The Appeal of Internal Review ― Law, Administrative Justice and the (Non-) Emergence of Disputes

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-)emergence of administrative disputes.

Paul Maginn is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Social Research, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia.