And the question is? Knowledge growth in welfare policy research

This study examines how federally sponsored research questions about welfare policy have evolved from 1981 to 2001, through a content analysis of Requests for Proposals (RFPs). We treat the RFP as a document that identifies what information is sought as well as what is treated as established knowledge. Results show that research questions represent a mixture of constancy and change. The greatest similarity in research questions is in the areas of employment and earnings/income, with greater variability in the areas of family formation and child outcomes. The research questions, notwithstanding their sophisticated terminology, often boil down to who the poor are, how welfare recipients can be coaxed or forced into the labor market, whether fundamental work supports such as health insurance and reliable childcare are helpful in sustaining employment, and whether welfare is implicated in pregnancy, marital behavior and multi-generational poverty. We interpret these findings in relation to concepts on research utilization.

Does social trust determine the size of the welfare state? Evidence using historical identification

Most modern welfare states offer an extensive array of services and benefits that are wholly or partly financed by tax revenue. One missing link in explaining the long-run sustainability of such comprehensive welfare states could be the already-existing stock of trust. Indeed, our cross-country results suggest that trust determines the size of welfare states as well as three features that are arguably necessary for their preservation: high levels of political confidence, strong legal institutions protecting private property rights, and low levels of bureaucratic corruption.     

From politics to good management? Transforming the local welfare state in Italy

In light of recent welfare reforms associated with new forms of managerial and financial accountability, this paper analyses the significance for the construction of new legitimate forms of governance of the relationship between public managers of welfare provider units and local elected politicians. The shift from local government as democratic representative institutions to depoliticised efficient agent of welfare provision has created in Italy the opportunity for the emergence of a new cadre of managers, less subject to interference by the parties. The increasingly problematic relationship between managers and politicians reflects the dynamics of a shifting game, originally intended for sector-specific interests, that was later transformed into a struggle between political elites across territory and about territorial politics. Any set of alternatives juxtaposing efficient management and politics is best viewed by taking account of the significance of local welfare institutions for political legitimacy.     

How Serious is the Global Warming Threat?

Despite the media’s and politicians’ insistence that the science of global warming is “settled”, there are good reasons to distrust climate model projections of future global warming. While the supposed scientific consensus is that mankind is very likely to blame for recent global warmth, this is mostly a statement of faith made from a position of relative ignorance about natural variability in the climate system. Since we do not understand what causes decadal- to century-scale natural climate variability, it has simply been assumed to either not exist, or to be relatively small. But even if predictions of catastrophic warming are accurate, the worldwide demand for energy is so large that there is little mankind can do without radically new energy technologies. Since it is only the wealthy countries of the world that can afford the R&D efforts to develop those technologies, punishing the use of fossil fuels, and the resulting negative impact on economies, might well delay the development of cost effective carbon-free energy sources that so many people are now calling for.

How fair is pricing perceived to be? An empirical study

The perceived fairness of different rules for allocating scarce resources is analysed in two cases: seats on a high speed train and parking spaces in a company car park. Attitudes toward allocation rules depend on context. They vary according to: the educational level of respondents; the type of “good”; and the exceptional or recurring nature of scarcity. Peak pricing, administrative and lottery rules are seen as the most unfair, together with queuing in some cases. The moral rule is considered to be the fairest one, except by more educated people who prefer the compensation rule.     

How Stable is the Condition of Family Homelessness?

Although research has documented the majority of homelessness experienced by individuals and families in the US to be transitional rather than chronic, the mechanisms by which some families successfully escape homelessness while other do not remains relatively unclear. To provide more information to this area of inquiry, this study analyzed the transitional nature of homelessness for a sample of families with school-aged children who were homeless under the McKinney-Vento definition. By conducting a survey with over 1000 homeless families with children enrolled in two public school systems in Central Florida, we find that over a quarter of families exit homelessness in less than six months. We compare these families to those that remained homeless to examine the potential importance of demographic differences and other potential barriers to securing housing. Many of the commonly assumed barriers were not significant predictors of continued homelessness; the most salient difference between the groups was income underscoring the importance of employment opportunities for families to allow them to exit homelessness.     

How useful to decision-makers is contingent valuation of the environment?

