Showing papers on "Retrenchment published in 2000"

The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment

Abstract: We report the results of a randomized field experiment involving approximately 30,000 registered voters in New Haven, Connecticut. Nonpartisan get-out-the-vote messages were conveyed through personal canvassing, direct mail, and telephone calls shortly before the November 1998 election. A variety of substantive messages were used. Voter turnout was increased substantially by personal canvassing, slightly by direct mail, and not at all by telephone calls. These findings support our hypothesis that the long-term retrenchment in voter turnout is partly attributable to the decline in face-to-face political mobilization.

‘Beyond Left and Right’: The New Partisan Politics of Welfare

Abstract: The ‘new politics of the welfare state,’ the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries' capacities to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and institutions play a prominent role in accounting for cross-national differences in leaders' abilities to diffuse responsibility for divisive initiatives. One important omission from the ‘new politics’ literature, however, is a discussion of partisan politics. ‘Old’ conceptualizations of the political right and left are implicitly taken as constants despite radical changes in the governing agenda of many leftist parties over the last decade. Responding to this oversight, Castles (1998) has recently probed the role of parties with respect to aggregate government expenditures, only to concludethat parties do not matter under ‘conditions of constraint.’ This article contends that parties are relevant to the ‘new politics’ and that, under specified institutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive. In some notable cases the left has had more effect inbruising the welfare state than the right. One explanation for these cross-cutting tendencies is that parties not only provide a principal source of political agency, they also serve as strategies, thereby conditioning opportunities for political leadership. By extension, they need to be situatedwithin the ‘new politics’ constellation of blame-avoidance instruments.

The Politics of Pension Reform: Institutions and Policy Change in Western Europe

Abstract: European pension systems are increasingly under pressure. In this book Giuliano Bonoli examines policymakers' efforts to cope in a context where they are caught between public support for existing pension schemes and the expected inability to sustain current arrangements in the long run. The book explores the impact of formal institutions and decision-making procedures on welfare retrenchment and modernisation. It compares and assesses the process of pension policy-making in the UK, France and Switzerland, examining the factors that influence pension reform, and the relative impact upon the decision-making process of political parties and interest groups. The book provides a detailed description of new pension legislation and looks at the issues of demographic change, pension financing, and likely developments on the wider European level. This analysis of pension reform will be of interest to policymakers as well as students of the politics of the welfare state.

The End of Creeping Competence? EU Policy-Making Since Maastricht*

Abstract: From its origins in the Treaty of Rome to the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, the EU has expanded the range of its activities dramatically, adopting both budgetary and regulatory policies across a broad range of issue-areas. The 1990s, however, witnessed a political and economic backlash against the creeping centralization of policy-making in Brussels, threatening a major retrenchment, or even devolution, of EU policy-making. This article examines budgetary and regulatory data from the late 1990s and early 2000s, to determine whether the centralization of policy-making has slowed, or even reversed, during the post-Maastricht era. The data reveal selective evidence of retrenchment in EU budgetary expenditures, which have been limited by the fiscal restrictions of EMU, German resistance to any increase in its net contribution, and the new budgetary demands of enlargement. By contrast, data on EU regulation suggest that the EU has been, and remains, an active regulator across a wide range of issue-areas after Maastricht, and will continue to play the role of a regulatory state in the future.

