Hypotheses on the Italian administrative system

Why is the private economy in Italy thriving, while the public sector is so poor? This article spells out the general characteristics of the structures and procedures of the public sector and outlines the criteria on which to judge its efficiency in order to proceed to the presentation of four explanatory hypotheses.

The first hypothesis is an economic one: the private sector may have exploited the public sector, which bears costs that are to the direct advantage of the private economy. The second hypothesis is social: the public sector is poor because it is a means of taking on labour from the underdeveloped South, becoming in this way a social buffer. The third hypothesis is political: the administration is used to secure political support for the ruling parties (and in particular, for the Christian Democratic Party). The fourth hypothesis is historical: the administration is badly run because, as a result of the Fascist experience, Italians fear any form of ‘Bonapartism’: and it is badly organised because the public sector's take‐off has been delayed and the pace imposed on its development has been excessive. In the last section some remedies are suggested and some conclusions are outlined.     

The relationships between public and private pension schemes: an introductory overview

Only recently have social insurance and private pensions, collectively, come to be thought of in terms of a total social security benefit package. The economic problems brought on by the 1974 oil crisis initially triggered consideration of a common, integrated role for the two systems. The second oil crisis reinforced the relative expansion in private pension programs, as a supplement to social security. Before these events, private and public pension programs interacted in only a limited number of ways, confined to relatively few countries. These interactions were largely confined to collective bargaining, whereby private pensions were gradually extended to nearly all employees in France and Sweden; mandating, or legally requiring private supplementation of social security, debated in several countries in the early 1970's, but postponed by the 1974 oil crisis; and contracting out, or covering a part of the social security benefit under a private plan, as in the United Kingdom. Overall, the tradition of private pensions was not very strong or broadbased. The current debate centers on which public/private pension mix is desirable from the point of view of an old-age income-maintenance program. A new element is the rising support for a "third pillar"--individual tax-encouraged savings--not only as a supplement, but as an alternative to social insurance.     

Medieval Security in the Modern State

Abstract. The size of the private security industry has increased substantially in recent decades. While previous research has focused on the industry's growth trajectory, less emphasis has been placed on explaining the nature and diversity of private security services. This article investigates the possibility of studying private security with the feudal model. Feudalism is introduced as an ideal type and the paper explains why it is necessary for understanding the independent control of violent force—termed here as ‘private coercion’—in contemporary society. The feudal model provides a unique historical lens through which to re-examine previous studies on this subject. In many ways, private coercion is incongruent with the traditional vision of liberal, capitalist society. The feudal model reveals these inconsistencies as it identifies private coercion as a means of creating wealth that violates the state's monopoly on violence, challenges the public sphere of governance and redefines the boundaries between public and private space. This article suggests that any explanation of modern modes of securing life and property is incomplete without the feudal model.     

Relationship between the retirement, disability, and unemployment insurance programs: the U.S. experience

This article was prepared initially for an international conference of social security program administrators and researchers. They examined the reasons for, and implications of, a recent trend in several European countries toward making it easier to qualify for retirement or disability benefits as a way of alleviating long-term unemployment. The article notes that the United States has not followed this trend. Instead, this country has continued to use temporary extensions of unemployment insurance benefits as a way to help the long-term unemployed during recessionary periods. Since the mid-1970's, the emphasis in retirement and disability insurance programs has been to strengthen the financial integrity of these programs rather than to expand eligibility. Described here are the progression of extended benefit provisions of unemployment insurance through the most recent recession, the historical development of early retirement features in the social security program, and the more recent attention that has been paid to the financing issues that have played a central role in legislation during the late 1970's and early 1980's. Unemployment experience and trends toward early retirement are examined, along with the role of public and private employee pension plans that supplement social security retirement benefits. Preliminary data from the Social Security Administration's New Beneficiary Survey show the prevalence of such pension coverage for recent retirees and the extent to which these pension benefits were claimed before normal retirement age.     

