The Risk of Social Policy? Giger, Nathalie
The Risk of Social Policy?,
2011, 20110307, 2011-03-07, 20110101, Letnik:
13
eBook, Book Chapter
The Risk of Social Policy? uses a comparative perspective to systematically analyse the effects of social policy reforms and welfare state retrenchment on voting choice for the government. It ...re-examines twenty elections in OECD countries to show if and how social policy issues drive elections.
This book contributes to the existing literature by providing an empirical analysis of the electoral implications of social policy. Giger asks the basic research question: What are the electoral consequences of social policy performance and retrenchment? More specifically, the following questions are addressed in order to provide a systematic test of the topic: Is retrenchment indeed completely unpopular? Do people punish the government for bad performance in the field of social policy? And what are the political implications of such a punishment reaction; does it affect the government composition? It shows empirically that the risks of welfare state retrenchment to incumbent governments may be lower than previously thought, and presents a theoretical framework for re-examining the impact of retrenchment initiatives on election outcome.
Making an important contribution to studies in political economy and welfare by questioning the assumption that social policy is an inherently controversial policy field in times of elections, The Risk of Social Policy? will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with the interplay between government and citizens, social policy and voting behaviour, and the political economy of welfare.
The issue of local governance is high on the institutional agenda of many local and regional authorities throughout the OECD countries. This book explores the relationship between two key issues of ...urban governance - leadership and community involvement - and how making these two elements more complementary can lead to more effective as well as legitimate policy outcomes. The authors examine the dilemmas involved in ensuring effective governance, focusing on issues such as legitimacy, citizen participation, economic performance and social inclusion.
Michael Haus is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Political Science at Darmstadt University of Technology. His current research focuses on the institutional design of local government in a comparative perspective. Recent publications include: * Bürgergesellschaft, soziales Kapital und lokale Politik , Leske & Budrich: Opladen 2002 (editor). Hubert Heinelt is Professor of Public Administration/Public Policy and Urban Studies at the Institute for Political Science at Darmstadt University of Technology. His current research focuses on local policy and politics and European integration and EU cohesion policy, as well as on issues of participatory governance. He is co-chair of the study group "Lokale Politikforschung" of the German Political Science Association (DVPW), a member of the executive board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA), as well as co- of the series Gesellschaftspolitik und Staatstätigkeit of Leske & Budrich, Opladen. His recent publications include: *Brennpunkt Stadt. Stadtpolitik und lokale Politikforschung in den 80er und 90er Jahren (Stadtforschung aktuell 31), Birkhäuser: Basel/Boston/Berlin 1991 (editor, together with Hellmut Wollmann) *Politik in europäischen Städten. Fallstudien zur Bedeutung lokaler Politik (Stadtforschung aktuell 38), Birkhäuser: Basel/Boston/Berlin 1993 (editor, together with Margit Mayer) *Policy Networks and European Structural Funds. A Comparison between Member States, Avebury: London 1996 (together with Randall Smith) *Zivile Gesellschaft. Entwicklung, Defizite und Potentiale, Leske & Budrich: Opladen 1997 (together with Klaus M. Schmals) Murray Stewart is Reader at the University of the West of England, Bristol and was Director of the Cities research centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol 1997-2002. His current research activities include participation in the national evaluations of the New Deal for Communities and of Local Strategic Partnerships. He was a member of the Social Exclusion Unit PAT 17 Policy Action Team, (Joining It Up Locally), and is the academic member of the Regional Co-ordination Unit Advisory Group. He is Deputy Chairman (and South West Trustee) of the Lloyds/TSB Foundation for England and Wales. Recent publications include: *Cross-cutting Issues affecting Local Government, London: Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999 *Community Leadership in Area Regeneration, JRF Report, Bristol: The Policy Press 2000 *Understanding Collaboration : International perspectives on Theory, Method and Practice. Proceedings of an International Conference, Bristol 2000 (with D. Purdue) *Globalism and Local Democracy (ed. with R. Hambleton and H. Savitch.)
"The PLUS collaborators have set a new benchmark for cross-national research in this crucial arena of governance. Researchers in a wide range of relevant fields, from political economy to social policy to the study of civic life, will benefit from close scrutiny of the empirical findings of this project. Although the pluralistic approach of the authors leaves it largely for the reader to draw synthetic conclusions, the overall picture is one of convergent trends across advanced industrial democracies as well as among newer democracies in southern and eastern Europe. At a more general level, the findings underscore the importance of state–society relations and culture within cities as an important element in trajectories of governance worldwide."
Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2008 (pp. 297–308).
Improving water quality is consistently ranked as a top environmental concern in OECD public opinion surveys. The key challenges for policy makers in addressing water quality issues in agriculture ...are to reduce water pollution while encourage benefits, such as maintaining aquatic life. This book examines linking policies, farm management and water quality. It looks at recent trends and prospects for water pollution from agriculture and the implications of climate change. It assesses the costs and benefits of agriculture's impact on water systems, and presents a series of case studies. Finally the report provides a set of recommendations for countries for meeting the challenge of improving agricultural water quality.
The global expansion of participation rates in higher education continue more or less unabated. However, while the concept of lifelong learning has figured prominently in national and international ...educational policy discourse for more than three decades, its implications for the field of higher education has remained relatively underdeveloped.
This book focuses on a particular dimension of the lifelong learning: higher education for those who have not progressed directly from school to higher education. Some will embark on undergraduate programmes as mature students, part-time and/or distance students; others wish to return to higher education after having completed (or not completed) a previous academic programme, while increasing numbers participate in postgraduate and continuing studies for a complex mix of professional and personal reasons.
