bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Standardized Identifiers and Electronic Data Interchange Rules for Music
Authors: Elton Serona
Published: August 2020

The music industry uses several categories of information standards, which involve policies, governance rules, and technical specifications. This chapter explains the standardized ways of identifying music-related parties, intellectual property, publications, products, and releases; of formatting music metadata; and of exchanging data electronically. It describes how parties such as songwriters/composers, music publishers, recording artists, performers on sound recordings, and record companies are identified through use of the IPI, IPN, and ISNI; intellectual property such as musical compositions and sound recordings and music videos are identified through use of the ISWC, ISRC, acoustic fingerprints, and watermarks; and publications, products, and releases are identified through the use of the ISMN, GTIN, and GRiD. It explores the way that Music Data Style Guides are used to set rules regarding the presentation of information to consumers and the structure of data which accompanies digital music files. It explains the electronic data interchange standards, including the CIS and DDEX message suites, which are used to efficiently communicate information between parties in the supply and value chains. Finally, the chapter looks to the future, considering the information management segment of the music industry as a form of IT service management and explores ways that people, process, and technology may come together to maximize business value.
Border Violence in Latin America
Authors: Carrión-Mena Fernando , Gottsbacher Markus
Published: August 2020

Violence across borders has experienced a global transformation as a consequence of regional integration, especially in border regions where the presence of global crime networks exacerbates complementary asymmetries. In such cases, borders are transformed from predominantly national spaces of encountering and separation into hubs of world economic circuits—both legal and illegal. This transformation produces two important changes: on the one hand, borders become less geographically fixed and more fluid spaces; on the other hand, the central actor of illegal markets is no longer the contraband smuggler but rather a trafficker of persons, goods, and services from distant territories. The text addresses these dynamics and focuses on three topics: the relationship between borders and actors, the configuration of particular forms of border violence, and the security politics in South American countries.
Introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society
Authors: Rice Ronald E. , Yates Simeon J. , Blejmar Jordana
Published: August 2020

This chapter summarizes the main themes associated with relationships between digital technology and society. It first proposes four central characteristics of digital technology that differentiate this concept from the more general term “information society.” Then it maps the growth of the use of terms associated with digital technology in articles in academic databases from 1972 through 2018, and in books from 1967 through 2008. However, the main focus is on summarizing the emergent themes associated with 89 recent books on digital technology society: (A) theory and conceptualization of this vast social change; (B) technology (venues and characteristics), (C) issues (content, creation; big data; civic issues; participation, engagement; inclusion, exclusion, discrimination; ethics, ethical issues; and managing the digital experience), (D) contexts (digitization of self and others; health; relationships; user groups; culture, everyday life, education, learning; work and organizations; and law, policy, regulation), and (E) effects (negative; positive; societal; contradictions, paradoxes, tensions, unintended). Finally, it describes the origins and motivations for this handbook and its main themes.
The Changing Nature of Knowledge and Service Work in the Age of Intelligent Machines
Authors: Coombs Crispin , Hislop Donald , Taneva Stanimira , Barnard Sarah
Published: August 2020

One of the most significant recent technological developments concerns the application of intelligent machines to jobs that up to now have been considered safe from automation. These changes have generated considerable debate regarding the impacts that the widespread adoption of intelligent machines could have on the nature of work. This chapter provides a thematic review, across multiple academic disciplines, of the current state of academic knowledge regarding the impact of intelligent machines on knowledge and service work. Adopting a work-practice perspective, the chapter reviews the extant literature concerning changing relations between workers and intelligent machines, the adoption and acceptance of intelligent machines, and ethical issues associated with greater machine human collaboration. A key finding is that much of the research discusses intelligent machines complementing and extending human capabilities rather than removing humans from work processes. The concept of augmentation of humans and human work, rather than wholesale replacement from automation, flows through the literature across a range of domains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the main gaps in existing knowledge and ways in which future research may provide a deeper understanding of how people (currently and in the near future) experience intelligent machines in their day-to-day work practice. These include the need for multi-disciplinary research, the role of contexts, the need for more and better empirical research, the changing relationships between humans and intelligent machines, the adoption and acceptance of the technology, and ethical issues.
Digitizing Cultural Complexity
Authors: Nugent-Folan Georgina , Edmond Jennifer
Published: August 2020