Regionalism through social policy: collective action and health diplomacy in South America

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the place of social policy as a driver of region building in South America. The contention is that while much has been written about economic integration, institutions and security communities in regionalism, a discussion of the significance of other regional projects has lagged behind. Social policy, particularly in the Americas, has been neglected as a policy domain in the account of regionalism. Changes in the political economy of Latin America in the last decade suggest that we need to engage afresh with regional governance and social policy formation in the Americas. By looking at the institutions, resources and policy action in the area of health within the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) this paper reconnects regionalism and social policy and explores two interrelated, yet largely unexplored, issues: the linkages between regional integration and social development beyond the historical hub of trade and finance; and the capacity of UNASUR to enable new policies for collective action in support of social development goals in the region, and to act as a broker of rights-based demands in global health governance. In so doing, the paper contributes towards a more nuanced understanding of regionalism and regionalization as alternative forms of regional governance.     

The Politics of Social Learning: Finance,Institutions, and Pension Reform in the United States and Canada

Because the traditional concept of social learning has faced significant criticism in recent years, more analytical work is required to back the claim that the lessons drawn from existing institutional legacies can truly impact policy outcomes. Grounded in the historical institutionalist literature, this article formulates an amended concept of social learning through the analysis of the relationship between finance, social learning, and institutional legacies in the 1990s debate over the reform of earnings‐related pension schemes in the United States and Canada. The article shows how social learning related to specific ideological assumptions and policy legacies in the public and the private sectors has affected policymaking processes. At the theoretical level, this contribution stresses the political construction of learning processes, which is distinct from the technocratic model featured in the traditional literature on social learning. This article also distinguishes between high‐ and low‐profile social learning while emphasizing the impact of private policy legacies on learning processes.     

Mapping the evolution and transformation of the new private entrepreneurs in China

Given the fact that the new private entrepreneurs (NPEs) are playing an increasingly important role in Chinese politics and economy, this article maps the historical evolution of the NPEs through analyzing five main private business groups, including small individual businessmen, price speculators, land speculators, enterprise investors and high-tech investors. The article also examines six major ways that the NPEs have sought to protect their private property and improve their moral reputation, ranging from obtaining the Communist Party membership, congressional seat and an official position within a government branch, to relying on the law, participating in the local election process, and contributing to charitable causes. In so doing, they have increased their influence in the Chinese political, social, and economic spheres. His research fields include China reform, economic history, and US-China relations. He has published and edited six books and more than 60 research articles. The earlier version of the paper was presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), San Diego, March 6, 2004. The author is indebted to the following scholars for their valuable reviews and suggestions: Drs. Yi Sun, Harvey Nelsen, Frank Hoffman, and four anonymous referees.     

The Impact of Public Funding on Contemporary Visual Arts

Public policy for supporting the visual arts has historically followed different traditions in France and the United Kingdom. In an environment of fiscal austerity that impacts upon public funding as well as private patronage, and given the tensions between artistic freedom on the one hand, and market constraints on the other, this article examines how these two traditions of financing artists has influenced the direction of the work itself. A brief historical presentation of the two forms of public support and their evolution in recent decades provides a framework for understanding government attitudes and policies on both sides of the Channel. A closer examination of selected artists, chosen here for their representativeness and their international renown, is used to illustrate the changing nature of public support for visual art creation.     

Privatization Within the Chinese State

This article suggests that China's public and collective enterprises have contributed to its economic growth and socio-political stability. The efficiency of these enterprises has been improved not through the privatization of the state (transferring public ownership to private hands) but privatization within the state (decentralization, appropriation, and marketization). This article first provides statistics to juxtapose the growth of the Chinese economy to the continued expansion of public and collective enter-prises. I t then explains the causes and benefits of privatization within the Chinese state. A case study of privatization within the state in Shanghai City follows. The article concludes that China's economic reform has been a transformation of socialism, not a transition to capitalism, and that it is a less costly but more effective alternative to the privatization of the state approach. The former communist countries in Europe have painfully followed this latter approach and have suffered from its political, social, and economic consequences.     

PRIVATIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

This article examines the main social security programs, narrowly defined to include income maintenance for the aged and health care, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and reveals the large degree to which the statutory programs depend on private provision, particularly, private financing. It further shows that efforts are underway to reduce, or at least to arrest the expansion of role of the state by a corresponding expansion in the role of private provision and financing. The expansion of social security for the aged in Thailand is an exception in this regard. I conclude that both inefficiency and inequity have been promoted.     

Reforming the Swedish employment-related social security system: activation,administrative modernization and strengthening local autonomy

The Swedish system of social security has often been regarded as comprehensive and comprehensive and inclusive. During major reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, it has maintained its essential character as a popular and well-endowed provider of social security and stability. Employment-related benefits are generous in financial terms, but come with the need for recipients to remain actively engaged in the economic or educational field. However, Sweden’s geographical and demographic diversity made it necessary to increase the role of local authorities in implementing active labour market policies. This article tracks these developments since the mid-1990s, both with regard to changing the benefits system and with regard to changing local government involvement. It argues that backed by broad political support, the Swedish system has achieved the necessary modernization and adaptation to remain a viable alternative to more neo-liberal welfare retrenchment projects conducted in other European countries.     

Political Support: Social Capital, Civil Society and Political and Economic Performance

This article assesses two main theories of the decline of political support that is found in many western democracies. The first is society centred and built on the concepts of social capital, trust and civil society. The second is politics centred and focuses on the performance of government and the economy. The two theories are not necessarily incompatible, but they are usually treated in a mutually exclusive way. In this article they are tested against a combination of aggregate cross-national comparative data and detailed case studies of four countries that have suffered exceptional decline of political support for politicians, political institutions and the systems of government. The puzzle is that cross-national comparative evidence about a large and diverse number of nations supports social capital theory, whereas in-depth study of four countries that have experienced substantial decline of political support does not. The erosion of support coincides in all four with poor economic and/or political performance. A way of reconciling the two theories and their supporting evidence is suggested, arguing that while social capital is a necessary foundation for democratic support, it is not a sufficient cause.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

Capitalism,Technology and Work: Interrogating the Tipping Point Thesis

Post-work politics, with a focus on universal basic income, rather than an agenda of saving jobs and improving the quality of work, has been a growth area on the left. This article challenges the views of proponents that their claims are ‘on trend' with developments in markets and technology. It does so by examining two supposed ‘tipping points' concerning crises in the production of value in capitalism and in the availability of and attachment to work. Through a rigorous examination of available evidence, the article demonstrates that the stories contained in post-work discourses about business models, technologies, labour markets and workers are not empirically sustainable. Suggestions are then made about what more credible accounts of actually existing capital, technology and labour might look like, and what the direction of alternative, progressive policy agendas might be.     

Educational vouchers: Effectiveness,choice, and costs

Most of the policy discussion on the effects of educational vouchers has been premised on theoretical or ideological positions rather than evidence. This article analyzes a substantial body of recent empirical evidence on achievement differences between public and private schools; on who chooses and its probable impact on educational equity; and on the comparative costs of public and private schools and an overall voucher system. The findings indicate that: (1) results among numerous studies suggest no difference or only a slight advantage for private schools over public schools in student achievement for a given student, but evidence of substantially higher rates of graduation, college attendance, and college graduation for Catholic high school students; (2) evidence is consistent that educational choice leads to greater socioeconomic (SES) and racial segregation of students; and (3) evidence does not support the contention that costs of private schools are considerably lower than those of public schools, but the costs of an overall voucher infrastructure appear to exceed those of the present system.     

Economic Democracy: The Left's Big Idea for the Twenty-First Century?

