bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
West Germany: The Policy of the Middle Way
Authors: Schmidt Manfred G. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article focuses attention on the distinctive characteristics of economic and social policy in West Germany during the last four decades. It will be argued, that the distinctiveness of state intervention in West Germany resides in a combination of policies of conversative-reformist, liberal and social democratic complexion. The policy of the middle way which results from this combination differs from the extreme poles that are marked by the model of Social-Democratic welfare capitalism on the one hand and market capitalism on the other, but it also comprises elements of both types of political economies. The emergence and the maintenance of the policy of the middle way can largely be attributed to distinctive characteristics of the policy process, and of processes of learning from historical catastrophes.
The Medical Profession and the State in France
Authors: Steffen Monika 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTFrench medicine is organised with dialectical relation between the public and private in health and welfare policy; there is also an ideological impact of public/private confrontation. The article retraces the history of the profession and shows how it was set up both with and against the state, emphasising two ideas at once: the idea of the small independent entrepreneur, guarantor of individual liberty, and the idea of the great state servant, guarantor of the public interest. Public/private confrontation is only rhetorical and bears no relation to the real content of the dualistic health system.
British Industrial Relations Policy Transformed: The Thatcher Legacy
Authors: Marsh David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIt is widely believed by political scientists that the Thatcher Governments transformed British industrial relations and ‘curbed union power’. In contrast, most industrial relations scholars have argued that despite the legislative onslaught relatively little has changed on the shopfloor. This paper examines both claims. Much has changed in Britain since 1979. In particular, the political role of unions has altered substantially. Unions in 1991 are infrequently consulted and have very little influence. In addition, the legislative framework within which unions operate is very different; their activities are much more circumscribed by the law than previously. But much less has changed on the shopfloor; for example, there is limited evidence of a major move to derecognise unions or restrict collective bargaining. Governments can only set the legislative framework within which shopfloor industrial relations operate; it cannot determine outcomes.
Corporatism Without Labor? Industrial Policymaking in the American States
Authors: Gray Virginia , Lowery David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper extends previous analyses of industrial policy from a corporatist perspective. We advocate a mid-level measure of group influence; the measure is based upon analysis of newspaper stories. A preliminary exploration of NewsBank data is reported, and several interesting trends in economic development policy are isolated. Business and education are heavily involved in policymaking whereas labor and political parties are not at all involved. On the whole, a meso-corporatist model in which business, state government, and education are partners seems to fit better than a business capture model. Some speculations are offered about this new American form of corporatism and its resemblance to the Japanese case.
The Policy Analysis-Critical Theory Affair: Wildavsky and Habermas as Bedfellows?
Authors: Forester John 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPolicy analysis may benefit from specific conceptual contributions derived from Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory. In particular, Aaron Wildavsky's emphasis on the policy analyst's fostering of social and political ‘interactions’ can be given concrete empirical content derived from the critical theorist's account of social and communicative action. In addition, the critical theorist's distinction between action and ‘learning’ extends and sharpens Wildavsky's and Lindblom's account of policy outcomes. Once obstacles to social and political learning are distinguished from ordinary constraints upon citizens' action, policy analysis research (as formulated by Wildavsky and Lindblom) can be more concretely specified and then understood also and essentially to involve fundamental normative judgments of the legitimacy of policy-fostered ‘interactions’.
Harnessing the Guinness Effect
Authors: Hanson Bertil L. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPolicy-makers are gravely troubled by a lack of means to get things done. They might like to consider harnessing the ‘Guinness effect’: when a measurement is created, persons come forth to be measured by it. A number of moral and practical objections to the use of the Guinness effect in public policy can be raised, but many of these also apply to other policy devices or indicate that care is needed in designing measurements. They do not preclude the introduction of trial uses of the Guinness effect, especially given the voluntary character of undertaking measureable activities under the scheme. A number of activities by individuals and communities suitable for measurement are suggested. Local statistical bureaus might play the part of defining measurements and monitoring performance.