Contingent valuation, as a method that attempts to estimate monetary values for public goods, excites passionate advocacy or resistance. This article summarizes and examines some of the criticisms of contingent valuation and concludes that its approach is essentially the same as any policy analytic method. It is argued that the language of contingent valuation needs radical reform for it to be readily accessible to practitioners, yet it does offer one escape from the lack of rigour of much of the environmental debate. Whatever the faults of contingent valuation methods, they do involve the public in a dialogue with ‘experts’. Any means that gives voice to the public in an age of public policy-making by managers, consultants, professional politicians, large firms and interest group leaders is at least an antidote to environmental managerialism.     

Austerity or welfare state transformation? Examining the impact of economic crises on social regulation in Europe

This article provides an encompassing analysis of how economic crises affect social regulation. The analysis is based on an innovative dataset that covers policy output changes in 13 European countries over a period of 34 years (1980–2013) in the areas of pensions, unemployment, and child benefits. By performing a negative binomial regression analysis, we show that economic crises do matter for social policymaking. Our main empirical finding is that crises impinge on social regulation by opening a window of opportunity that facilitates the dismantling of social policy standards. Yet crisis‐induced policy dismantling is restricted to adjustments based on existing policy instruments. We do not find significant variation in policymaking patterns across different macroeconomic conditions for the more structural elements of social policy portfolios, such as the envisaged social policy targets or the policy instruments applied. This suggests that economic crises do not lead to a profound transformation of the welfare state but to austerity.     

How Plausible is Chinese Annexation of Territory on the Moon?

This article argues that a hypothetical decision by the People's Republic of China to assert territorial sovereignty over the area surrounding its planned manned Moon base is plausible. Enhanced international prestige in the near term and access to natural resources and strategic military positions in the long term may be sufficient temptations for China's leaders to challenge the United States to a twenty-first century space race. Strategic surprise could be successfully employed, given the opacity of Chinese decision-making; the conceptual blindness of external observers, including decision-makers, analysts, and academics; and China's repeatedly demonstrated capacity for executing military or diplomatic surprises of comparable magnitude. The ability of signatory states to withdraw from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty with one-year's notice means that international law only poses a temporary obstacle to such a decision. A manned Moon base would fulfill the condition of effective occupation necessary for territorial sovereignty under international law. An international relations constructivist approach discourages consideration of the advantages to states of territorial aggrandizement or the weakness of international law in restraining the behavior of states.     

Large‐scale solidarity? Effects of welfare state institutions on the admission of forced migrants

The variation among countries when it comes to the admittance of forced migrants – refugees and asylum seekers – is substantial. This article explains part of this variation by developing and testing an institutional explanation to the admission of forced migrants; more precisely, it investigates the impact of domestic welfare state institutions on admission. Building on comparative welfare state research, it is hypothesised that comprehensive welfare state institutions will have a positive effect on the admission of forced migrants to a country. There are three features of comprehensive welfare state institutions that could steer policies towards forced migrants in a more open direction. First, these institutions have been shown to impact on the boundaries of social solidarity. Second, they enhance generalised trust. And third, they can impact on the citizens’ view of what the state should and can do in terms of protecting individuals. The argument is tested using a broad comparative dataset of patterns of forced migration, covering 17 OECD countries between 1980 and 2003. This analysis shows that comprehensive welfare state institutions have a significant positive effect on the admission of forced migrants, under control for a number of factors often highlighted in migration research.     

Out of tune or well tempered? How competition agencies direct the orchestrating state

This article analyzes the impact competition agencies have on the orchestrating role of states in domestic private regulation. I argue that these agencies can significantly affect interactions in the governance triangle through the way they apply a “logic of the market” to evaluate agreements between firms. The regulatory framework of European Union competition law has increasingly constrained the ability of firms to take into account broader interests when making agreements to foster social objectives. This logic of the market clashes with the ever‐increasing emphasis governments place on enabling firms to enter into such agreements. I analyze this tension through a case study of a pact of Dutch retailers to collectively introduce higher animal welfare standards for poultry. Using regulatory network analysis I trace the governance interactions between the governance triangle on the one hand (government, non‐governmental organizations, and firms), and the Dutch competition authority, Autoriteit Consument en Markt (ACM) and the European Commission on the other hand. Attempts by the Dutch government to instruct the ACM to be more lenient toward private regulation were blocked twice by the European Commission. As a result, the Dutch government abandoned private regulation as the preferred mode and proposed a bottom‐up process that would generate public regulation as a way to avoid conflict with competition policy. I argue that paradoxically enough the intervention of these non‐majoritarian competition agencies against the “will” of the governance triangle has potentially increased the effectiveness and legitimacy of orchestration processes.     