Elephants on the move. Patterns of public pension reform in OECD countries

Abstract: Among OECD countries there are two clusters of old-age security systems: (1) ‘Social insurance’ countries had, by the end of the 1960s, fashioned the core of old-age security as public, contributory, earnings-related and unfunded insurance schemes; (2) a diverse collection of countries that, after 1970, topped up their basic pension arrangements with funded occupational pension schemes with (almost) universal coverage. ‘Social insurance’ countries, on which this essay focuses, reveal at least six common trends in pension reform, all about improving the financial sustainability of public schemes. Although the repertoire of incremental adjustment strategies is quite limited, policy changes since the early 1980s have not led to a clear convergence among ‘social insurance’ countries (or across the two clusters). Their original diversity has been somewhat diminished, but it has for the most part merely taken a different form. Public pension reforms regularly harmed (future) beneficiaries. Nevertheless, most reforms were actually based on broad political consensus. The success of attempts to introduce retrenchment policies depends on prior negotiation with – and support obtained from – collective actors above and beyond a simple parliamentary majority. This peculiar prerequisite ensures success in the sense of a sustained implementation of the measures taken and of actual improvement in public trust in ‘reliable’ pension schemes.

European Welfare Futures: Towards a Theory of Retrenchment

Abstract: List of Figures. List of Tables. Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Explanations of the Growth of State Welfare. 2. New Directions in European Welfare Policy. 3. Globalization and the Welfare State. 4. Welfare Politics: The Narrowing of the National Conscience. 5. The Neo--liberal Argument for Welfare Retrenchment. 6. Squaring the Welfare Circle. 7. The Impact of Institutional Frameworks. 8. European Welfare Futures. References. Index.

How do welfare states change? Institutions and their impact on the politics of welfare state reform in Western Europe

Abstract: In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

West European welfare states: The old politics of retrenchment

Abstract: Analysing endeavours to restructure welfare provision,Paul Pierson proposes that the `politics of retrenchment' is very differentfrom the politics of welfare expansion. In particular, the difficulties of welfare retrenchment are not to be explained by existing theories of welfare expansion; and the `old' politics ofwelfare expansion has little to offer in explaining the`new' politics of welfare retrenchment. This article questions these claims. First, contemporary societaldevelopments are considered in the light of three majortheories advanced to explain the emergence of welfare states in Western Europe:the logic-of-industrialism, the crisis of capitalism, and nation-building. Secondly,focusing on trade unions,mainstream left parties, and traditions of governance,the current status of the political forces regarded as vital in buildingwelfare states is assessed. The conclusion drawn is that the resilience of thewelfare state in Western Europe lies less in the `new' politics of `policy lockin' and `client interest groups' than in the persistence of the `old' forces that led to the founding and expansion ofwelfare states.

Welfare state development and employment in the Netherlands in comparative perspective

Abstract: In recent years it has been said that the Dutch welfare state has been made fit for employment growth. This development is praised as part of the so-called Dutch 'Delta model' which since the mid-1980s has been very succesful in labour market terms. Some 20 years ago, when unemployment started to soar, the high level of social security was seen, by contrast, as an aspect of the 'Dutch disease'. Employing a typology based on regulative assumptions of dealing with market risks and aberrations, this paper briefly analyses the subsequent stages of Dutch welfare state development: from a predominantly Christian- paternalist system to social-democratization from the mid-1960s and then to a certain degree of liberalization since the mid-1980s. The structural or institutional inertia of the original system should not be overlooked, however. Comparative investigation reveals that the current Dutch welfare state, in spite of retrenchment measures, still belongs to the most generous ones in the western world, which ...

Ending Welfare As We Know It (Again): Welfare State Retrenchment, 1989–1995

Abstract: In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children fell victim to a dramatic retrenchment as states submitted waivers, or permission slips to experiment with their public assistance programs by implementing new methods of exclusion and regulation. We find that Republican states were quick to submitfederal waivers to the the AFDC program, as were states with high AFDC payments. As Soule and Zylan (1997) found in their study of an earlier wave of welfare retrenchment in the U.S., states with higher minority group populations and heavier AFDC caseloads were quick to pass waivers. Following Pierson (1994, 1996), we find that states with an increasing tax revenue base and with a high proportion of Social Security recipients were quick to submit waivers, while states with a high proportion of Unemployment Insurance recipients were slow to do so. We also find evidencefor the geographic diffusion of waiver submission and that states experiencingfiscal crisis were more susceptible to the diffusing of waivers. Finally, wefind that states which are traditionally innovative with regard to policy decisions served as referents to other states puzzling over whether or not to submit waivers. Students of welfare reform in the U.S. were little surprised when Bill Clinton pledged in 1992 to "end welfare as we know it"and fewer were surprised that what he meant by that was ending entitlement to public assistance under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The AFDC program has been the focus of the discourse of welfare reform for more than forty years, and this discourse was

