Making ends meet: perceptions of poverty in Sweden

During the era after the Second World War, Sweden has built a welfare system based on labor market participation and income maintenance. Low unemployment and decent wages are supposed to guarantee people a labor market income or income maintenance, which in turn should provide a proper standard for everyone. However, a rapid increase in unemployment and economic problems have made the future of the Swedish welfare state more uncertain than ever. These circumstances have, among other things, led to the suggestion that Sweden should abandon the income maintenance policy and create a social policy system with the more limited ambition of guaranteeing everyone a minimum income. In that case, one central question must be answered: what constitutes a decent minimum income in today's Sweden? Where should we draw the poverty line under which people will not be forced to live? These questions are central in the current debate. The consensual poverty line method is used in this article to derive a poverty line relevant for today's Sweden. The results shows that more than every fifth household has an income below the consensual poverty line. That is, they have an income that most Swedes would argue is too low to make ends meet. The level of the consensual poverty line was compared with the National Board of Health and Welfare's guidelines for social assistance. The consensual poverty line was shown to be more generous to small households and the norm for social assistance was more generous to larger households. Finally, the expenditure for guaranteeing all Swedish household a minimum income equal to the consensual poverty line was estimated: more than SEK 25 billion per year. The results in the article casts serious doubt on the ability of the Swedish welfare state to secure a decent income to all citizens.     

Poland's crisis and East European socialism

Conclusion We began this article by asking whether the Polish crisis is a socialist or a Polish disease. By citing the structural factors, we brought out the common difficulties affecting all East European societies in their political and economic development. These difficulties arose out of the transition from extensive to intensive economic growth and the consequent need to replace political mobilization of the population with their political integration. The structural contradictions occurred together with conjunctural developments in the world economy, the collapse of detente, the post-war demographic explosion, and natural calamities. Poland was least able to cope with these structural and conjunctural dynamics. The result was a society united on a national basis in its conflicts with the Party State apparatus. This conflict was never resolved by Solidarity nor by the subsequent military coup.While Poland and Romania had quite similar structural and conjunctural dynamics, it was only in Poland that the constellation of nation-specific factors yielded a societal reaction of system-threatening character. Looking at the rest of Eastern Europe, we do not see a similar constellation of factors. Rather, the combination of structural, conjunctural, and specific conditions has prevented the deeper contradictions from evolving into Solidarity-type mass movements of the Polish variety. Thus, we believe that the Polish developments will not be replicated in any of the other East European countries in the foreseeable future.Does this mean that the Polish experience is so unique that it is without relevance for the other East European states? On the contrary, the recognition of common structural problems points to fundamental conflicts in all the countries of actually existing socialism. The essence of these conflicts may be the same. It is the ability to identify and deal with them that distinguishes one East European regime from another. This ability varies with the specific and conjunctural factors as applied to each country. While there is little likelihood that the Polish disease will spread, this is partly because the other East European states are beginning to take preventive measures. In other words, they are learning from the Polish experience.There are several indicators that these regimes have learned from the Polish crisis. We can summarize them in the following predictions:First, we believe that state power and the repressive apparatus of the various East European countries will be reinforced and made more effective. This applies not so much to overt shows of force but to more sophisticated methods of social control and repression: e.g., limiting information channels, dispersing dissident groups, giving in to workers protests before they spread, taking practical measures to prevent consumer shortages from getting out of hand, and the like.Second, we can expect that oppositional forces, especially intellectuals, will be increasingly restricted in their ability to formulate and articulate system-threatening demands. The East European states will take any measures - jail, slander, internal deportation, cooptation, forced emigration - to make sure that intellectuals' contact with workers is weakened or at least strictly supervised.Third, we can expect the Eastern European states to take further measures to integrate potential system-threatening movements into the official system. We will see further attempts to improve the access possibilities for those social interests that have up to now been neglected, e.g. in physical and social infrastructures, neglected regions. Moreover, there will be renewed efforts to make the system of political socialization (education, propaganda, culture) more effective. Finally, we can expect anti-corruption campaigns within the State, Party, and industrial bureaucracies as the elites attempt to make these organs more legitimate in the eyes of the population.In recent months there seems to be considerable evidence that the East European regimes have taken all these measures. There have been attempts to re-invigorate the official trade unions. Yuri Andropov's succession was marked by a highly publicized anti-corruption campaign designed to win favor among rank-and-file workers. In Romania there have been exhortations towards more self-sufficiency and self-management, so that individual producers will be less dependent on State retail outlets, and the country less dependent on costly foreign imports. The reduction in East-West trade and decline of detente have also given more leeway for the East European repressive apparatus to crack down on dissidents and oppositional movements.With reduced trade, the economic benefits of detente no longer exist as a restraining factor on the authorities. The West now has reduced influence on domestic politics in East Europe. The combination of integration and repressive measures has so far prevented the structural contradictions from growing into true political crises of the Polish variety. Eastern Europe (and Poland) is remarkably quiet.With the broad enthusiasm fostered in the West by the rise of Solidarity, it is understandable that its brutal demise had generated parallel feelings of disillusionment. It would be erroneous to consider the Polish events as an archetype for Eastern Europe. The problems of East European regimes reflect a general system crisis (economic and political), each country's response depends on specific local conditions and fortuitous conjunctures. If the Polish events are to be understood, they must be explained as a variant in a larger East European context.Having concentrated on the crisis aspects in Poland and Romania should not blind us from the fact that these systems have an amazing ability to reproduce themselves - to muddle through. Actually existing socialism is more than simply brute force. Each of the East European societies exhibits a complex dialectic between the forces of functional stability and the forces of immanent contradictions. As such, in addition to their structural aspects, we must analyze each of these societies in their differing vulnerability to conjunctural events and in their specific political, social, and cultural characters.For those who seek to replace actually existing socialism with a more emancipatory socialism, the Polish crisis constitutes a key point of departure. It should be discussed both in terms of what it means for Poland, and for Eastern Europe. The Polish events provide further evidence that the tasks of social theory reside as much in explaining why societies muddle through as why they fall apart.     

