Index insurance and climate risk management: Addressing social equity

Fair distribution of benefits from index insurance matters. Lack of attention to social equity can reinforce inequalities and undermine the potential index insurance holds as a tool for climate risk management that is also pro‐poor. The aims of this article are to: (a) examine social equity concerns raised by index insurance in the context of climate risk management, (b) consider how greater attention can be paid to social equity in index insurance initiatives, and (c) reflect on the policy challenges raised by taking social equity into account as a mechanism for climate risk reduction. The article draws on learning from the CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and presents the cases of the Index Based Livelihoods Insurance (IBLI) and Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise Ltd. (ACRE) in East Africa. It proposes a framework for unpacking social equity related to equitable access, procedures, representation and distribution within index insurance schemes. The framework facilitates identification of opportunities for building outcomes that are more equitable, with greater potential for inclusion and fairer distribution of benefits related to index insurance. The article argues that systematically addressing social equity raises hard policy choices for index insurance initiatives without straightforward solutions. Attention to how benefits and burdens of index insurance are distributed, suggests the unpalatable truth for development policy that the poorest members of rural society can be excluded. Nevertheless, a focus on social equity—facilitated by the framework—opens up opportunities to ensure index insurance is linked to more socially just climate risk management. At the very least, it may prevent index insurance from generating greater inequality. Taking social equity into account, thus, shifts the focus from agricultural systems in transition per se to systems with potential to incorporate societal transformation through distributive justice.     

Market stewardship of quasi‐markets by street level bureaucrats: The role of local area coordinators in the Australian personalisation system

With the rise in popularity of market‐based responses to social policy challenges, the stewardship of quasi‐markets or public service markets, is a key concern for governments worldwide. Debates about how to manage quasi‐markets have focussed on high‐level decision‐making processes. However local actors, in particular street level bureaucrats, are a key part of the complex work of managing quasi‐markets. We examine how street level bureaucrats act as local market stewards in a new quasi‐market for disability care, the Australian National Disability Insurance scheme. We find that the street level bureaucrats, known as local area coordinators, act as shapers of local markets but that their contributions are informal and often restricted by formal structures and processes. For example, we found evidence that the use of key performance indicators can disrupt effective local stewardship efforts towards a procedural approach. We conclude that introducing principles of the polycentric governance approach can improve connections between local market knowledge holders and central decision‐making agencies, thereby improving market stewardship and outcomes.     

Factors Influencing Custody Decisions in Contested Adoption Cases

In a number of recent controversial adoption cases, courts have been forced to decide if an unwed father should be granted custody of his child when the mother purposely fails to inform him of the child's birth or of her intention to place the child for adoption. The current study utilized three bi-variate independent variables from which eight vignettes were created depicting scenarios modeled on actual court cases. It was conducted as a preliminary investigation intended to examine the factors which are important to people when making custody decisions, to see if the importance of these factors varies with circumstance, and to examine their concurrence with factors utilized in judicial decisions. The results suggest that although subjects stress the importance of characteristics associated with being a good parent, the specific circumstances of each separate case and also the subject's gender have influential effects on custody decisions.     

Mixed accountability within new public governance: The case of a personalized welfare scheme in early implementation

We explore personalized funding schemes and associated changes for accountability within new welfare governance reforms. Using the case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme as hybrid institution, requiring mixed accountability arrangements, we examine the implications for broader discussions of accountability in personalized welfare arrangements. Methods used were semistructured interviews with government actors and disability service providers in Australia. In describing how accountability structures emerge, we argue that the way that layers fit together during implementation are often imperfect because of the conditions under which they arise. As a result, critical gaps can emerge in layered systems, which can put end users at risk. We demonstrate that theories on accountability in new public governance welfare reforms must also be informed by context and history informed qualitative analysis of case studies.     

Programme form and service user well-being: Linking theory and evidence

Since the early 1990s, the “activation turn” has become a standard welfare orthodoxy at the heart of international welfare systems. Although policymakers talk confidently about the well-being gains of activation interventions and their employment outcomes, a growing body of research has focused instead on questions around “activation process well-being”—the potential well-being effects of participation in activation programmes themselves. The present article makes three main contributions to the theory, knowledge, and policy practice of this activation well-being literature. First, the paper develops an original conceptual framework that newly connects well-being theory, qualitative variation in programmatic form, and empirically testable well-being expectations for participating service users. Second, the paper uses multivariate statistical analyses to examine six conceptually derived hypotheses around variation in programme forms and implications for participating service users' well-being, drawing on the case study of U.K. activation policy. Noteworthy is the paper's unique distributional insights into well-being effects across different types of service users. Third, the paper offers new policy contributions around the relevance of policy form to service user well-being as well as important pointers to key programme features in this regard.     

Visual methodologies,sand and psychoanalysis: employing creative participatory techniques to explore the educational experiences of mature students and children in care

Social science research has witnessed an increasing move towards visual methods of data production. However, some visual techniques remain pariah sites because of their association with psychoanalysis; and a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed approaches outside of therapy-based settings. This paper introduces the method of ‘sandboxing’, which was developed from the psychoanalytical approach of the ‘world technique’. ‘Sandboxing’ provides an opportunity for participants to create three-dimensional scenes in sand-trays, employing miniature figures and everyday objects. Data are presented from two studies conducted in Wales, UK. The first, exploring mature students’ accounts of higher education, and the second, exploring the educational experiences of children and young people in public care. The paper argues that psychoanalytical work can be adapted to enable a distinctive, valuable and ethical tool of qualitative inquiry; and illustrates how ‘sandboxing’ engendered opportunities to fight familiarity, enabled participatory frameworks, and contributed to informed policy and practice.     

The self‐concept of the delinquent female 1

Interviewing: Its Principles and Methods, Annette Garrett, Second Edition, FSAA, New York, 1972

The Experience of Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Manual, Herbert S. Strean, Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 1973.     

Entrepreneurship among the Displaced and Dispossessed: Exploring the Limits of Emancipatory Entrepreneuring

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurship, emancipation and gender within the international development arena. Through a longitudinal analysis of a micro‐enterprise development project in which intermediary organizations contract traditional handicrafts from female home‐based producers, we focus on the impact of contracting policies on the ability of the desperately poor to improve their disadvantaged position. Our critical analysis reveals how intermediaries who impose exclusive contracting conditions, supposedly to protect the women's interests, actually constrain the emancipatory potential of the women's entrepreneurial activities. However, such contractual limitations generate collaborative networks enabling the women to challenge these constraints in an effort to assert control over their activities. Accordingly, this paper contributes to contemporary debates concerning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship within the context of development. We advance this analysis through a gendered evaluation of the role of intermediary organizations on entrepreneurial emancipation and related empowerment.