One of the major terminological forces driving information and communication technology (ICT) integration in research today is “big data.” The characteristics of big data make big data sound inclusive and integrative. However, in practice such approaches are highly selective, excluding input that cannot be effectively structured, represented, or digitized; in other words, excluding complex data. Yet complex data are precisely the kind that human activity tends to produce, but the technological imperative to enhance signal through the reduction of noise does not accommodate this richness. The objective of this chapter is to explore the impact of bias in digital approaches to knowledge creation by investigating the delimiting effect digital mediation and datafication can have on rich, complex cultural data. If rich or complex data prove difficult to fully represent on a small-scale level, in the transition to a big data environment, we run the risk of losing much of what makes this material useful or interesting in the first place. We will begin by reviewing some of the existing implicit definitions of data that underlie ICT-driven research. In doing so will draw attention to the heterogeneity of definitions of data, to identify the key terms associated with data demarcation and data use, and to then expand on the implications of this heterogeneity.
ESRC Review
Authors: Yates Simeon J. , Townsend Leanne , Whitty Monica , Rice Ronald E. , Carmi Elinor
Published: August 2020

This chapter describes the analyses and results for the ESRC Domain of Health and Well-Being, guided by a three-part main question: “whether technology makes us healthier, better educated, and more productive.” It first provides an initial overview of the major insights from the literature review and analysis, the Delphi surveys, and workshop discussions about the relevant range of the concepts of health and well-being in a digital age. The resulting focus is initially mostly about the technology but later on users, health, and research. Eight main topics emerged, including health care, measures and measurement, mobile and smartphone devices, social support, and weight loss. The analyses also highlighted theory, methods, and approaches in the literature, showing a relatively even distribution of deductive–inductive approaches and quantitative–qualitative approaches, using several well-known theories from psychology (e.g., theories of behavior change) and sociology (social networks). The review provides examples of literature from the project’s study period that illustrate these topics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions (e.g., cross-platform or holistic assessments examining the effects of broad, everyday digital technology use on health and well-being) and research challenges (e.g., methods, rapid change in health care technology, big data for health, and linking of personal and clinical health data with well-being outcomes).
Literacy in Emerging Sign Language Communities
Authors: Gagne Deanna L. , Coppola Marie
Published: August 2020

Literacy in Deaf communities has been redefined to include knowledge and skill in the production and comprehension of sign language as well as in the written form of the larger community’s spoken language. However, this reconceptualization has occurred primarily in communities with well-established sign languages. This chapter considers this type of literacy in emerging sign language contexts where the social, political, and financial resources are oftentimes scarce. The chapter presents the community of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) signers, a newly emerged sign language that is now just over 40 years old, as a case study and explores the educational, cultural, and social evolution of NSL. Considering this context, findings are presented that speak to the relationship between language, cognitive development, and academic success particular to sign literacy. These findings are presented in the context of other emerging languages in both urban and rural/village settings.
Historical Approaches to the Study of Political Executives
Authors: Laing Matthew , McCaffrie Brendan
Published: August 2020

Historical research has always been used to inform the study of politics, and historical analysis is a common thread through political theories from Plato to Habermas. Several traditions that take a historical approach to political executives can be discerned, including political history, historical patterning, hermeneutics, and historical institutionalism, though it has been the lattermost which has dominated in recent decades. This has made history as a foundation for political analysis considerably more methodical and robust, and has spawned important subfields, many of which have made valuable and influential contributions to the study of executive politics. That ‘history matters’ has been well-established, but how it matters is still an evolving subject of study, as methodological debates, idiosyncratic theories, and inconsistent analytical frameworks are still commonplace. Moreover, political history, once a flourishing tradition in executive politics, has declined in recent decades, exposing the complex relationship between political and historical disciplines.
Government Formation and Termination
Authors: Schleiter Petra
Published: August 2020

Most of the time government formation and termination in parliamentary, semi-presidential, and presidential democracies entails a degree of bargaining between political parties and, where relevant, the president. This chapter reviews the literature that analyses these bargaining processes and their outcomes. It examines the motivations and resources of parties and presidents in negotiating cabinet representation, the attributes of cabinets, their durability, the different modes of cabinet termination, and the methodological challenges that studying cabinet formation and termination gives rise to. Since the 1990s, I argue, the confluence of the institutionalist turn in the literature on parliamentary governments and the rising interest in cabinet formation and termination among scholars who study semi-presidential and presidential democracies has lent increasing realism to models of government formation and termination. At the same time, the merger of these different research traditions highlights new challenges which are identified in the chapter’s conclusion.
Presidents and Cabinets
Authors: Elgie Robert
Published: August 2020

