Accountability in Public Service Quasi‐markets: The Case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme

Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) represents the latest in a worldwide shift towards individualised funding models for the delivery of care services. However, market‐based models for care deliveries bring new considerations and dilemmas for accountability. Drawing on previous work by Dickinson et al. (2014), we examine a range of accountability dilemmas developing within the early implementation of the NDIS. These relate to accountability for the following: care outcomes, the spending of public money, care workers, and advocacy and market function. Examining these accountability dilemmas reveals differences in underpinning assumptions within the design and on‐going implementation of the NDIS, suggesting a plurality of logics within the scheme, which are in tension with one another. The contribution of this paper is to set out the accountability dilemmas, analyse them according to their underpinning logics, and present the NDIS as having potential to be a hybrid institution (Skelcher and Smith 2015). How these dilemmas will be settled is crucial to the implementation and ultimate operation of the scheme.     

The Subversive Potential of Women’s Relation to Work*

This article makes the hypothesis that it is the relation to work, and not work itself, that holds subversive, or even liberating, potential for women. We begin by showing the theoretical convergence between this hypothesis and feminist epistemology. In order to test the hypothesis empirically, we then look at the paradoxical ways in which many women relate to paid work. In order to understand this paradox, we argue that it is necessary to go back to a feminist definition of work by calling into question the separation between professional and domestic work. Finally, we attempt to make suggestions to transform this subversive potential into collective emancipatory practices. We insist on the necessity for the feminist movement to put domestic work back at the center of its reflection on work and on the emancipation of women.     

论我国的刑事指定辩护制度

刑事指定辩护制度是我国刑事辩护制度的重要组成部分．该制度的完备程度直接关系到被追诉者的辩护权能否得到充分保护、刑事诉讼程序的公正性能否得到体现。目前我国刑事指定辩护制度存在一定的不足．因此有必要结合立法和司法实践进行分析,以期进一步完善。     

On the Tort of Negligence in Common Law Legal System

It is difficult for judicial practitioners to determine the liability of tort of negligence due to the fact that it has not been specially stipulated in the provisions of the Tort Liability Law or other civil laws and regulations in China. On the contrary, the principles of tort of negligence in common law legal system have been refined in judicial practice and provided the corresponding solution for determining the liability of tort of negligence. The author believes that the empirical research on the tort of negligence in common law legal system will help us to further strengthen the understanding and application of the Tort Liability Law in China. This article thus comprehensively surveys and researches the tort of negligence from the perspective of common law legal system.     

农村留守儿童健康成长的环境优化研究

农村留守儿童成长宏观环境可以归纳为以下四类:即国家和政府层面的有关留守儿童的法律政策环境;人口迁移流动背景下留守儿童减量化措施所构成的制度和发展规划性环境;新农村建设和"三农"问题解决背景下农村儿童工作特别是社区工作所构成的农村社区儿童工作环境;留守儿童问题及工作相关媒体宣传倡导所构成的传媒环境。针对上述4类环境及其优化进行分析并提出对策建议具有重要意义。     

Rental Housing Assistance and Health: Evidence From the Survey of Income and Program Participation

Interest in the health impacts of renter housing assistance has grown in the wake of heated national discussions on health care and social welfare spending. Assistance may improve renters’ health by offering (a) low, fixed housing costs; (b) protection against eviction; and (c) access to better homes and neighborhoods. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and econometric analysis, I estimate the effect of receiving assistance from the public housing or Section 8 voucher programs on low-income renters’ reported health status and spending. Assisted renters spent less on health care over the year than unassisted low-income renters did, after controlling for other characteristics. This finding suggests that assisted housing leads to health benefits that may reduce low-income renters’ need to purchase health services. Voucher holders’ lower expenditures are influenced by their low, fixed housing costs, but public housing residents’ lower expenditures are not explained by existing theory.     

A Comparative Study of Denmark and New Zealand’s National Health Targets

This paper investigates the influence of nationally imposed health targets on current management control practices in New Zealand and Denmark. It reveals how variants of New Public Management (NPM), arising from specific historical socio-political contexts, rise to the challenge of national differences. The study finds that both nations are challenged to ensure data registration procedures produce valid and comparable performance measures. Denmark’s reliance on a single efficiency measure of health sector performance reflects a historic socio-political context that reduces the feasibility of additional measures whereas New Zealand’s context enables the government to impose a more extensive range of health targets.     

What abolishing the family would not do

Abstract

Because families disrupt fair patterns of distribution and, in particular, equality of opportunity, egalitarians believe that the institution of the family needs to be defended at the bar of justice. In their recent book, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift have argued that the moral gains of preserving the family outweigh its moral costs. Yet, I claim that the egalitarian case for abolishing the family has been over-stated due to a failure to consider how alternatives to the family would also disturb fair distributions and, in particular, equality of opportunity. Absent the family, children would continue to be exposed to care-givers of different levels of ability, investment in childrearing and beneficial partiality. In addition, social mechanisms other than the family would lead to the accumulation of economic inequalities. Any kind of upbringing will fail to realise equality for reasons that go deeper than the family: our partiality and unequal abilities to nurture.     

Self-rated health and barriers to healthcare in Ukraine: The pivotal role of gender and its intersections

The ongoing health crisis in the Ukraine has persisted for 48 years with a clear division of gender-based outcomes as seen in the decline of male life expectancy and stagnation of female longevity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in self-rated health and system barriers to health care applicable to gender and its intersections because of the differing negative health outcomes for men and women. Intersectionality theory provides an analytic framework for interpreting our results. Utilizing a nationwide sample of the Ukrainian population (N = 1908), we found that low socioeconomic status (SES) women rate their health worse than men generally and any other socioeconomic group. Yet women also face the greatest barriers to health care until older ages when the ailments of men cause them to likewise face the obstacles. In reviewing the barrier to health care scale, one barrier—that of health care services being too expensive—dominated the responses with some 52.5 percent of the sample reporting it. Consequently, the greatest problem in Ukraine with respect to health reform reported by the population is the out-of-pocket costs for care in a system that is officially free. These costs, constituting some 40 percent of all national health expenditures, affect women and the aged the most.     

Freedom of information in local government: rhetoric or reality?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the level of implementation by Spanish local authorities of the Transparency Act (19/2013), and their voluntary information disclosure in areas where such disclosure is obligatory in other EU countries. We identify the main factors that may influence the implementation of this Act and the self-regulation policies adopted. Our analysis highlights the existence of delays among some local authorities, with notable differences between municipalities with larger and smaller populations, in implementing the Act, and also the fact that many municipalities are committed to achieving transparency, often going beyond minimum legal requirements. Factors such as population size, the political ideology of the governing party and the education level and economic capacity of the population are related to the level of implementation of transparency and self-regulatory policies in this respect by local authorities. We acknowledge that the 2013 Act was still being implemented during the period analysed.