Showing papers on "Legislation published in 1994"

On ecological dumping

Abstract: pollution-intensive sectors of the economy to the cleaner sectors. The comparative advantage of the former is diminished by such a policy. Thus, environmental legislation affects the international division of labour and can be used to achieve trade-policy objectives. This is particularly appealing if the traditional instruments of trade policy, tariffs and quotas, are not available, for instance if the country has signed treaties that prohibit restrictions on imports from other countries. Examples are the EC treaties and the GATT. Thus, the politician may be tempted to use the tools of environmental policies to achieve objectives other than the internalisation of the social costs of pollution. The objectives may be terms-of-trade improvements, strategic trade-policy considerations, or the protection of infant or ailing industries or sectors which are supported by powerful lobbies. The protection of particular sectors or subgroups of a society by means of environmental policies may result in an environmental legislation which is too lax in some sense. Producers obtain hidden subsidies in terms of low pollution abatement requirements and they can dump their products in international markets at prices that do not reflect the true cost of production. This is considered to be a practice of unfair trade. Thus, the term 'ecological dumping' is often used in the public discussion to paraphrase the phenomenon. This catchphrase will be taken up for the following investigation. It should be kept in mind, however, that, in contrast to normal dumping, ecological dumping is an activity performed by the government and not by an individual firm. Moreover, it does not in the first place affect the price of a tradable commodity but that of a factor of products which is internationally immobile: nature's capability to provide environmental resources. This paper is an attempt to cast some more light on the issue of ecological dumping. In a first step, a sensible definition of the subject is sought. What is ecological dumping and how can it be measured? We shall then try to identify economic motives underlying a government's decision to engage in ecological dumping. It will be assumed that the government follows a rational strategy, i.e. it maximises national welfare or another objective function. Firstly, the

Managing the mosaic : diversity in action

Abstract: Today, all organizations have to confront the challenge of diverse workforces. Yet, many equal opportunity initiatives, in particular target setting and positive action which focus on specific groups, such as women or ethnic minorities, are fundamentally flawed. This practical book sets out to separate myth from reality. Drawing on a wide-ranging literature search, extensive experience of working within companies and a survey of almost 300 organizations, the authors give evidence that group-based equal opportunity policies are divisive and seldom successful. Effective diversity strategies, pioneered by companies, such as Distillers and Vintners, are summed up in a detailed new model, and linked in with the ideal of "the learning organization". The essential elements are flexibility, an empowering culture, and business-related training based on individual needs rather than group membership. Demographic changes, legislation and increasingly globalized markets mean that diversity is now a central concern of all employers; this book provides solutions to their problems.

The Bubble Act: Its Passage and Its Effects on Business Organization

Abstract: By surveying contemporary sources this article reveals direct evidence for the involvement of the South Sea Company in the passage of the Bubble Act. The dominant position of the Company and of its national debt conversion scheme in the affairs of England in 1720 support the conclusion that the act was in fact a piece of special-interest legislation for the Company. The short-term interest that motivated the enactment, together with the limited legal and economic effects of the act, minimized its significance as a turning point in the long-term development of the English joint-stock company.