The relationship between presidents and cabinets has attracted less scholarly attention than the prime minister/cabinet relationship. The relationship is typically captured in the theoretical and conceptual terms of the principal-agent framework. In presidential systems, cabinet is the agent of the president, as it is the agent of parliament in parliamentary systems, but in semi-presidential systems, and especially in the president-presidentialism variety, cabinet has two principals. This has resulted in hypotheses for empirical research into the powers of the president over cabinet, and the level of conflict between president and cabinet. With regard to the dominance of the president, the proportion of non-partisan ministers in the cabinet has been shown to be an important indicator. However, the chapter ends with the suggestion to look beyond regime-level differences. The category of presidential systems in particular hides considerable variety, and the study of presidential systems, especially in Latin America, has important potential in this regard.
Cabinet Decision-making in Parliamentary Systems
Authors: Vercesi Michelangelo
Published: August 2020

This chapter deals with the internal decision-making process of political executives in parliamentary systems, that is, how executives take their own collective decisions. The focus is on the cabinet system as a whole, including both cabinet members and other involved party-political and bureaucratic actors. In particular, the chapter reviews literature’s debates about the nature of cabinet government, the role of prime ministers, and variations of decision-making. A special attention is payed to factors explaining intra-cabinet power distribution and the choice of different decision-making arenas. After introducing the topic, an overview of conceptual issues and main research questions is provided. Subsequently, the work discusses the way in which scholars have addressed these issues and the findings they have reached. The final part stresses existing deficits and seeks to set the agenda for future research.
Executive-Legislative Relations in Democratic Regimes
Authors: Taylor-Robinson Michelle M. , Escobar-Lemmon Maria C.
Published: August 2020

To make lasting policy executives must get the legislature to pass their proposals. How do executives form working relationships with the legislative branch, and when do they seek control over rather than negotiation with the legislature to achieve their preferred policy outcomes? Scholars of presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential systems have sought to answer this question from a variety of angles. We consider how executives use and manage coalitions to achieve their preferred outcomes; the constitutional or chamber rules that allow them to influence which bills become law; and the way changes in the external environment can lead to shifts in the executive’s strategy. We conclude by offering suggestions for extending the study of executive-legislative relations including advocating for more comparisons across different institutional structures and party systems and a recognition that increased diversity in the executive branch may impact executive-legislative relations.
The Political Executive Returns
Authors: Andeweg Rudy B. , Elgie Robert , Helms Ludger , Kaarbo Juliet , Müller-Rommel Ferdinand
Published: August 2020

Recent developments across political landscapes have contributed to a re-empowerment of the political executive. The authority of political executives was once largely autonomous and unchecked, but diminished with the development of constitutional and democratic constraints and further curtailed by more pressures on and more competitors to the state. The drivers behind the re-empowerment of political executives are also diverse, stemming from both domestic and international sources. The study of political executives has also experienced a revival; political executives are being rediscovered by students and scholars of politics. This is partly due to the re-empowerment trend, but it is also connected to developments within the research program on political executives. Although the term ‘political executives’ will be understood by scholars and non-scholars alike, there is considerable room for different notions of the exact position and functions of political executives in different types of political regimes. This introductory chapter also discusses the borderlines between the political executive and other actors within the executive: the bureaucracy and the head of state.
A Rational Choice Perspective on Political Executives
Authors: Indriðason Indriði H. , Kam Christopher
Published: August 2020

Rational choice theory has shaped the study of executive politics in important ways. We contend most of the rational choice literature on executive politics can be seen as exploring the consequences of two related problems that all executives confront: credible commitment and delegation. The credible commitment problem arises because executives require political support. This support is forthcoming only to the extent that the executive can assure potential supporters that the executive will faithfully advance their interests. How, then, does an executive make a credible commitment to advance his or her supporters’ interests? The delegation problem arises because executives must rely on subordinates to carry out their agenda. Such delegation is efficient from executive’s perspective only to the extent that subordinates competently and faithfully execute their orders. How, then, does an executive choose and monitor his or her subordinates? We briefly review the key components of rational choice theory that distinguish it from other theoretical approaches. We then examine how the two different problems have different expressions in parliamentary and presidential systems.
Feminist Approaches to the Study of Political Executives
Authors: Beckwith Karen
Published: August 2020

