Fixed or Variable Needs? Public Support and Welfare State Reform

2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Reform ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Pension Schemes ◽  
Welfare State Reform

AbstractThe study of welfare state reform has in the last decade been strongly influenced by the ‘new politics’ literature. A fundamental assumption of this literature is that the public has fixed attitudes concerning welfare benefits; however, this may be hard to sustain empirically. Instead, this article argues that public support differs depending on whether a welfare programme aims at relieving fixed or variable needs. By analysing reforms of old-age pension schemes and the introduction of workfare strategies in the United States, France and Denmark, the fruitfulness of this approach is indicated.

scholarly journals What the Australian Public Knows About the High Court

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-63
Author(s):  
Ingrid Nielsen ◽  
Russell Smyth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
High Court Of Australia

Existing studies for the United States examine the extent to which the public is knowledgeable about US courts, arguing that knowledge of the courts is linked to public support for their role. We know little, though, about the Australian public’s awareness of the High Court of Australia. We report the results of a survey of a representative sample of the Australian adult population, administered in November 2017. We find that few Australians know the names of the Justices, the number of Justices on the Court, how the Justices are appointed or for how long they serve. Awareness of recent cases decided by the Court is mixed. We find that age and education are better predictors of awareness levels than is gender. Our findings are important because in the absence of awareness of the High Court, the potential exists for the public to see the Court as having a more overt political role than it has, which may lower esteem for the Court. The potential for this to occur is exacerbated if, and when, politicians attempt to drag the High Court into the political fray, by attributing political motives to it that it does not have.

scholarly journals Good governance, political experiences, and public support for mandatory sentencing: Evidence from a progressive US state

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Sundt ◽  
Kathryn Schwaeble ◽  
Cullen C Merritt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
Mandatory Sentencing ◽  
Roll Back

A shift in public mood and declining incarceration rates in the United States signal a potential change in the politics of punishment. This research considers whether the public continues to support mandatory sentencing. The study expands upon existing knowledge by testing theoretical predictions about how instrumentalism, political beliefs, and political participation affect public support for mandatory sentences. Drawing on a state-wide survey of 1569 adults from Oregon, the study found that belief in the effectiveness of prosecutors, judges, and prisons significantly influenced support for mandatory sentencing. Although 67% of those surveyed favored judicial discretion, a firm belief that “prisons work” may limit efforts to reduce incarceration and roll back mandatory sentences.

The U.S. Welfare State Is Minimal

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 13 examines the size of the social safety net in the United States. Compared with European and other OECD countries, the United States has a fairly small safety net. The amount spent is approximately 2 percent of our GDP. In particular, programs aimed at protecting children from poverty are minimal. These programs have also been reduced over time, especially since the 1996 welfare reform changes. Challenging the myth of the bloated welfare state requires tackling multiple intersecting misperceptions, including erroneous portrayals of U.S. welfare expenditures as exorbitant and low-income programs as driving up the national debt. It will also require shattering myths that legitimize keeping welfare benefits low.

scholarly journals The New Politics of Religious Education in the United States and Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1035-1046
Author(s):  
Amandine Barb
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Teaching Religion ◽  
Political Landscapes

AbstractThis Article explores the contemporary governance of religious diversity in the United States and Germany through the case study of religious education in public schools. The United States and Germany have two very different approaches to teaching religion: The subject does not exist at all in American public schools, while in Germany, confessional religious education is explicitly mandated by the Federal Constitution and is still an integral part of the curriculum in the vast majority of Länder. Yet, both countries have recently been confronted with similar challenges—a growing diversification and politicization of religious identities—which have forced them to rethink the place and role traditionally given to faith in the sphere of public education. The Article thus examines how, and to what extent, the American and German historical models of religious education—and thereby, more broadly, the public governance of religion in both countries—have been transformed by the changes in their religio-political landscapes.

Public Support for Welfare State Reform Measure

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Achterberg ◽  
Romke van der Veen ◽  
Judith Raven
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Support ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Reform Measure ◽  
Welfare State Reform

A Property Rights Analysis of the American Welfare State**

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-91
Author(s):  
Svetozar Pejovich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Development Costs ◽  
Before And After

Abstract The paper uses the property rights approach for the analysis of the development, costs, and consequences of the welfare system in the United States before and after the 1996 reform. The welfare system in the United States grew from less than one percent of GDP in 1929 to about 4 percent in 1997. In addition to its total costs, the welfare system before 1996 created property rights, which, in turn, generated negative incentives and positive transaction costs. The purpose of 1996 reform was to make the welfare system more efficient by redefining property rights in welfare resources and creating incentives to reduce the transaction costs of providing welfare benefits.

scholarly journals The President Is in: Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Twitter

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511985514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paromita Pain ◽  
Gina Masullo Chen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Deliberative Discourse ◽  
Private Citizen ◽  
Sexist Language

Analyzing President Trump’s Tweets ( N = 30,386) with the first tweet starting from 4 May 2009, this article looks at the nature of his conversations with the public and the building of public support for his candidacy, till he assumed office on January 2017. Drawing theoretically on deliberative democracy and technological populism as performance, this study, among the earliest to use interpretative qualitative analysis, reveals the different themes in his discourse, rather than only highlight specific attributes of his tweets. Our analysis shows that Trump tweets frequently and casts himself as a political outsider who can alone save America. His racist and sexist language with his confrontational style leaves no room for deliberative discourse. His messages may be populist in character, but they are aversive and uncivil and lack normative attributes of deliberation that one would expect in the leader of a powerful nation, such as the United States. These characteristics have been present in his tweets even as a private citizen. This research makes a new contribution to our understanding of how Trump uses Twitter, starting from before he emerged as a contender for the presidential office, and the discourses that emanate from his use of Twitter to make broader inferences about the messages the public is receiving from Trump.

The United States and the Genocide Convention: Leading Advocate and Leading Obstacle

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 271-290
Author(s):  
William Korey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Public ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
Bar Association

While the United States is now an international leader in the fight against genocide and human rights abuses, it only recently ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide– forty years after the convention's unanimous adoption by the UN General Assembly. Korey provides a description of the long struggle for ratification of the Genocide Convention, detailing decades of work by a committee of fifty-two nongovernmental organizations lobbying the Senate and the American Bar Association, the treaty's key opponent. Despite the public support for the United Nations and human rights by the United States, failure to ratify the Genocide Convention stemmed primarily from the fear that international covenants were threats to U.S. sovereignty. The United States finally overcame this fear with the ratification of the Genocide Convention in 1988, which opened the door for U.S. leadership.

Achieving Fairness in Policing

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Van Craen ◽  
Wesley G. Skogan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Legitimacy ◽  
The Public ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship

Decades of research on public support for the police has documented the prominent role of procedural justice in shaping popular views of police legitimacy and the predisposition of citizens to comply and cooperate with them. However, much less attention has been given to the issue of how to get police officers to actually act in accord with its principles when they interact with the public. Reminders of the importance and the difficulty of fostering police legitimacy are not hard to come by, as witnessed in events in the United States during 2014 to 2015. This article addresses the hard, multifaceted issue of fostering procedural justice in the ranks. It theorizes and assesses the relationship between fair supervision and fair policing. The results of our study indicate that perceived internal procedural justice is directly related to support for external procedural justice (modeling thesis), and also indirectly, via trust in citizens.

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