The death of common sense : how law is suffocating America

Abstract: If Howard plays his cards right, he may be on the brink of creating his own intemal industry along the lines of Peters and Waterman's, "In Search of Excellence." There appears to be a broad range of acceptance of his views on the excesses of regulation. President Clinton recently shared the same stage with Howard when he aligned himself with the popular intention of reducing big govemment. Senator Dole and the democratic Govemor of Florida, Lawton Chiles, have also embraced Howard's book. Even outside the United States, other countries seem to be changing course toward a reduction in govemment and regulation. For example, France elected conservative, Jacques Chirac, and a conservative recently won office in a Canadian province. It is not clear whether Howard's book is a harangue against regulation or the U.S. legal system. Does the latter lead to the excess of the former? Because Howard is a corporate lawyer, his polemic is all the more compelling. Howard proposes the notion of a "regulatory budget" (pp. 9, 26). This has been seen before under the mbric of "sunset laws," in which regulations are evaluated periodically according to certain criteria to justify the continuation of the regulations. Howard notes lawmakers' zest for promulgating regulations, but their lack of enthusiasm for reducing them. Evaluating regulations may be currently revived in the proposed legislation in the Senate, which would require cost/benefit analysis to be undertaken before any proposed regulations can be adopted. At the heart of Howard's concem is the seemingly wrong tum the United States has taken in trying to solve every national problem with detailed regulations. It would be better to allow the nation's administrators to use a little common sense, judgment, and discretion. Indeed, the common law is based on such a premise; namely, past experience with legal matters accumulated over time in the form of legal precedent provides the guidelines for evaluating future legal issues. The situation is further exacerbated by the deluge of regulations, as well as the ridiculousness of so many of them. According to the author, if only Americans could rely on lawyer friendly terms of art, such as the reasonable man standard and good faith (pp. 23, 24), society would be better served. Yet, Howard also expresses fmstration with those administrators in the school systems who "knew, or reasonably should have known" (p. 128) that their disciplinary actions were violating the constitutional rights of students. His embracing of the reasonable man standard is difficult to fit with its application in reality. Anyone who has attempted to study antitmst law in which the mle of reason standard is applied, knows the frustration in trying to apply a standard (1) when the plaintiff has the burden to show that the conduct in question is more anticompetitive than procompetitive in the relevant geographic and product markets and (2) when the defendant has not employed the least restrictive competitive altemative in restraining trade. Howard correlates the regulatory mess the United States is in to trends or political eras. Prior to the tum of the century, the United States was relatively free of regulations and statutes. Rules and regulations began to replace the common law around the late 1800s, with tmst-busting legislation and laws dealing with child labor. The New Deal, under President Franklin Roosevelt, put the United States on the road to a regulated economy. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, with Medicare, work safety, and civil rights laws, capped the progression (pp. 24-28).

Social Care in a Mixed Economy

Abstract: Historical and policy context community care - markets and enabling the mixed economy in 1991 local response to the legislation and guidance building a mixed economy social care is different residential care home transfers.

The Liberal Promise: Anti-Discrimination Legislation in Australia

Abstract: Anti-discrimination legislation represents a halting step towards recognition by the state that women and minority groups (Aborigines, migrants, gays, people with a disability and those espousing unpopular religious and political views) constitute underclasses in our society. This study attempts to show that blind faith in the law as a beneficent agent of social change is misplaced. Not only does the liberal commitment to individualism undermine the communal or class-based nature of discrimination, but the legal culture itself operates to uphold the power of the socially superior. The author describes how such a subversive result can be achieved through the application of the ostensibly neutral principles of legal doctrine. Within a broad contextual framework and focusing on the Australian experience, this work examines the innovative substance and procedure associated with equal opportunity practices. In the conclusion, this critique of liberalism in action contemplates the implications of communitarian social theory for women and minority groups and finds that it is also likely to be wanting.

The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence

Abstract: The Constitution Besieged offers a compelling reinterpretation of one of the most notorious periods in American constitutional history. In the decades following the Civil War, federal and state judges struck down as unconstitutional a great deal of innovative social and economic legislation. Scholars have traditionally viewed this as the work of a conservative judiciary more interested in promoting laissez-faire economics than in interpreting the Constitution. Gillman challenges this scholarly orthodoxy by showing how these judges were in fact observing a long-standing constitutional prohibition against "class legislation." Originally published in cloth by Duke University Press, this book received the 1994 C. Herman Pritchett Award for the "Best Book in the Field of Law and Courts," awarded by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association.

The political economy of centralization and the European Community

Abstract: Since 1972, the share of central government expenditure in total public expenditure has continued to increase in most industrial countries. In an international cross-section analysis, it has a significant positive effect on the share of government spending in GDP. The actors who have an interest in centralization are analyzed. The dynamics of centralization are attributed to a response asymmetry and two thresholds. “Popitz' law” of the attraction of the larger budget is tested with respect to the EC Commission: high-ranking politicians come mainly from the smaller member states. The voters' attitudes toward European unification are analyzed in a pooled regression. Ten years hence, 80% of our economic legislation, and perhaps even our fiscal and social legislation as well, will be of Community origin (Jacques Delors, Debates of the European Parliament, 6 July, 1988, No. 2-367/140).

