Preferential Treatment, Social Justice, and the Part-time Law Student – The Case for the Value-added Part-time Law Degree

There has been growing pressure to increase diversity in legal education and the legal profession in England and Wales. While this has focused upon the absence of certain groups such as women, ethnic minorities, and the disabled, there has been no specific discussion of part-time law students. Drawing on questionnaires and focus groups with part-time law students across England and Wales, this article examines how their background and experiences may hamper their ability to participate and succeed in higher education and legal practice. In response to the consistent omission of part-time students' needs from attempts to enhance social diversity in universities and the legal profession, it also argues that affirmative action is now necessary and justified in respect of these students. Pragmatic suggestions are made for a contextual approach to affirmative action for part-time law students which adds value to their degree. Finally, the potential effects of affirmative action on part-time law students themselves and upon the gatekeepers to the legal profession are explored.     

Fiscal Federalism in Australia

Australia displays high vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) for historical and constitutional reasons. It also attempts to achieve the highest degree of horizontal fiscal equalization (HFE) to be found in any democratic federation. The Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC), a non-partisan body at arm's length from politicians, oversees the regime. A recent report claims that equity, efficiency and transparency would all improve if the regime were abolished. Such a change is politically unachievable, but it raises interesting issues in public finance and public administration, which carry over to other federations and union states.
An economically efficient system would: minimize perverse incentives, especially incentives to seek rent; encourage states to grow; discourage suboptimal location decisions; minimize transaction costs. An equitable system would maximize equity between relevantly similar individuals. Aspects of the Australian system that should be copied include the non-partisan agency and the target of HFE between component parts of the country. Aspects that should be discussed and perhaps copied include the very extensive equalization, including the feature of equalizing away the effects of grants for special purposes. Aspects that should probably not be copied include the cumbersome formulae and some of the perverse methods of calculating for 'needs'. All abbreviations and acronyms are spelt out in the Appendix on page 37.     

South Korea's State-led Soft Power Strategies: Limits on Inter-Korean Relations

Abstract

The South Korean government has taken on many of Joseph Nye's ideas as it is promoting a state-led soft power in the form of the cultural hallyu, foreign aid, and domestically, a future-orientated rebranding of South Korea as a multicultural state. Soft power is understood in instrumental terms as well as in more substantive terms. This state-led multiculturalism has challenged widely held beliefs in ethnic homogeneity which have been the mainspring of national identity and national security in South Korea. These beliefs have underscored inter-Korean relations as the two states officially share beliefs despite political and ideological differences. The growing significance of such state-led multiculturalism in Global Korea to attract foreign workers can be linked to a myriad of intentional and unintentional strategic issues arising from this form of state-led soft power promotion. This is particularly significant given the sensitive culture and identity across the East Asian region.     

Prospects for Local Collaboration into an Uncertain Future: Learning from Practice within Labour's Partnership Paradigm

Achieving effective local collaboration, a strong theme of the previous Labour government, may actually become more important given Coalition government policies emphasising decentralisation and encouraging alternative providers of public services. Therefore, it remains essential to learn from experiences of collaboration especially as, despite significant research, few studies explicitly identify guidance for improving this practice that is of specific relevance to local policy actors. In order to do so, a decentred and ethnographic approach was adopted to examine collaboration in a case study of a Sport and Physical Activity Alliance in Casetown, a medium-sized city in the south of England. Findings from this case study reinforced those found in other studies that pointed to the constraints of targets imposed by the Labour government, ingrained approaches to public administration and lack of open acknowledgement of power differentials impeding the development of effective collaboration. Drawing on the suggestions of those involved in the alliance, an alternative vision of collaboration is advocated, focused on shared learning and bottom-up implementation within more fluid and open structures in which there would be greater scope for the exercise of agency on behalf of those individuals and organisations involved. As during the period of the Labour government, aspects of current wider policy agendas may impede as well as support the development of this alternative vision of collaboration. Nevertheless, it is argued that reflexive local actors may collectively be able to address the contextual challenges that exist in order to develop more effective forms and practices of collaboration.     

Better by design: Korea's neoliberal economy

Abstract

This paper examines the processes of bank and corporate restructuring in South Korea since the 1997–98 economic crisis, and seeks to highlight how the state has intervened in a highly dirigiste manner in order to expedite restructuring in both the commercial bank and corporate sectors. At the same time it demonstrates the clear neoliberal principles that have underpinned the state's attempts to promote restructuring. The state has shown a clear determination to take action against insolvent firms and financial institutions no matter how large or strategically important they may be, to impose hard budget constraints on key economic actors. Furthermore, the state has actively sought to engineer the sale of key domestic firms and banks to foreign investors. We argue that Korea's efforts to create a functioning neoliberal economy have been largely successful and are functional from the perspective of Korean capitalism, if not the perspective of individual Korean firms. Changes in the global economy in the two decades preceding the 1997–98 crisis imposed an increasingly inescapable pressure on the Korean state to effect a neoliberal transformation and Korea's future as a centre of capitalist accumulation has for some time been bound up with the success of the neoliberal project. In conclusion, this paper seeks to draw out the broader implications of this reading of the post-crisis restructuring programme for debates on global economic liberalization and the future of capitalist diversity.     

The new Korean political economy: beyond the models of capitalism debate

Abstract

A key theme within the literature on the evolution of the Korean political economy since the 1997/8 crisis has been the extent to which Korea remains a ‘developmental state’ or has pursued radical neoliberal reform. These debates have not only reflected a concern with understanding the Korean economy but with a wider set of questions relating to the future of capitalist diversity within a globalized economy. By the late 1980s Korea had come to be regarded as a model of successful state-led late capitalist development. Korean modern economic history has insured that questions relating to the extent that it has pursued neoliberal reform have been of keen interest to students of political economy globally. This paper argues that substantive neoliberal reform has taken place in Korea since 1997. The thesis that a new ‘developmental state’ is in process of consolidating itself is simply wrong. However, the state's reform program interacted with material conditions and political coalitions at the meso level in a complex and uneven manner. In certain critical sectors, such as finance, a neoliberal regulatory regime has been consolidated. In others, such as telecommunications, developmentalist regulatory structures have proven to be highly resilient. In order to fully understand the complexity of the contemporary Korean political economy it is necessary, therefore, to prioritize the importance of meso-level analysis.     

Quebec nationalism in the 1980s: a spent force?

The Independence Movement in Quebec 1945–1980. By William D. Coleman . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1984. Pp. xii, 274. Inder (paper) Conflict and Language Planning in Quebec. Edited by Richard Y. Bourhis . Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. 1984. Pp. xvi, 304. Index. $19.95 Problems and Opportunities in U.S.-Quebec Relations. Edited by Alfred O. Hero , Jr . and Marcel Daneau . Boulder and London: Westview Press. 1984. Pp. xv, 320. Index (cloth)