Integration or Building Resilience: What Should the Goal Be in Refugee Resettlement?

The article presents a qualitative study of 110 providers and administrators of refugee services from four countries: United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Iceland. Of the total participants, 28 were male and 82 were female. The sample consisted of 83 social workers who provided direct services to refugees and 27 administrators who managed the programs. The interviews occurred over a period of 3 years from January 2014 to January 2017. The participants described what they perceived to be the goals of resettlement and the successful outcomes of their work with refugees. Findings show that providers and administrators varied in what they believed to be the goals and outcomes, with three main differences emerging: (1) lessening the transition burden; (2) acquisition of language and securing self-sufficient employment; and (3) enhancing the integration of resilience within the refugee. These differences are discussed in terms of how they differ in resources required and in outcomes. The implications of these differences are addressed.     

Should Love Conquer Evidence in Policy‐Making? Challenges in Implementing Random Drug‐Testing of Welfare Recipients in Australia

The Australian Government announced in its 2017 budget that it would trial random drug‐testing of recipients of the Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance in three locations from January 2018. The Prime Minister described it as a policy ‘based on love’, but that sentiment is hard to find in the policy rhetoric, which situates it in a suite of measures designed to ‘ensure taxpayers’ money is not being used to fund drug addictions which are creating significant barriers to employment'. The policy may make it harder for people to buy drugs with their welfare payments, through income management, but research suggests it will not help them overcome addiction and its costs will exceed any savings it generates in income support. Furthermore, the policy perpetuates ‘medicalisation’ of the problem of long‐term unemployment by suggesting it stems from deficiencies in individuals that can be ‘treated’, despite evidence to the contrary. Finally, the policy claims to close loopholes in enforcement of mutual obligation requirements without addressing structural weaknesses in the welfare‐to‐work model. Each of these issues will pose challenges for those charged with implementing the policy.     

What have we learned from the last three decades of empirical studies on factors driving local privatisation?

Scholarly empirical studies on factors that motivate local privatisation have greatly grown in the last decade. As well, having available better and more comprehensive databases and using more refined empirical techniques have made possible to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of local privatisation, particularly in many European countries. The influence of fiscal stress, cost considerations – scale economies as well as transaction costs – and political partisan interests is usually confirmed. Furthermore, ideological attitudes appear to be more influential than they seemed to be, particularly when considering social services, rather than the technical ones.     

Heroic Action and Its Discontents: Safe Horizon’s Response to 9/11

Based on first-hand qualitative research, this article describes and analyzes the significant role that a local, New York City-based social service agency played in responding to 9/11; the sources of its notable ability to provide assistance to individuals and families affected by this terrorist attack; and the structural strains and unanticipated divisions within the agency that the heroism of its fervid engagement nevertheless engendered.

技术与民生:在线政务服务影响公共服务满意度的经验研究

本文应用期望不一致理论分析了在线政务服务对公共服务满意度的影响。在理论分析的基础上,采用Tobit模型,从公共教育、医疗卫生、住房保障、劳动就业、社会保障五个方面进行实证检验。实证研究结果表明:在线政务服务显著提升了公共服务的公众满意度,增强了人民群众的获得感;显著的在线政务服务区域差异不利于公共服务满意度的提升。进一步,本文利用有序Probit模型探讨了在线政务服务影响公共服务满意度的路径。研究发现,在线政务服务主要通过提升公共服务资源分布均衡度与获取公共服务资源便捷度的满意度来提升公共服务满意度。     

Bridging the gender gap in agricultural development through gender responsive extension and rural advisory services delivery in Ghana

Despite the critical role women play in agricultural development their access to extension and rural advisory services delivery is limited. To improve this situation, an in-depth understanding of the importance of gender-responsive extension delivery is required. A case study of the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Program that put in extra efforts to reach more female farmers with extension delivery and other rural advisory services was conducted. The study investigates how gender dynamics interact with the agricultural extension delivery with particular reference to the adoption of improved technologies. A total sample of 592 smallholder farmers were interviewed in selected communities in Northern Ghana. In addition to one-on-one interviews, 18 focus group discussions were also conducted in the surveyed districts. Study findings confirmed that male farmers had more access to agricultural extension delivery than their female counterparts because of their relatively better financial standing, large farm sizes, mobility to access extension and rural advisory service providers outside their communities. The study identified gendered associations with some crop types across all the study districts. However, the gendered extension delivery led to a new sociocultural order that seems to break down the gendered associations with the adoption of improved technologies.     