This chapter focuses on feminist approaches to the study of executive politics, gender, and power. The chapter examines how feminist executive political analysis has employed gender as a concept and a process, identifying conceptual and methodological challenges for this body of research and discussing four midrange theories of women’s access to presidencies, prime ministerships, and cabinet posts: cultural models, gender norm explanations, supply and demand models, and feminist institutionalist analysis. The chapter concludes with reflections on a future research agenda for feminist scholarship on political executives: detaching gendered analyses of the political executive from the scholarship on women and parliamentary politics; developing institution-specific gendered analyses across and within political executive offices; and focusing on the gendered consequences of the removal function for political executives from office.
Ethical Approaches to the Study of Political Executives
Authors: Uhr John
Published: August 2020

The contemporary study of the ethics of political executives lacks a coherent focus. Although the extensive study of political executives includes many studies of important ethical issues reviewed at length here, the field of executive studies still lacks a common language or grammar about relationships between ethics and executives. This chapter proposes a fresh start to the search for greater intellectual coherence through recovery of neglected ‘foundation stone’ of executive ethics in the writings of Enlightenment philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon (1561‒1626). Bacon’s Essays can help contemporary students of executive studies learn much about ethics of public leadership from a seasoned statesman, whose influential ‘Baconian method’ was intended to shape governance as much as natural science. The chapter notes alternative accounts of executive ethics derived from rival political theories, such as the realism of Machiavelli and the idealism of Kant.
Methodology and the Study of the Political Executive
Authors: Elgie Robert
Published: August 2020

The predominant methodologies that are used in the study of the political executive are closely linked to the various approaches that have been applied in this domain. The intellectual history of the study of political executives shows the familiar evolution from the ‘old’ institutionalism via behavioralism to varieties of ‘new’ institutionalism, without any approach being replaced completely by another, resulting in more methodological pluralism than ever before. Each of these quantitative and qualitative methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, but to a greater or lesser extent they share several problems concerning the material they use. Most notably, the very nature of political executives brings with it severe limitations to data availability. This chapter ends with a plea for more systematic attention to methodological issues such as case selection, and with suggestions for new methodological techniques that may help improve the validity of the conclusions that scholars wish to draw about the political executive.
The Study of Symmetry in Empirical Aesthetics
Authors: Bertamini Marco , Rampone Giulia
Published: August 2020

Symmetry has attracted interest from many scholars, scientists, and artists over the centuries. It has been described as a key principle of aesthetics as well as a factor in perception of shape. We critically review the empirical evidence regarding the link between symmetry and aesthetics, between symmetry and beauty/attractiveness, and between symmetry and affect, and discuss possible mechanisms. We show that, although symmetry entails regularity and redundancy, there is no clear and strong link between beauty and simplicity. Also, although symmetry influences aesthetic judgments, it is difficult to isolate a neural correlate of this link, suggesting that spontaneous aesthetic responses to symmetry are not elicited in the brain unless people are explicitly processing symmetry aesthetically. Finally, we show that preference for symmetry lies on a continuum from a universal tendency to prefer symmetry to obsessive need for order and balance.
Party Competition and Representation
Authors: Dalton Russell J.
Published: August 2020

Democratic representation requires that voters can find a party that represents their interests. Thus, representation is a function of the policy demands of citizens and even more so on the supply of party choices at election time. This chapter describes the factors that affect the choices that parties and party systems offer to voters, such as the number of political cleavages, the structure of the electoral system, the number of parties, the ideological diversity of these choices, and other factors. This chapter uses the Left–Right scale to describes the representation process across contemporary party systems. The chapter also considers the implications of these patterns for the functioning of representative democracy, and the issues facing future research.
Party Government and Voters
Authors: van der Brug Wouter , Harteveld Eelco , van Slageren Jaap
Published: August 2020

This chapter focuses on the extent to which voters fulfil the requirements of the ‘party government model’ to be represented meaningfully. The main requirements are that (1) a single ideological dimension structures their attitudes; (2) voters know the positions of parties on this dimension; and (3) this dimension structures their party choice. The main obstacle to representation is that there is little structure in public opinion. The largest differences exist between countries, but we observe surprisingly little change over time and only small differences between generations. The over-time changes are in the direction of less ideological structuration, which is not good news from the perspective of representation.
Intra-Party Democracy and Representation
Authors: Poguntke Thomas , Scarrow Susan E.
Published: August 2020

