Verursacht Globalisierung die Krise des Wohlfahrtsstaates?

Wirtschaftliche Globalisierung bezieht sich auf drei miteinander zusammenhängende Prozesse: 1. das Wachstum der Weltwirtschaft; 2. den Wandel in den Beziehungen zwischen den Ländern der ?ersten“ und ?dritten“ Welt, der sich aus dem Einsatz von Informationstechnologien zur Reorganisation der Produktion sowohl auf nationaler wie globaler Ebene ergibt; 3. die Integration der Weltfinanzmärkte. Diese Prozesse werden gemeinhin für die Deindustrialisierung in fortgeschrittenen Wohlfahrtsstaaten, die Zunahme der Einkommensungleichheiten und jenen Druck verantwortlich gemacht, unter dem Wohlfahrtsregime Arbeitnehmerschutz und Unterstützungsleistungen transformieren sollen. Ich zeige, dass die Veränderungen innerhalb der Weltwirtschaft viel kleiner, unspektakulärer sind als die Globalisierungsthese behauptet und das Ausmaß je nach Gesellschaft variiert. Wichtiger noch: Zwischen der Globalisierung und ihren mutmaßlich negativen Konsequenzen bestehen bestenfalls schwache Zusammenhänge. Die Rhetorik der Globalisierung hat eher mit den USA und den Veränderungen innerhalb ihrer politischen Ökonomie zu tun als mit Veränderungen des Welthandels. Abschließend werden die daraus sich ergebenden Auswirkungen auf Westeuropa diskutiert.     

China's political discourse towards the 21st century: Victimhood, identity, and political power

Political discourse is critical to the legitimisation of China's ruling elite and critically informs its formulation and execution of political action. This study explores the theme of victimhood in China's contemporary political discourse. The constructed nature of political discourse—the ‘official story’ in Benedict Anderson's phrase—draws upon a range of supporting sources. Of central importance is the role of history and one of its key features is the portrayal of China as victim. This offers a distinctive pole of identificatory attachment for the construction of a modernist reading of national Chinese political identity. The study conducts discourse analyses of three primary texts. It is concluded that objectified discursive power remains an influential factor in Chinese politics. “Without legitimacy, words are invalid; invalid words lead man to nowhere” (Mingbuzheng zhe yanbushun; yanbushun zhe shibucheng)—Confucius This paper was presented at the 10th Anniversary Conference of the American Association of Chinese Studies, Washington D.C., 16–17 April 1999. The authors would like to thank their panel discussants, Professor Peter Li and Dr. Gary Rawnsley, for their comments and suggestions on this paper.     

Regulation and the Role of Trust: Reflections from the Mining Industry

The role of prosecution in achieving compliance with social regulation is a highly contentious issue, nowhere more so than with regard to work-related injury and death in the New South Wales mining industry. Following a mining disaster, political pressure prompted the mines inspectorate to abandon its traditional 'advise and persuade' approach in favour of a much tougher, deterrence-oriented approach. Our field-work suggests that while the former approach can result in regulatory capture, the latter can be equally counterproductive. In the mining industry, interactions between inspectors and the regulated industry are frequent and ongoing and trust is central to constructive relations. When those relations break down (as under an inappropriate prosecution policy) then dialogue ceases, information is withheld rather than shared, in-firm accident investigation, prevention, and remedial action are inhibited and both sides retreat to a form of adversarialism that undermines regulatory effectiveness. Through a 20-year case study of the mines inspectorate, the article demonstrates the centrality of trust to regulatory effectiveness, how it can be lost, and how it can best be regained.     

Shadow Writing and Participant Observation: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Work Around Sentencing

The study of decision‐making by public officials in administrative settings has been a mainstay of law and society scholarship for decades. The methodological challenges posed by this research agenda are well understood: how can socio‐legal researchers get inside the heads of legal decision‐makers in order to understand the uses of official discretion? This article describes an ethnographic technique the authors developed to help them penetrate the decision‐making practices of criminal justice social workers in writing pre‐sentence reports for the courts. This technique, called ‘shadow writing’, involved a particular form of participant observation whereby the researcher mimicked the process of report writing in parallel with the social workers. By comparing these ‘shadow reports’ with the real reports in a training‐like setting, the social workers revealed in detail the subtleties of their communicative strategies embedded in particular reports and their sensibilities about report writing more generally.     

The Privatization of Urban Housing in China and its Contribution to Financial System Development

The privatization of urban housing and the subsequent development of a mortgage market have played a major role in the development of China's financial system. This paper explores the history and development of China's urban housing market, its impact on the financial system, and the government's efforts to grapple with new issues that have surfaced alongside these reforms. This paper concludes that although housing privatization has helped strengthen the financial standing of state-owned enterprises, urban residents, and commercial banks alike, systematic weaknesses must be addressed in order to promote sustainable economic growth.