Equalising opportunities in health through educational policy

Despite the growing prominence of theoretical analysis of inequality of opportunity over the past twenty years, empirical work towards the normative evaluation of real-world policies has been minimal. This paper seeks to address this issue. It proposes a normative framework to model the influence of educational policy on health outcomes, grounded in Roemer’s model of equality of opportunity. We apply this model to the National Child Development Study cohort, who, since their schooling lay within the transition period of the comprehensive education reform in England and Wales, attended different types of secondary school. We use this reform in two ways: first, to evaluate the health outcomes of different educational policies under different normative principles; second, to simulate counterfactual distributions of health outcomes by neutralising the different channels through which early life circumstances influence health. Evidence on the comparative performance of the two educational systems is mixed, suggesting that the opportunity-enhancing effects of the comprehensive reform were, at best, modest in terms of adult health. For some of the health outcomes considered, this leads to a convergence between the policy recommendations made by the two ethical principles of equality of opportunity and utilitarianism, while for others, the two principles diverge in their evaluation.     

The Pension Reform Process in France

The French old age security system was constructed progressively following the end of the Second World War in response to the pressing problem of old age poverty. In 1945 less than 40% of old people (4.5 million in total) had a pension. This was despite the existence of some pension systems dating back to the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Monetary depreciation also meant that the pensions of those who enjoyed such benefits were very low. Historical factors explain the current pension system's organization and institutional division favouring pay-as-you-go schemes. While the French pension system has been largely successful in eliminating old age poverty, it today faces new challenges and constraints that make reform necessary. The debate as how best to reform the pension system is a long and winding one. Change is slow and incremental. Ideological, social and cultural factors and their interrelations help explain the difficulties in effecting reforms.     

Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution

Russia’s transition to a market economy has been accompanied by serious, and in some ways unanticipated, disruptions of the existing social welfare system. The social policy dilemma has become a contentious issue in the national political arena. This paper examines the debate on the relationship between social welfare and democratization in post-communist Russia, exploring the case of pensions for the elderly. Although the causes of the pension crisis are complex and rooted in institutional difficulties, the state’s fiscal weakness alone does not explain the difficulties and controversies associated with Russia’s pension crisis. Analysis of the assumptions and principles of pension policy during the Soviet era and perestroika reveals that Russia today is caught between contradictory and competing discourses over citizens’ entitlement to pensions: Is an old-age pension to be considered a reward distributed by a prosperous society, or a basic and inviolable human right? Although the Russian government has used an argument that in effect makes pensions conditional on government resources, citizen and opposition protest has to some extent compelled the Russian government to be increasingly sensitive to demands for guaranteed pensions.     

Bilingual Education Theater: Behind the scenes of Latvian minority education reform

Focusing on the political nature of education policy making in the post-Soviet context, this paper questions whether, how and to what extent the bilingual education reform under way in Latvia contributes to social integration among different ethnolinguistic groups. The paper begins by tracing the emergence and institutionalization of bilingual education reform in light of long-term education development trends prevalent during the 1990s. Based on press analysis, document review, and in-depth interviews with major education stakeholders in Latvia, it reveals that there exists a growing disjunction between 'policy-talk', 'policy action' and 'policy implementation', resulting in the legitimization of education spaces that once were and continue to be functional, hierarchical and divisive.     

Framing home-care policy: A case study of reforms in a Canadian jurisdiction

Much of the literature on home-care services reform—an issue in the spotlight of policy debate across many ‘aging’ industrialized countries—has focused on the organizational, financial and clinical aspects of service provision. Less attention, however, has been paid to how particular issues and reform alternatives gain momentum in a given context; in particular to how a selective range of policy initiatives reach government's agenda and get incorporated into mainstream policy-making. This article seeks to advance our understanding of home-care policy by considering the influence of ideational factors on reform undertakings. More specifically, while concentrating on home-care policies in the province of Quebec, Canada, it examines how the organized perspectives and differing concerns of various stakeholders—i.e. their policy frames—appear to have shaped the form and content of policy. It is argued that framing provides a cogent and insightful means of understanding policy change and stasis in this area, most notably why managed competition or an all-out privatization of service delivery, as seen in other jurisdictions, has not been advocated by government in Québec.     

Ecological Modernization,Environmental Policy and Employment. Can Environmental Protection and Employment be Reconciled?

The paper examines the relationship between environmental policy and employment. It argues that environmental policy probably has a positive effect on employment. To support this conclusion the following arguments will be made: polluting companies, and hence employment in these companies, can be, but is not always, negatively affected by environmental policy; polluting companies do not move to another country due to environmental policy; the ecosector is an important employment sector; and, the net balance between job losses and gains due to environmental policy is positive. This conclusion is conditional on certain assumptions concerning the functioning of labour markets, the improvement in environmental quality and the normative implications of the debate.     

