Suchergebnisse

Specialist housing for older people is an important welfare service and integral part of the housing offer in many countries. An extensive evidence base details the relative merits of different modes of provision, but little light has been cast on the forces shaping provision and the interests served. Drawing on a new model of demand and supply of specialist provision in England at the local authority level, this study addresses this lacuna. Two key contributions are made to knowledge and understanding. First, the uneven landscape of specialist housing provision is charted and the extent to which this maps onto need is revealed. Second, this condition is explained by situating specialist housing within wider debates about the reimagining of housing systems driven by the neoliberal transformation of housing politics, and recognising that these processes can have uneven effects embedded in the nature of places.

Abstract
This paper explores the conditions under which democratic decentralisation has contributed to pro-poor policy reform in Indonesia by examining the politics of health insurance for the poor in two Indonesian districts, Jembrana and Tabanan, both located in Bali. Governments in these districts have responded quite differently to the issue of health insurance for the poor since they gained primary responsibility for health policy as a result of Indonesia's implementation of decentralisation in 2001. We argue that this variation has reflected differences in the nature of district heads' political strategies — particularly the extent to which they have sought to develop a popular base among the poor — and that these in turn have reflected differences in their personal networks, alliances and constituencies. Comparative research suggests that pro-poor outcomes have only occurred in developing countries following democratic decentralisation when social-democratic political parties have secured power at the local level. In the Indonesian case, we suggest, political parties are not well defined in ideological and programmatic terms and tend to act as electoral vehicles for hire and mechanisms for the distribution of patronage, while local-level politics is increasingly dominated by the executive arm of government. Hence the pathway to pro-poor policy reform has been different — namely, via the emergence of local executives who pursue their interests and those of allies and backers via populist strategies with or without the support of parties.

Problems caused by the Communist Party's arrangement of succession through "lines" of those who manage the day-to-day work and those who determine major issues of policy; based on conference paper. Also discusses the political role of the People's Liberation Army.