Stigmatized Spaces: Gender and Mobility under crisis in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract: The economic downturn in Indonesia (1997‐99) has changed the context of gendered spatial mobility in South Sulawesi. For low-income migrants in the region, the monetary crisis has not only reorganized the labor market, but it has also brought about an intensification of the stigma placed on young women's independent residence in an export processing zone. Household surveys and in-depth interviews with migrants and members of their origin and destination site neighborhoods, both before and during the economic retrenchment, illustrate that ideas about women's sexual morality are a key part of the context within which migration decisions are gendered. The article situates survey and interview findings within an overview of Indonesia's recent development history, economic crisis, and official state gender ideology. The article argues that migrants and their communities have identified the ‘prostitute’ as a female-gendered metaphor for the crisis, and finds that post-1997 narratives of women's mobility increas...

Dangerous Territories : Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education

Abstract: With the recent conservative retrenchment, educational institutions have witnessed a backlash against the gains made by feminist and antiracist activists. Dangerous Territories examines higher education as one site of this backlash, at the same time challenging the binary framing of discourse as "reactionary" vs. "progressive," or Right vs. Left. Contributors are scholars working within and across a variety of disciplines including law, history, sociology, education, literature, women's studies, queer theory, cultural politics and postcolonialism.

Agricultural Retrenchment Revisited: Issue Definition and Venue Change in the United States and European Union

Abstract: The case of agriculture in the United States and the European Union indicates that retrenchment opportunities wax and wane. In the first half of the 1990s, both the U.S. and the EU instituted significant farm policy reforms. But as the 1990s came to an end, subsidies in both countries increased as policymakers became less enthusiastic about reducing benefits for farmers. This variability highlights the shortcomings of current political science explanations of retrenchment: the literature has yet to explain why policy change occurs in some circumstances but not others. In this paper, I employ the concepts of issue definition and venue change in order to explain why the United States and the European Union fluctuate in their capacity to reduce farm subsidies. I argue that, in agriculture, retrenchment advocates must redefine the issue of subsidies in a manner that highlights the negative externalities associated with farm policy. Second, retrenchment advocates must also exploit opportunities for strategic venue change so that policy decisions in agriculture do not rest solely with those who benefit from the status quo. By adding the concepts of issue definition and venue change to studies of retrenchment, we gain a better understanding of the conditions that make policy change possible, as well as an account of the mechanism through which retrenchment takes place.

Housing Benefit and Welfare Retrenchment in Britain

Abstract: Following the 1997 general election in Britain, the New Labour government made clear its intention to cut back and radically reform the social security system, including Housing Benefit, an income-related housing allowance for low-income tenants. The cost of Housing Benefit had doubled in real terms over the previous decade and was taking up a growing share of social security expenditure. The scheme also suffered from major deficiencies. Drawing on recent literature on welfare state retrenchment, this article examines why the government eventually retreated from cuts and a wholesale reform of Housing Benefit and opted instead for a more modest and long-term approach.

European Welfare Futures

Abstract: European Welfare Futures presents a clear and up-to-date analysis of developments in social policy in the main EU member states. It provides a systematic account of welfare retrenchment and assesses the competing explanations of this process. The authors provide convincing evidence for the view that an 'ever closer union' in social policy will require a much more difficult process than that which led to monetary union.The book makes a major contribution to understanding how welfare policy in Europe will develop over the next few years. It offers an original and wide-ranging account of the forces affecting the direction of policy, and stresses the role of social and political institutions in explaining why countries differ.European Welfare Futures will be essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and scholars in social policy, sociology, political science, area studies and international relations courses. It will also be of great interest to policy-makers in the EU, especially in the areas of pensions, health, social care and unemployment.