Corporate social responsibility and governance

Journal of Management and Governance -     

Models of social mobility

Properties of measures and models of social mobility are analyzed in relation to the conceptualization of mobility. Two main objectives of mobility research are identified. One is the study of determinants of occupational achievement, the other is the study of mobility as a characteristic of social systems. It is shown that the realization of both objectives is hindered by a failure of commonly used models and measures of mobility to separate out the various individual and structural factors responsible for mobility.     

Inequality in Interaction: Equalising the Helper–Recipient Relationship in the Refugee Solidarity Movement

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In this paper, we supplement existing scholarship on the interactional process within volunteering with one that focuses...     

大学生返乡创业生态系统：目标、要素、机理和对策*

创业生态系统从生态系统的视角揭示了创业生态中创业主体、创业要素、创业环境以及各要素之间的相互作用。创业生态系统是一个复杂的自适应系统，其具有复杂的自适应系统的各项特征，从系统的角度来讲，其具有系统的目标、要素、运行机理和系统边界。本文以大学生返乡创业生态系统为例，从系统目标、系统要素和系统的运行机理三个方面立体剖析了创业生态系统的内涵和外延。同时，对大学生返乡创业生态系统的目标设定、大学生返乡创业生态系统各要素的构成以及大学生创业生态系统的运行机理进行了分析，对强化大学生返乡创业生态系统的构建提出了对策建议，为促进大学生返乡创业和乡村振兴提供参考。     

Conditional VAR and Expected Shortfall: A New Functional Approach

We estimate two well-known risk measures, the value-at-risk (VAR) and the expected shortfall, conditionally to a functional variable (i.e., a random variable valued in some semi(pseudo)-metric space). We use nonparametric kernel estimation for constructing estimators of these quantities, under general dependence conditions. Theoretical properties are stated whereas practical aspects are illustrated on simulated data: nonlinear functional and GARCH(1,1) models. Some ideas on bandwidth selection using bootstrap are introduced. Finally, an empirical example is given through data of the S&P 500 time series.     

Framing human rights: exploring storytelling within internet companies

This article explores human rights storytelling within two of the dominant internet companies, Google and Facebook. Based on interview with company staff as well as analysis of publicly available statements, the article examines how human rights are framed, made sense of and translated into company norms, products, and governance structures. The paper argues that the companies’ framing in many respects resembles that of the United States’ online freedom agenda, celebrating the liberating power of the internet and perceiving human rights as primarily safeguards against repressive governments. The companies see freedom of expression as part of their DNA and do not perceive any contradiction between this standard and business practices that may impact negatively on users’ freedom of expression, such as terms of service enforcement. Likewise, there is no sense of conflict between the online business model and their users’ right to privacy.