Public Management and Vulnerability

Book excerpt: This book locates the issue of ‘vulnerability’ in an international context, within public-sector reform processes, and goes beyond the conceptualization of existing concepts of policing and vulnerability to include multi- and intra-agency working. It uncovers many competing and contradictory conceptualisations of the phenomenon and shows how a variety of agencies in different jurisdictions prioritise and operationalise this escalating 21st-century social problem. Two recurring themes of this edited collection are the ways in which non-state organisations and agencies have become an acknowledged feature of modern service delivery, and how the withdrawal of the state has heralded a perceptive shift from collective or community provision towards the stigmatization of individuals. Increasingly, public service professionals and ‘street level bureaucrats’ work in collaboration with non-state agents to attempt to ameliorate vulnerability. Chapter contributions were deliberately drawn from combinatory empirical, theoretical, policy and practice fields, and diverse academic and policy/professional authors. Editors and authors deliberately cast their nets widely to provide integrative scholarship, and contributions from international perspectives to confirm the complexity; and how socio/cultural, political and historic antecedents shape the definitions and responses to vulnerability. This collection will appeal to academics, policy makers and practitioners in a wide variety of disciplines, such as public management and leadership, criminology, policing, social policy, social work, and business management, and any others with an interest in or responsibility for dealing with the issue of vulnerability.