Mortgage Redlining: Race, Risk, and Demand

Abstract: Charges that geographical redlining is widely practiced by mortgage lenders and is associated with racial discrimination have received much attention. However, empirical research in this area has yet to document a convincing answer to the question of whether redlining even exists. Much of the previous research in this area has suffered from failure to account for variations in risk, and/or failure to adequately control for geographical differences in demand. This study addresses these problems in an effort to determine whether the disparity in the flow of mortgage credit can be explained by differences in risk and demand. THE U.S. MORTGAGE MARKET is operationally efficient with long-term mortgage loans made to highly leveraged borrowers at very thin spreads above the lender's cost of funds. There has long been controversy, however, with respect to considerations of equity. Legislation on this issue began with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, followed by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA). It is now over 15 years since passage of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA). This legislation was designed to assure that banks meet the credit needs of neighborhoods in their service areas. In recent years much attention in the administration of the CRA has been devoted to the issue of racial discrimination in mortgage lending. Questions still remain as to whether the decisions of mortgage lenders are influenced by the race of the loan applicant or on the racial composition of his neighborhood. Redlining is the refusal of lenders to make mortgage loans in certain areas regardless of the creditworthiness of the individual loan applicant. Many studies claim to verify the existence of racially based mortgage redlining. The earliest studies were generally carried out by community groups and were rather crudely done. For a summary of such studies, see Benston (1981). Several studies appear in professional literature (for example, see Bradbury, Case, and Dunham (1989) and Hutchinson, Ostas, and Reed (1977)). From a public policy standpoint, these findings, if valid, would indicate a need for additional regulation to ensure social equality. Additionally, the existence of redlining in the absence of structural defects in the market would conflict

The Business Case for Women′s Equality

Abstract: Outlines women′s continuing pay and employment disadvantage in Britain. Discusses limitations of the legal compliance approach to equal opportunity. Examines critically the business case for EO (that it serves organizational competitiveness). Argues there is not a business case but a series of business rationales which are contingent. Organizational and managerial receptiveness to them is uneven, and they lead to only selective action. Argues that the business case “carrot” shares a similar weakness to the legal compliance “stick”. Calls for action beyond the individual organization in a multi‐pronged approach requiring state action, in which equality legislation and business case rationales each have a part to play.

Policy and Pork: The Use of Pork Barrel Projects to Build Policy Coalitions in the House of Representatives

Abstract: The literature on distributive politics in legislatures concentrates on the formation of logrolling coalitions to pass the district projects of the coalitions' members at the expense of the general public. This article argues that district projects are also used for another purpose: to help committee leaders to construct supporting coalitions for legislative packages that satisfy the leaders' own goals, including general benefit legislation. This study explicates such a strategy and tests its efficacy by estimating the impact on House members' roll call votes of the inclusion of highway "demonstration" projects in the 1987 highway and urban mass transit reauthorization by the leadership of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. The analysis shows that distributive benefits conferred by the leaders did indeed influence members' support for the leaders' legislative goals on that bill.

Coordination and Welfare Reform: The Quest for the Philosopher's Stone

Abstract: In ancient times alchemists believed implicitly in the existence of a philosopher's tone, which would provide the key to the universe and, in effect, solve all of the problem of mankind. The quest for coordination is in many respects the twentieth-century equivalent of the medieval search for the philosopher's stone. If only we can find the right formula for coordination, we can reconcile the irreconcilable, harmonize competing and wholly divergent interests, overcome irrationalities in our government structures, and make hard policy choices to which no one will dissent. In an attempt to reform Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the major intergovernmental program providing public assistance to the poor in the United States, Congress approved the Family Support Act (FSA) in 1988 (PL. 100-485). This act included the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, which established a new set of employment and training services targeted at AFDC recipients.(1) JOBS, which became operational in October 1990, has been initiated in a complex organizational and policy environment composed of pre-existing programs that are open to the same target group. The involvement of multiple state, local, and other organizations is characteristic of this new program, as it was of some of the pre-existing programs. In recognition of the multiple possible linkages, the Family Support Act imposes several requirements intended to foster the coordination of services delivered by the different agencies and organizations to JOBS participants. The multiagency, multiprogram framework and the welfare reform legislation mandates for coordination raise questions about how effectively the JOBS program can be administered. Although state welfare departments are designated as the lead agencies, cooperation of other public agencies is required. Activities of the state agencies need to be linked to not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. Success of the welfare reform effort might well turn on the degree to which the diverse organizations and programs integrate their efforts. That coordination was already a problem in the social service arena can hardly be questioned. The categorized, fragmented nature of the welfare system has seriously constrained effective delivery of human services, as several national commissions noted in 1991 (National Commission for Employment Policy, 1991; National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality, 1991; National Commission on Children, 1991). We know, however, that coordination is hard to achieve. Seidman (1970) has called coordination the "philosopher's stone"' of public administration, suggesting that it is an illusive, magical ingredient that will transform flawed systems of administration. Agranoff's (1991) recent review of service integration efforts of the past 20 years indicates that coordination continues to be extraordinarily difficult to attain in the mosaic of American social services. Thus we ask: What practices have managers used to blend together the essential ingredients of the JOBS program? Have the wizards of the social service organizations overcome their specialized concerns and been able to amalgamate the diverse elements into a functioning system? What barriers to coordination fell to their magic or resisted their alchemy? The answers to these questions will tell us something about the potential for the long-term success of JOBS and similar programs. They will also tell us about factors that shape the success of intergovernmental program implementation and interorganizational policy activity. The Barriers to Coordination Previous research suggests that coordination barriers are of several types: organizational, legal/technical, and political. Organizational barriers are rooted in the differing missions, professional orientations, structures, and processes of the agencies. Mission defines an organization's purposes, and differences in mission can lead to conflicts over goals, directions, and activities. …

