Employers,the state and the politics of institutional change: Vocational education and training in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

An in‐depth comparison of Austria, Germany and Switzerland shows that the employers' constellation and the elites of the public education administration affect patterns of institutional change. If large firms are the dominant actors and collaborate with elites in the public education administration, institutional change follows a transformative pattern. If small and medium‐sized firms are in a strong position and have the power to influence public elites according to their interests, self‐preserving institutional change results. The article also shows that it is not so much trade unions as small and medium‐sized firms that act as a brake on transformative change. The article adds to the literature of institutional change by arguing that specifying and explaining patterns of institutional change requires that sufficient scope be allowed for actors' creative handling of institutions. It also suggests that in order to differentiate between self‐preserving and transformative change, one has to specify the important institutional dimensions that sustain an institution. The article combines Mill's method of agreement and difference.     

SNAKES AND LADDERS: UPPER‐MIDDLE CLASS MALE OFFENDERS TALK ABOUT ECONOMIC CRIME*

This paper explores the ways in which male offenders in professional‐status occupations prior to conviction construct and justify money‐related crime. We report a detailed analysis, based in grounded theory and critical social‐psychological discourse analysis, of a loosely‐structured group interview with four offenders. The men constructed justifications for their offenses in terms of “breadwinning” for their immediate family and economic responsibility toward their extended “family” of employees and creditors. They represented their post‐conviction decline in social status as being “dragged down” by envious “boys” in the state apparatus. They positioned themselves on moral high ground, despite having been inappropriately sent to the working class world of prison (“Dante's Inferno”). We contrast these accounts with those of less privileged male offenders.     

Regional development policies and the constructions of gender equality: The Swedish case

Abstract.  This article uses a discursive approach to analyze how gender equality has and is being constructed and given meaning in the context of Swedish regional policy. Drawing on Carole Bacchi's 'What's the Problem? Approach', we explore how arguments concerning the new forms of regional policy are assigning different categories of people different subject positions and, in particular, we focus on the kind of subject positions that are being given to women as a group in this context. The discourse being shaped in national policy is, however, interpreted in specific contexts. Accordingly, we compare the way this new discourse is being (re)interpreted and (re)constructed and the subject positions being ascribed to women in the regional development partnerships and growth strategies in two Swedish regions: Västerbotten and Jönköping. Finally, we draw attention to how both the form and the content of Swedish regional development policies create great difficulties for politicizing gender as a power dimension in society. We suggest that regional politics has become de-politicized and argue for the need for it to be re-politicized with gender included as a conflict dimension.     

In Private

Iwould be lying if I told you that when,back in October, one of my studentspeered over the toilet stall door to wishme a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, itwas the first and only time I have scrambledto hide my dignity in China. Ten monthslater, and as I swiftly avert my eyes from the     

INFORMATION‐SHARING AND CONFIDENTIALITY IN SOCIAL POLICY: REGULATING MULTI‐AGENCY WORKING

In recent years, there has been growing concern in the UK that local services aimed at risky or vulnerable people are ineffective, because of agencies’ persistent failure to share information about their clients. Despite considerable national policy effort to encourage better information‐sharing, previous research indicates that there are many cases where information is still not shared when it should be, or where it is shared when it should not be, with potentially devastating results. This article uses data from the largest empirical study of local information‐sharing yet undertaken to examine four policy sectors where multi‐agency working has come to the fore. It shows that variations in their information‐sharing and confidentiality practices can be explained by neo‐Durkheimian institutional theory and uses insights from this theory to argue that current policy tools, which emphasize formal regulation, are unlikely to lead to consistent and acceptable outcomes, not least because of unresolved conflicts in values and aims.