Is Unemployment Insurable? Employers and the Development of Unemployment Insurance

ABSTRACTIn order to shed light on the recent debates that are reinterpreting the role played by organized employers in the development of modern social policy, this paper examines the origin of the system of contributory social insurance during the Weimar period. Contrary to ‘laborist’ accounts of the origin of the modern welfare state that view the working class as the most important protagonist behind the transition from ‘assistance’ to ‘insurance’ policies, this paper argues that employers' dissatisfaction with the means-tested system of unemployment assistance and employers' endorsement of an insurance solution to the risk of unemployment remained the decisive factor leading to the introduction of the insurance system during the Weimar period. Drawing on employers' deliberations and archival material, the paper reconstructs the process of preference formation of German employers. The significance of a sectoral conflict between employers of large and small firms about the organization of the ‘risk pool’ within the system of unemployment insurance is also highlighted. While the existing literature fails to characterize employers' preferences towards social policies and to explain the variation in the degree of employers' support for particular social policies, this paper does so. Firms' preferences towards social policies can be analyzed along three dimensions: ability of social policies to redistribute risks, locus of control within alternative policy arenas and the costs imposed by different social policies.

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Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x0000016x ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 36-93 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Theda Skocpol ◽

Gretchen Ritter

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Welfare State ◽

Social Insurance ◽

Working Women ◽

The United States ◽

Welfare States ◽

Social Policies ◽

The Social ◽

Social Security Act ◽

Modern Welfare State

Comparative research on the origins of modern welfare states typically asks why certain European nations, including Great Britain, enacted pensions and social insurance between the 1880s and the 1920s, while the United States “lagged behind,” that is did not establish such policies for the entire nation until the Social Security Act of 1935. To put the question this way overlooks the social policies that were distinctive to the early twentieth-century United States. During the period when major European nations, including Britain, were launching paternalist versions of the modern welfare state, the United States was tentatively experimenting with what might be called a maternalist welfare state. In Britain, male bureaucrats and party leaders designed policies “for the good” of male wage-workers and their dependents. Meanwhile, in the United States, early social policies were championed by elite and middle-class women “for the good” of less privileged women. Adult American women were helped as mothers, or as working women who deserved special protection because they were potential mothers.

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Propiedades psicométricas de la Escala de Autoritarismo de Derechas en población colombiana

10.31234/osf.io/txw7k ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Efrain Garcia-Sanchez ◽

Nelson Molina Valencia ◽

Estefanía Buitrago ◽

Zabdi Sanz ◽

Valentina Ramírez ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Psychometric Properties ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Social Dominance ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Social Policies ◽

The Right

El autoritarismo es un constructo ampliamente estudiado en psicología para investigar comportamientos políticos. Para su medición se suele usar la escala de autoritarismo de derechas (RWA), la cual tiene variaciones en sus propiedades psicométricas según cada contexto. En este artículo traducimos y adaptamos una versión reducida del autoritarismo de derechas al contexto colombiano. En dos estudios (NEstudio1=417;NEstudio2=396), identificamos tres dimensiones: agresión-autoritaria, sumisión-autoritaria y convencionalismo; y encontramos que la RWA estuvo asociada positivamente con: dominancia social, deshumanización del adversario, apoyo al conflicto, patriotismo, sexismo, homofobia y la prohibición de políticas sociales consideradas como liberales (e.g., aborto, matrimonio igualitario, eutanasia). Se aporta evidencia empírica a favor de las propiedades psicométricas de la escala de RWA en el contexto colombiano. Authoritarianism is widely used construct to study political behaviors.For its measurement, researchers usually use the right authoritarianism scale (RWA), which has variations in its psychometric properties according to each context. In this article we translate and adapt a reduced version of RWA to the Colombian context. In two studies (NStudy1=417; NStudy2=396), we identified three dimensions: authoritarian-aggression, authoritarian-submission,and conventionalism. We also found that RWA was positively associated with: social dominance, dehumanization of the adversary, support for conflict, patriotism, sexism, homophobia and the prohibition of social policies considered liberal (e.g., abortion, equal marriage, euthanasia). Empirical evidence is provided in favor of the psychometric properties of the RWA scale in the Colombian context

