Public spending on agriculture in Southern Africa: Sectoral and intra-sectoral impact and policy implications

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: firstly, it examines the relationship between public agriculture expenditure and agriculture sector growth, and secondly, it examines the heterogeneous effects of expenditure on agriculture growth depending on which subsectors within agriculture receive the investments. The co-integration analysis results offer insights into a number of issues: (i) it is found that agricultural expenditures are important for agriculture sector growth in Malawi, Eswatini (Swaziland) and Zambia and (ii) that within the agricultural sectors, investing in research and development, subsidies, and in neglected areas (livestock, fisheries) alongside crops can expand the agricultural sector more. Policy makers should increase public spending in agriculture but should also emphasize on improving intra-sectoral allocations, targeting areas that create sectoral growth.     

中亚地区恐怖主义的产生原因及其对策研究

苏联解体后,中亚地区恐怖主义日益成为影响国际社会稳定的重要因素。通过剖析这些恐怖主义组织的活动现状及其特点,可以发现中亚恐怖主义滋生蔓延的根源,它是各种民族、宗教、地缘、经济、大国势力争夺等内外因素交织碰撞的产物,短期内难以彻底解决。在此基础上,本文分析了中亚恐怖主义活动的产生原因,提出了防范和打击恐怖主义的对策。     

Safety nets in (the) crisis: The case of Greece in the 2010s

This paper deals with the question of how the social safety net in Greece responded to, and was transformed by, the social emergency of the 2010s. The outbreak of the Eurozone crisis caught Greek welfare woefully unprepared for what was to come. Thereafter, as the recession fuelled the “demand” for social protection, the austerity reduced its “supply.” Nevertheless, this is not a straightforward case of austerity predictably causing welfare retrenchment or dismantling. Stringent budgets and policy inertia did result in reduced provision and diminished capacity to protect. Yet significant progress towards a less parochial and more effective social safety net also took place. The paper is an attempt to bring out the complexity and contradictions of recent developments. It concludes that the system of social protection that has emerged from the crisis is undoubtedly leaner, less robust in core policy areas such as pensions and health, but also more effective in protecting against extreme poverty than ever before.     

Factors affecting the development of social work and its professionalisation process: the case of Greece

This article discusses some of the factors that have shaped the development of social work in Greece and analyses its present level of professionalisation. There were four main factors: (i) the familialist-statist social care model in which social work operates in Greece; (ii) reluctant state support related to a complex set of specific political, social and economic conditions; (iii) the pressure of new needs in recent years as a result of the aging population, family changes and increasing numbers of immigrants; and (iv) the European Union's financial support and regulatory role in various social policy sectors. The present status of the profession indicates a satisfactory protection of professional rights, a slow but steady improvement in the educational process, but also limited occupational control.     

Immigrants’ support for social spending,self‐interest and the role of the group: A comparative study of immigrants in The Netherlands

This study examined immigrants’ support for social spending. We tested the dominant self‐interest hypothesis for a number of immigrant groups in the Netherlands with highly varying socio‐economic positions. We additionally examined the effect of immigrants’ group interest by testing the relevance of in‐group immigrant benefit participation rates and their effect on support for social spending. In this article, we discuss how immigrants’ sense of belonging to a group affects the association between immigrants’ self‐ and group interests in welfare and their support for social spending. We found that self‐interest has explanatory relevance, but that this is strongly correlated with level of income. Results showed weak support for the effect of group interest. Instead of the expected moderation effects of sense of belonging on the self‐ and group‐interest explanations of support for social spending, the results showed a direct effect of sense of belonging on support for social spending.     

Farm level effects of policy reforms in Germany: First empirical evidence

The farm level effects of policy reforms in agriculture have been discussed in the literature for a long time. However, empirical studies based on field data are not yet available. In this paper, the effects of the EU agricultural reforms in the last two decades and the introduction of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act on agricultural enterprises are investigated. For this, panel data of arable farms in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the period from 1984/85 to 2010/11 is analyzed by means of a fixed effects model. The results suggest that the farm income level, transmission effects on land rental markets and the farm income risk were significantly affected by the respective reforms.     