What Drives For-Profit and Nonprofit Organizations’ Entry into Voucher Markets?

This study investigates a social service voucher program in Korea to examine why local governments rely on external actors, such as for-profit and nonprofit organizations, in provisioning social services and what encourages such market entry in view of the transaction cost theory. The social service voucher program, first introduced in 2007, offers a unique dataset of 1,101 local markets to examine how local governments are willing to stay in control of provisioning the nationwide program while promoting private actor entry. This study finds that local governments with lower fiscal capacities or in markets in which multiple existing organizations operate are more motivated to foster for-profit entry, whereas only existing nonprofit organizations in the market that provide the same services predict nonprofit entry. The implication is that the facilitation of for-profit entry is associated with local governments’ need to manage transaction costs, although this may not be true for nonprofit entry.     

The Strange Career of British Democracy: John Milton to Gordon Brown

Political debate in modern Britain has been structured by four narratives or traditions, called here ‘Whig imperialist’, ‘Tory nationalist’, ‘democratic collectivist’ and ‘democratic republican’. The Whig imperialist tradition goes back to Edmund Burke; it is a tradition of responsive evolution, flexible statecraft, genial optimism and abhorrence of dogmatic absolutes. It prevailed for most of the nineteenth century, for most of the interwar period and for most of the 1950s and early‐1960s. Its Tory nationalist counterpart is tense, rebarbative and often shrill. At its core lies a primal fear of the dissolution of authority and a collapse of the social order. Its most notable exponents include Lord Salisbury, Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. The democratic collectivist tradition stresses ineluctable progress towards a just and rational society, to be achieved by a strong, essentially technocratic central state, with the power and will to replace the wasteful, unjust chaos of the market place by planned co‐ordination. Formative influences on it were the great Fabian socialists, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb; it achieved its apotheosis under the Attlee Government of 1945‐51. The democratic republican tradition is much more inchoate: its exponents have been the awkward squad of British democracy. The most glittering stars in the democratic republican firmament were probably John Milton, John Stuart Mill and R.H. Tawney. It stresses active self‐government and republican self respect, embodied in a vigorous civil society and strong local authorities. During the ninety‐odd years since Britain belatedly acquired a more‐or‐less democratic suffrage, the first three traditions have all been tested, almost to destruction. But though the fourth has had great influence on social movements of all kinds, governments at the centre have done little more than toy with it, usually for brief periods. The great question now is whether Britain is about to experience a democratic republican moment.     

煤气公司如何实施服务创品牌、争名牌战略

从 4个方面详细阐述了如何实施服务创品牌、争名牌战略之对策 :形成并建立全员服务理念 ;企业以市场为导向 ,服务以用户需求为导向 ;实施服务创品牌、争名牌战略 ,满足用户需求 ,必须坚持以人为本 ;启动硬件投入 ,创新服务方式     

论欧盟金融服务法中的最低限度协调原则

在欧盟金融服务法中,最低限度协调原则是指共同体立法只对各成员国金融监管规则的基本要素进行协调.这一原则尊重了成员国的国家主权,有助于降低金融服务市场一体化的政策成本,并能够充分发挥市场机制的作用以促成最优的监管标准.<欧共体条约>中的特别协调条款是这一原则的直接依据,金融服务指令中的协调条款是其集中体现.最低限度协调原则只适用于符合共同利益的非歧视性限制措施.在其适用范围内,各成员国只能进行执行性立法.该原则的确立和推行是以相互承认为核心、以母国控制为表现形式的一体化模式成功运用的必然结果.晚近的立法实践表明,这一原则有被边缘化的危险.