The deserving sick: Income-maintenance policy towards the ill and disabled

Illness and disability often result in a serious loss of income. Government response to this problem has been piecemeal, so that there is a patchwork of different programs, some state and some federal, covering particular types of medical disabilities and particular categories of people. This article briefly describes existing programs and then evaluates income-maintenance policy towards the ill and disabled using four broad criteria: clarity of objectives, adequacy of coverage, adequacy of benefits, and equity. The general findings are that extreme program fragmentation in this policy area have led to competing (and sometimes inconsistent) objectives, large gaps in population coverage, benefit levels that do not meet even minimal standards, and tremendous inequities across different programs. Recommendations for improvement include the development of a more workable definition of disability and development of a guaranteed minimum income plan in conjuction with supplementary disability insurance plans.The author would like to thank Randall Bovbjerg and James Vaupel for their thoughtful criticisms.     

Designing and Implementing Cross‐Sector Collaborations: Needed and Challenging

Theoretical and empirical work on collaboration has proliferated in the last decade. The authors’ 2006 article on designing and implementing cross‐sector collaborations was a part of, and helped stimulate, this growth. This article reviews the authors’ and others’ important theoretical frameworks from the last decade, along with key empirical results. Research indicates how complicated and challenging collaboration can be, even though it may be needed now more than ever. The article concludes with a summary of areas in which scholarship offers reasonably settled conclusions and an extensive list of recommendations for future research. The authors favor research that takes a dynamic, multilevel systems view and makes use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, especially using longitudinal comparative case studies.     

Australian National Anthologies: A Study of Poems and Poets

This article analyses the contents of fifteen Australian “national” poetry anthologies published between 1946 and 2011. The study has three basic aims: to identify the most anthologised poems (as determined by the greatest number of inclusions in all anthologies), to identify poets with the most poems anthologised, and to identify the poets most consistently represented during this period. Based on quantitative data derived from each anthology’s table of contents, this article provides an empirical and analytical account of Australian national poetry anthologies over a six-decade period. The results reveal a core group of consistently anthologised poems and poets. While each anthology is different, there is a degree of consensus among national anthologists regarding the inclusion of “standard anthology pieces”. This article also considers the role of national anthologies in supporting a hierarchy of established literary reputations and perpetuating a poetic tradition in Australian literature.     

Nazi race ideologues

ABSTRACT

Stone argues that we need to disaggregate Nazi race ideologues since they do not form one undifferentiated mass. Ultimately, all the Nazis were race ideologues and chief among them were Hitler, Himmler and the other leading figures. All of the leading Nazis, whether they dealt specifically with ‘racial policy’ or not, put forward a racialized ideology, but those who made a name for themselves specifically as race theorists did not therefore all share the same views, nor did they all contribute in equal measure to the regime's crimes. Nor did race science, however deeply it threw its lot in with Nazism, drive the regime as much as did a kind of racial mysticism, or ‘thinking with the blood’. Here Stone suggests how we might evaluate the relative contributions made to the development of the Third Reich and its crimes by race scientists of different stripes, on the one hand, and theorists of racial-political conspiracies on the other.     

Influences on substance use cessation during pregnancy: an exploratory study of women on probation and parole

Research suggests that a lack of family support, low self-efficacy, mental illness, and life stressors increase the likelihood of women using illicit substances during their pregnancies. These risk factors often characterize the lives of women on probation and parole. The current study uses data from a larger study of women on supervision to explore the risk and protective factors of substance use during pregnancy. Results highlight the importance of self-efficacy, mental health treatment, and family support; and suggest avenues for intervention to improve maternal and infant health outcomes.     

The law and politics of transnational rights protection: Trusteeship,effectiveness, de-delegation

International trustee courts embody a specific form of delegation, in which state principals confer on such courts the authority to interpret and apply treaties agreed by the states in order to realize specific values and interests. Human rights courts help states resolve commitment and enforcement problems that are inherent in human rights treaties. This study seeks to answer the question, what happens when states parties seek to reduce or eliminate the authority of a human rights court? To answer these questions, the article assesses six human rights treaty regimes: the Council of Europe; the Organization of American States; the African Union; the Economic Community of West African States; the East African Community; and the Southern African Development Community. The article identifies four types of de-delegation possible with respect to international human rights courts and assesses the extent to which states have sought to de-delegate from them. With one exception (the SADC Tribunal), the regimes examined here have so far successfully withstood the challenge of de-delegation.     

Reversing delegation? Politicization,de-delegation,and non-majoritarian institutions

Elected governments and states have delegated extensive powers to non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) such as independent central banks and regulatory agencies, courts, and international trade and investment organizations, which have become central actors in governance. But, far from having resolved the balance between political control and governing competence or removed certain issues from political debate, NMIs have faced challenges to their legitimacy by elected officials and sometimes attempts to reverse delegation through “de-delegation”. Our special issue studies the politicization of NMIs, and then whether, why and how it leads to de-delegation through reducing the formal powers of NMIs or increasing controls over them. In this article, we examine how to analyze de-delegation, how politicization of NMIs has developed, and how it has affected de-delegation. We underline not only institutional rules that constrain elected officials but also the actions of NMIs themselves and their relationships with other NMIs as part of multi-level governance systems. We find that politicization has varied, but even when strong, elected officials have not introduced widespread and long-lasting de-delegation; on the contrary, they have frequently widened the powers of NMIs. Insofar as elected politicians have sought to curb NMIs, they have often preferred to use existing controls and non-compliance. Finally, we consider the wider implications of the combination of politicization and lack of de-delegation for broader issues of governance such as the division of powers between the elected and unelected and democratic accountability.