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This paper examines the globalization process of German core export metalworking industries, to show how the globalization of national corporations has different effects on domestic economies. Contrary to the prevalent views on the globalization of production, this paper holds that the outcomes and patterns of globalization vary, due mainly to the politics of the main actors inside and outside corporations. This paper compares Germany's negotiated globalization with U.S. employer unilateralism. In most U.S. corporations, employers decide how to globalize based on the short-term perspective of shareholder value. By contrast, in Germany, main industrial actors—including employers, works councils, and trade unions—collectively negotiate how to globalize. In this conflict-laden process of collective negotiation, German actors have created a political compromise that combines the upgrading of domestic production with globalizing overseas, whereas Americans have failed to do so. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes that divergent patterns of globalization are not predetermined by national institutions. To the contrary, the successful outcomes in German globalization come mainly from actors' proactive readjustments in their traditional model of industrial relations, creating new practices, such as active union involvement in company-level bargaining, and the democratic bottom-up process instead of the traditional top-down process of negotiation.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, created in 1996, is one of the key federal funding streams provided to states to assist low-income families. A critical aspect of TANF has been its focus on employment and self-sufficiency, and the primary means to measure state efforts in this area has been TANF's work participation requirements. When the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) reauthorized TANF, it also made changes that were generally expected to strengthen these work requirements. Given the impending extension or reauthorization of TANF, this testimony primarily draws on previous GAO work to focus on (1) how the welfare caseload and related spending have changed since TANF was created and (2) how states have met work participation rates since DRA. To address these issues, in work conducted from August 2009 to May 2010, GAO analyzed state data reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); surveyed state TANF administrators in 50 states and the District of Columbia; conducted site visits to Florida, Ohio, and Oregon, selected to provide geographic diversity and variation in TANF program characteristics; and reviewed relevant federal laws, regulations, and research. In July 2011, GAO updated this work by analyzing state data reported to HHS since that time. In addition, GAO gathered information on caseload changes through its forthcoming work on TANF child-only cases."

English
This article seeks to explain the politics of social policy in Korea after the economic crisis of 1997/98, focusing on the advocacy coalitions. It shows that the welfare idealists were able to succeed in introducing the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (MLSG) by seizing a number of strategic points of decision making in Korea, explaining why Korea adopted active social policy initiatives beyond the functional requirements of the structural adjustment. The introduction of MLSG, which recognises the right of every citizen to a decent living, means that social protection has become an integral social policy goal in Korea.

In this article I use pooled data from the 1988 and 1992 National Election Studies to explore the relationship between knowledge of politics and belief that one can understand the political universe. Although the 2 are related, the association is weaker than might be anticipated. Moreover, the meaning of the belief that one is sometimes confused by political affairs varies according to how well-informed citizens are. Among those who are largely ignorant of politics, admitting that public affairs are sometimes baffling seems to constitute a confession of political incapacity. For those who are well-informed, however, stating that one sometimes finds politics confusing is related to lack of trust in political leaders. Finally, among the well-informed, at least, believing that one sometimes cannot understand politics is related to lower rates of electoral participation.

How do the perpetrators of mass killing legitimise their behaviour? This article examines the legitimation of some of the worst cases of mass killing in the past two centuries. It finds that the colonial experience helped establish a moral framework that facilitated arguments designed to place whole groups beyond normal legal and moral protection on account of some assigned traits. This moral framework was evident in different colonial settings and rested on claims negating the right of the victim group to protection and claims valourising their violent extermination. It also underpinned the moral justifications offered by perpetrators of some of the twentieth century's worst episodes of mass killing. This article examines the "family resemblances" between the arguments used by perpetrators in different settings, indentifies their common structure, and examines the factors that influenced their capacity to secure legitimacy for mass killing.

Standards are an omnipresent yet generally taken-for-granted part of our everyday life (Higgins and Larner, 2010a; Timmermans and Epstein, 2010; Busch, 2011). Until recently, standards within the agri-food sector were typically dismissed (if thought of at all) by social scientists as rather benign, technical tools, primarily of interest to specialists concerned with facilitating markets and trade. Over the past decade, however, this assessment has changed considerably and many agri-food scholars now view standards as a useful entry point for analysing and understanding our social and material world. The degree of interest today is reflected in the fact that our call for papers on private agri-food standards attracted so many high-quality submissions that we are publishing this special issues in two parts. In part, this shift in interest reflects the influence of science studies and its concern with studying 'mundane' and taken-for-granted objects and practices (Higgins and Larner, 2010b). Here scholars take inanimate objects seriously, to understand, for example, how non-human actors such as standards allow humans to 'act at a distance' (Latour, 1987), thereby ordering relations across time and space. Many agri-food researchers are also concerned with the rise of private food standards developed by global retailers and non-government organizations, including understanding the role that these standards might play in coordinating and governing production and consumption relations within the context of globalization (Giovannucci and Ponte, 2005; Hatanaka et al., 2005; Mutersbaugh, 2005; Tallontire et al., 2011).

This chapter is organised into three parts. The first offers a brief survey on how multilateral security has been regarded and approached by the Asia-Pacific region�s large powers, particularly in Southeast Asia, and what part they have played in supporting or constraining its development. The second section evaluates what factors may convince the region�s great powers to become genuine architects for building multilateral security politics. The third section concludes with an offering of some general propositions about what will be needed to transform current great power politics - now largely based on national self-interest - into an effective process for order-building in the region.

In 1878 the liberal parties lost enough votes to lose the majority in the parliament which they had defended in the general election just one year before. In this article, the questions of where the voters came from and why the voting changed so crucially within one year are reexamined. The analysis uses a new set of data and makes use of King's algorithm, a tool provided by modern political science. The main finding of this article is that the change towards protectionism was not caused by new, but by floating voters from the agricultural sector.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses our work on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which Congress established on October 3, 2008, in response to the financial crisis that threatened the stability of the U.S. financial system and the solvency of many financial institutions. Under the original TARP legislation, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) had the authority to purchase or insure $700 billion in troubled assets held by financial institutions. The Secretary of the Treasury extended the authority originally provided under EESA through October 3, 2010. However, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act)--signed into law on July 21, 2010--set a new spending ceiling for TARP, in effect prohibiting Treasury from incurring any additional obligations for programs that had not been initiated prior to June 25, 2010. A broad range of activities have been initiated under TARP. Specific initiatives have injected capital into key financial institutions; implemented programs to address problems in the securitization markets; provided assistance to the automobile industry and American International Group, Inc. (AIG); and offered incentives for modifying residential mortgages, among other things. As TARP passes the 30-month mark, U.S. financial markets appear to be less volatile than they were in 2008. But questions about a sustained economic recovery continue, and certain areas of the economy still face significant challenges. For example, foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies continue to linger and small businesses still face tight credit conditions. As a result, TARP has been transformed into a program that focuses primarily on preserving homeownership and improving financial conditions for small financial institutions and businesses. While many other programs have ended and begun winding down operations and some participating institutions have repaid part or all of their TARP funds, the prospect of repayment from some other institutions, both large and small, remains uncertain. This statement is primarily based on our January 12, 2011, report and focuses on (1) the status of TARP programs; (2) Treasury's progress in implementing an effective management structure for TARP, including staffing the Office of Financial Stability (OFS), overseeing contractors, and establishing a comprehensive system of internal controls; and (3) trends in key relevant economic indicators."