The appeal of internal review

by Cowan, David

Why do most welfare applicants fail to challenge adverse decisions despite a continuing sense of need? The book addresses this severely under-researched and under-theorised question. Using English homelessness law as their case study,the authors explore why homeless applicants did -- but more often did not -- challenge adverse decisions by seeking internal administrative review. They draw out from their data a list of the barriers to the take up of grievance rights. Further, by combining extensive interview data from aggrieved homeless applicants with ethnographic data about bureaucratic decision-making, they are able to situate these barriers within the dynamics of the citizen-bureaucracy relationship. Additionally, they point to other contexts which inform applicants' decisions about whether to request an internal review. Drawing on a diverse literature -- risk, trust, audit, legal consciousness, and complaints -- the authors lay the foundations for our understanding of the (non-)eme