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Understanding Social Insurance: Risk and Value Pluralism in the Early British Welfare State

Political Research Quarterly ◽

10.1177/1065912921994675 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 106591292199467

Author(s):

Rachel Z. Friedman

Keyword(s):

Welfare State ◽

Social Insurance ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Welfare Policies ◽

Perceptions Of Risk ◽

Mathematical Probability ◽

Policy Tool ◽

Theoretical Support ◽

Modern Welfare State ◽

Normative Reconstruction

This article seeks to make two contributions to the understanding of social insurance, a central policy tool of the modern welfare state. Focusing on Britain, it locates an important strand of theoretical support for early social insurance programs in antecedent developments in mathematical probability and statistics. While by no means the only source of support for social insurance, it argues that these philosophical developments were among the preconditions for the emergence of welfare policies. In addition, understanding the influence of these developments on British public discourse and policy sheds light on the normative principles that have undergirded the welfare state since its inception. Specifically, it suggests that the best model, or normative reconstruction, of social insurance in this context is a value-pluralist one, which pursues efficiency and equality or solidarity, grounded in group-based perceptions of risk.

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The Impact of Coercive Pressures on Sustainability Practices of Small Businesses in South Africa

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su10093032 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. 3032 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Reginald Masocha ◽

Olawale Fatoki

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Small Businesses ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Small Firms ◽

Likelihood Estimation ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Research Approach ◽

Sustainability Practices ◽

The Impact ◽

Isomorphic Pressures

The study sought to examine the role that coercive isomorphic pressures play in the sustainable development practices by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The survey research approach was utilised in the research through 222 self-administered questionnaires distributed to SME owners and managers. The structural equation modelling (SEM) method was utilised to analyse the data through the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method in Amos Version 24 software. Major findings in this study are that coercive isomorphic pressures have a significant impact on all the three dimensions of sustainable development which are economic, environmental and social. The implications are that government, environmental pressure groups and other stakeholders need to take into consideration the coercive pressures such as laws and regulations in pressuring small businesses to enhance sustainability practices. The research contributes by unearthing the extent to which coercive pressures impact the behaviour and practices of SMEs in sustainability practices. The study indicates that eventually small firms are expected to behave the same when it comes to adopting sustainability practices due to coercive isomorphism. The findings of this study further contribute toward understanding the concept of sustainable development in practice and theory.

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Seeing environmental injustices: the mechanics, devices and assumptions of environmental sustainability indices and indicators

Journal of Political Ecology ◽

10.2458/jpe.4765 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Marina Requena-i-Mora ◽

Dan Brockington

Keyword(s):

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Environmental Governance ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Environmental Performance Index ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Global North ◽

Distributional Conflicts ◽

Nature And Society ◽

Shed Light ◽

Sustainability Indices

At the heart of any colonization project, and therefore any move to de-colonize, are ways of seeing nature and society, that then allow particular ways of governing each. This is plainly visible in a number of tools that exist to measure progress towards (or regress from) environmental sustainability. The tools use indices and indicators constructed mostly by environmental scientists and ecologists. As such, they are not neutral scientific instruments: they reflect the worldviews of their creators. These worldviews depend on three dimensions: the values they prioritize, the explanatory theories they use and the futures they envision. Through these means different tools produce conflicting notions of the sustainability of our economies and societies. In this article, we shed light onto the theoretical and epistemological assumptions that lie behind key international sustainability indices and indicators: the Environmental Performance Index,Domestic Material Consumption, Material Intensity, the Material Footprint, the Carbon Footprint, the Ecological Footprint and CO2 emissions (territorial). The variables included in these indices, the way they are measured, aggregated and weighted all imply a particular way of understanding the relationships between economy, society and environment. This divergence is most clearly visible in the fact that some indices are negatively correlated with each other. Where one index might plot growing environmental sustainability, another shows its decline. Our results highlight that those devices and the theories informing them are particularly interesting for way how colonialism is materialized. Some of these measurements hide the material roots of prosperity and the ecological (and economic) distributional conflicts exported to the poorer countries by the global North, and others show how its production and consumption levels are reliant upon a socio-ecological 'subsidy' imposed on Southern countries. These subsidies represent injustices that present a primafacie case for decolonizing indices and indicators of environmental governance.

