The Case Against Participation Income—Political,Not Merely Administrative

This article develops the position we have taken in debate with Anthony Atkinson that a participation income (PI) would be problematic from an administrative and political point of view. We argue that Atkinson remains far too optimistic about the magnitude of administrative difficulties a PI would face. Negotiating these difficulties will inevitably involve the sort of political trade‐offs PI is supposedly able to avoid when compared to its more controversial cousin, the unconditional basic income. The enduring significance of ‘The case for a participation income’, we argue, lies in the often neglected point that Atkinson intends a PI as a supplement to an eroding contribution‐based welfare state. In the current political and fiscal environment, the case for a universal support scheme set below the rate of subsistence, and supplemented by other forms of welfare support, deserves careful re‐examination.     

Certification – An Overview

Delinquents are better managed in the juvenile court, though the adult system may be necessary for the few cases in which juvenile facilities and jurisdictional time remaining cannot adequately protect the public.     

FAMILY CARE COMMITMENT DISCRIMINATION: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN WORK AND FAMILY

This Note discusses the pervasive problem of employment discrimination based on family responsibilities, or family care commitment discrimination. Employees with family care commitments often find themselves being pulled in opposing directions—between work and family. When an employee is forced to choose work, for financial reasons, over family, his or her family ends up suffering. The current state and federal statutes aimed at employment discrimination are insufficient to deal with family care commitment discrimination. This Note proposes a change to the current legislation and explains how this change will protect employees and families, while causing employers to internalize externalities by adopting more family‐friendly policies.     

Transparency Mechanisms: Building Publicness into Public Services

Recent changes in patterns of public service provision, sometimes associated with the 'regulatory state', have been said to have eroded citizenship and diminished accountability. This paper responds to these challenges by outlining a toolbox of four transparency mechanisms – information, choice, representation, and voice – as alternative devices that can be built into the architecture of public service regimes, to increase responsiveness and answerability. Using insights drawn from cybernetics and transaction cost analysis, this paper looks at the consequences of different choices of combinations of mechanisms in allocating authority in line with competing administrative doctrines of fiduciary trusteeship and consumer sovereignty. Attention is drawn to differences in 'cost profiles' between different public services that can facilitate or inhibit consumer choice as a basis for understanding the suitability of different combinations of mechanisms to specific public services. A contingency model determining the suitability of particular mechanisms to particular services of different 'cost-profiles' is presented. Given the variety of public services and among different public service architectures in the regulatory state, it is argued that this differentiated approach to transparency and accountability provides a more effective response to holding public services accountable than narrower traditional notions of political accountability.