While the notion that parts of the economy should be subject to democratic oversight is not particularly new, it is only recently that the term “economic democracy” has begun to emerge as a political label and a political project in its own right. Interest in economic democracy is at a historical high as more and more people search for a comprehensive alternative to neoliberal capitalism that is neither state socialism nor social democracy. In addition, the fact that mainstream concern with economic inequality is at a historical peak means that economic arrangements are on the political agenda in a way that they have not been for many years. The central argument of this article is that economic democracy has the potential to be the “big idea” of the left this century for two main reasons. First, although economic democracy is usually thought to be concerned solely with workplaces, in fact it has implications far beyond this. Indeed, economic democracy is best understood as a comprehensive critique of the economy and a corresponding encompassing vision of an alternative. This article thus aims to offer a sympathetic overview of the main facets of economic democracy—the attempt to democratize workplaces, finance, investment, and the market system—as a holistic and integrative project. Second, economic democracy offers an important method for challenging inequality. The expansion of democratic accountability through representation, and particularly the expansion of opportunity for direct participation in economic decision-making is a fundamentally important method of redressing the structural inequality that continues to be a defining dilemma of our societies.     

The Negotiated Economy: Ideal and History*

In the negotiated economy an essential part of the allocation of resources is by definition conducted through institutionalized negotiations between independent decisionmaking centres in state, organizations and corporations. Institutionalized creation of consensus via campaign institutions and forced compromise via negotiating procedures and decisions are central characteristics of the negotiated economy. The article includes evidence to the fact that the present Danish economy is a negotiated economy. During a long historical process, a multi-centred and pluralist political structure has been formed and simultaneously the discursive and institutional basis for co-ordination of decisions made in autonomous organizations has been created. It is shown how today's wages policy, labour market policy, public expenditures policy and industrial policy are characterized by negotiation-based economic processes. It is argued that this historical development has far-reaching theoretical consequences. The institutional conditions presupposed in traditional economic theory for the ideal of optimal allocation of resources is enshrined in the constitutional interpretation of the distinction between the authority of the sovereign state and civil society. As a result of the evolvement of the negotiated economy these institutional conditions no longer exist. This development has made a myth of the ideal of optimal allocation of resources and challenges the interpretation of rationality in traditional economic theory.     

The future of the nonprofit sector: Its entwining with private enterprise and government

The nonprofit sector—neither private enterprise nor governmental—is growing rapidly, and not only in the United States. This article explores three questions about the sector, which includes large elements of such service industries as universities, hospitals, nursing homes, day-care centers, museums, social services, and organizations promoting medical research, environmental protection, and the arts. These questions are: (a) Why is the nonprofit sector expanding worldwide?; (b) How is the growth of nonprofits affecting other parts of the economy?; and (c) What evidence is there that nonprofits make a difference, that they perform functions which private firms or government cannot perform? A major theme is that the sector's growth necessitates finding ways to increase revenues, and that has brought side effects, particularly as nonprofits have become more and more “commercial.” In the process, borders between the nonprofit and both the for-profit and public sectors are being crossed increasingly, and with consequences that often pose problems.     

Social Equity and Evidence: Insights from Local Government

This article examines the role of evidence‐based decision making in social equity, with a particular focus on local government. It offers an assessment of the past, present, and future of such efforts by engaging themes from Matias Valenzuela's article based on King County, Washington. King County is one of more than 70 local governments that are members of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a growing national network of governments using an evidence‐based approach to achieve racial equity. In general, previous social equity measures have focused largely on measuring the extent to which disparities exist. More recently, tools and resources have become available to assist local governments in designing and evaluating their approach and performance in reducing social inequities. Future evidence should include more standardized measures to benchmark success, provide comparative analysis, and better support the identification of best practices.     

Public Spheres and Urban Space: A Critical Comparative Approach*

China's mounting unemployment in recent years is an unintended but predictable consequence of the economic reform with an open labor market. It has turned into a major political crisis in a "socialist state" where not only security but also sovereign dignity of labor remain central to the constitutional mandate and, however lingering, to popular expectation as well. This article traces the origins of the crisis, explores linkage between participation and recognition, explains mutual relevance of the EuroAmerican "future of work" debate and the Chinese experience, and argues for creative adaptation toward an alternative. It concludes with an observation that participatory activities beyond salaried jobs would require guaranteed social security; and only institutional innovations in public policy that enable democratic control by citizens over resources and management can forge a new social contract for overcoming unemployment.