When the Export of Social Problems Is No Longer Possible: Immigration Policies and Unemployment in Switzerland

Throughout the twentieth century, Switzerland has been one of the OECD countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in its population. The aim of this article is to show how institutional factors have shaped the opportunities for change in immigration and immigrant‐employment‐related policies there in the 1990s. Whereas unemployment had remained low in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a marked increase at the beginning of the 1990s. Existing migration policies were considered a central cause of this increase, since the great majority of foreigners who had come and settled in Switzerland in the periods of economic expansion were low‐skilled, and were now over‐represented among the unemployed. The reforms undertaken in the field of immigration and integration policy to respond to these new problems have been determined by specific institutional factors: direct democracy, a defensive migration regime, the development of immigrant rights and the weak autonomy of the central state. These factors account to a large extent for the limited scope and specific pathways of policy reforms in these two domains.     

The Decoupling of Social Policy Reforms in Romania

Social reforms in Romania have been, from the beginning of the 1990s and throughout the EU post‐accession phase, the battlefield for many domestic and international actors. The article identifies, from an historical institutionalist perspective, the international actors who decisively influenced reforms of social protection in Romania during the transition, with a special emphasis on the EU pre‐ and post‐accession stages. Further, the article attempts to understand the impact of the various external influences on the sustainability and effectiveness of domestic reforms, by assessing the convergence, or the decoupling, between the rationales – i.e. ideologies and values – that explicitly grounded social reforms in Romania and the domestic public rhetoric on social risks and values. Answers to these questions can provide important insights in regard to both the impact of the EU upon new member states and the challenges of EU enlargement for the EU and its core member states.     

Neo‐liberalism by Decay? The Evolution of the Czech Welfare State

In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction – not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig-zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social-capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest-avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.     

诺斯与马克思:关于社会发展和制度变迁动力的比较

道格拉斯·诺斯是新制度主义在经济史学方面的代表。他从总体上说是一个制度变迁动力的多元论者,但又视人口变化是制度变迁的最终动力。本文对诺斯关于制度变迁动力的解释与马克思关于社会发展动力的理论进行了比较,说明诺斯对马克思的生产力一元动力论的批评,即过分强调技术进步、缺少解释技术进步速率的理论,是缺少根据的。本文以有关史实证明,诺斯以人口增减为基本动因对所谓“两次经济革命”的解释是不成立的;不可更改的历史事实始终对马克思的一元论唯物史观提供着坚实而有力的支持。     

政治科学中的新制度主义--当代西方新制度主义政治学述评

新制度主义政治学是对传统政治学制度研究的继承,以及对"行为主义革命"的反思而形成的一种政治学研究范式.它重新把政治制度置于社会的核心地位,认为忽视制度或者低估其作用,都不可能全面地理解政治学理论.作为当代西方政治科学的前沿,新制度主义政治学主要由历史制度主义、理性选择制度主义、社会学制度主义等流派组成.它触及了一系列政治学中关键的理论和经验问题,提高了人们对于政治世界的理解水平,有其重要的理论贡献,但也存在着一些严重的缺陷.     

A “shift in attitude”? Institutional change and sexual and gender-based crimes at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

ABSTRACT

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has been slow to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) crimes perpetrated during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. However, there appears to have been a tentative “shift in attitude” at the ECCC toward the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. This article draws on feminist institutionalist theories, first to explain the ECCC’s initial failure to prioritize SGBV and then to explain how and why this may have changed. The article suggests that such change has not arisen from the ECCC’s formal rules. Instead, various actors working with and around these “old rules” have drawn on these provisions, civil society initiatives and international and national gender norms to modify “informal” practices concerning the prosecution of SGBV at the ECCC. Sensitivity to SGBV is particularly important in hybrid, or internationalized, international criminal structures, which may be hindered by prohibitive practices emerging from both the international and national components of the institution.     

经济学方法论的个体主义、集体主义及其超越

方法论个体主义和方法论集体主义的分歧源于社会理论中的能动性与结构问题。方法论个体主义体现了一个极端,即强调行为主体而不是社会结构,是一种试图仅用个体相关的方式处理社会结构、制度和其他总体现象的方式。方法论集体主义体现了另一个极端,强调整体结构而不是个体,认为所有个体倾向或行为能够也应当从社会的、结构的、文化的或者制度的现象中得到解释。这两个极端都有其缺陷:个体主义否定结构影响,不承认多层次系统中存在着不同的"质"层级,集体主义对改变个体的过程和机制也未给予充分的关注。而对这两者的超越与综合则包括了结构化理论、批判实在论、凡勃伦制度主义、奥地利传统的互动主义以及基于现代系统论的系统主义等。结构化理论和批判实在论试图从实体层次上分离能动性与结构,凡勃伦制度主义和互动主义试图从不同的角度解释能动性与结构之间的双向因果关系,系统主义则采用系统论的思考方式,强调不同层级和不同网络中的循环因果关系。     

Social Policy from Olson to Ostrom: A Case Study of Dutch Disability Insurance

Social policy development and reform in corporatist welfare states often follows a pattern of subsequent collectivization and de‐collectivization. This has to do, the article argues, with the social problems these phases address. Early social policy development forms a response to Olson‐type collective action problems that organized actors (labour and employers' organizations) in the field experience: state‐obliged benefits solve free rider problems, while bipartite administration allows labour and employers' organizations to organize their constituencies. This solution to Olson‐type collective action problems, however, also constitutes an Ostrom‐type collective action problem. Such a system functions as a common pool resource. Individual benefit take‐up is experienced as free and the costs of benefit take‐up are collectivized in the common pool. The article illustrates this pattern with reference to Dutch disability insurance.     

Economics of the firm and economic growth: a hybrid theoretical framework of analysis

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to achieve a critical discussion around the conceptualization of the firm and its role in the dynamic process of economic growth. By reviewing the theoretical matrix of the economics of the firm we go beyond the mainstream economics of the firm proposing a hybrid approach combining evolutionary and population ecology, which is likely to constitute a fruitful path for the conceptualization of the firm in the process of economic growth. Specifically, the analysis confronts the distinct theoretical perspectives around some imperative and controversial issues such as the nature of knowledge and learning and the cognitive capacities of economic agents within the firm. We argue that the economic understanding of growth and development of human societies will strongly benefit from a conceptualization of the firm capable of capturing the spirit of the Knightian firm. Overcoming the shortcomings of the mainstream growth models, which conceive firms as a black box, the proposed hybrid approach recalls the true nature of the firm as an organization. Issues related to the organizational arrangements that sustain the feasibility of productive activities and to the incentive contracts are also taken into account. Although acknowledging some recent important contributions within mainstream economic growth theory to adopt more realistic concepts of the firm, we believe that evolutionary and organizational population perspectives include crucial pointers in developing further research aimed at the construction of economic growth models based on a micro-economic perspective that is closer to the reality of firms.     

Ideas, private institutions and American welfare state 'exceptionalism': the case of health and old-age insurance, 1915–1965

Traditional theories of welfare state development divide into two camps: societal accounts and institutional accounts. The aim of the present article is to amend and enrich the institutional approach to US social policy by reconsidering key aspects of the genesis of the American welfare state: 1) showing that concepts such as 'policy feedback' and 'path dependence' need to be extended to encompass the effect of private social policies; and 2) taking policy paradigms and agenda setting more seriously than is the norm in institutional scholarship. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. The first part explores the activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) in the decade beginning in 1910 and the genesis of Social Security in the 1930s, while the second part examines the effect of the private benefit developments on policy choices between 1935 and 1965.