城中村已婚流动女性卫生服务需求及政策分析——以昆明市为例

“城中村”是城市化进程中的特殊现象,流动人口多因城中村便宜的住房而聚居于此。笔者调查的城中村社区已婚流动妇女因自身保健知识及居住环境所限,缺乏公共卫生服务的公平性和可及性,严重地影响了流动已婚妇女的健康。本文就更好地实现“城乡统合”、“人人享有卫生保健”提出行政管理的讨论与建议。     

The political economy of changes in family and old‐age welfare policy spending: Analysis of OECD countries, 1998–2011

This study investigated whether in times of budget constraints and in countries with relatively large family policy spending, family policy has an advantage in the budget competition with old‐age expenditures, compared with countries with a lower level of family policy spending. We employed pooled time‐series cross‐sectional analysis of 24 OECD countries from 1998 to 2011. Our findings suggest that the initial level of family spending tends to moderate the crowding‐out effect of old‐age spending, indicating that the more mature a family spending policy is, the more it resists budget competition from old‐age policy. Furthermore, the size of government debt was found to have an insignificant effect on welfare budgeting. Our findings indicate that retrenchment in welfare spending for old age cannot be fully explained by budget constraints. Politics among interest groups associated with different welfare programmes can be an important determinant in explaining changes in spending on each welfare programme.     

Macroeconomic and financing determinants of out of pocket payments in health care: Evidence from selected OECD countries

In this paper, we examine the impact of macroeconomic, as well public and private health insurance financing (PHI) factors on out of pocket (OOP) healthcare expenditures, by using fixed/random effects and dynamic panel data methodology to a dataset of 26 EU and OECD countries for a period lasting from 1995 to 2013. The existing empirical literature has focused on testing the hypothesis that several macroeconomic and health financing determinants have an effect on OOP healthcare expenditures. Nevertheless, the related articles have not well tested the hypothesis concerning the potential impact of PHI financing on OOP spending. We find that public and PHI financing have a significant countervailing effect on OOP spending. Moreover, we show that unemployment rate has a significant positive impact on OOP expenditures. Sensitivity tests with variation of specifications and samples show that our findings are robust. We argue that policy-makers should give serious consideration to PHI institution; our results indicate that there is an inverse effect on OOP spending. We suggest that our examined countries have to provide financial risk protection to their citizens against OOP payments, rather than only attending health budgetary retrenchments in order to adjust public finances.     

The ratification of ILO Conventions and the provision of unemployment benefits: An empirical analysis

This article tests the relationship between the ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions and the provision of unemployment benefits. Statistical tests focus on two related issues: why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits, and whether ratification influences government spending on unemployment benefits. The main findings are that democracy, region, income, and globalization are the main factors influencing why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits. In turn, the ratification of ILO Conventions is systematically associated with higher spending if countries have ratified more than two Conventions.     

Fitting in: Group effects and the evolution of fundamentalism

We provide an evolutionary model of conflict based on dyadic interactions within and between individuals drawn from a society containing fundamentalists and “others.” Thus, the paper presents an asymmetric game representation of group effects. Fundamentalist control of society is inversely related to the degree of social stratification, and fundamentalists’ intolerance of others. If, however, fundamentalism can be feigned (by displaying certain traits), then fundamentalists must balance their intolerance and insularity to take power. The model provides a novel means for distinguishing democratic versus open societies. This leads to a central result characterizing how fair and open societies can peacefully contravene fundamentalism.     

Modeling Contextual Effects in Developmental Research: Linking Theory and Method in the Study of Social Development

This special section was inspired by the recent increased interest and methodological advances in the assessment of context‐specificity in child and adolescent social development. While the effects of groups, situations, and social relationships on cognitive, affective and behavioral development have long been acknowledged in theoretical discussions of social development, empirical research has largely relied on the assessment of individual differences rather than contextual differences in these processes—perhaps due to the fact that advanced data analytic techniques are required to access contextual dependencies in such data. While still developing, best practice data analytic techniques enable us to access the ‘social’ of social development in more precision today than ever before. In this special section we examine three of these techniques through the work of our invited authors.     