Annual update of how each state stands on legislative issues affecting advanced nursing practice.

Abstract: The change from a free-for-service system to a system run by managed-care organizations has caused dramatic shifts in where and how health care is delivered. Within the managed-care systems, administrators need to show a good bottom line. Rapid restructuring of the system and the need for profit create many potential consequences (e.g., APNs squeezed out of participation on some provider panels; previously unattractive poor patients are now attractive because they can provide an ongoing revenue base; the use of more unlicensed personnel to provide patient services). Private businesses and the federal government like managed-care health care systems as an answer to the out-of-control escalating costs of health care. Managed care is likely to stay with us for a long while. Because political force comes from money and there is plenty of that in health care insurance corporations, managed care is likely to be with us for a long time. Regulations and control of these managed-care systems will probably be difficult. However, though big business has the money, APNs have the feet, hands and patience to seek further regulation of these huge corporations (e.g., antidiscrimination language to prevent exclusion from provider panels). With the reality of managed care, MDs are no longer in control of the health care system. The AMA's recent attempt to control other providers is tantamount to one ship officer attempting to control another on the Titanic's (i.e., fee-for-service system's) last evening. In a few states, fee-for-service is still predominant, but the majority of states are rapidly moving into megaconglomerate, finance-driven managed care run by business administrators. Things are getting so complex in today's world of corporate takeovers, managed-care megaconglomerates, and power-brokering politics that it is easy to understand why millions of Americans drown themselves in relatively simplistic good-versus-evil entertainment dramas. Huge changes in how the system operates have happened this year while the nation was busy following the Simpson trial. But NPs and other APNs must be very vigilant. We must ensure a place in this new system. Our patients and the nation need us!

Copyright and the public interest

Abstract: Part I: The public interest in the copyright system. Part II: The concept of the public interest in the history of copyright - national examples. UK. USA. France. Germany. Part III: Copyright and public policy. Part IV: The future of copyright - obstacles and perspectives.

EU water policy: Uncertain agendas, shifting networks and complex coalitions

Abstract: European Union (EU) water legislation is now very extensive in scope and has major cost implications for the member states, for the water industry, and for consumers. Although participation in the policy formulation process was fairly narrowly based in the early development of this programme of legislation, more recently participation has become more extended. The EU water policy process is an example of a rather loose and more open issue network or constellation of actors, rather than a closed and restricted policy community. It is, however, possible to identify a core of central actors within this loose configuration. Even so, the agenda setting process remains unpredictable and issues are processed via the interaction of a series of advocacy coalitions which link epistemic communities of scientists (especially toxicologists) into a wider and more visible political world. Because of the high salience of water policy throughout the Union, issue expansion, rather than issue contraction, is likely to remai...

