Controlled Restructuring in Finland?

Surveying the economic legislation and policies of the new Blue - Red coalition government in Finland in six separate fields - competition policies, industrial relations, income policies, the financial system, taxation and the public sector - the question is asked whether the different measures can be seen as parts of an overall strategy to change the Finnish mode of regulation. Is it possible that we are witnessing the development of a two-tiered form of corporatism, combining a more traditional social corporatism on the macro-level and a new liberal corporatism on an intermediate level of production and innovation?     

维护社会公正建构和谐社会

从上个世纪90年代前期开始,随着中国政治、经济体制改革的全面铺开,在这一过程中贫富悬殊和社会稳定问题的日益凸显,社会公正越来越成为思想界关注的焦点,本文从维护社会公正的视角出发,通过对社会公正若干问题的探讨,进一步深化对和谐社会的理解.     

Health maintenance insurance: Toward an optimal HMO

The financial incentive structure of today's health maintenance organizations addresses certain problems attributed to fee-for-service medical care, but at a theoretical level it does not induce optimal provider behavior. Health maintenance insurance—a combined package of medical, morbidity/disability, and life insurance—encourages providers to compete for the health dollar, and not simply the medical care dollar, thereby remedying deficiencies in prepayment and promoting true health maintenance. The principle underlying health maintenance insurance emphasizes the need to search for effective means of preventing disability, morbidity, and premature death.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, Washington, D.C., October 30–November 3, 1977.     

Cost benefit analysis and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Partially as the result of consumer and environmentalist pressure, proposals for large-scale government and private projects are increasingly coming under the scrutiny of cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, risk assessment and related approaches. This paper presents a critical overview of such analyses. It discusses (a) their rationale; (b) their acceptability as guides to decision making; (c) the problems such analyses encounter; (d) how they may be misused; and (e) what steps are needed to increase their contribution to society. The discussion is illustrated with a variety of examples, drawn, in particular, from the evaluation of new technologies.Whatever their flaws, such analyses appear to have a critical role in guiding social decision making. It is important, however, for both the analyst and the nonexpert consumer of such analyses to understand the errors to which they are prone in order to maintain a critical perspective. Indeed, the institutionalization of such criticism is essential.Additional research is needed to clarify psychological (subjective) aspects of the analytic process in order to (a) reduce the errors and omissions made by analysts and (b) help policy makers and the public understand the results and the assumptions under which they were reached.This research was supported by the University of California, Los Angeles, Subcontract No. KS59081-0 to Oregon Research Institute.This paper was stimulated by my participation in Risk Benefit Methodology and Application, a conference held September 21–26, 1975, in Pacific Grove, California, and chaired by Dr. D. Okrent. Many of the ideas expressed could be attributed either directly or indirectly to a variety of conference participants. I would like to particularly thank Philip Bereano, Joseph Coates, Barbara Combs, Ward Edwards, Lewis Goldberg, Paul Hoffman, Jack Hirshleifer, Robert Kates, Sarah Lichtenstein, Joanne Linnerooth, David Okrent, Leon Rappoport, Peggy Roecker and Paul Slovic for help in stimulating and clarifying my thinking. The title is borrowed in part fromZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (New York: Bantam, 1974) where some related lines of thought are developed.     

Policy impacts of the New Jersey income maintenance experiment

This paper deals with a major piece of policy relevant social science research, the New Jersey Experiment in Income Maintenance, and a proposed piece of social legislation, the Family Assistance Plan. An attempt is made to assess the impact which the experiment had on political decision-makers, both in the Administration and the Congress, during deliberations over the legislation. The channels of communication between the researchers and the decision-makers are elaborated; the relevance of the research to the concerns of the decision-makers is described; and the impact of the research on these decision-makers is evaluated.It is suggested that there are two major uses of research in the policy process, technical and political. One involves resolving technical details of program design and administration; the other involves convincing decision-makers that a particular policy alternative is the correct one to support. Through analysis of primary documents, it is concluded that the major impact of the experiment to date has been in technical areas. Experimental findings and methods were used by the Administration to support its position and the preliminary data contributed to House discussions.The information sources of the Congress and the Administration are compared and despite disparities, it is pointed out that research cannot change values and values are an important factor in determining a decision-maker's attitude toward an innovation.It is concluded that if systematic thinking and research are to play a role in the process of policy formulation and implementation, each part of the process not only has to have access to research, but also the ability to evaluate that research. It is to be expected that under existing conditions the major immediate contribution of research such as the New Jersey Experiment to policy discussions will be in very technical areas, with the possibility of making a contribution to change in the climate of opinion over time.     