The effectiveness of poverty reduction and the target efficiency of social security transfers in South Korea, 1999–2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of social security transfers between 1999 and 2003 in South Korea, the period during which the Asian economic crisis of 1997 occurred. The study used a secondary data set, which is part of the Korea Labour Panel Data. Of 5,000 original household samples, the results for the 2,728 households (54.6 per cent) that completed the surveys for all five years studied were analysed. One finding was that the average percentage of social security transfers appeared to be nominal, as was the 1.9 per cent in 1999, which grew to 2.4 per cent in 2003. Another finding was that the average poverty-reduction effectiveness for the five-year period was as low as 7.9 per cent, indicating a slightly increasing pattern. This percentage is only one-seventh to one-tenth that of Western countries. Target efficiency appeared to be 31.8 per cent. We give the following reasons to explain why the level of the poverty-reduction effectiveness of Korean social security transfers is comparatively low: the immaturity of the Korean Old Age Pension; the lack of diversity in social transfer programmes; and a cultural factor of stronger dependency on private transfers within the family structure.     

Revisiting children 'home on trial' in the context of current concerns about the costs and effectiveness of the looked-after children system: findings from an exploratory study

Statute and practice relating to s.31 part IV of The Children Act 1989 allow children subject to care orders to be placed at home with their parent(s). It is not uncommon for the courts to accept a plan for children to return home at the final hearing of care proceedings at which full care orders are granted. In such instances, children retain looked‐after status but, in terms of their day‐to‐day care, are looked after by parent(s). Whilst there are a small number of studies conducted in the 1990s relating to children ‘home on trial’, there is a much more limited recent literature. It is important to revisit this population of children, given current concerns about the burgeoning costs of child care proceedings and the looked‐after children system (LAC). This paper reports on a small‐scale exploratory study in one north‐west local authority area. Consisting of a file study and interviews with parents and professionals, the study examines the factors that contributed to initial removal of children to public care, the impact of the LAC system for children ‘home on trial’, stability of placements at home, as well as issues to do with the discharge of care orders. Particular attention is drawn to lone father headed households, a social group over‐represented in our sample. The study aims to inform further multi‐location studies.     

Efficiency and Productivity changes in the presence of undesirable outcomes in Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care

This paper analyzes efficiency and productivity changes in Emergency Obstetric and Newborn care (EmONC) in regional public hospitals in India. A novel approach of Weighted Russell Directional Distance Function Model (WRDDFM) has been employed. This model considers all the radial and non-radial slacks associated with good outputs as well as the undesirable outcomes while estimating inefficiency and helps to identify the source of the inefficiency. The empirical results based on a sample of 46 regional public hospitals from 2006–07 to 2013–14 show on average overall inefficiency of 24% and much of these are due to inefficiencies associated with undesirable outcome of stillbirths and intra-uterine deaths. Further, on an average the sampled hospitals have experienced marginal productivity decline over the reform period. The study indicates that there is a greater scope for efficiency and productivity gains in public hospitals, particularly if the undesirable outcome of still birth is minimized.     

In the Eye of the Storm: Civil Servants and Managers in the UK Department of Health

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the UK government faces some tough choices over public expenditure, and these choices will have important implications for both the future of health policy and the way in which health services are managed. In this article, we examine the organization and leadership of the UK Department of Health and weigh its suitability to meet such challenges. We find an organization that is culturally split between public servants and managers, highly reliant on the ability of its key personnel to bridge these divides, and extremely responsive to the political goals of government ministers. We explore the modern DH using three types of evidence. First, the history of the department shows clear political efforts to reduce civil service discretion and focus the DH on the management of the English NHS. Second, the recent organizational structures of the DH show a bifurcation between policy direction and NHS management tasks. Third, an analysis of the top ranks of the department since 2005 shows the implementation of political preferences that are consistent with managerialism but inconsistent with the perceived characteristics of traditional civil servants. The result is a department which has changed just as frequently as the health service it oversees – a department which has been moulded by successive ministers into one for the management of the NHS. Our findings raise important questions about the value and purpose of long‐term organizational knowledge in policy formulation.     

