Determinants of welfare service provision after the Golden Age

Jensen C. Determinants of welfare service provision after the Golden Age Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 125–134 © 2009 The Author, International Journal of Social Welfare © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. The welfare state literature exhibits a ‘transfer bias’ in the sense that very little research exists on welfare services or benefits in‐kind. This article presents one of the first systematic studies on the determinants of welfare service provision since the end of the Golden Age of welfare expansion. The article concludes that partisan factors do not drive change, although historically they may have been pivotal. Instead, new factors, including deindustrialisation, female labour force participation and rising public attention appear to be highly significant. It is argued that new studies need to take seriously both the individual characteristics of services as well as the changing social demands that the services are supposed to meet.     

The Burden of Success: Futebol and Brazilian Society through the 1970s

Futebol, Brazil's national sport-best-known to American audiences through the brilliant play o f Pelé one of its superstars-is more than simple mass entertainment. Robert Levine traces the evolution of the trends in the history of Brazilian soccer to explain what may be behind the current unprecedented dissatisfaction with the sport. Beginning with the 189Os, he illustrates how futebol is a barometer by which national pride, exuberance, frustration, rage, and hope may be measured. He shows that as the game changed from an activity restricted to the upperclass to a popular form of entertainment with a mass audience, it became a means used by the government in the 1930s and 1940s to foster national integration. More recently, it has been used by an unpopular military regime to bolster its popularity. In the second part of his study, Levine focuses on Pelé who reintroduced an appreciation of individualistic skills to the game and loaned his mass popularity to the military regime. In short, the author makes a convincing case on how the sport of futebol has been used as a political weapon.     

Brazilian Musical Values of the 1960s and 1970s: Popular Urban Music from Bossa Nova to Tropicalia

Brazilian rhythms have enjoyed wide popularity in this country for many years, but Americans who delight in the samba and other sounds are generally unfamiliar with the development and special characteristics of this national music. In his paper, Gerard Béhague studies the main trends of Brazilian popular music associated with the bossa nova. In particular, he examines the music's socio-cultural meaning for producers and consumers, its relationship to or influence from foreign models, and the various cultural values that it expresses. He traces the original bossa nova phenomenon of the late 1950s, emphasizing that its cultivators, who were from upper-middle-class families, developed a somewhat elitist urban popular musical trend. Contrary to many critics' opinions, bossa nova did not result from jazz or imitations of other imported styles. Thematically, early bossa nova differed little from the samba, a trulypopular music. However, bossa nova's poFtic substance and treatment did reveal significant innovations. Béhague asserts that after 1964, a new social awareness developed among bossa nova musicians. He discusses the musical compositions of the musician-poet Chico Buarque who, more than earlier bossa nova musicans, established a clear link with the traditional samba of the 1930s and 1940s, thus giving bossa nova an euen more popular character. The author also reviews the work of the group of musician-poet-performers of the mid-1960s known as the Tropicdia. Their music adhered to the basic concepts of modernismo, a Brazilian literary movement of the 1920s.     

A model of the Canadian global exchange rate: A test of the 1970s

This comment points out some methodological weaknesses in the Canadian global exchange rate model and the associated efficiency tests of Marwah and Bodkin. The model is found to be inadequate for policy analysis.     

A model of the Canadian global exchange rate: A test of the 1970s

A review of the literature indicates that no single exchange rate model has been able to track successfully the movements of the Canadian dollar for both the 1970–1976 period and the period thereafter. The purchasing power parity model, irrespective of whether based on relative wholesale prices, unit labor costs, GNP deflators, or export prices performs very poorly; the monetarist models collapse because of their strict adherence to the purchasing power parity and interest rate parity assumptions; the portfolio demand models require a significant adjustment for the post-1976 period. This paper presents a medium-term eclectic model of the global exchange rate of the Canadian dollar and examines a spectrum of broad issues that reflect on the efficiency of the foreign exchange market of Canada. These issues are basically related to the interest parity assumption, the role of speculation, and the test of rational expectations. The global exchange rate is defined as the value of the Canadian dollar measured in terms of a unit of basket of currencies comprising currencies of France, West Germany, Japan, the U.K., and the USA. The model belongs to the same genre of balance of payments structural models that explain the exchange rates by balancing demand and supply of foreign currencies. The model simultaneously explains both spot and forward rates, and it has been estimated and tested by using the quarterly data for 1971–1981.     

Feminism,the state,and the centrality of reproduction: abortion struggles in 1970s Italy

This article analyses an episode of intense socio-political conflict over the question of abortion in 1970s Italy. Considering the shifting positions of feminist groups and other pro-legalization actors on the one hand, and institutions, political parties and the Church on the other, it offers a new analysis of social mobilization, leading to parliamentary debate and legal change. It presents an original approach to an understanding of feminist challenges to patriarchal cultures and institutions, and of the latter’s immediate responses. Focusing on Italy but referring to developments in other industrialized countries, the article inscribes the history of the battle for reproductive rights in 1970s Italy within a framework centred on the Foucauldian notion of biopolitical power. It is argued that the legal settling of the issue came to be seen by state actors as central to the wider socio-political stabilization of the country. For feminists, the question of abortion was less straightforward than is often assumed. Italian feminist debate, while visibly impacting on wider society, was marked by dilemmas around the private and the public, the relationship to the state, and concerns around centring the feminist agenda on reproduction.