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This chapter explores how those interested in the making, implementation, and effects of government policies might approach the stand-off between Rawlsians and the capabilities approach. It proposes we should want any theory of justice to do lots of different things. It argues that both perspectives wrestle with an “elasticity problem” to which there is no final, ideal solution. The limitations of Rawls lie in trying to make capabilities adjuncts to the primary goods; the limitations of the capability approach derive from allowing capabilities to occlude the material-distributive characteristics of resources and the political strategies of capitalism. The chapter considers several means of dealing with the elasticity problem, before proposing a possible way forward. This involves not a grand, syncretic reconciliation but one that is, nonetheless, multiperspectivist in intent and method. The task for students of policy studies is therefore to find practical, institutional forms for this multiperspectivism.

Karin Bradley Department of Water and Environmental Studies, Linkoping University,Linkoping, SE-581 83 Sweden (email: karin.bradley@liu.se)Understanding the Environment and Social Policy deals with the intersection of environmental policy and social policy. Though often treated as two different fields with different sets of literature, in practice, they are deeply intertwined. The book is primarily written from the perspective of how environmental challenges alter the field of social policy, but it also considers to some extent how environmental policy can be more attentive to the dimensions of social sustainability. The volume develops a thorough ecosocial perspective of ethics, policy, and planning. Its explicit aim is to help advance the emerging field of ecosocial policy making. The volume is part of a series of books oriented to students on the overall theme of "understanding welfare." Despite a somewhat unappealing title, this book is an important work, not only for students, but also for politicians and practitioners.The book is an edited volume consisting of chapters on environmental challenges and policy, social challenges and policy, environmental ethics, environmental justice, health, urban planning, green jobs, citizenship, and international development. Tony Fitzpatrick, the editor of the book and author of three of its chapters, sets the overall tone. It is primarily his contributions--using illustrative examples and writing in a transparent, humorous and sometimes unexpected way--that engage the reader.Fitzpatrick is clear about the book's political positioning, a stance that is often absent from course literature that maintains an assumption of neutrality. He situates the work in the center-left and the mid-green shades of politics. At the same time, the contributors are careful to avoid being interpreted as alarmists or "unrealistic" ecologists. Rather they seek to position themselves as sound academics--well informed about global, social and environmental challenges and the necessities for action. The analyses, questions, and perspectives raised in the book move beyond the well-known consensus politics and the tired policies of mainstream society, and hence attempt to rethink current models and measurements of development and growth. In this respect, the authors bring up deep-rooted problems of Western civilization, such as the linear notion of progress and Cartesian philosophy, as they simultaneously engage with current everyday politics and geopolitical reality.What was lacking, however, was a more nuanced discussion about politics and the political--a more penetrating discussion about liberal democracy, current forms of political arrangements, and their capability (or lack thereof) to deal with environmental concerns. In Chapter Four, Philip Catney & Timothy Doyle briefly mention such theorists as Robyn Eckersley (2004) who argues that environmental responsibility and a "truly green state cannot be achieved within the frameworks of liberal democracy," and that "new forms of democracy" need to be developed. However, this chapter does not explore these new forms. This is a key question if one wants to advance ecosocial perspectives. How might current systems of democracy and governance be altered to better encompass environmental concerns, collective identities, care for the commons, as well as distant environments and distant people? It would have been fruitful to expand this discussion and engage with current debates around the post-political condition (Swyngedouw, 2007), that argues for going beyond contemporary consensus-seeking governance models and explores meanings of "the political," agonism, and radical pluralist democracy (both within and beyond the state) (see Mouffe, 2005).Catney & Doyle believe in state governance; however, they admit that until now no state can be said to have effectively handled environmental concerns (i.e., there are no "green states"). …

This article offers a philosophical discussion of paternalism. First, it establishes the relevance to basic income of the concept of ‘paternalism’. Second, it provides an overview and critique of the main philosophical schools of paternalism. Third, it argues in favour of a version of soft/weak paternalism, which is here termed ‘social paternalism’. Fourth, it reviews the main positions that advocates of various paternalisms might take towards basic income. Finally, it defends a proposal to allow a basic income stream to be ‘mortgaged’ into lumpsum capital grants. The article therefore fills an important gap in the theoretical literature pertaining to basic income.

Paul Spicker's article has provided a thought-provoking contribution to which I am broadly sympathetic. I have two principal concerns, however. Firstly, it fails to contextualise itself vis-à-vis some key debates. Secondly, therefore, it neglects to ask some crucial philosophical and methodological questions. As such, researchers should pause before embracing a phronetic social policy. Below, I specify the nature of my concerns, paying particular attention to the implications of phronesis for universalism. My aim is not to critique Spicker's entire article, but to draw attention to key issues to which those interested in phronetic approaches should attend.

This article brings interconnects three debates to show what this might imply for the ‘redemocratisation’ of UK society and for pedagogical reform. One debate concerns deliberative types of democratic reform, arguing in favour of a ‘creative agnosticism’ towards the two philosophical frameworks which dominate this literature. This leads into a discussion of education and critical rationality, arguing for an aptitude-based account of moral agency, one which relates to the sociocultural resources we inherit from the past. The final debate therefore concerns social memory. I do not offer a theory of social memory but critique various commentators in arguing for what I call a ‘multipolar analysis’. This both describes the analytical method adopted in this article and the skills and capacities which a system based upon ‘education for discourse’ would need to facilitate. The article therefore proposes that democracy, education and memory—deliberativeness, critical rationality and social remembering—be brought closer together for the mutual benefit of each debate.

