Housing Policy: Towards a Public Choice Perspective

1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ricketts

Few commentators on the state of the housing market in the UK express satisfaction at the outcome of public policy in this field. From widely differing ideological presuppositions and with divergent views as to causes and cures, researchers nevertheless tend to agree that past policies have failed. This dissatisfaction arguably stems from the departure of housing policy from commonly held views about appropriate objectives. Housing policy is usually viewed as a response to some variety of ‘market failure’ or as a means of income redistribution. In the nineteenth century, externalities of a public health nature were important in encouraging the state to concern itself in the housing market, while the twentieth century has seen growing state involvement ostensibly as a response to so-called ‘distributional externalities’ or possibly on the grounds that housing service represents a ‘merit good’.

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Flynn

The influence of state bureaucrats and professionals on public policy is empirically and theoretically problematic. Recent work concerning the ‘dual politics thesis' has suggested that bureaucratic autonomy will flourish particularly at the regional level of the state. Evidence about decentralization in the Dutch housing system is reviewed which generally supports this thesis. However, it is argued that regional bureaucratic and professional power in housing policy, and the specific institutional arrangements for decentralization, must also be explained in terms of the distinctive nature of Dutch pillarized society and politics.


1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Barlow ◽  
A King

The objective in this paper is to compare the competitive strategies of the housebuilding industry in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden. It is focused on the relationship between the different mechanisms by which the housing market is regulated and the competitive methods adopted by firms in each country. By using a detailed study of over 100 firms in the three countries, it is argued that there is a relationship between the forms of market regulation, the level of uncertainty and risk faced by housebuilders, and their profit-making strategies. Finally, some of the implications of the findings for the UK housebuilding industry in the 1990s are considered.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-135
Author(s):  
Lucia Della Torre

Not very long ago, scholars saw it fit to name a new and quite widespread phenomenon they had observed developing over the years as the “judicialization” of politics, meaning by it the expanding control of the judiciary at the expenses of the other powers of the State. Things seem yet to have begun to change, especially in Migration Law. Generally quite a marginal branch of the State's corpus iuris, this latter has already lent itself to different forms of experimentations which then, spilling over into other legislative disciplines, end up by becoming the new general rule. The new interaction between the judiciary and the executive in this specific field as it is unfolding in such countries as the UK and Switzerland may prove to be yet another example of these dynamics.


Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Borick

“An Introduction to the Special to the Special Issue on Energy and the Environment” provides an overview of the state of the literature relating to Pennsylvania in these areas of public policy. It then introduces each of the articles in this issue of the journal. 


2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hunold

In this essay I examine the dispute between the German GreenParty and some of the country’s environmental nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) over the March 2001 renewal of rail shipmentsof highly radioactive wastes to Gorleben. My purpose indoing so is to test John Dryzek’s 1996 claim that environmentalistsought to beware of what they wish for concerning inclusion in theliberal democratic state. Inclusion on the wrong terms, arguesDryzek, may prove detrimental to the goals of greening and democratizingpublic policy because such inclusion may compromise thesurvival of a green public sphere that is vital to both. Prospects forecological democracy, understood in terms of strong ecologicalmodernization here, depend on historically conditioned relationshipsbetween the state and the environmental movement that fosterthe emergence and persistence over time of such a public sphere.


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