To Sell or Not to Sell? Telecommunications Policy in Britain and France
Authors: Zahariadis Nikolaos 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTUsing Kingdon's agenda setting model and broadening it to the entire policy formation process, I offer an explanation of why the British privatised their telecommunications authority but the French did not. Privatisation is brought about by coupling three streams or factors in critical moments in time: available alternatives generated in policy communities, high government borrowing needs, and party politics. The findings illuminate the usefulness of Kingdon's model beyond its original application in the United States, and have implications for broader theoretical debates in comparative policy research.
Integrating Comparisons Across Time and Space: Methodology and Applications to Disparities within Yugoslavia
Authors: Sicherl Pavle 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAn extended conceptual and analytical framework is elaborated where proximity in time as one dimension of a multidimensional concept of disparity is used as a tool to integrate space and time in comparative analysis. Time distance measures the difference in time (number of years) when two compared units achieve a given level of the indicator. Time distance emphasises a novel perspective of disparity between the compared units, and time is a universal unit of measurement comparable between countries, levels and units of comparison. It complements rather than substitutes for conventional measures, at the conceptual level the overall degree of disparity is looked upon as a weighted combination of static and dynamic dimensions of disparity.The comparative analysis of socio-economic data sometimes employs comparison across time within a country, e.g. monitoring trends in productivity, per capita income or unemployment. Alternatively, comparison is made across space between countries, e.g. comparing the level of productivity or unemployment in different countries at a given point in time. In each case, the analysis seeks to identify disparities. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the advantage of analysing disparities, referred to often as inequalities or differences, by intergrating comparisons across both time and space. Empirical examples from the regions (republics and autonomous provinces) of the former Yugoslavia are used to provide empirical illustrations of this expanded analytical framework
Nationalization and Privatization: A Rational-Choice Perspective on Efficiency
Authors: Pint Ellen M. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the use of nationalization and privatization policies to redistribute costs and benefits among interest groups, using a rational-choice framework. The major cases considered are the post-war nationalizations and the current wave of privatizations in the United Kingdom, plus France and the United States. The analysis indicates that governments tend to redistribute benefits to more concentrated interest groups, such as organized labor or shareholders, and to impose costs on more diffuse groups, such as consumers and taxpayers. This type of redistribution is often economically inefficient, but politically efficient for the party in power. Policy design is also influenced by the ease with which policies can be changed by future governments within the prevailing political institutions.
Understanding Local Government Responses to Fiscal Pressure: a Cross National Analysis
Authors: Wolman Harold 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTFiscally pressured local governments face the same basic choices in both the United States and the United Kingdom: whether to increase locally raised revenues in order to maintain existing services or to reduce local services. The article first posits a model of local government decision-making in response to fiscal pressure drawn primarily from organizational and systems theory. Local governments are viewed as organizations concerned with maintaining their equilibrium relationships with their external environment (public employees and their unions). The model suggests a series of hypotheses about how local government will respond to fiscal pressure. Case studies of fiscally pressured local governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom are then utilized to describe actual local responses and to assess the usefulness of the model. The article concludes by setting forth a rough hierarchy of preferred local responses.
Between Pluralism and Corporatism German Business Associations and the State
Authors: Streeck Wolfgang 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the complexities and ambiguities of the relationship between the state and business associations by examining the case of West Germany. While business associations continue to lobby the state on behalf of their members, they perform a number of other roles. Association staff often provide information and expert advice to the state. The state can lend associations organisational support by setting rules of political influence that are favourable to them. Business associations become involved in the formulation and even implementation of what are effectively public policy functions, though associations have a ambivalent attitude, preferring both autonomy from the state and influence. Business associations may fend off attempts by the state to subject their members' behaviour to legal regulation by offering self-regulation with state approval; however, this can critically affect relations between associations and their members. Devolution of public authority to business associations is resorted to pragmatically, or opportunistically, by both associations and the state as an expedient solution to individual problems. This arises because associations lack a consistent theory defining their status in relation to the state.
Policy Change in Direct Government Responses to UK Unemployment
Authors: Moon Jeremy 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article examines the patterns of policy change in the field of direct responses to unemployment in the UK. After discussing the nature of the policy area, the article proceeds to identify instances of policy innovation, persistence, succession and termination under the headings of Job Creation, Employment Subsidy, Training, and Youth. As this is a relatively new problem for British government there are several cases of policy innovation, but the most striking finding is of a high number of policy successions. Discussion is then focused upon the relevance of a range of factors which might explain the patterns of policy change deduced, suggesting that the most important of these have been (i) ‘symbolic pay offs’ of policy change; (ii) the in-built terminators in most special employment measures; (iii) the nature and strategic position of the unemployment policy community; (iv) changing cabinet objectives. It is concluded, despite the several problems of this form of analysis pin-pointed, that in this study programme changes were generally good indicators of policy change, providing a useful over-view of this important sphere of government policy.