Mental health law: civil liberties and the principle of reciprocity

Abstract: At a conference organised by the Law Society, Mental Health Act Commission, and Institute of Psychiatry possible reform of mental health legislation in England and Wales was discussed. It was concluded that radical legal reform was required, and that the law should be designed specifically for provision of care in both hospital and the community. Reform should be based on principle rather than pragmatism, particularly the principle of reciprocity--patients' civil liberties may not be removed for the purposes of treatment if resources for that treatment are inadequate. Protection of society from nuisance or even violence is insufficient reason for detention. Legal provision for compulsion of patients, whether in hospital or the community, must be matched by specific rights to treatment.

Governing the Nation's Schools: The Case for Restructuring Local School Boards

Abstract: Ms. Danzberger recommends reforms that will actually re-create local boards so that they can become influential forces for change and improvement. Without such reforms, she points out, attacks on school boards will continue and escalate, thus diminishing what credibility boards have maintained. Local school boards are among the most venerable of U.S. public institutions, embodying many of our most cherished political and cultural tenets. One of these is a distrust of "distant" government that dates back to Colonial times, when Americans were ruled from afar by governments that had little knowledge of the Colonial experience and no knowledge of local conditions. Lay school boards are also valued because of Americans' ambivalence regarding experts and expertise. This profound ambivalence accounts for much of the motivation to elect laypeople to make local education policy and for the expectation that they will act as buffers between citizens and the possible "excesses" of professional educators. Historical experience also explains Americans' fondness for keeping school boards independent of units of general government. In the late 19th century, city school boards, controlled by the political ward system, were patently corrupt. This corruption led in the first two decades of this century to a major movement to reform school governance. The familiar form of school governance - a central board for each district with a professional chief executive, the superintendent - emerged from these reforms. The current grassroots commitment to separating the governance of education from general purpose government in order to keep education out of the hands of "ordinary politicians" is rooted in these almost century-old reforms. The governance system for the nation's schools evolved over more than 200 years, starting in Massachusetts when local selectmen determined that running both towns and schools in expanding communities was too great an administrative burden. Although states increasingly provided for a statewide system of primary and secondary schools in their constitutions, they did not immediately establish a state governance structure specifically for education. It was not until 1837 that the first state board of education and the office of state superintendent were established (another first for Massachusetts). Local control remained preeminent, although the innate public suspicion of state control manifested itself frequently in complex layers of legislation that carefully defined local prerogatives. Today, the governance system for public schools is complex, incorporating multiple players and decision makers, including federal and state courts, the U.S. Congress, state governors and legislatures, and so on. These policy makers often respond to the concerns of the unofficial players in education policy: special interest groups, the business community, and groups of citizens who want their perspectives reflected in the policies governing schools. Even at the local level, the school board is not the only local institution whose decisions determine what will or will not occur in schools. Teacher and administrator unions, principals and teachers in individual schools, and, increasingly, planning or governing bodies in individual schools all make decisions or share authority once lodged with the school board. Unquestioning acceptance of school boards, as currently structured, cannot be equated with protecting local control, for local control is increasingly diffuse. Thus the issue is not local control, as many defenders of the status quo would have us believe, but how to ensure an effective central policy-making body for public education at the local level. Citizens can continue to exercise some control over the education of their children and the expenditure of their tax dollars, while also providing for effective leadership and governance of the schools, through reformed and strengthened school boards. …

The New German Packaging Laws: Effects on Firms Exporting to Germany

Abstract: Environmental issues have become progressively more important during the 1980s and 1990s. With greater concern about the environment, pressure, both formal and informal, has mounted on business. One of the most developed formal constraints has emerged in Germany, with the introduction of packaging laws to reduce packaging and encourage reuse and recycling. Such legislation affects both German companies and companies exporting into Germany. It can be argued that exporters are disadvantaged by such legislation, having to adapt their activities to each country. This presupposes knowledge of the legislation and a willingness and ability to change and embrace the new constraints. Reports on the new German packaging laws and on a survey of firms exporting to Germany, which examines their awareness of and compliance with these laws.

Insulation of pensions from political risk

Abstract: There are many sources of political risk to public provision of pensions. This paper analyzes legislation to alter the retirement income system. This approach naturally recognizes that some changes in the system are good responses to social risks, while others generate such risks. Thus the discussion is in terms of the effect of institutional structure on the likelihood of alternative legislative actions. Particular attention is paid to the roles of automatic pension adjustment and pension professionals in providing insulation. Briefly touched upon is the tendency of legislation to redistribute as a function of the type of system being created.

