Showing papers by "M. Ramesh published in 2002"

The Policy Effects of Internationalization: A Subsystem Adjustment Analysis of Policy Change

Abstract: This article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary policy analysis and management by setting out the parameters for analyzing policy change induced by internationalization. It first maps the dynamics of policy change in domestic settings and then explores how internationalization has affected the dynamics identified. The central proposition of the article is that internationalization promotes the restructuring of policy subsystems in such as way as to form hospitable circumstances for swifter and deeper policy changes than would otherwise be the case. However, the analysis suggests that this is a two-stage process in that once its initial impact is felt, internationalization serves to entrench and stabilize reconstructed policy systems, thus constraining the scope for further change.

Globalisation Makes of States What States Make of It: Between Agency and Structure in the State/Globalisation Debate

Abstract: Across the social sciences the last decade has witnessed a proliferating interest in the relationship between the state and globalisation. By the early 1990s a range of writers working within what we label a structuralist approach asserted that globalisation is, if not challenging the viability of the sovereign state, then at least forcing it to adapt its policies to conform to the new global reality— being ‘hollowed out’, as the phrase had it. The pendulum then swung the other way when an ‘agent-centric’ backlash emerged, insisting that states have what we call agential power, such that they can mitigate and even shape global structures. In this article we build upon an emergent third way, or ‘structurationist’ perspective, between these two antinomies, in which we synthesise structuralist and agent-centric theory. We begin in Part I by taking stock of the central issues in the state/globalisation debate and examine the various structuralist and agent-centric approaches, while Part II sketches the theoretical outlines of a structurationist approach and conceptualises what we call the spatial promiscuity of the state. In Part III we apply this approach to the case of Singapore. We choose Singapore only because it provides an excellent litmus test for critically appraising the various positions on globalisation, including our own, not least because Singapore is a small state that has perhaps the most globalised economy in the world.

Privatization of social security in southeast asia

Abstract: This article examines the main social security programs, narrowly defined to include income maintenance for the aged and health care, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and reveals the large degree to which the statutory programs depend on private provision, particularly, private financing. It further shows that efforts are underway to reduce, or at least to arrest the expansion of role of the state by a corresponding expansion in the role of private provision and financing. The expansion of social security for the aged in Thailand is an exception in this regard. I conclude that both inefficiency and inequity have been promoted.