Borrowing to Build: Private Money and Public Welfare

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberta Sbragia

The process of local government borrowing to finance the capital needs of social services has an impact on both central-local relations and the type of service which can be offered to the citizen-consumer. Based on an examination of these relationships in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, it is postulated that different types of central-local relations are dependent on the nature of relations between central government and the investment community. Further, through use of material from a case study of public housing politics in Italy, it is shown how the investment criteria of the so-called “private” sector are transferred to the operations of the public sector through the mechanism of local borrowing. This transferal affects the manner in which social services are conceived and delivered.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205316801881007 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.J. Flynn ◽  
Megan A. Stewart

How do international audiences evaluate the legitimacy of secessionist insurgencies? Although secessionists often propagate their behavioral choices, such as state-building and non-violence, to international audiences in the hopes of generating support, scholars know little about the effects of this information. In this article, we use survey experiments in the United States and the United Kingdom to examine how international audiences respond to two commonly used strategies of secession: civilian killings and social service provision. We find that international audiences view secessionists who avoid civilian killings and provide social services as more legitimate than secessionists who kill civilians and do not provide services, respectively. Further, we show that service provision can allow secessionists to reduce—and, in some cases, eliminate—the public costs of civilian killings. These findings have important implications for ongoing secessionist conflicts across the globe.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Crime Coverage

This chapter sets up the thesis of the book: Crime coverage practices serve as a lens to consider underlying cultural attitudes to concepts like privacy, public, public right to know, and justice. Differing decisions, for example, about whether to name suspects, suggest varying beliefs about the value of privacy and the public right to know. The chapter outlines the methodology and situates the work in relation to Daniel Hallin and Paulo Mancini, whose book Comparing Media Practices influenced the selection of countries, as well as the initial premises. We name the ten countries that comprise the basis of our comparison, and briefly introduce our three media models: the Protectors (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden), the Watchdogs (the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and the United States), and the Ambivalents (Spain, Italy, and Portugal). The chapter concludes with a brief overview of individual book chapters.


Author(s):  
Stuart O. Schweitzer ◽  
Z. John Lu

This chapter provides a comparative analysis of pharmaceutical expenditure levels across major global markets. It identifies several factors for the difference across countries, including national income, spending on overall healthcare, price for substitutable healthcare products and services, age distribution, patient and physician tastes and preferences, and even culture. The discussion focuses on seven of the largest national markets outside the United States: Japan, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Brazil. While there are notable differences between these markets, one especially important commonality distinguishes them from the United States: in every single market, the central government plays a pivotal role in the determination of drug prices by using its monopsonist power in negotiations with and regulations of drug manufacturers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 130-170
Author(s):  
Myrisha S. Lewis

In many areas of innovation, the United States is a leader, but this characterization does not apply to the United States' position in assisted reproductive technology innovation and clinical use. This article uses a political science concept, the idea of the “democratic deficit” to examine the lack of American public discourse on innovations in ART. In doing so, the article focuses on America's missing public consultation in health care innovation. This missing discourse is significant, as political and ethical considerations may impact regulatory decisions. Thus, to the extent that these considerations are influencing the decisions of federal agency employees, namely those who work within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the public is unable to participate in the decision-making process. This lack of a public discourse undermines the goals of the administrative state, which include democratic participation, transparency, and accountability.The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has had a markedly divergent experience with assisted reproductive technology innovation. Instead of ignoring the various ethical, social, and legal issues surrounding assisted reproductive technology innovation, the United Kingdom engaged in a five-strand public consultation on the topic of mitochondrial transfer, a form of assisted reproductive technology that uses genetic modification in order to prevent disease transmission. This article argues that after a multi-decade standstill in terms of the public discourse related to ethical issues associated with assisted reproductive technology and germline modification, it is time for the United States to institute a more democratic inquiry into the scientific, ethical, and social implications of new forms of assisted reproductive technology and ultimately, forthcoming medical innovations that involve genetic modification.