When Consumers Oppose Consumer Protection: The Politics of Regulatory Backlash
Authors: Vogel David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article examines a neglected phenomenon in the existing literature on social regulation, namely political opposition to regulation that comes not from business but from consumers. It examines four cases of successful grass-roots consumer opposition to government health and safety regulations in the United States. Two involve rules issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a 1974 requirement that all new automobiles be equipped with an engine-interlock system, and a 1967 rule that denied federal highway funds to states that did not require motorcyclists to wear a helmet. In 1977, Congress overturned the Food and Drug Administration's ban on the artificial sweetener, saccharin. Beginning in 1987, the FDA began to yield to pressures from the gay community by agreeing to streamline its procedures for the testing and approval of new drugs designed to fight AIDS and other fatal diseases. The article identifies what these regulations have in common and examines their significance for our understanding the politics of social regulation in the United States and other industrial nations.
From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management
Authors: Twight Charlotte 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper develops a theory synthesizing credit-claiming and blameavoidance explanations of congressional behavior and evaluates it against asbestos policy in the United States from the 1920s through the 1980s. Public policy is viewed as shaped by officeholders' ability to achieve political ends through augmenting information costs and other transaction costs facing the public. Public perceptions are seen both as the endogenous product of congressional information-cost manipulation and as an exogenous constraint that changes in identifiable ways over time. Different policy stances - open credit claiming, concealed credit claiming, early-stage blame avoidance, and full-scale blame avoidance – are predicted to emerge in response to specified conditions, yielding implications about the expected timing of public policy changes. Specific types of transaction-cost manipulation are predicted to accompany the identified policy stances. The US asbestos policy experience is shown to be consistent with the predictions of the model.
Towards a European System of Labor Relations?
Authors: Armingeon Klaus 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAre the systems of collective labor relations in member countries of the European Communities converging towards a common European system of industrial relations? In this paper the hypothesis is put forward that the national systems have not been converging in the past and probably will not do so in the immediate future. The analysis is based on changes in procedural rules of collective labor relations and on data on labor unions, strikes, wage structure, and government employment.
Charges for Merit Goods: Third World Family Planning
Authors: Godwin R. Kenneth 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article examines the arguments for and against user fees, privatisation, and decentralisation of health care and family planning delivery systems and compares the effectiveness of fee-for-service delivery by decentralised systems with that of centralised systems with services provided free of charge. Developing countries have achieved remarkable reductions in fertility rates in the past 25 years, but continuing gains depend largely upon increasing the capacity of family planning and health care delivery systems in rural areas. National governments are unlikely to allocate additional funds to improve delivery systems to rural areas because of the greater political influence of urban areas and the declining health-care budgets of the central government. This situation has led many to propose alternative arrangements for health-care delivery in rural areas.
Don't Blame the Bureaucracy!
Authors: Milward H. Brinton , Rainey Hal G. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPublic agencies and public employees are increasingly berated as inept and inefficient. We argue that the public bureaucracy in the United States is more valuable and effective than generally recognized. Where public agencies do perform badly, the problem is often due to external factors. We discuss the oversimplified calls for more businesslike efficiency in government, the value complexity which complicates evaluation of the public bureaucracy, and the higher standards imposed on the public sector. We also discuss the challenges imposed on public agencies by special interest politics, an overload of highly complex assignments, and adverse public stereotypes. The danger of overlooking these issues is that we will continue to have a huge, active public sector, and decisions about its role and management must not be determined by oversimplification and stereotype.