How well is the United States competing? A comment on Papadakis

We contend that Papadakis's inferences regarding past and future competitiveness crises cannot be made on the basis of the evidence she has presented. We support this assertion in three ways. First, we argue that the import penetration ratio is not a reasonable measure of national competitiveness in international markets. Second, we show that conventional macroeconomic models can explain the deterioration in the trade balance during the 1980s. Third, we present data demonstrating that, as of 1990, the United States had very low unit labor costs relative to other developed countries, and had the highest level of aggregate productivity in the world.     

How does the context make a translation happen? An activity theory perspective

Context is a critical topic in translation studies. The research into translation context has undergone a shift from the multidisciplinary investigation into one or a few contextual factors to conceptualizing it as contextualization, i.e. a dynamic process of the interactions among the contextual factors. Nevertheless, the mechanism of translation contextualization, namely, the problem of how the interactive factors enable a translator to bring a meaningful target text into being, is yet to be explored. Activity Theory is a cultural-historical framework to analyze social practices. It can provide an account of translation contextualization. In light of the framework, an activity itself is the context of a translator’s decision-making and translation contextualization is no other than the rule-governed actualization process of a translation activity, which is hierarchically realized through chains of actions and operations.     

‘New politics’ in German labour market policy? The implications of the recent Hartz reforms for the German welfare state

The twin predicaments of German labour market performance and welfare state performance triggered an ongoing debate on reforming the German model. Recently, this debate has yielded an outcome in the form of the so-called Hartz laws, a bundle of labour market policies aimed at the reduction of unemployment and the decrease of non-wage labour costs. The Hartz reforms have played a prominent role in the public discussion, but are they really a watershed as both optimists and pessimists claim? In this article we investigate in what sense the Hartz reforms mark a substantive political change and how they are related to similar processes in other countries. To characterise the policy output we discuss three views of policy reform: reform as a process of policy-learning, reform as a process of competitive realignment and reform as a process of reinforcing path dependence. We show which of the three paradigms accounts for which part of the political result. We find evidence for both policy diffusion and retrenchment, but it is too early to speak of a change of regime. Rather, both the changes thus far and the blocked proposals follow a traditional German logic of strong institutional resistance.     

How Restricted is the Job Mobility of Skilled Temporary Work Visa Holders?

Using the National Survey of College Graduates, we investigate the job mobility of skilled workers holding U.S. temporary visas. Such workers either have legal restrictions on their ability to change employers or may be reluctant to leave an employer who has sponsored them for permanent residence. We find that the voluntary job‐changing rate is similar for temporary work visa holders and natives with similar characteristics, but that it spikes when temporary work visa holders obtain permanent residence. The spike magnitude implies mobility is reduced during the application period by about 20 percent, alleviating concerns that employers exercise strong monopsony power.     

How Vigilant is the Vibrant Civil Society in Bangladesh? A Survey-based Analysis

Although international development organizations and donor countries regard civil society organizations (CSOs) as the best instrument for institutionalizing democracy in third world countries, few of these organizations have successfully influenced government policies or played a role in consolidating democracy. Based on survey data and empirical observations, this article will argue that civil society in Bangladesh may be noteworthy for its contributions to development and social welfare but that it can hardly contribute to democracy. CSOs participate in vibrant grassroots social services. However, they lack the necessary participatory attributes for proper interest articulation and monitoring of the state, resulting in a less vigilant civil society. The article links civil society's non-vigilant nature to co-optation and politicization by political forces.     

Financial Centre and Monetary Outsider: How Precarious is the UK's Position in the EU?

The UK's negotiating position in the area of ‘economic governance’ started from the assumption that there is a deep dividing line between insiders and outsiders of the ‘euro zone’. To protect the outsiders, the UK government did not ask for a veto, but for a safeguard mechanism that can postpone a decision in the euro area. This is exactly what David Cameron achieved in the negotiations with Council President Tusk. This article explains why the UK demands were so modest. Key is the peculiar situation of the UK being the major financial centre for a currency union to which it does not belong. Hence, the UK taxpayer needs protection from the City, and EU membership has helped to provide this. There is not much else a UK government could ask for.