Suchergebnisse

Since 2008 the countries of the Eurozone have seen social upheaval and economic crisis on an unprecedented scale. Sociological explanations for European development and crisis have relied either on an neoinstitutionalist approach, seeing the region as a coalescing "field" of social interaction, or an approach a collection of disparate "varieties" of economy, supposing that Southern European states were profligate in their spending or wage policies compared to Germany and other Northern states. In contrast, this study uses global political economy and post-Keynesian economics to analyze the sharp inequalities between Western Europe's economies, the unusual structure of pan-European economic governance institutions, and the way these interacted to cause the post-2008 crisis. I argue that Europe's uneven political economy, in which a "neomercantilist" North centered on Germany has grown by extracting export surpluses from the debt-addled South, is a crucial component of any explanation for why Northern and Southern member states display such divergent models of social development and why pan-European institutions took their current form. I use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), a software-aided method of case comparison, as an initial test of competing crisis explanations, mapping the Eurozone's Northern and Southern blocs over the 1999-2007 period. This revealed bloc structure then informs a multi-chapter historical case study of European development since 1945, putting the neomercantilist explanation in dialogue with competing sociological theories at each step. Comparative-historical methods are employed to demonstrate that pan-European institutions such as the European Central Bank (ECB) were shaped by this neomercantilist relationship between Northern and Southern countries and thus tend to exacerbate between-country inequalities. More fundamentally, I argue that the disparate social models found across Europe were also shaped by this neomercantilist relationship, rather than being a sui generis result of each country's own particularities. Explaining who won and lost in the wake of the crisis therefore depends, at base, on this neomercantilist linkage, and the way it determined both the social models installed in each European country and the restrictive institutional framework of the Euro itself.

Ahead of the Bandung Asian-African Summit in Indonesia this past April, statements from Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's office suggests a long-range view for enhancing relationships on the continent. Driven by "commitment in strengthening cooperation" and achieving "prosperity through South-South cooperation," Malaysia is expressing great enthusiasm in exploring opportunities across Africa. Indeed, the continent could find itself playing a central role as part of Malaysia's effort to develop a latticework of political and trade relationships with developing nations. Since the 1990s, Singapore's northern neighbour has undertaken a sustained effort to build partnerships across the developing world as part of its vision to achieve greater resiliency on the global stage through political and economic diversification.3 The Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme has featured strongly as a mechanism to deepen bilateral relationships with developing countries, welcoming more than 20,000 participants from 138 countries since launching in 1978.4 In the wake of the recent financial crisis, this commitment to South-South cooperation has certainly been renewed.

When emergency and waiting list data are submitted by health services to the Victorian Department of Health they are not ready for immediate use. Data must undergo further edit and rule checks before they can be declared fit for purpose and made available for internal and external stakeholder use. Further transformation of the data is constantly required to suit individual stakeholder requirements; this requires in-depth knowledge of each dataset. Health Information Managers are especially suited to this role because of their understanding of classification, exposure to the data at hospital-level and general health information management skills.