This chapter examines the much-debated topic of intra-party democracy (IPD). It reviews normative questions concerning whether democracy requires parties’ decision-making procedures to be as similar as possible to those of national constitutions. It also considers evidences about the practical impact of the rules that parties choose, including whether rules which claim to empower grass-roots party supporters actually have such effects. As the chapter makes clear, there are different variants of IPD, assembly based and plebiscitary versions. Yet, despite growing scholarly interest in how party rules affect more general political outcomes, there is still much disagreement about what it means for a political party to be internally democratic, and about how such democracy (or its lack) may affect the nature or quality of representation in electoral democracies.
Parties’ Election Manifestos and Public Policies
Authors: Thomson Robert
Published: August 2020

This chapter examines the linkage between parties’ election manifestos and subsequent public policies in the light of democratic theory and practice. Democratic theorists are divided on the extent to which and ways in which the contents of parties’ manifestos should accurately foreshadow future government policies. The actual strength of the manifesto–policy linkage has been examined through a range of approaches, including analyses that focus on the policy themes that parties emphasize and the specific campaign promises that parties make in their manifestos. These studies find considerable variation in the extent to which parties’ manifestos are congruent with future policies, and some of this variation can be explained by institutions that compel parties to share power with others. The evidence also indicates that there are high levels of congruence between what parties write in their election manifestos and what governments subsequently do, at least under certain conditions.
Populists in Power
Authors: Enyedi Zsolt , Whitefield Stephen
Published: August 2020

Much of the literature on populism, particularly in contemporary advanced democracies, focuses on its disruptive power to shake up mainstream party systems, to criticize the functioning of democratic institutions, and to mobilize critical citizens against elites. This chapter considers how populists construct regimes when they have established themselves in power, taking cases from post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe as examples. We identify specific governmental policies, ideological tenets, institutional designs, and discursive practices that enable populists to stabilize their rule and forge representational linkages with large blocks of the population. The chapter questions, however, whether the success of populists in power in these cases provides an indication of how populists might succeed in advanced democracies or whether it is a result of the peculiar political conditions of post-Communism, the absence of which suggests limiting conditions in other contexts.
Does Economic and Political Integration Undermine Representative Democracy?
Authors: Fernandes Jorge M. , Magalhães Pedro C.
Published: August 2020

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis are frequently treated as having led to a breakdown in democratic representation in Europe, as deeply constrained governments became unable to translate the preferences of citizenry into actual policy. However, after reviewing the available evidence, we find that the crisis seems to have contributed to increasing both the salience of economic policy issues and the ideological differentiation around them, amongst both parties and voters. Furthermore, the composition of governments remained relevant for the policy responses to the crisis, even among those countries that were most deeply affected. To be sure, the picture regarding the extent to which governments remained responsive to changing citizen preferences remains very incomplete. However, the existing evidence warns against underestimating the resilience of the mechanisms that contribute to keep re-election-minded officials in line with the preferences of citizens, even in what concerns supranational policymaking.
Gender Equality
Authors: Celis Karen , Erzeel Silvia
Published: August 2020

The study of descriptive representation is key in projects that aim to understand and further gender equality. But what does it mean to achieve gender equality in descriptive representation? And how can descriptive equality be measured and understood? Gender and politics scholarship contends that gender equality is about more than counting women and men in elected assemblies. Concerns related to power, agency, and intersectionality should equally be addressed. This chapter engages with these challenges by going back to the conceptual roots of descriptive representation. Based on a re-reading of Pitkin’s foundational study on representation, it suggests that scholars can counter several of the complexities that have been identified by taking information-giving on board as an additional criterion. Studying descriptive representation as information-giving would allow for an improved understanding of the causes and consequences of political inequality, and of descriptive representatives as a source of equality in other political spheres.
Why a Book on Danish Politics?
Authors: Munk Christiansen Peter , Elklit Jørgen , Nedergaard Peter
Published: August 2020

Danish politics is comparable to the politics of other small European states. However, it is also unique because of its many years of minority governments, its history of EU opt-outs, its high electoral turnout even in local elections, and its high level of trust in government and Parliament. Other remarkable features are high female labour participation in spite of a lack of proactive gender policies, and one of the world’s largest local and regional government sectors. Denmark had its earthquake election as early as 1973 with many new parties entering Parliament. However, the June 2019 elections still saw the huge majority of voters voting for old parties. Denmark is also known as a country with a high taxation level and one of the world’s biggest publicly funded service sectors, possibly because minority governments strive for majority support for their legislative proposals. Other specific characteristics are the mix of market-oriented policies and the huge welfare state. These topics—and many more—are presented, analysed, and discussed in the book. The intention has been that the chapters should reflect the state-of-the-art in research on the various topics and simultaneously provide new knowledge and suggest future lines of research.
Municipalities and Regions
Authors: Houlberg Kurt , Ejersbo Niels
Published: August 2020