Unfastening the Electoral Connection: The Behavior of U.S. Representatives when Reelection Is No Longer a Factor

Abstract: While elections are essential to a democracy, it is commonly believed that the desire to secure reelection causes legislators to engage in many undesirable activities. In this note, by comparing the behavior of U.S. representatives who have chosen to run for reelection with those representatives who have decided not to do so, we provide evidence of the precise activities induced by electoral concerns. We find that elections cause members to go back to the district more often, to employ more staff assistants, to attend to roll-call voting more fastidiously, and to be more legislatively active. While these activities are no doubt consistent with the wishes of most constituents, the desire for reelection also encourage members to introduce what is apparently frivolous legislation on topics of little familiarity to the member. Those members who are not running for reelection, on the other hand, are more likely to have a successful and tightly focused legislative agenda.

“Geneva – the key to equality”: inter-war feminists and the league of nations[1]

Abstract: Inter-war feminists converged on Geneva seeking international action to raise the status of women. They believed that support from the League of Nations would strengthen national efforts to combat the anti-feminist reaction caused by the Depression and the rise of conservative ideologies. During the 1930s, demands for an equal rights treaty exposed tactical and ideological tensions among women's groups. While all women's groups active in Geneva sought the extension of women's rights, some questioned the effectiveness of blanket legislation, such as an equal rights treaty, and its implications for protective legislation. Although these tensions remained unresolved, the international campaign by feminists led ultimately to a League-sponsored inquiry into the legal status of women. With this victory, inter-war feminists irrevocably challenged the idea that the status of women was a subject for consideration by national governments only. The League inquiry laid the foundations for the creation of the...

The Politics of Law and Order

Abstract: We're Number One! Every politician running for office in the November elections recognized that law and order demagoguery was the ticket to success. Though the Republicans proved themselves tougher and nastier than Bill Clinton's New Democrats, as far as criminal justice policies are concerned it made little difference which party triumphed.(1) By 1992, the traditional liberal agenda on crime - prevention, community development, mediation, rehabilitation, and abolition of the death penalty - had, like liberalism itself, disappeared from official political discourse. Meanwhile, given the current rash to retribution, you wouldn't know that people's safety is unrelated to the number of police or severity of punishment; or that most crime is not even reported to the police; or that the overall crime rate has gone down over the last 20 years. The rates for murder and rape are high, but are about the same as they were in the early 1970s; other crimes of violence, such as robbery and assault, have declined and youth violence is a small and decreasing part of serious crime in the United States.(2) Yet a moral panic about crime and lawlessness is in full swing throughout the country, from Puerto Rico, where the National Guard is called upon to police housing projects, to the beaches of southern California, where curfews are imposed to prevent gang violence (Navarro, 1994: 6; Rimer, 1994: 1). Legislators at every level of government are in fierce competition to prove their devotion to criminalization and punishment. Congress recently passed a $30.2 billion crime bill that will fund 100,000 new police and $8.8 billion in prison construction. The new Congress is likely to toughen this essentially right-wing bill by eliminating its token social programs, adding new restrictions on death-row appeals and trying to weaken what remains of constitutional restraints on the police (New York Times, 1994: 10). Variants of "three strikes and you're out," which mandates life imprisonment for prisoners convicted of a third felony, operate now in more than 30 states (Rohter, 1994: 1). California will require at least 20 new prisons to meet the provisions of its three strikes initiative and some 600 other bills that are waiting in line before the legislature's Public Safety Committee (Chavez, 1994: 1). Florida's legislature is also awash in crime bills, including proposals to reduce the age of execution to 14 and to fine welfare mothers for their kids' crimes (Rohter, 1994: 10). To avoid any accusation of being soft on crime, New York and Ohio are reducing and eliminating recreational programs in prison, while Mississippi is the first state to put convicts back in striped uniforms (Nossiter, 1994: 1). At the local level, budget-strapped city councils and boards of supervisors are cutting schools and other public services in order to maintain or expand their police and sheriffs departments. They, too, are hard at work expanding the justice net through legislation that criminalizes "aggressive panhandling" and crams already overcrowded jails with the homeless and chronically unemployed, quite similar in conception and impact to the English Poor Laws that filled workhouses with "sturdy beggars" some 400 years ago. When it comes to biggest and best, you cannot beat the U.S. criminal justice system - 14 million arrests annually; more than 1.7 million employed as police, guards, and other functionaries at a total cost to taxpayers of about $74 billion (or about three times as much as the economic relief allotted to 4.5 million families on AFDC); 1.5 million incarcerated, including 3,000 prisoners stacked up in a waiting pattern on death row. By 1993, almost five million people in this country were under some kind of correctional supervision (jail, prison, probation, and parole) and there are no signs indmcating that the trend is abating. On the contrary, about the only debate you can hear in the corridors of power these days is whether the victims of execution should be electrocuted, gassed, drugged, or shot to death (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993: 2, 23, 422; Butterfield, 1992: E4; Rothman, 1994: 34-38). …

