The Case for a Participation Income: Acknowledging and Valuing the Diversity of Social Participation

Anthony Atkinson's idea of a participation income draws attention to the various ways in which people contribute to society. Current discussions on social participation go beyond paid work to include volunteering, education, and caregiving to kin. With the idea of the participation income, various forms of contribution can be highlighted and acknowledged. This article investigates how the idea of a participation income is reflected in Danish, Finnish, German and Dutch social policies. It shows that different elements of a participation income are incorporated in active labour market policies: Denmark adopted a narrow focus on paid work; Finland seeks tailor‐made solutions for the long‐term unemployed; Germany reformed many policy areas to achieve a better activation; and the Netherlands acknowledges a wide range of social participation forms. These country differences highlight that governments can adapt the idea of a participation income to achieve the focus they desire.     

Reforming Social Services in Hong Kong: The Role of Contracting and Performance Management in the Non‐Profit Sector

Contracts and performance management, along with the concept of consumerism, have become the fundamental metaphors for New Public Management (NPM) and key changes in the public service. ‘Doing well while doing good’ and finding generally acceptable accountability measures for social services have become the perennial aspirations of planners, service providers and funders. This article examines the contingent factors and rationales behind the quality movement and recontracting exercise in reforming the delivery of personal social service programs in Hong Kong within the framework of New Public Management (NPM). It explains the use of long‐term relational contracts rather than the standard business contracts between the government as funder and non‐profit organisations as service providers. It also deals with the complex relationships among quality issues, quality standards, consumerism, accountability, performance indicators, and performance management.     

Public Policy and Social Science Training in Israel: The Impact of Structural Change on the Constitution of Knowledge

Recent reforms instituted in the network of higher education in Israel have focused on two elements: adjusting the managerial structure of the universities to make it more amenable to market criteria of efficiency and reducing the proportional weight of state funding to the universities compared to that allotted to the technical and professional colleges. The main elements of this process—increasing power of managers in academic institutions, shifting universities toward entrepreneurialism, the idea of the service university, and the massification of the system of higher education—are characteristic of similar changes in higher education in the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, and Australia.This article examines the impact of organizational and structural changes on the categories of knowledge produced, and by extension on the production of knowledge itself. By examining changes in the organization of higher education in Israel and in particular in the social sciences, the article suggests that institutional and academic diversification have influenced the categorization of legitimate knowledge pertaining to society, the economy, and the political arena—the traditional terrain of the social sciences—and hence what is considered knowledge worth knowing about these subjects. Finally, the article points to certain political interests that have motivated this change, and examines their larger impact upon Israeli society.