Denmark is a highly decentralized unitary state with a three-tier administrative system consisting of central government, 5 regions, and 98 municipalities. Danish municipalities are some of the largest compared to the rest of Europe. They are multi-purpose entities responsible for a wide range of technical and social services and have for decades been entitled with a high level of fiscal autonomy. A major reform of the local government system in 2007 followed by a strengthened national spending regime influenced the decentralization framework and autonomy of local governments in Denmark. While the Danish local government system continues to be among the most decentralized local government systems in Western democracies and has demonstrated a high degree of adaptability to changing conditions and externalities, it also faces a number of challenges in order to maintain the delicate balance between being local self-government and implementing agency of the state. These challenges include issues like coordination and capacity for handling complex decentralized tasks, pressure on the institutional framework for coordination of the local government’s economic activities with overall national policies, and an increasing politicization of the equalization scheme.
The Constitution
Authors: Christensen Jens Peter
Published: August 2020

The Constitutional Act of Denmark from 1953 provides the framework for democracy and the constitutional state. Denmark is a monarchy; however, the Queen’s role is mostly ceremonial. Compared to the constitutions of other nations, the Danish Constitution is brief, containing simple guidelines for the interaction between government and Parliament. These rules have allowed ample room for parliamentary life to evolve with the times. The few rules about the legislative process include a number of minority guaranties, for example, with respect to referendums. Such referendums have played a significant role in the transfer of power to the EU. The courts rule in all cases, both criminal and civil, as well as cases involving the legality of administrative decisions and cases concerning the constitutionality of legislation. Denmark does not have special administrative or constitutional courts. The Danish constitutional catalogue of rights is less comprehensive than in many European countries, with rules based on the original Constitutional Act of 1849. These have only been minimally expanded since. In praxis, constitutional rights are supplemented by the European Convention on Human Rights whose provisions are implemented legislatively. The Constitutional Act is difficult to amend, and there are currently no imminent amendments.
In War and Peace
Authors: Wivel Anders
Published: August 2020

Military activism is a defining characteristic of Denmark’s security and defence policy. This policy reflects the combination of increased international demand for military engagement since the end of the Cold War and the ability and willingness of Danish decision-makers to meet this demand. Danish willingness is the result of a merger of two distinct Danish perspectives on the aims and means of security and defence policy of a small state, one focused on the short-term military defence of the country, the other on long-term diplomatic efforts at creating a more peaceful international order. In the eyes of Danish decision-makers, a changed security order after the Cold War collapsed the distinction between the two perspectives. They saw military activism as a route to short-term security as well as a more peaceful order in the future. Consequently, they reformed the Danish armed forces, giving up territorial defence in favour of expeditionary forces. However, defence expenditure remains well below the 2 per cent NATO threshold for the near future.
Economic Policy
Authors: Andersen Torben M.
Published: August 2020

The Danish economy found itself in deep disequilibrium in the late 1970s/early 1990s, with high unemployment, inflation, and deficits on public budgets and the current account. A string of reforms starting with the fixed exchange rate policy from the early 1980s, followed by labour market reforms (the flexicurity model) in the 1990s, have radically changed things, eliminating all macroeconomic imbalance problems. Moreover, in a forward perspective, pension and retirement reforms ensure high replacement rates for pensions, and fiscal policy is sustainable. The Danish experience shows that policy choices are possible even in an era of globalization. Overall, the welfare state has been consolidated, and in a comparative perspective, Denmark has attained a high per capita income level and low income inequality. Two points are particularly important. First, while the public sector is large, the private sector is regulated in a market-conform way. Thus, the Danish model is not ‘politics against markets’. Second, welfare arrangements focus on supporting labour market participation and human capital acquisition. Since the financial viability of the welfare model ultimately depends on maintaining high employment levels in the private sector, the conflict between welfare objectives and economic performance is not as stark as it may first appear.
Welfare State Policies
Authors: Petersen Klaus
Published: August 2020