Adopting a comparative and international longitudinal perspective which goes beyond a snapshot view by building on the cases of a core group of ten OECD countries, this timely book investigates the ways in which important new developments impacting on higher education crystallise around the lifelong learning agenda:
new technology and open source resources;
the changing role of the state and market in higher education;
the blurring of public and private boundaries;
issues of equity and access in a time of global economic turmoil;
the increased emphasis on research and international league tables;
the changing nature of the education; and,
the complex interaction of international, national and regional expectations which governments and other stakeholders have of universities and other public and private institutions of higher education.
While focusing on the situation in Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and a wide variety of European countries, the book also assesses the issues from the perspective
Water resources allocation determines who is able to use water resources, how, when and where. It directly affects the value (economic, ecological, socio-cultural) that individuals and society obtain ...from water resources. This report overviews how allocation works in a range of countries and how the performance of allocation arrangements can be improved to adjust to changing conditions. Capturing information from 27 OECD countries and key partner economies, the report presents key findings from the OECD Survey of Water Resources Allocation and case studies of successful allocation reform. It provides practical policy guidance for water allocation in the form of a "health check", which can be used to assess the performance of current arrangements and manage the transition to improved regimes.
This study investigates the short-term and long-term impacts of economic growth, trade openness and technological progress on renewable energy use in Organization for Economic Co-operation and ...Development (OECD) countries. Based on a panel data set of 25 OECD countries for 43 years, we used the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and the related intermediate estimators, including pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) to achieve the objective. The estimated ARDL model has also been checked for robustness using the two substitute single equation estimators, these being the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS). Empirical results reveal that economic growth, trade openness and technological progress significantly influence renewable energy use over the long-term in OECD countries. While the long-term nature of dynamics of the variables is found to be similar across 25 OECD countries, their short-term dynamics are found to be mixed in nature. This is attributed to varying levels of trade openness and technological progress in OECD countries. Since this is a pioneer study that investigates the issue, the findings are completely new and they make a significant contribution to renewable energy literature as well as relevant policy development.
•Economic growth, trade openness and technological growth drive renewable energy use.•Long-term dynamics of the variables are found homogenous across the OECD countries.•Short-term dynamics vary as to variation in technological growth and trade openness.•An understanding of variable dynamics is vital for increasing renewable energy use.
This book is about how much people earn and why the distribution of earnings has been changing over time. The gap between the top and bottom in the United States has widened significantly since 1980. ...Why has this happened? Is it due to new technologies? What is the role of globalisation? Are there historical precedents? The book begins with the "race" between technology and education, and shows that continuing technical progress does not necessarily imply a continuing rise in dispersion. It then examines the experience of 20 OECD countries over the twentieth century, material presented in the form of 20 country case studies. The book breaks new ground in assembling data on the distribution of individual earnings covering much of the twentieth century and drawing on a variety of under-exploited sources. The findings overturn a number of widely-held beliefs. It is not the earnings of the low paid that have been most affected by the recent changes; widening is largely due to what is happening at the top. The recent rise in earnings dispersion is not unprecedented, but should be seen as part of a longer-run history of successive compression and expansion of earnings differences. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/9780199532438/toc.html
This study replicates and extends the results presented in a top-cited article in this journal, Inglesi-Lotz (2016), which analyzes the impact of renewable energy consumption to economic growth for ...the OECD countries by applying the ordinary least squares with fixed effect estimator on the data from 1990 to 2010. By using the same data and methods, this study first produces and compare empirical results with those reported in the original article. Then, it applies a set of new econometric methods on the same data to address heterogeneity in renewable energy and economic growth across the analyzed group of countries. The panel quantile regression estimation shows that the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is positive for lower and low-middle quantiles; however, its effect becomes negative for middle, high-middle, and higher quantiles when renewable energy consumption is proxied by the absolute value. Furthermore, a negative impact of renewable energy on economic growth is observed in almost all quantiles when it is proxied by the share of renewable energy consumption to total energy consumption. These results greatly differ from those of the original study
•This study aims to replicate and extend Inglesi-Lotz's (2016)•The panel quantile regression is used for empirical analysis.•Renewable energy consumption contributes to economic growth for lower and low middle quantiles.•Renewable energy consumption negatively impacts economic growth in middle and upper quantiles.
The information revolution, in recent years, has worked as a catalyst to create a globalized yet localized world with local governments playing an ever-increasing role in the domestic and global ...economy. How these governments will be able to shoulder their responsibilities' especially the delivery of local services more effectively is the concern of this book. The book, edited by Anwar Shah, provides a comparative perspective on international practices in local governance and draws lessons from these experiences to guide future reform. Case studies include the following countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Contributors to this volume include Jose Afonso, Erika Araujo, Miguel Asensio, Brian Dollery, Chris Heymans, Roy Kelly, David King, Leonardo Letelier, Jorgen Lotz, Mereurt Makhamutova, Melville McMillan, Nobuki Mochida, Remy Prud homme, Jerzy Regulski, Larry Schroeder, Kaniz Siddique, Jesper Steffensen, and Pawel Swianiewicz. This important new series represents a response to several independent evaluations in recent years that have argued that development practitioners and policy makers dealing with public sector reforms in developing countries and, indeed, anyone with a concern for effective public governance could benefit from a synthesis of newer perspectives on public sector reforms. This series distills current wisdom and presents tools of analysis for improving the efficiency, equity, and efficacy of the public sector. Leading public policy experts and practitioners have contributed to the series.
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