Popular Hazards and Policy Rhetoric

Popular hazards are common activities that involve some risks of harm, such as driving a car, possessing or shooting a gun, drinking alcohol, or smoking marijuana. In each of these cases, many millions of Americans engage in the activity, but only a small fraction of them harm themselves or other people. Because the activity is so common, the number harmed may be substantial, although more serious harms tend to be much more infrequent than less serious harms. Social policy debates almost always focus on some particular popular hazard, yet we can see rhetorical similarities—parallel arguments—in how advocates frame what are understood to be very different social issues. Thus, discourse about legalizing recreational marijuana use tends to invoke claims that are quite similar to those opposing further gun control. The category of popular hazards allows us to recognize parallels in policy debates about seemingly unrelated social issues. Focusing on the underlying policy issue—balancing popularity and hazardousness—encourages considering alternative ways to construct social policies.     

'Learning Difficulties', the Social Model of Disability and Impairment: Challenging epistemologies

Critical researchers enter into an investigation with their assumptions on the table, so no one is confused concerning the epistemological and political baggage they bring with them to the research site (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1998, p. 265). A theory of disability as oppression recognises and, in the present context, emphasies the social origins of impairment. (Abberley, 1987, in Barton and Oliver, 1997, p176, my emphasis.) Identification with the label of 'learning difficulties' has contradictory personal and political implications for people so-labelled. While this identification has allowed people to organise collectively through the self-advocacy movement, pervasive understandings of 'learning difficulties' that permeate many societal settings tend to be framed in ways that directly confirm a personal tragedy model of disability and impairment. This paper argues for a reconsideration of impairment in relation to 'learning difficulties', to challenge pervasive assumptions in relation to 'learning difficulties' - at the level of epistemology - and to construct four inclusive epistemological foundations . The first, deconstructing impairment , draws upon a body of literature that has exposed the social nature of diagnostic criteria and destabilised naturalised notions of 'learning difficulties'. The second, impairment, as storied , brings in the accounts of people with 'learning difficulties' that locate impairment in, and as, personal and social narratives. Thirdly, reculturising impairment highlights emergent resilient cultures of people with 'learning difficulties' that re-culturise impairment. Fourthly, epistemological impacts , grounds the analysis by calling for an attention to the ways in which assumptions about the origins of 'learning difficulties' impact upon the treatment of people so-labelled.     

Symbolic Economies: Money,Neoliberal Law and National Politics in Argentina

In this article, I examine Argentina's neoliberal reforms throughout the 1990s from a Marxist theoretical perspective, analysing how money, monetary policy and law constitute a fundamental mode of ideological regulation in neoliberal capitalism. Situating this analysis in the context of the capitalist crisis of the mid-1970s, the article discusses the politics of effacement that in Argentina's case paved the way for the use of monetary policy as a form of social control intended to embed the nation-state into global capitalism. Examining economic legislation, macro-economic policies, political ideologies, consumer discourses and pension privatization, I analyse how the neoliberal monetary regime ideologically underpinned a whole state imaginary based on exchange rate parity with the US dollar. Further, I investigate the ideological function of money in symbolically reordering the relationships of workers and citizens to the state, capital and culture. The article concludes with an exploration of the political significance of the monetary collapse of the Argentine neoliberal reform in 2001–2002, comparing Argentina's crisis of hegemony with that of other states within global capitalism.     

Long-Term Care Policy Reform in Japan

Summary

The implementation of Japan's Long-Term Care Insurance Scheme in April 2000 was the culmination of some 30 years of policy deliberation on aged care. Understanding the policy debate surrounding the Long-Term Care Insurance scheme and its financing arrangements requires an appreciation of rapid demographic and social change, especially in family structures and attitudes to caring for aged parents; but the pressures that population aging and economic downturn are placing on Japan's pension and health insurance systems also must be recognized. Even more generally, the delicate balance of political interests in Japan's central governing body, the Diet, has shaped the implementation of Long-Term Care Insurance as a forerunner to other reforms in social security and health insurance.     

Stories of Risk and Protection: A Turn to the Narrative in Social Policy Education

This paper discusses the role of ‘story’ in social policy teaching within social work education. In particular, it uses the explication of two students' stories of their own experience to consider approaches to the concepts of risk and protection. The paper sets a scene whereby the roles of narrative, practitioner-wisdom (Phronesis) and personal experience need to be addressed within social policy education. Then, using stories generated by an educational intervention building on memory work, it illustrates how the ‘pragmatic eclecticism’ of narrative analysis can illuminate some of the complexities of social policy constructs. A range of analytical tools have been brought to bear on the stories, including the distinct but related concepts of ‘role’ and ‘performance’ and literary devices such as genre and plot, as well as a consideration of intertextuality. This is done to support the notion that social policy needs to broaden its methodological range.     

