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Economics, Social Policy and Social Administration: The Interplay between Topics and Disciplines*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

A. J. Culyer
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Abstract

The article uses a distinction between topic and discipline to argue that social administration, like economics, is characterized by both, but that social administration has the special advantage, in treating the topic of social policy, of being multi-disciplinary. An account is presented of why economics is underrepresented among the disciplines of social administration, and three important contributory roles are outlined for economics to play in the development of social administration.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1981 , pp. 311 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

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13 The reason, for this may lie on the ‘supply side’: the vast expansion in sociology teaching in universities since the war and the limited employment prospects for the better graduates may have led them to offer themselves relatively more frequently than others – including social administration graduates, who came later, were fewer in number, and had considerable employment potential elsewhere. (I am grateful to Brian Abel-Smith for this point).

14 Economists, sociologists, etc. are identified by their discipline. The discipline is identified by its theory. Hence theoreticians are ‘disciplinarians’ – in quotation marks to avoid confusion with the more usual meaning of the word. A social administrator may be a ‘disciplinarian’ in this sense or a ‘multi-disciplinarian’.

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