Conceptualising dignity in the context of social security: Bottom-up and top-down perspectives

Dignity and social security have been closely associated since at least the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but there is a lack of clarity around what dignity means in this context. This article explores how two key stakeholders—out-of-work benefit recipients and policymakers—understand dignity in the context of social security, drawing on qualitative research with each group. The evidence presented notes a relative absence of direct references to dignity among policymakers, although related issues are nonetheless discussed, whereas benefit recipients commonly articulate experiences of undignified treatment and the negative impact this has on their lives. This article's exploration of dignity is of particular relevance to Scotland, where recent framework legislation includes the principle that their security system should be underpinned by “respect for the dignity of individuals.” The authors propose that a social security system that protects dignity must take account of distributional, relational, and intrinsic aspects of dignity—providing sufficient income, treating users with respect, and avoiding interventions or discourses that are disrespectful and dehumanizing. Further, the authors question whether it is possible for dignity to enjoy meaningful protection within highly disciplinary conditional welfare regimes.     

The beginning of the end of Robert H. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral Ministry: A towering failure in crisis management as reflected through media narratives of financial crisis,family conflict,and follower dissent

In 2010–2011, the Crystal Cathedral Ministry, one of the world's most respected Christian megachurches (Frankl, 1990), endured a series of crisis events culminating with a court ordered sale of its property. This signaled the end of Robert H. Schuller's ministry. This research analyzes dozens of news stories published during the crisis, documenting that the ministry failed to effectively use the media to communicate on vital issues. This failure exacerbated the crisis by allowing, unchecked, a proliferation of news stories portaying the ministry as out of touch, and Schuller family members as quarreling spendthrifts. Despite Schuller's decades of service, national prominence, and ‘positive thinking’ focus, his ministry was overcome by the materialism he purported to stand against. The rapid downfall is an extraordinary event within Christian televangelism. Examining media reporting of it allows important conclusions to be reached about any organization's communication with media gatekeepers in a time of crisis.     

New Governance and the Case of Activation Policies: Comparing Experiences in Denmark and the Netherlands

This article explores the importance of new forms of governance in active labour market policies (activation) in two countries: Denmark and the Netherlands. Drawing on research with key stakeholders in these countries, we analyse how new governance, and particularly processes of contracting-out and localization, have found expression in recent reforms to activation. We conclude that localization and contracting-out may have a future role to play in the development of more locally responsive and individually focused services. But both countries have encountered problems in promoting joined-up services through local jobcentres, while contracting-out has not always led to the tailored, individually focused services envisaged by policy-makers. In both countries, there are also concerns that the restriction of the Public Employment Service to a 'gatekeeping and signposting' role will lead to inconsistencies in the quality of services, exposing the most disadvantaged to greater social risk.     

市场的社会建构与行动者的逻辑：对上海电视剧市场的研究

近年来,随着中国经济社会结构的快速转型,广播电视制度也正在经历着快速变迁,促使电视剧的制作、交易与播映等日趋市场化。面对来自政治和社会的双重作用,围绕电视剧及其运作过程中的不确定性,参与其中的制片公司、电视台以及政府管理部门都试图策略性地主导权力关系的运作。区别于以往“网络结构分析”与“政治文化分析”的市场社会学传统,本文引入了“行动者分析”的视角,将市场视为一种不同行动者参与的社会建构过程。通过分析上海电视剧市场运作的实证资料,本文阐明了行动者的策略性行动及其身处的结构性制约,并对市场秩序的建构性与变动性特征进行了讨论。