Social Cost Pricing when Public Transport is an Option Value

A well-known principle of welfare economics states that an efficient allocation of resources can be achieved in a competitive economy when market prices are in line with social marginal costs. When applied to the transport sector, this implies that the price of the various transport modes should be made equal to the sum of marginal production and external costs, like congestion, accidents, pollution, and road maintenance. It is sometimes argued the internalization of external costs would bring about a change in demand patterns with a shift towards public transport and cleaner modes. But public transport is already favoured by discriminatory fiscal treatment. Whereas public services are normally (heavily) subsidized, private transport is taxed in several ways and, in some countries, quite substantially so. The application of the 'optimal pricing' principle, therefore, critically depends on how the subsidization of public services is interpreted. This paper addresses the issue of optimal pricing of urban transport, using different hypotheses concerning the treatment of public services. After reviewing some traditional arguments in favour of public transport subsidization, a new approach, based on uncertainty and option values, is discussed. The implications of this approach are investigated by means of an applied model, where optimal prices for urban transport services in the city of Bologna are computed under alternative assumptions.     

Framing a welfare reform: the social benefits reform in Russia and Kazakhstan

This article addresses the question of why some non-democratic governments are more successful than others at reforming their welfare institutions. Using the example of the Russian and Kazakhstani social benefits reform, the author will illustrate that in modern non-democratic regimes the importance of framing and effective communication with the public for the purpose of effective policymaking and regime legitimization is equal to, if not greater than, in established democracies. The successful implementation of the Kazakhstani social benefits reform, as opposed to Russia’s protracted experience with reforming its social benefits system, was determined not only by the configuration of various institutional and political factors, but also the skilful actions of the Kazakhstani authorities, who used effective communication strategies and framing techniques that resonated with the public and generated broad support for reform. Based on extensive research conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006–2010 as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto, this paper enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and non-democratic contexts and adds important details to our understanding of how post-Soviet autocrats run their countries and what methods they use to stay in power, manage their state affairs, and avoid public dissatisfaction.     

Environmental Justice and Social Power Rhetoric in the Moral Battle over Whaling*

This study examines the ideological battle between the Makah Indian Tribe and anti‐whaling activists over the Tribe's quest to resume its 2000‐year‐old tradition of hunting gray whales for traditional and ceremonial purposes. Through qualitative discourse analysis of 268 newspaper articles, this study analyzes the competing rhetoric surrounding the indigenous whaling issue and exposes fundamental differences in how the opposing campaigns frame their arguments. This study contributes to the literature on social movements and environmental justice in two primary ways. First, this article exposes the social power dynamics and experientially based assumptions inherent in the “framing contests” of competing social movements that comprised those from diverse racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Second, this article expands existing work in the field of environmental justice to include American Indian issues and concerns.     

Social security reform in Latin America: policy challenges

Over the last decade Latin American countries have served as the world's laboratory for pension systems based on individual retirement savings accounts. Some countries have adopted defined-contribution individual accounts as a replacement for state-run pension systems; other countries have embraced mixed systems of have made individual accounts optional and supplementary. This article outlines some of the most significant elements of recent Latin American pension reforms and examines some of the most serious policy challenges faced by governments implementing the new systems of individual accounts, including the need to reduce administrative costs, limit evasion, incorporate new categories of workers into the system, and improve competition in the pension fund industry. The authors conclude that there is no single Latin America model, and that reform itself has been and will continue to be an incremental process.     

Social capital as social relations: the contribution of normative structures

This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.     

Narrative Diversity and Sympathetic Abortion: What Online Storytelling Reveals About the Prescribed Norms of the Mainstream Movements

Social movement scholarship demonstrates the importance of formula stories in raising awareness for social causes. The stories put forth by the opposing sides of the abortion rights issue in the United States utilize sympathetic narratives in furthering their arguments for and against abortion rights respectively, but differences in each side's narrative strategies are instructive in understanding current reproductive debate discourse. This article is a qualitative examination of abortion narratives published on two websites, one pro‐life and one pro‐choice. Chief among my findings are that narratives for each cause support opposed views of women's appropriate contemporary social roles and that authors' reported approaches to pregnancy and abortion are instrumental in constructing these broader understandings. Narratives posted by pro‐choice authors are confined by circumstantial norms surrounding unintended pregnancy (such as young age, student status, and first‐time pregnancy) as well as by a requirement to attribute empowering outcomes to the abortion decision. Pro‐life authors discuss a broader array of circumstances surrounding their pregnancies with narratives ultimately unified by themes of intense regret followed by atonement.     

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.     

Social Spaces beyond Civil Society: European Integration,Globalization and the Sociology of European Society

There has been a renewed interest in the idea of society of late. Sociological studies of globalization have posed the question of how to understand society without the nation-state, and studies of European Union (EU) integration have linked the non-emergence of a European society to the 'democratic deficit'. In both cases what is at issue is how to understand the social dynamics of transnational spaces. This paper advances three main arguments in relation to the idea of European society. First, despite its popularity, the concept of civil society is of limited use for understanding European society. Second, European society should not be seen as a unified and coherent whole but as a series of non-integrated, fragmented and autonomous public spheres. Third, European society cannot be understood in the singular. A plurality of European public and social spaces exist, often beyond the control of, or unrelated to, the EU or its member states. In short, European social spaces are not harmonious and cohesive, nor are they necessarily constituted by European integration.