The impact of the European Youth Guarantee on active labour market policies: A convergence analysis

The European Union’s (EU) Youth Guarantee aims to improve the labour market situation of young people. Rather than prescribing a uniform policy model, it acknowledges that supportive measures need to align with national, regional and local circumstances. It thus seeks to promote mutual policy learning through the open method of coordination. As an innovative measure, the EU has deployed funding programmes to support the domestic measures related to the Youth Guarantee. We therefore examined in this study whether this mix of recommendations and financial incentives has entailed a convergence of member state policies. Our analysis of policy outputs for the period 2007?2014 yields a mixed empirical picture. There is catching‐up convergence regarding policies’ sectoral coverage but increasing divergence concerning the number of adopted policy instruments. The first two years of financial incentives did not produce any effect on enhancing policy experimentation among less active member states. We offer an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation of these findings.     

Objective and subjective conditions for the continuity of the Peruvian extractive development model

ABSTRACT

The Peruvian economy depends for its growth on the export of its mineral resources. The core of the current economic development model is the export of the country's commodities and a free and (relatively) unregulated functioning of the markets. We argue that the continuity of the country's extractive development model is the consequence of the interplay between the objective and subjective conditions of Peruvian capitalist development. The analysis of the objective conditions is focused on the role of the country in the international division of labour, the relation between this role and the country’s economic and business structure, and the functionality of the extractive development model for the Peruvian State. In the case of the subjective conditions, the strength of the political Left, the labour movement and the social movements against mining capital are analyzed     

Value drivers of social businesses: A business model perspective

Hybrid organizational forms that combine commercial and welfare institutional logics play an increasingly important role in addressing the grand societal challenges we face today. Building on the literatures on hybrid organizations and social business models, we explore the characteristics of social businesses from a business model perspective. This study seeks to better understand the particularities and value drivers of hybrid social purpose in contrast to purely commercial business models. We follow a grounded theory approach and our findings are based on interview data from 17 social business firms. Building on social businesses' identified particularities, we propose four value drivers of social business models: 1) responsible efficiency, 2) impact complementarities, 3) shared values, and 4) integration novelties. We link our findings to the literature, contributing new insights into social businesses models and implications for practitioners.     

Work-related factors associated with psychological distress among social workers

The current study assesses the association between several work-related factors and psychological distress among social workers (SWs) in Israel. The data were collected through structured questionnaires, administered to a sample of 494 SWs. The findings suggest that most of the examined work-related factors (namely, years of professional experience, personal work-related subjection to violence, burnout, compassion fatigue, and sense of coherence), with the exception of compassion satisfaction, significantly predicted psychological distress among SWs. The conclusion is that it is important to embed within the social work practice strategies for reducing sources of psychological distress (job demands) and increasing material, professional, and personal resources. Reducing the levels of psychological distress experienced by SWs will benefit not only themselves, but also their families and colleagues, as well as their clients. Moreover, this has potential benefits for the social work profession and for the general community.     

一把尺子如何“量到底”:基层治理中的制度硬化——以一个城市更新试点项目为例

城市更新中日益增长的社会压力使基层政府产生制度硬化的需求，但持续的高压体制又使其延续制度弹性的逻辑，两者间张力凸显，构成当前的治理困境。本文通过对一个试点项目中制度硬化实践的观察提出核心问题：权力运作空间如何在日益增强的规范性约束下得以再生产。本案例中，制度硬化被拆分为“结果硬化”和“过程硬化”两部分，前者标识着鲜明的刚性边界，后者则暗中预留出弹性空间。通过外部条件硬化、让步规则硬化、加压底线硬化这三重机制，基层政府在与社会的互动中由表及里地拓展了硬化原则背后的边界，使权力运作空间以一种更为正式化、制度化、组织化的形式不断生产出来，展现出更深层、隐秘的治理技术及国家与社会的相互形塑过程。     

Turkey’s Twitter public diplomacy: Towards a “new” cult of personality

This study examined how Turkey uses social media as a tool for public diplomacy and how the state’s soft-power efforts have recently changed on the global stage. The researchers constructed a dataset of 2769 Twitter posts by the Turkish government’s most influential public diplomacy accounts. The analyses revealed that the focus of Turkey’s Twitter public diplomacy has become concentrated on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and is thematically focused on the political values embodied by the Turkish president. The findings suggest that public diplomacy remains to be the diplomacy of the government, not of the public, and social media is used as just another tool for propaganda, not as a means of engagement with foreign publics. Further, the findings indicate the emergence of a “new” cult of personality in public diplomacy and point out the instrumental role of social media in changing the dynamics of leader-follower relationship. The study contributes to public relations theory and practice by advancing the burgeoning public diplomacy scholarship at the intersection of social media and relational approaches.     

Why do newcomers vote for a newcomer? Support for an immigrant party

This article studies the voters of DENK, the first immigrant party to gain seats in a national parliament. It builds further on the existing literature on how immigrants and people from immigrant descent vote in Western European countries. From the literature we derive seven expectations about the kind of voters that are likely to vote for an immigrant party in terms of their political cynicism, attitudes towards economic, globalisation and moral issues. We find that DENK voters are younger Muslims, who have conservative views on moral matters, cynical attitudes towards politics, right-wing views on economic matters and progressive views on issues that pertain to the globalisation dimension, such as immigration, integration and Islam and in particular discrimination. This article uses VAA data to construct a matched sample that in terms of key variables is representative for voters with and without a migration background.     

“一带一路”倡议下大学国际化发展问题研究——基于云南省中外合作办学现状的考察

在"一带一路"倡议下，云南省近年来与南亚、东南亚国家之间的教育合作不断加强，取得了可喜的成绩。基于云南省与南亚、东南亚国家的中外合作办学数据，考察云南省中外合作办学现状，发现云南省中外合作办学还存在留学生生源面窄且学历层次低、中外合作办学规模小且办学层次不高、联合科学研究产出能力较弱等问题。因此，应从国家层面、当地政府层面、大学层面分别采取相应措施，大力促进大学国际化发展，完善大学国际化的体制机制与法律监管，搭建更多国际合作平台。当地政府应加强大学国际化的统筹规划、综合协调和宏观管理，省域大学应加大国际化保障条件的建设力度。     

制度风险的法律维度: 突破非物质文化遗产保护的瓶颈

以风险理论审视非物质文化遗产的现行法律制度,根据风险产生根源不同,非物质文化遗产保护的制度风险会表现为制度运转失灵风险、制度功能偏差风险和公平性缺失风险。化解制度风险,形成制度风险的维度,不可基于同一个标准,而是需要在大的框架之下论及制度风险的法律管控,需要有针对性地创构"建立私权,善用公权"的多元法律控制体系,并在体系内引入技术规制,创设"非物质文化遗产权",推动民间习惯法与法律制度、公法与私法的互动式发展。