It has been common for researchers and commentators within the discipline of Social and Public Policy to evoke Rawlsian theories of justice. Yet some now argue that the contractualist tradition cannot adequately incorporate, or account for, relations of care, respect and interdependency. Though contractualism has its flaws this article proposes that we should not reject it. Through a critique of one of its most esteemed critics, Martha Nussbaum, it proposes that contractualism can be defended against the capabilities approach she prefers. The article concludes by suggesting how and why the moral philosophy of Thomas Scanlon offers a basis for reconciling the strengths of a contractualist, egalitarian liberalism with those of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach.

The connections between social and environmental policies have a longer and more fertile history than is often appreciated. Ignoring that history is not just unfortunate in its own terms but may mean that we deprive ourselves of resources that could be useful in the future. Unfortunately, social policy histories avoid discussion of the natural environment, just as environmental histories avoid discussion of welfare services. This article therefore seeks to open up new debates and a new field of research. It focuses upon one of the key periods in the development of UK state welfare, the Labour government of 1945–51. It argues that Labour displayed an ambivalence toward the natural environment. Land nationalisation had long been an aspiration, but Labour drew back from its more radical ambitions. In policy terms, this gave rise to a dualism. Town and country planning became one of its enduring legacies, but more socialistic, redistributive measures fell by the wayside.

Faults and fractures are common features in many well-known reservoirs. In many of these reservoirs, horizontal wells are drilled to intersect a large number of fractures, particularly in low-matrix-permeability formations. In addition, the application of horizontal wells intersecting multiple hydraulic fractures has been widespread to allow shale gas and oil reservoirs, some of which are also naturally fractured, to produce economically. In this paper, we investigate the pressure transient behavior of horizontal wells in continuously and discretely naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR)s using semi-analytical boundary element solutions. These solutions have the advantages of the absence of grids and reduced dimensionality. Furthermore, they provide continuous rather than discrete solutions. The solutions are sufficiently general to be applied to many different well geometries and reservoir geological settings, where the spatial domain may include arbitrary fracture and/or fault distributions with different types of outer boundaries. A number of solutions have been published in the literature for horizontal wells in NFRs using the conventional dual-porosity models that are not applicable to many of these reservoirs. Most of these published solutions ignore the wellbore and the unfractured sections of the horizontal well. Therefore, they cannot capture the true early-time response, such as fracture radial flow. They may also yield incorrect damage skin values. Our solutions take these effects into account. Our solutions can also be applied to shale gas and oil reservoirs without shale-gas transport nonlinearities when the average reservoir pressure is above the desorption pressure. Our solutions for horizontal wells in fractured reservoirs can contain any spatial distribution of finite or infinite conductivity fractures with arbitrary length and orientation. The number and type of fractures (hydraulic or natural) intersecting the wellbore and with each other are not limited in both homogeneous and naturally fractured reservoirs. We present a number of examples to show different flow regimes that a horizontal well with multiple fractures exhibits, and to show that the conventional dual-porosity models simply do not work and can be deceptive. In our solutions, continuous and discrete conductive and nonconductive fractures are treated explicitly. The exact treatment of the uniform wellbore pressure condition, and the inclusion of the wellbore and the unfractured sections of the horizontal well have led to identification of new flow regimes that were not apparent from the existing solutions. Consequently, our solutions capture the true pressure transient behavior of the system, such as fracture radial flow. In this paper, a new classification of wellbore and fracture skin damage is given, and their effects on the pressure transient behavior are investigated. There are many factors that dominate the pressure transient behavior of horizontal wells intersected by multiple hydraulic fractures in naturally fractured reservoirs, such as fracture conductivities, lengths, and distributions, as well as whether or not fractures intersect the wellbore. Diagnostic derivatives plots are presented for a variety of horizontal wells with multiple fractures in homogenous and NFRs. It is shown that these reservoirs exhibit many different flow regimes. A multistage-fractured horizontal well in a very low-permeability shale reservoir example is also presented. Finally, we have presented two field buildup test examples from NFRs

While analyses of time have never strayed too far away from those of social justice, and vice versa, this article's premise is that they have so far failed to converge as directly and coherently as they might. The aim of this article is to facilitate a greater degree of convergence by working within a framework of liberal equality and establishing similarities in the work of the two theorists who have gone furthest in bringing the various debates together. These are Robert Goodin and Andre Gorz, and the article explores the respective strengths and weaknesses of their ideas. A liberal theory of socio-temporal justice is derived from their work and is then used to critique some recent developments in UK welfare reform.

The purpose of this article is to contrast productivism with post-productivism and raise a question mark over the extent to which social democrats should support the former rather than the latter. It offers a definition of post-productivism, explaining this in terms of the ‘reproductive value’ of care and sustainability. The paper then sketches the limits to social democracy and indicates why post-productivist solutions might therefore be appropriate. It concludes by speculating on some implications for social policy.