European Social Policy after Maastricht: The 'Social Dialogue' and 'Subsidiarily'

Abstract: The paper reviews recent changes in the institutional conditions ofa European social policy, especially the new codecision rights of the 'social partners' under the Maastricht Social Protocol. To assess the potential of the new institutional framework to add a meaningful social dimension to the integrated European market, the paper places Maastricht and its aftermath in the context of both the history of social policy as well as the overall institutional structure of the European Community. Drawing on theory derived from the study of neo-corporatism, the paper argues that the key for a productive 'social dialogue' rests with business; that business has no incentives to promote an activist, market-correcting social policy at Community level and will therefore likely use its codecision rights to delay or prevent legislation; and that neither the unions nor the European Commission, the incipient European Community executive, have a capacity to make business change its strategic calculation.

Care programme approach: Recent government policy and legislation

Abstract: The care programme approach has been introduced to improve the delivery of services to people with severe mental illness and minimise the risk that they lose contact with mental health services. Its essential elements are assessment of health and social need, a written care plan, nomination of a key worker, and regular review. It requires interprofessional collaboration and negotiation of care plans with users and carers but individual patients vary in their needs for multidisciplinary involvement and review.

Insulations of pensions from Political Risk

Abstract: There are many sources of political risk to public provision of pensions. This paper analyzes legislation to alter the retirement income system. This approach naturally recognizes that some changes in the system are good responses to social risks, while others generate such risks. Thus the discussion is in terms of the effect of institutional structure on the likelihood of alternative legislative actions. Particular attention is paid to the roles of automatic pension adjustment and pension professionals in providing insulation. Briefly touched upon is the tendency of legislation to redistribute as a function of the type of system being created.

The management of professional enterprises and regulatory change: British accountacy and the financial services act, 1986

Abstract: The paper analyses the changing nature of professionalism through a study of the effects of a change in the regulatory context of the U.K. accounting profession. The emphasis is on how accountacy, as a professional project, is managed. Professions are viewed as institutions whose direction and management is influenced by movements within and between a range of constituencies and practices. we focus on confluences of actions and ideas from a variety of constituencies, including accountants, with management of the profession being achieved through the interplay and negotiations between diverse groups. The specificity of the interplay leads to a heightened awareness of the mutability of contemporaneous professional arrangments, and emphasis their malleability. it offers insight into the apparently adventitous development of accountancy in modern society. Although we present management as a means to capture more general changes in the practices and frameworks of professions, rather than just regulatory change, our argument is developed around the Financial Services Act (1986). That legislation was ostensibility intended to regulate the conduct of investment business in Britain. Accountants became involved in legislation that at first seemed, at best, to be on the periphery of their practice. The implementation of the Act involved pro-acitve monitoring of members and firms. inspectors, acitng as the agents of professional bodies, were able to enter member's practices to confirm that accountants were able adequately to conduct business that, prior to the Act, they had been held to be “fit and proper” to conduct, by virtue of their professional affiliations. This in itself may be seen as a significant expansion of professional Institutes' regulatory roles, especially since this monitoring was undertaken on behalf of government. The expansion of the regulatory role of the Institute resulted from a confluence of, inter alia, government and platforms, the range of modern professional practice and concomitant difficulties of professional governance. The result is a re-moulding of the professional. We use these develpments to illustrate how professions may be thought in terms of management and how professions change.

Congress, Social Movements and Public Opinion: Multiple Origins of Women's Rights Legislation:

Abstract: Scholars often characterize congressional response to public opinion as either reflecting opinion and legislating accordingly or manipulating opinion for political ends. When the wider political en...