Rethinking Retrenchment: North American Social Policy during the Early Clinton and Chrétien Years

Abstract: Since the mid–1990s, comparative research on welfare state evolution has contrasted the contours of postwar social policy expansion with the parameters of contemporary programme retrenchment. Paul Pierson's 1994 account of pension, housing and income support policies in the United Kingdom and the United States during the Thatcher and Reagan years proposed two core arguments with this literature: first, welfare state expansion and contraction were governed by fundamentally different dynamics; and second, even conservative, ideologically committed political executives found it hard to impose radical social policy changes. Because “the welfare state has proved to be far more resilient than other key components of national political economies.” Pierson has maintained, “retrenchment is a distinctive and difficult political enterprise.”

Wither Ontario's Environment? Neo-Conservatism and the Decline of the Environment Ministry

Abstract: A series of sharp cuts to the Ontario Ministry of Environment's (MOE) budget in the 1990s have left it with fewer resources at the turn of the century than it controlled in the mid-1970s when the ministry was first created. This paper reviews the impact of those cuts on the ministry's mandate and organizational structure, and argues that public pressure and party politics models offer a good explanation for most of the ministry's historical development, but an insufficient account of the more recent drastic cuts and downsizing. Rather, the neo-conservative ideology of Premier Mike Harris' Conservative government accounts for the major retrenchment of the late 1990s.

Retrenchment, Refinement, and Simulation

Abstract: Retrenchment is introduced as a liberalisation of refinement intended to address some of the shortcomings of refinement as sole means of progressing from simple abstract models to more complex and realistic ones. In retrenchment the relationship between an abstract operation and its concrete counterpart is mediated by extra predicates, allowing the expression of non-refinement-like properties and the mixing of I/O and state aspects in the passage between levels of abstraction. Modulated refinement is introduced as a version of refinement allowing mixing of I/O and state aspects, in order to facilitate comparison between retrenchment and refinement, and various notions of simulation are considered in this context. Stepwise simulation, the ability of the simulator to mimic a sequence of execution steps of the simulatee in a sequence of equal length is proposed as the benchmark semantic notion for relating concepts in this area. One version of modulated refinement is shown to have particularly strong connections with automata theoretic strong simulation, in which states and step labels are mapped independently from simulator to simulatee. A special case of retrenchment, simple simulable retrenchment is introduced, and shown to have properties very close to those of modulated refinement. The more general situation is discussed briefly. The details of the theory are worked out for the B-Method, though the applicability of the underlying ideas is not limited to just that formalism.

Solidarity in Swedish welfare--standing the test of time?

Abstract: Swedish welfare has for decades served as a role model foruniversalistic welfare. When the economic recession hit Swedish economyin the beginning of the 1990s, a period of more than 50 years ofcontinuous expansion and reforms in the welfare sector came to an end.Summing up the past decade, we can see that the economic downturnenforced rationing measures in most parts of the welfare state, althoughmost of this took place in the beginning of the decade. Today, most ofthe retrenchment has stopped and in some areas we can see tendencies ofrestoration – but more so in financial benefits than in the caringsectors. In the article this process is discussed as a process ofreallocation where general principles of solidarity become manifest.Various levels of decision making are discussed within the context ofsocio-political action. Current transitions in Swedish health care aredescribed with respect to coverage rates, content, marketisation anddistribution. Basic principles of distribution are highlighted in orderto analyse the meaning of social solidarity in a concrete allocativesetting. The significance of popular opinion – it's shifts anddeterminants – is also considered. The article concludes with adiscussion of how the (once salient) features of universalism inwelfare and health care provision have been affected by the developmentsin the past decade in Sweden.

