Nudge Nudge, Think Think: Two Strategies for Changing Civic Behaviour

This paper reviews two contrasting approaches governments use to engage the citizen to promote better public policy outcomes: nudging citizens using the insights of behavioural economics, as summarised by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) or giving citizens the space to think through and debate solutions, as indicated by proponents of deliberative democracy. The paper summarises each approach, giving examples; then it compares and contrast them, illustrating their relative strengths and weaknesses. The paper concludes by suggesting that the approaches share some common features and policy-makers could useful draw upon both.     

Childcare Policies and the Politics of Choice

Governments have intervened in two basic ways on childcare: via the provision of leaves to care (usually taken by mothers) and the provision or (often only partial) financing of childcare services. These policy options reflect the fundamental debate on how young children should be cared for. Labour has developed both policy areas since 1997, but there is a question mark over how far mothers and fathers have a ‘real choice’ to work and/or to care. Parents' choice in this policy area is a sensitive political issue and, this article suggests, requires a careful balancing of policy instruments. Policy goals may conflict with preferences and there is also the difficult issue that parents' choices may prejudice their future welfare in a work/welfare system that is tending to assume that there will be increasing capacity for self‐provisioning.     

HOW POLICY‐MAKERS (REALLY) UNDERSTAND GLOBALIZATION: THE INTERNAL ARCHITECTURE OF ANGLOPHONE GLOBALIZATION DISCOURSE IN EUROPE

There is a growing acceptance in the literature of a potentially significant causal role for ideas about globalization in shaping the trajectory of policy and institutional reform in contemporary Europe. Yet we still know remarkably little about policy‐makers' understandings of globalization, save those they choose to declare publicly. This paper contributes to the important task of operationalizing empirically this key set of ideational variables. Using factor analysis of new survey data collected by the authors it maps and compares UK and Irish policy‐maker's understandings of, and orientations towards, globalization. The analysis reveals considerable similarities in the ordering of assumptions and attitudes towards globalization between the two country cases and between civil servants and parliamentarians. Yet it also shows some subtle and intriguing differences between policy‐makers' responses in the UK and Ireland and between elected and unelected officials. Intriguingly, it also suggests a significant disparity between politicians' private understandings and public discourses of globalization, with the former less necessitarian in tone than the latter. Above all, it suggests that Anglophone globalization discourse in Europe is principally structured in terms of a number of dimensions which relate to the acceptance or rejection of a series of core neoliberal premises. In effect, the terms and internal architecture of globalization discourse in the UK and Ireland are defined by neoliberal assumptions, to the extent that they provide the core point of reference and orientation for even the most sceptical and critical of views.     

An Analysis of the Time to Adoption of Local Sales Taxes: A Duration Model Approach

The timing of the decision of local governments to adopt a local sales tax is explored in a duration model with time‐varying covariates. Our framework suggests a set of factors associated with the decision to adopt a local sales tax and we find empirical support for these factors. We also consider whether the adoption by one jurisdiction depends on the adoption by neighboring jurisdictions and find empirical support for interdependency of behavior.     

ALIENATION IN PRISON ORGANIZATIONS:

The deprivation modelsuggests that prisonization and inmate opposition the prison organization are a function of the deprivations imposed by organization. Compliance theory maintains that alienationof the organiza tionf participants covaries with the coerciveness of the organization. Data obtained from inmates and officers in six adult correctional institutions are examined to test the hypothesis that inmate alienation is a result of the coer civeness of the institution and a cause of inmate opposition to the institu tion. The findings lend support to the hypothesized model and, further more, suggest the need to distinguish between absolute and relative deprivation.