Many social policy texts examine specific social policy debates at a point in time and offer mostly technical interpretations of why existing or amended policies and programs have worked or not worked. In contrast, this text presents a comprehensive historical and political analysis of four policy areas where reform was achieved after many years of neglect.

Using a rich corpus of primary and secondary data, this is the first ever time that these four cases – covering discrete policy debates around young people transitioning from out-of-home care, medically supervised injecting facilities, social security payments for the unemployed, and compulsory income management – have been compared within an organized framework. For each of these policy areas, author Philip Mendes presents the long-term chronology of the public policy debates, the key arguments and evidence presented by researchers and advocacy groups in favour of policy reform, the strategies used by policy advocates, and the contrary arguments presented by governments and other bodies, as well as other factors which may have hindered or enabled policy change. Chronicling these cases where long-standing research evidence in favour of practice and policy reform suddenly achieved implementation and political impact when evidence finally trumped ideology, author Philip Mendes also describes the improved outcomes for disadvantaged groups and the wider community.

Arguing that governments should introduce policy development processes and networks that include active engagement with knowledge from domestic and global research studies, this is critical reading for scholars and policymakers internationally on the dynamics of policy initiatives, outcomes and reform.