Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

2 1 The innovative transport systems and the CityMobil project 10 1.1 The research questions 10 2 The state of art in the field of automatic transport systems 12 2.1 Case studies and demand studies for innovative transport systems 12 3 The design and implementation of surveys 14 3.1 Definition of experimental design 14 3.2 Questionnaire design and delivery 16 3.3 First analyses on the collected sample 18 4 Calibration of Logit Multionomial demand models 21 4.1 Methodology 21 4.2 Calibration of the “full” model. 22 4.3 Calibration of the “final” model 24 4.4 The demand analysis through the final Multinomial Logit model 25 5 The analysis of interaction between the demand and socioeconomic attributes 31 5.1 Methodology 31 5.2 Application of Mixed Logit models to the demand 31 5.3 Analysis of the interactions between demand and socioeconomic attributes through Mixed Logit models 32 5.4 Mixed Logit model and interaction between age and the demand for the CTS 38 5.5 Demand analysis with Mixed Logit model 39 6 Final analyses and conclusions 45 6.1 Comparison between the results of the analyses 45 6.2 Conclusions 48 6.3 Answers to the research questions and future developments 52

The European commission

We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

This essay seeks to lay the foundation for an understanding of welfare state retrenchment. Previous discussions have generally relied, at least implicitly, on a reflexive application of theories designed to explain welfare state expansion. Such an approach is seriously flawed. Not only is the goal of retrenchment (avoiding blame for cutting existing programs) far different from the goal of expansion (claiming credit for new social benefits), but the welfare state itself vastly alters the terrain on which the politics of social policy is fought out. Only an appreciation of how mature social programs create a new politics can allow us to make sense of the welfare state's remarkable resilience over the past two decades of austerity. Theoretical argument is combined with quantitative and qualitative data from four cases (Britain, the United States, Germany, and Sweden) to demonstrate the shortcomings of conventional wisdom and to highlight the factors that limit or facilitate retrenchment success.

http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/sem/Pierson_NewPolitics(1996).pdf

The New Politics of the Welfare State

The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

/pdf/the-institutional-dynamics-of-international-political-orders-4v1onuni6t.pdf

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

This CASEbrief summarises 'Understanding Social Exclusion' edited by John Hills, Julian Le Grand and David Piachaud, published by Oxford University Press

Understanding social exclusion

/pdf/centre-for-analysis-of-social-exclusion-4x8vxso245.pdf

Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion

The review confirms that fuel poverty is a serious national problem and shows that it is set to rise rapidly. It affects people with low incomes and energy costs above typical levels. It proposes a new way of measuring the problem, focused both on the number of people affected and the severity of the problem they face. Using the proposed measure: Nearly 8 million people in England, within 2.7 million households, both had low incomes and faced high energy costs in 2009 (the most recent year with available data). These households faced costs to keep warm that added up to £1.1 billion more than middle or higher income people with typical costs. The review’s central projection is that this “fuel poverty gap” – already three-quarters higher than in 2003 – will rise by a further half, to £1.7 billion by 2016. This means fuel poor households will face costs nearly £600 a year higher on average than better-off households with typical costs. The report also argues that: Fuel poverty exacerbates other hardship faced by those on low incomes, has serious health effects (including contributing to extra deaths every winter), and acts as a block to efforts to cut carbon emissions. The current official way of measuring it, based on whether a household would need to spend more than 10 per cent of its income on energy, is flawed, giving a misleading impression of trends, excluding some affected by the problem at some times and including people with high incomes at others. Interventions targeted on the core of the problem – especially those that improve the energy efficiency of homes lived in by people with low incomes – can make a substantial difference, but the impact of those planned to be in place by 2016 is only to reduce the problem by a tenth.

Getting the measure of fuel poverty: final report of the Fuel Poverty Review

Britain is an unequal country, more so than many other industrial countries and more so than a generation ago. This is manifest in many ways - most obviously in the gap between those who are well off and those who are less well off. But inequalities in people's economic positions are also related to their characteristics - whether they are men or women, their ages, ethnic backgrounds, and so on. The independent National Equality Panel, was established at the invitation of the Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman, Minister for Equality to report on the relationships between inequalities in economic outcomes and differences related to people's characteristics.

/pdf/an-anatomy-of-economic-inequality-in-the-uk-report-of-the-5c4kbm2ax6.pdf

An anatomy of economic inequality in the UK: report of the National Equality Panel

Preface List of contributors PART I: General Issues: Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen: Public action for Social Security: Foundations and strategy Robin Burgess & Nicholas Stern: Social Security in developing countries: What, why, who and how? A. B. Atkinson & John Hills: Social Security in developed countries: Are there lessons for developing countries? Jean-Philippe Platteau: Traditional systems of Social Security and hunger insurance: Past achievements and modern challenges Bina Agarwal: Social Security and the family: Coping with seasonality and calamity in rural India PART II: Case Studies: Ehtisham Ahmad & Athar Hussain: Social Security in China: A historical perspective S. R. Osmani: Social Security in South Asia Carmelo Mesa-Lago: Social Security in Latin America and the Caribbean: A comparative assessment Joachim von Braun: Social Security in sub-Saharan Africa: Reflections on policy challenges Richard Morgan: Social Security in the SADCC States of Southern Africa: Social welfare programmes and the reduction of household vulnerability

/pdf/social-security-in-developing-countries-45srti32u7.pdf

John Hills

Papers

Understanding social exclusion

Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion

Getting the measure of fuel poverty: final report of the Fuel Poverty Review

An anatomy of economic inequality in the UK: report of the National Equality Panel

Social security in developing countries