The Realities of Strategic Planning: Program Termination at East Central University

Abstract: It is not difficult to find advice for colleges and universities about management and restructuring during periods of financial stress. Texts and chapters on strategic planning (Keller, 1983; Rowley, Lujan, & Dolen, 1997; Schuster, Smith, Corak, & Yamada, 1994) and restructuring in lieu of retrenchment (Karr & Kelley, 1996; Leslie & Fretwell, 1996; MacTaggart, 1996; Myers, 1996) provide recipes for proactively managing a university through hard times. These texts and chapters guide managers interested in such topics as environmental scanning, resource reallocation, dealing with faculty, and the role of campus culture. Primarily, however, these sources provide “macro” case studies: they aggregate examples of restructuring at colleges and uni-

Grants to Home-owners: A Policy in Search of Objectives

Abstract: This paper examines the policy of providing capital grants to home-owners in England and Wales for repairs and improvements to their properties since its origins in the late 1940s. Such grants have been the major mechanism for delivering state support to home-owners with repairs and improvements and at times have formed a major component of public spending. Grant aid, usually covering 50 per cent of approved costs, was initially intended as an incentive to owners (mainly landlords) to install amenities and facilities which had not been provided when properties were constructed in the 19th century. With the growth of low-income home ownership, grants were extended to provide assistance with repairs and to cover a greater proportion of the costs of work. In some cases, 100 per cent grants under which the organisation of work was taken out of the owner's hands completely were provided in order to secure better works quality. Unfortunately these approaches coincided with financial retrenchment. From 1990, the...

Retrenchment from a Queer Ideal: Class Privilege and the Failure of Identity Politics in AIDS Activism:

Abstract: In the decade following the 1969 Stonewall Riots, identity politics in New York City enabled the construction of a socially and recreationally defined homogeneous gay identity. But contrary to comm...

Maximally abstract retrenchments

Abstract: The more obvious and well known drawbacks of using refinement as the sole means of progressing from an abstract model to a concrete implementation are reviewed. Retrenchment is presented in a simple partial correctness framework as a more flexible development concept for formally capturing the early and otherwise preformal stages of development, and briefly justified. Given a retrenchment from an abstract to a concrete model, the problem of finding a model at the level of abstraction of the abstract model, but refinable to the concrete one, is examined. A construction is given that solves the problem in a universal manner, there being a canonical factorisation of the original retrenchment, into a retrenchment to the universal system followed by an I/O-filtered refinement. The universality amounts to the observation that the retrenchment component of any similar factorisation, factors uniquely through the universal model. The construction's claim to be at the right level of abstraction is supported by an idempotence property. The consequences of including termination criteria in the formal models is briefly explored.

Deficit reduction as causal story: strategic politics and welfare state retrenchment

Abstract: In 1993, the Government of Alberta, facing continued budget deficits and increasing public debt, announced a multibillion dollar reduction in social welfare expenditures that included large cuts to health care and education, and the elimination of thousands of public sector jobs. This article examines the Alberta government’s attempts to overcome the often daunting challenge of effecting sizable reductions in social welfare expenditures. It explores how the government employed a number of political strategies in an effort to limit potential opposition to its retrenchment policies. The article argues the government was able to achieve its goals because it controlled the debate on the cause and potential consequences of deficit spending and government debt. This allowed the government to define problems and issues in terms that most suited its goal of restructuring the provincial welfare state. The conclusion notes that the Alberta experience offers an opportunity to add to the limited but growing literature on subnational social policy retrenchment.

The one nation idea and state welfare: The conservatives and pensions in the 1950s

Abstract: The Conservatives’ 1959 earnings‐related pension scheme has rightly been dismissed by historians as an exercise in financial retrenchment. However, the debate that preceded its introduction has been ignored. This, it is argued, involved the first concerted attempt by ‘One Nation’ Conservatives to construct a social policy different both from the Conservative right's rigid adherence to laissez‐faire government and Labour's uncritical statism. The state would guarantee and regulate greater private pension provision, but would only provide pensions as a last resort. The Treasury and the Conservative right blocked these proposals in 1957–8, but similar ideas continued to inform debates on pensions policy after this date.