1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dant ◽  
Brian Gearing

ABSTRACTIn the United Kingdom a range of services for elderly people in the community has developed that is delivered by a variety of professionals and administered within different organisations. This has resulted in a problem of co-ordinating services to meet the individual needs of the most frail elderly people. In the United States ‘case management’ has been introduced as a way of improving the co-ordination of care. Despite structural differences in the provision of health and social services between the United States and the United Kingdom, the concept of case management has influenced the design of a number of innovatory schemes in the United Kingdom, including the Gloucester Care for Elderly People at Home project (CEPH). These innovatory schemes have demonstrated the need for a ‘keyworker’ and clarified the tasks that are involved in taking responsibility for co-ordinating services to meet the needs of elderly people at risk of failing to cope at home. There is, however, a danger of proliferating the complexity of service provision by creating a new breed of professional; an alternative might be to alter the responsibilities, attitudes and team orientation of existing professional workers so as to include taking on the key worker role for some of their clients.


Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Camurça ◽  
Sueli Martins

RESUMOA partir de um estudo de caso de escolas municipais na cidade de Juiz de Fora, este artigo visa discutir a questão de fundo da laicidade no Brasil. Tomando a perspectiva do debate internacional atual que analisa este processo de uma forma plural e não como via única que tem como modelo os países europeus e os EUA, busca-se aqui estabelecer uma tipologia - três casos paradigmáticos - que nos aproxime das formas diferenciadas e informais de regulação do religioso no ambiente público escolarPalavras-chave: Chave: Escolas públicas, laicidade, regulação, religiões, BrasilABSTRACTDrawing upon a case study on public schools in the city of Juiz de Fora (MG), this article aims to discuss the substantive issue of secularism in Brazil. The paper builds on the current international debate that analyzes the process of secularization under a plural and multidimensional, rather than one-imensional perspective, which has been modeled on European countries and the United States. We seek to establish a typology based on three paradigmatic cases that may bring us closer to the differing forms and informal regulation of the religious phenomenon in the public education environment.Keywords: Public schools, secularism, regulation, religions, Brazil 


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrij Euler

The paper is about domestic laws’ response to the greater need of publicly listed corporation to be accountable to the public in accordance with international law. The paper is dedicated to the transparency of multinational corporations listed and incorporated in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland. Under these applicable laws, transparency of publicly listed corporations has significantly changed in the last decade. Some countries oblige corporations to disclose non-financial and financial information immediately; others merely require periodic reporting of financial information. In particular, the connection between Impact Investor, an investor that invests based on social or environmental criteria in addition to the financial performance, and the investment target, publicly listed corporations contributed to some change. The applicable law provides a minimum standard of transparency. This minimum standard defines how the reasonable investor invests in the publicly listed corporation. Depending on this standard, the responsibility owed by the publicly listed corporation extends from the shareholder, several stakeholders to the public. Reasons for these differences lie in the greater accountability of publicly listed corporations from shareholders, to stakeholders or even the public. The OECD’s different standard on Corporate Governance, the Ruggie principles and other recommendations of non-governmental organisations (NGO) keep shaping the accountability under the applicable law. These standards provide guidance to corporations to voluntarily implement greater responsibilities beyond the minimum standard in the form of Corporate Governance. However, once publicly listed corporations implement these standards, the applicable law seem to not adequately impose duties on publicly listed corporations to disclose the information under its self-imposed standard to stakeholders or even the public. The paper researches the problem of transparency of publicly listed corporations in European Union, in particular Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States and Switzerland wither regard to impact investors. Its hypotheses is that the applicable law lacks clear wording that transfers voluntary standards into binding law. The paper will not focus on obligations of corporation established under contracts with groups of shareholders. It will also not focus on stock market programmes to audit corporations based on environmental and social criteria. The paper excludes inter partes obligations because they give the contracting party merely a right to rely on the disclosure. The paper will also not look at methods for evaluation of non-financial information with regard to publicly listed corporations.


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