Denmark is a welfare state. Arguably, the development of the welfare state over the last 120 years is one of the most striking features of Danish history and society. An indication of Hegel’s famous phrase that ‘the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’, the crisis of the welfare state in the 1970s sparked an interest in understanding both the welfare state’s historical development as well as the changes that took place in the present. This chapter starts with defining the main characteristics of the Danish welfare state, followed by an outline of its historical development (organized around four historical phases) until the end of the ‘golden age’ in the 1970s. First, the following sections discuss the crisis of the Danish welfare state and the main challenges confronting the Danish welfare model since the 1970s. Second, they offer an overview of the main trends of policy change over the last four decades. Developments over the last 3–4 decades have triggered an ongoing academic and public discussion on the nature of the changes: are these changes taking place within the paradigm of the classic Danish welfare state, or are they leading towards a new paradigm?
Media and Politics
Authors: Olesen Thomas
Published: August 2020

The chapter’s premise is the social contract between media and democracy, which features strongly in the professional values of Danish journalists. Media have become so central to the political process that many refer to a mediatization of politics. At the same time, research points to a crisis of journalism with declining readership, trust, and professional authority. These challenges have been set in motion at least partly by new media consumption and production patterns. The crisis of journalism prompts two questions: is it reversing the process of mediatization, and does it erode journalism’s role as democratic watchdogs in Denmark? The chapter shows that the crisis of journalism must be considered in a comparative perspective and that the Danish media system demonstrates a degree of resilience to it. It also notes, however, that traditional media have indeed lost their privileged position as organizers of the public sphere. Rather than seeing a reversal of mediatization, it makes more sense to speak of a mediatization 2.0, and rather than identifying an erosion of the media’s watchdog role, it is more accurate to say that they now share it with a host of other agents in the current hybridized media system.
The Government and the Prime Minister
Authors: Hansen Martin Ejnar
Published: August 2020

The formation of Danish governments and their governance continues to be of interest both on their own and comparatively. Minority coalition governments are the norm in Denmark, increasing the importance of support parties for the government to pass its policies. Danish politics can increasingly be seen as two blocs: the ‘red’ bloc led by the Social Democrats and the ‘blue’ bloc led by the Liberals (although it was the Conservatives in the 1980s). This division may have increased the tendency of the presidentialization of Danish politics, not least with the prime minister’s increasing engagement in the day-to-day running of the government, especially with regard to foreign policy. Similarly, the minister of finance is ever more important as well for the day-to-day running of other departments. Ministerial turnover through reshuffles happens during the tenure of most governments, but portfolio redesign mostly occurs when governments are formed. The distribution of portfolios is proportional, but there is much variation in which portfolios parties prefer, with some valuing importance over number of portfolios. Overall, the Danish government and prime minister is a well-researched area, although there is still significant scope for research innovation.
Organizing Central Government
Authors: Grøn Caroline Howard , Houlberg Salomonsen Heidi
Published: August 2020

With the Danish civil service coming out on top in numerous international ratings, it seems worthwhile considering what characterizes the way it works and the central institutions on which it is built. In this chapter, we argue that the Danish central government is built on a relatively weak, formally institutionalized foundation. Rather, we argue that when looking at questions such as formal organization and interactions between politicians and civil servants, we find pragmatic solutions to some of the central challenges. In terms of the size and organization of central government, we find a number of different solutions. In addition, we find an ongoing adjustment of the way civil servants and politicians interact. We discuss this finding and argue that such a pragmatic approach may come with many advantages in terms of day-to-day effectiveness and responsiveness to changing political needs. However, it also demands a lot from the political and administrative actors in the system to ensure that pragmatism does not turn into ‘anything goes’.
The Global Experience in Special Economic Zones
Authors: Farole Thomas
Published: August 2020

This chapter provides a global, historical overview of the role of special economic zones (SEZs) in supporting industrialization, showing that approaches, experiences, and results vary widely across countries and over time, and identifying a number of key lessons on what differentiates successful from unsuccessful SEZ programmes. Amongst these lessons, the chapter highlights the importance of political support, location decisions, aligning the incentives of key stakeholders, strategic flexibility, and local economy integration over time. Perhaps most importantly, it argues that SEZs which successfully supported industrialization have aligned their SEZ offering with comparative advantage and have used the flexibility of the SEZ instrument in a targeted way to overcome critical constraints to large-scale private investment.
Greening Structural Transformation
Authors: Altenburg Tilman , Vrolijk Kasper
Published: August 2020