Requisites of radical reform: Income maintenance versus tax preferences

Why did tax reform succeed in gaining passage while the family assistance plan failed? Using cultural theory, we argue that the active consent of elites from three political cultures is required before radical policy proposals will win political support in America. Although the Nixon administration cast the income maintenance plan in integrative terms—support for the family—it failed because egalitarian leaders demanded more. Tax reform succeeded because elites of the three cultures—individualists, egalitarians, and supporters of hierarchy—saw benefits in the plan and were willing to compromise.     

Cognizance and Consultation of Randomized Controlled Trials among Ministerial Policy Analysts

Consultation of scientific evidence by policy actors has been the foci of attention of knowledge utilization scholars for decades. The present study questioned the extent to which randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—generally seen as the gold standard of scientific research—are known and consulted by policy analysts in ministerial settings. Using cross‐sectional data collected in 17 ministries in Québec (Canada), our study showed that fairly high levels of policy analysts report never having heard of RCTs, thus possibly hindering effective communication of scientific results to relevant policy makers. Statistical analyses reveal the importance of cognitive factors in explaining both phenomena.     

网络时代政府形象的维护和修复

政府形象直接反映政府的行政理念和能力，是政府得以正常运行的基本条件。网络时代，政府形象面临更多的挑战，影响政府形象的因素也变得更为复杂。政府及其官员只有增强形象意识，树立公共权力观念，进一步完善蓓息公开制度，建立健全责任机制，增强行政能力，才能避免形象危机事件的发生，最大限度地维护和修复政府良好形象。     

Decentralization as a strategy of regime maintenance: The case of Yemen

Proponents of decentralization often argue that decentralization makes governments more accountable and responsive to the governed. This is perhaps why the decentralization literature tends to overlook Middle Eastern regimes as these are among the most authoritarian and most centralized regimes in the world. However, many of these regimes have included decentralization in their legal framework. This article shows how a weak regime can use decentralization as a regime maintenance strategy when formal decentralization reforms strengthens external and internal legitimacy. The articles main argument builds on the literature on decentralization and elite capture to show how weak regimes can use formal decentralization reform to undermine local autonomy. The article uses the case of Yemen to make this argument. Yemen has a long tradition for local bottom-up initiatives and there is widespread internal support for decentralization. Simultaneously, donors have seen decentralization as a way of strengthening the Yemeni state, leading to international support to the formulation of the Local Authority Law of 2000, Law 4/2000, an extensive legal decentralization framework.     

Media Priming in a Multi-Party Context: A Controlled Naturalistic Study in Political Communication

This study investigates media priming effects in the context of a Summit meeting of European Union (EU) leaders. It differs in four ways from most previous non-experimental priming studies: (1) it provides survey data accompanied by a content analysis of the news, (2) it compares priming effects on evaluations of a number of political leaders, who differed in their visibility in the news, (3) it involves an issue with low salience, and (4) it studies priming effects in the context of a European Parliamentary democracy. The study involves a two-wave panel study (before and after the Summit) on a representative sample of 817 Dutch adults, and a content analysis of the newspaper and television news in the 8 weeks leading up to the Summit meeting. The study shows that media priming effects occur only for the politicians who appeared visible in the news in connection with the issue. The media priming effects were not significantly moderated by political attentiveness or by political knowledge. We also explore the aggregate level consequences of priming for the popularity of leaders, and demonstrate that, as a result of media priming, two politicians became more popular, despite having received a bad press.