Budget Deficits, Inflation Accounting, and Macroeconomic Policy: A Skeptical Note
Authors: Catsambas Thanos 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper challenges the mechanical application of inflation accounting to public sector deficits as it has been suggested in recent years. Although the theoretical considerations underlying the proposed adjustment for the inflation premium of interest payments are well taken, the new approach has fundamentally focused on measurement issues with little attention paid to the behavioral aspects of microeconomic adjustment. This paper, therefore, raises skepticism about the usefulness of inflation accounting, if such a correction is not accompanied by a conceptual model that links behavioral responses of individuals to balance sheets and other stock variables. In a departure from previous investigations, the paper also points out the possibility that inflation accounting might have more relevant implications for public, rather than private, spending.
Systematically Pinching Ideas: A Comparative Approach to Policy Design
Authors: Schneider Anne , Ingram Helen 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPolicy design, whether conceptualized as a verb referring to the process of formulating policy ideas, or as a noun describing the logic through which policy intends to achieve its objectives, remains relatively uncharted territory. This paper reviews what we know about how policy designs emerge, and identifies the kinds of biases and weaknesses that are introduced into designs by the decision heuristics employed. Theories of policy invention and expert decision-making suggest that individuals search through large amounts of relevant information stored in memory, reason by analogies, make comparisons, and either copy or simulate patterns of information. Policy scholars may contribute to improved policy design by making more explicit the biases introduced through reliance on decision heuristics, and by suggesting a more formal, self conscious search and selection process that enables designers to be more discriminating when they pinch policy ideas from other contexts. To perform this task, comparative policy analysis is needed in which common elements that exist in virtually all policies are identified and the underlying structural logic of the policies is made explicit. In this paper we set forth generic elements found in policies, describe and compare some of the more common design patterns, and discuss the circumstances where these may be inappropriately copied or borrowed, thereby thwarting the effectiveness of the policy.
International Coordination of Fiscal Policies
Authors: Tanzi Vito 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTInternational coordination of macroeconomic policies has attracted much attention in recent years. The main issue has been whether economic performance can be improved by coordination. Although still a controversial issue, many economists have argued that coordination would make a positive contribution to economic performance. This paper deals with the requirements for successfulfiscalcoordination. It concludes that those requirements are such that the best fiscal policies that countries can pursue are those aimed at putting their house in order.
Deregulation and Privatization in Germany
Authors: Vogelsang Ingo 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPublic enterprises in the Federal Republic of Germany are about average for all nonsocialist countries and markets are more heavily regulated than in the United States. Compared to American deregulation and British privatization, there have been few developments in the Federal Republic. Why? In the last ten years new schools of thought have provided a stronger normative foundation for and a stronger positive explanation against deregulation and privatization in Germany in the near future. The German political debate on deregulation and privatization is characterized by three institutional peculiarities. Major steps to deregulate or privatize economic sectors require legislation, which is influenced by political parties. Trade unions exert a strong influence on the major parties and are opposed to privatization and deregulation. The European Community forces some deregulation upon the Federal Republic in order to liberalize service sectors.
The Long Road to Long-Term Care Insurance in Germany
Authors: Götting Ulrike , Haug Karin , Hinrichs Karl 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper represents a case study in welfare state expansion. It takes an actor-centered point of view and reconstructs the long process which has ultimately led to a compromise solution to the problem of providing long-term care, especially for the elderly. It describes the previously means-tested arrangement of long-term care provision and its shortcomings. Furthermore, it sketches the different stages through which the political debate on this issue has passed during the last twenty years: from the initial phase of defining the “social problem”, to the final stage when the approval of the compromise package became a question of “all or nothing”. The analysis of the politics of long-term care insurance reveals that the difficulties of reaching an agreement mainly resulted from the complex decision-making situation. It was in essence a problem of decision-making under conditions of general uncertainty.
Politics and Exchange Rates: Britain, France, Italy, and the Negotiation of the European Monetary System
Authors: Walsh James 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTWhen the European Monetary System was negotiated in 1978, governments in France, Britain, and Italy took very different approaches to this new international institution for coordinating exchange rate policies. The French government actively supported the creation of the European Monetary System, the Italian government entered the system but on weaker terms than the French, and the British government refused to enter the system, preferring to allow the pound to float. To explain these different policy choices, I analyze the impact of domestic politics and institutions on exchange rate policy, paying particular attention to how the organization of bank-industry relations and government instability shape policymakers' policy preferences and their abilities to implement these preferences.