Enormous environmental challenges call for environmentally sustainable forms of economic development. In this chapter we discuss the urgency of green structural transformation in developing countries and the role that industrial hubs can play in this process. We first itemize the different grounds for ‘greening’ industrial structures, then review the most practical green industrial policies, and conclude by appraising three green hubs: eco-cities, green clusters, and eco-industrial parks. Altogether our chapter brings to the fore that there is considerable leeway for developing countries to seek spatial and non-spatial green policies to reduce their ecological footprint whilst increasing competitiveness simultaneously. There are indeed distinct cost advantages in incorporating green incentives and technologies in new cities, clusters, and parks, rather than retrofitting them ex post.
Special Economic Zones in China and India
Authors: Zheng Yu , Aggarwal Aradhna
Published: August 2020

This chapter compares and contrasts the SEZ experiences of China and India, two fast-growing major economies of the world, by revisiting the evolutionary process, institutional arrangements, and performance of SEZs from a political-economy perspective. The objective is to reveal the contextual factors that determine the outcome of the SEZ policy. Our analysis suggests that it is the broader political and economic contexts within which SEZs are embedded that underlie the differences in the SEZ experiences of China and India. The study enriches the literature that focuses on the conditions determining success and failures of SEZs.
The Development of Knowledge-based Export Clusters
Authors: Cornick Jorge
Published: August 2020

After the great liberalization and structural reforms that started in the 1980s, most of Latin America has failed in its attempts to transition from a commodity-based to a highly diversified, knowledge-intensive economy. Mexico (and specifically the state of Jalisco) and Costa Rica are partial exceptions to this trend: both economies have developed diversified, high-complexity, knowledge-intensive export sectors on the basis, mostly, of FDI by MNCs. Neither region has been fully transformed into a modern, high-productivity economy. The sources of their relative success, but also the limiting factors that have prevented them from achieving wider economic transformation are explored in this chapter.
Legal Framework for Industrial Hubs
Authors: Kidane Won , Fikre Belachew M.
Published: August 2020

Industrial hubs, as instruments of economic policy, are unapologetic creations of the law. They take different forms but are essentially realized through a regime of waivers and exceptions to the rules of general applicability. The legal framework, quintessentially domestic in nature, is an embodiment of the Latin maxim lex specialis derogat legi generali. The lex specialis is ipso facto a function of each domestic system. Any exposition of the institutional and legal framework of industrial hubs is thus necessarily an appraisal of a series of parallel systems of law in varied jurisdictions representing a wide range of legal systems. The fundamental commonalities of the features of this regime of waivers and exceptions do, however, permit a systematic and unified appraisal. This chapter identifies the conceptual origin and evolution of the institutional and legal frameworks of industrial hubs, evaluates their function in a comparative context, and assesses the extent of harmonization across jurisdictions and the possible emergence of some useful transnational best practices.
Special Economic Zones in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Zeng Douglas Zhihua
Published: August 2020

SEZs can be an effective catalyst for industrialization and structural transformation for developing countries if implemented properly in the right context. However, the performance of SEZs is mixed globally, with East Asia outperforming other regions in general. In sub-Saharan Africa, with the rapid industrial transfer wave of recent years and inspiration from the East Asian success, countries have shown renewed interest in this policy instrument. This chapter provides an overview and an in-depth analysis of Africa’s SEZ experiences through thirteen case examples, identifies the key drivers of SEZs’ success, and draws useful lessons which can be applicable to other developing countries.
Thracian
Authors: Paliga Sorin
Published: August 2020

This chapter focuses on the Thracians. The Thracians did not have a written tradition. This detail may be considered either normal, as most ethnic groups of antiquity did not use writing as means of communication; or it may be considered somewhat unexpected, given the proximity of the Thracians to the Greeks and later the Romans of the Empire. Nevertheless, one can work out a quite comprehensive list of Thracian words. The Thracian forms are gleaned from various sources, often with approximate spellings and therefore with a high probability of being misread or misinterpreted. The chapter then looks at Thracian religion, one of the striking features of which is aniconism. Also striking is the peculiar representation of the supreme god, Zalmoxis, also spelled Zamolxis. There is no visual representation of this god or other Thracian gods of ‘classical’ Thracian society. Some Thracian groups adopted Roman ways of life and others resisted into the fourth century. This may have some bearing on the two dialects in modern Albanian—Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian being the main heirs of the Thracians—but this is a matter of debate.