibility and reduce taxation
- The reason for this is that social democratic research will inevitably find that there is a need for investment in social spending, whether that be on improving social housing, improving wages or on additional educational spending in order to solve the problem
- An example of this would be the current debate around knife crime
- Left wing thinkers suggest that the problem is due to a lack of opportunities, racism in wider society and the marginalisation of groups
- solving these issues would involve investment in training and employment, promoting inclusion in wider society and the use of community policing and youth workers to intervene at an early level to prevent knife crime
- This would be costly and is not considered due to the policy of austerity and reductions to public service