United Kingdom / Great Britain

Abstract: Britain was the first country to industrialize, and also trade unions and free collective bargaining emerged relatively early, with long-term consequences. British unionism grew gradually over almost two centuries, marked by the unionization of different groups in the work-force over successive phases; the decentralization of British unions; and relatively weak co-ordination in the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Some TUC unions founded and still support the Labour Party. Given a gradual democratic inclusion of the working-class and voluntarist traditions, the state abstained from direct intervention in industrial relations, while unions sought political influence via TUC and the Labour Party to advance union and social rights. The political debate centred on either broadening or restricting collective labour law, that is, the legal immunities granted to unions. Since 1979, the Conservative government made the legal environment for union action and membership recruitment more difficult. Unionization increased considerably until the late 1970s due to collectivist occupational traditions, organizational sectionalism, closed shop practices, high wage growth, and a large public sector and welfare state. After the winter of discontent in 1978–79 and the election of the new Thatcher government, union membership receded given the adverse political, legal and economic environment, increased decentralization of collective bargaining, flexibilization advanced by employers, and privatization and welfare retrenchment policies. Over the post-war period and most notably in union decline, concentration via mergers has gained in importance.

What is Vulnerable During Fiscal Retrenchment

Abstract: Using data for 70 countries in the 1980s, this study investigates the impact of socioeconomic and political characteristics of a country on the vulnerability of expenditure categories during budget cuts. Greater democracy is associated with less vulnerability of the social and productive sectors and with more vulnerability of the administrative/defense, infrastructure, and miscellaneous sectors. Political instability reduces the vulnerability of the social, administrative/defense, and miscellaneous sectors and increases that of the productive sector. Fiscal federalism increases the vulnerability of the infrastructure and administrative/defense sectors and reduces that of the productive sector. The relative size of the budget cuts is also a determining factor.

Remaking the military industrial relationship: A French‐American comparison

Abstract: Defense industrial complexes in leading Cold War nations have downsized and reallocated resources to other productive activities in the 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the experience of two key countries ‐ the US and France. Comparing the two countries, we find similar outcomes in budgetary retrenchment and large firm restructuring but marked differences in the pace of downsizing and diversification among small and medium‐sized firms. We hypothesize that three sets of contextual differences may explain these differences: 1) institutional differences in the way that the State bureaucracies ‐ the Pentagon and the French Delegation generale pour l'armement (DGA) ‐ oversee defense industrial matters, 2) differences in military industry ownership and firm size patterns, and 3) differences in the regional distribution of defense industrial capacity and associated regional policies. In closing, we note that the two countries’ defense industrial complexes are becoming more alike and speculate on the significance...

Socio-Legal Backlash

Abstract: Over the past three years, an increasing number of disability rights activists, practitioners, and scholarly commentators have claimed that a powerful judicial and media backlash against the Americans with Disabilities Act is underway. Even before issuance of three Supreme Court decisions in the Summer of 1999 narrowly construing the Act's coverage, there existed ample evidence supporting the backlash hypothesis. In two papers, a Foreword and an Afterword, Professor Krieger frames an interdisciplinary symposium on public, judicial, and media responses to the Americans with Disabilities Act soon to appear in the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law. In the first article, Backlash Against the Americans with Disabilities Act: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Implications for Social Justice Strategies, Professor Krieger situates the intellectual project undertaken by the Symposium and introduces the fourteen articles and three responsive commentaries that comprise it. In the second paper, Socio-Legal Backlash, Professor Krieger posits a theoretical model of socio-legal change and retrenchment, situates the concept of backlash within that model, and applies the model to investigate and explain patterns of public, judicial and media reactions to the ADA.