Jennifer Pan,Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The Politics of Social Welfare Reform in Urban China: Social Welfare Preferences and Reform Policies

China’s social welfare reform since the mid-1980s has been characterized as incremental and fragmented in three dimensions—social insurance, privatization, and targeting. This paper attempts to explore the micro-foundation of China’s urban social welfare reform by examining the diverse social welfare preferences and the cleavages among societal groups. It argues that the diversity of the societal groups’ preferences for social welfare has given rise to two lines of cleavage in urban China with respect to social welfare—between state sector and non-state sector employees and between labor market insiders and outsiders. The Chinese authoritarian regime’s political priority—economic growth with social stability—has induced the government to accommodate public social welfare preferences in social welfare policies. Therefore, the three dimensions of Chinese social welfare reform policies since the mid-1980s reflect and respond to the social cleavages derived from societal groups’ different preferences for social welfare.     

共建共治共享:社会公益参与产业精准扶贫的政策工具创新

推进精准扶贫精准脱贫,离不开精准研策和精准施策,需要借助有效的公共政策工具。在社会层面形成大扶贫格局是打赢脱贫攻坚战的重要制度安排,广泛动员社会力量参与扶贫事业是实现精准扶贫的政策工具选择。产业扶贫事关贫困地区造血机能,是精准扶贫的重要内容,社会公益参与其中并引导和帮助村民发展产业是实现贫困群众稳定可持续脱贫的根本路径,然而在实践中往往面临志愿性政策工具失灵的理论困境以及诸多现实难题。通过对"马兰实验"的个案研究,可发现一种以"共建共治共享"为特征的社会公益参与产业精准扶贫的独特机制:"共建"即多方主体共同兴办扶贫产业,"共治"即各方主体共同管理扶贫产业,"共享"即各方主体共享产业成果,借此形成一套由社会公益组织小农户融入现代产业发展的有机衔接机制。该机制能够有效地防治志愿性政策工具失灵,形成精准高效的扶贫共同体,进而实现社会资源的优化配置和精准脱贫的可靠推进。     

Teresa Wright,ed., Handbook of Protest and Resistance in China

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

David Shambaugh,ed., China & the World

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Empathy,Deservingness, and Preferences for Welfare Assistance: A Large-Scale Online Perspective-Taking Experiment

Political Behavior - Online perspective-taking experiments have demonstrated great potential in reducing prejudice towards disadvantaged groups such as refugees or Roma. These experiments trigger...     

Suisheng Zhao,ed., Debating Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Popular Protests and Regime Performances

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Xiaoyu Pu,ed., Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Social Policy and Social Citizenship: Britain's Welfare States

In Britain the imagery and rhetoric of the postwar welfare stateremain powerful—citizens should have equal access to publicservices based on need not place of residence. Devolution issometimes depicted as a threat to this tradition. This articleshows that the immediate risk of a social policy race to thebottom is small. Moreover, because of the peculiarities of Britishterritorial politics the traditional imagery was never borneout in practice; the article traces policy variation beforeand after devolution. Finally, locating British social policywithin the comparative framework of "nationalization" and "citizenship,"I argue that Britain lost its status as an exemplary welfarestate partly because it failed to provide an adequate territorialframework for the development of social policy.     

Local Government and Welfare Generosity: Municipality Spending on Social Welfare

Although it is difficult for local governments to give support for social welfare recipients top political priority, there are huge variations in the support recipients actually receive among Norwegian municipalities. However, local governments representing different party ideologies may prefer to support different dimensions of generosity. Some municipalities could have a liberal attitude to eligibility rules but be strict on time limits and the amount of money provided. Others may be generous regarding time limits or amounts received once one is accepted as a welfare client. Data from the mid 1990s indicate the variation in support is related to different generosity dimensions for different party groups. While the total number of clients seems unrelated to politics and basically correlates with local social problems, the duration and amount of support are related to the political composition of the municipality assembly. Devoid of any large variation, both time limits and the amount of support increase in accordance with socialist leanings, and the total budget used for social welfare support also increases with the proportion of women in the municipality assembly.     

Peter Kien-hong Yu,ed., Reinventing the Methodology of Studying Contemporary China

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare     

Welfare Reform, Mississippi Style: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Search for Accountability

Through an examination of the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in the state of Mississippi, we explore the adequacy of traditional two-actor principal-agent theory. Using this as our lens, we suggest that the choices made by Mississippi in the area of welfare reform to privatize much of the work and to add several layers to the existing principal-agent relationship substantially reduced accountability and the effectiveness of the monitoring systems. We conclude that not only is traditional principal-agent theory an insufficient tool for understanding the complex interrelationship between democratic actors in this particular case, the decisions of the state of Mississippi to complicate the principal-actor relationship through privatization also undermined the reform effort itself in ways that may have general implications for other like-minded efforts in other policy areas.
There are those who are undermining what we are trying to achieve ...
—Bud Henry, Director of Economic Assistance, Mississippi Department of Human Services