Of time,leadership, and governance: Elite incentives and stability maintenance in China

China's party‐controlled elite appointment system has been praised for contributing to growth and order in recent decades. Inspired by Mancur Olson's insight into elite incentives and governance, we examine how the Chinese practices of elite management affect the character of governance using unique survey and interview data on township leaders and social contention. We find that, first, externally appointed party secretaries experience more petitions and mass incidents during their tenure and are more likely to use coercion to deal with petitions than internally appointed secretaries. Second, these tendencies are moderated when externally appointed party secretaries are paired with internally appointed township heads We explore the implications of such behavioral differences and suggest our findings are of broad significance for understanding governance in China.     

Vietnamese ethnicity networks maintenance process in the urban context Case study in Tainan Park,Taiwan

In Taiwan, the initiated policy for receiving foreign workers from the early 1990s has created prerequisite for workers and migrants from the Southeast Asian countries to access Taiwan labour market, including a great quantity of migrants from Vietnam. The appearance of new wave of immigrants over the past decade has created new ethnoscapes in Taiwan society. This paper considers the formation and characteristics of Vietnam ethnoscape in the urban context. The author adopts Tainan Park as public space--an ethnoscape with big concentration of Vietnamese in Tainan city for analysis. Based on geographical advantage factors and traffic convenience, Tainan Park became an important sociospatial pattern of Vietnam immigrants gathering. The paper then analyzes the locations and roles of immigrant gathering places as sites of ethnicity networks maintenance. The author studies the way to maintain directly opposite relationships in Tainan Park context. This park is an important space pattern for Vietnamese ethnicity networks maintenance.     

反腐防腐必须治理“协腐、容腐、羡腐“行为

协助腐败、容允腐败、羡慕腐败是腐败滋生蔓延的温床.民主化程度不高、法制不健全所导致的政治冷漠是"协腐、容腐、羡腐"行为产生的主要原因.治理"协腐、容腐、羡腐"行为,要着力培养全社会的共同政治理想,加快政治民主化进程,大力加强法制建设和廉洁文化建设.     

Increasing Community College Completion Rates Among Low-Income Students: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation of a Case-Management Intervention

Community college completion rates are low, especially among low-income students. The existing policy and research attention has primarily focused on academic and financial challenges, but there is ample reason to think that non-academic obstacles might be key drivers of dropout rates for low-income students. This study focuses on the role of “life barriers” and investigates the effectiveness of intensive case-management services for low-income community college students. We evaluate the impact of the Stay the Course (STC) intensive case-management program through a multi-armed randomized controlled trial evaluation conducted between 2013 and 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas. Analysis of administrative records indicates that STC significantly increased persistence and degree completion for women; estimates for the full sample are imprecise. The statistically significant estimates for women imply that STC tripled associate's degree receipt by 31.5 percentage points. We find no difference in outcomes between students in an emergency financial assistance (EFA) only treatment arm and the control group. Given program costs of $4,343 per person, the implied cost per additional associate's degree is $27,140. This study complements existing literature on financial and informational interventions designed to increase completion rates and is most closely related to the smaller literature examining coaching and mentoring interventions.     

Effects of Financial Incentives on Saving Outcomes and Material Well‐Being: Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial in Uganda

The use of savings products to promote financial inclusion has increasingly become a policy priority across sub‐Saharan Africa, yet little is known about how families respond to varying levels of savings incentives and whether the promotion of incentivized savings in low‐resource settings may encourage households to restrict expenditures on basic needs. Using data from a randomized controlled trial in Uganda, we examine: (1) whether low‐income households enrolled in an economic‐empowerment intervention consisting of matched savings, workshops, and mentorship reduced spending on basic needs and (2) how varied levels of matching contributions affected household savings and consumption behavior. We compared primary school‐attending AIDS‐affected children (N = 1,383) randomized to a control condition with two intervention arms with differing savings‐match incentives: 1:1 (Bridges) and 1:2 (Bridges PLUS). We found that: (1) 24 months post‐intervention initiation, children in Bridges and Bridges PLUS were more likely to have accumulated savings than children in the control condition; (2) higher match incentives (Bridges PLUS) led to higher deposit frequency but not higher savings in the bank; (3) intervention participation did not result in material hardship; and (4) in both intervention arms, participating families were more likely to start a family business and diversify their assets.