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THE RECOGNITION OF ISLAM IN THE HUNGARIAN LAW OF 1916 (XVII): DOCUMENTS FROM THE VATICAN ARCHIVES

Hungarian Studies ◽

10.1556/044.2019.33.2.9 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 337-365

Author(s):

ORSOLYA VARSÁNYI

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Legal Recognition ◽

Holy See ◽

Archival Material ◽

Points Of Interest ◽

Key Points ◽

Shed Light ◽

The Catholic Church

This article aims to reconstruct the reception of Act XVII adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in 1916, which brought about the legal recognition of Islam, from the stance of the Holy See of Rome. The research is based on archival material preserved at the Vatican Archives, namely letters exchanged between the Nunziature of Vienna and the Holy See, which are published and translated here. The presentation of so far unpublished material provides an opportunity to follow the growing understanding of the contents and background of this law; the key points of interest of the Catholic Church in this matter are identiﬁed; while lexical references seek to shed light on the perceptions of Islam.

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Human Development Status and Regional Disparity in China

Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies ◽

10.1142/s2345748114500195 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 02 (02) ◽

pp. 1450019

Author(s):

Ying ZHANG ◽

Bin ZHANG

Keyword(s):

Human Development ◽

Regional Disparity ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Income Differences ◽

Education And Health ◽

Country Comparison ◽

The Status ◽

Cross Country ◽

Nations Development ◽

Shed Light

The 2010 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Human Development Report introduced a new methodology to calculate Human Development Index (HDI). Three dimensions of HDI i.e. income, education, and health are adjusted for inequalities in attainments across people. The paper uses the new methodology to estimate 2010 China's national and provincial HDI. Compared with UNDP global report, all the data used here are from China's domestic sources. The education indicator estimated here by referring to detailed local statistics and documents are higher than that in UNDP's global report, thus contributing a slight higher overall HDI estimate. Based on the estimation results here and UNDP's report, China is located in between high human development and low human development, in other words, placed around the half position among all 169 countries. To facilitate a cross-country comparison, the indices are normalized with reference to the goalposts outlined in the HDR 2010. When ranked according to global goalposts, Beijing's rank is 31 whereas the least developed Tibet only ranks 114. Most of the regional disparity is driven by their income differences. The findings of this paper try to shed light on the status of China's human development and also gain insights on China's regional disparity. Further research is required to explore the inter-linkages between inequalities across various dimensions and to examine the factors behind these inequalities.

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Australian Government failure and the VET FEE-HELP loan programme

International Journal of Educational Management ◽

10.1108/ijem-05-2020-0256 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 271-281

Author(s):

Caillan John Fellows ◽

Brian Dollery

Keyword(s):

Three Dimensions ◽

Vocational Education And Training ◽

Australian Government ◽

Content Type ◽

Government Failure ◽

Policy Success ◽

Big Picture ◽

Training Quality ◽

And Training ◽

Shed Light

PurposeIn an effort to boost participation in vocational education and training (VET), in 2009, the Australian Government launched its VET FEE-HELP income-contingent loan programme for VET students. The programme was terminated in 2016 following numerous failed attempts to arrest its escalating costs and improve its performance. In an effort to shed light on the failure of the VET FEE-HELP programme, in this paper, the authors offer estimates of the aggregate costs involved and the quantum of graduates.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors examined the VET FEE-HELP programme through the analytical lens offered by Marsh and McConnell’s (2010) framework, which offered a broad, “big-picture” view covering three dimensions of policy success or failure.FindingsBy identifying the causes of the failure, the authors concluded that the features of the scheme designed to improve accessibility of VET also allowed for exploitative behaviour on the part of VET providers, causing deterioration in training quality and leading to a substantial amount of wasteful public expenditure.Originality/valueThe authors seek to illuminate the demise of the hitherto neglected programme to contribute towards the literature on Australian Government failure.

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