Changing Roles for a State Agriculture Department: Driving Forces and Organisational Responses in the 21st Century

This article examines the forces of change that have been operating on a state agriculture department over recent decades. These forces of change include pressures for the department to meet community expectations on issues such as animal welfare and ecological sustainability — issues which were not emphasised in its former focus on agricultural production. The article then goes on to look at the responses that have occurred in a public sector agency to these forces and what these may mean for the future of this traditionally conservative arm of government in terms of changes to what have been its primary client groups and its most important priorities.     

Measuring community social organization: Sense of community as a mediator in social disorganization theory

The current study utilized an updated systemic model of social disorganization to investigate neighborhood effects on both positive and negative youth outcomes. Although empirical support for updated social disorganization models has increased in recent years, the field continues to rely too heavily on behavioral indicators of community social organization. Unfortunately, these measures do not assess the truly important social processes and dynamics that result in cohesive and supportive neighborhoods. It was proposed that sense of community (SOC) was a more valid, comprehensive, and applicable measure for the mediating variables in social disorganization theory. Results supported the hypothesis that SOC mediates the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on youth outcomes and implications for the field are discussed.     

Social redistribution in federalised Belgium

The federalisation of Belgium has led to a fragmentation of competences in the field of social policy. Only social security has remained an exclusive federal responsibility. However, there have been calls for further federalisation in this policy area. The prominence of interregional financial transfers fuels such calls, while its opponents point out that, among other things, federalisation would result in greater poverty and inequality in Wallonia, a Region that is already disadvantaged in economic terms. In this contribution we first outline the territorial organisation of social policy in a federalised Belgium. We then analyse social transfers between Flanders and Wallonia, focusing on their size and determinants. We demonstrate that these transfers have a considerable equalising and anti-poverty effect. Next, we explore the theoretical arguments for and against federalising social policy, supplemented with examples from the Belgian case. We conclude with an overview of the discussion and indicate some future policy directions.     

Networking in the Shadow of the Law: Informal Access to Legal Expertise through Personal Network Ties

Civil legal problems are common in everyday life, but the costs of obtaining legal representation create barriers to legal action and contribute to disparities in access to justice. Some individuals, however, may have informal access to legal assistance through personal network ties with lawyers, enhancing their responses to justiciable problems. In this study, we draw from theories of social capital and network formation to examine the distribution and mobilization of network‐based legal expertise. Using nationally representative survey data, we find that network‐based access to lawyers is widespread, and most people who have ties to lawyers expect to informally mobilize legal assistance when facing a problem. But people who are most likely to afford formal legal representation are also most likely to have informal access to lawyers. Thus, while informal access to lawyers may shape responses to legal problems, it may also exacerbate inequalities in experiences with civil justice events.