Suchergebnisse

In einer persönlichen Annäherung reflektiert der Autor über die Begriffe Ästhetik und Schönheit mit Blick auf die ihnen inhärenten Möglichkeiten von Freiheit und Widerstand. Dabei führt er verschiedene philosophische und geistesgeschichtliche Stränge zusammen. Ankerpunkt seiner Ausführungen ist die Frage, welches Ziel ästhetische Erziehung, ästhetische Bildung, Kunstproduktion, Kunstaneignung, Kunstwahrnehmung etc. hatten und haben. Abschließend werden gegenwärtige Entwicklungen und Neuerungen in Erziehung, Bildung und Gesellschaftspolitik aufgerollt und hinterfragt. (DIPF/Orig.) ; Taking a personal approach, the author reflects on the ideas of aesthetics and beauty, focusing on the possibilities for freedom and resistance inherent in them. He weaves together different strands of thought from philosophy and the history of ideas. His remarks revolve around the question of what goal aesthetic "education", art production, art acquisition and artistic perception have had in the past and what goal they currently have. Finally, current developments and innovations in education and social policy are reviewed and scrutinized. ((DIPF/Orig.)

This chapter provides analyses concerning trends in female employment, life-work arrangements and welfare development in Spain in the last decades. After analysing the increase in female labour activity rates since the times of the transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, a discussion on family, work and gender co-responsibility underlines the crucial knock-on effects that this social policy area will have for the future evolution of the Spanish welfare state. In spite of some initiatives taken towards favouring equality between women and men, the great increase in female employment occurred in the last decades in Spain has not been matched by effective public policies concerning work-life balance. Families, and particularly women, are still the central piece of a system of welfare that is increasingly challenged. ; Peer reviewed

AbstractThe quantitative strand of social policy research suffers from a double deficit: on the one hand, analyses of aggregate expenditure dominate, and on the other hand, most studies of replacement rates focus on unemployment or sickness benefits, while pensions are excluded. This paper addresses the said deficit firstly by discussing the pension sectors' theoretical peculiarities and by proposing two hypotheses: one on the retrenchment of pension replacement rates and one on the role played by political parties in implementing it. Secondly, after a brief literature review and an outline of our methodological approach, we present regression results of replacement rate changes in 18 developed democracies. Our findings show considerably smaller cuts of pensions than of unemployment or sickness benefits, and striking differences regarding partisan effects between the sectors.

On October 4, the US Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted a team of seven scholars at its Washington, DC headquarters to present the findings of its "The Day After" project, which outlines the challenges facing a post-Bashar Assad Syria. The recommendations and strategies presented are the result of monthly deliberations among 45 to 50 key figures of the Syrian opposition, with a focus on the issues of transitional justice, security reform, social policy, economic restructuring, constitutional reform, electoral reform and the rule of law. Steve Heydemann, USIP senior adviser for Middle East Initiatives, began by saying that, unlike in other nations swept by the Arab Spring, the establishment of a new order in Syria will not start only upon the fall of the regime. Adapted from the source document.

This chàpter provides analyses concerning trends in female employment, life-work arrangements and welfare development in Spain in the last decades. After analysing the increase in female labour activity rates since the times of the transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, a discussion on family, work and gender co-responsibility underlines the crucial knock-on effects that this social policy area will have for the future evolution of the Spanish welfare state. In spite of some initiatives taken towards favouring equality between women and men, the great increase in female employment occurred in the last decades in Spain has not been matched by effective public policies concerning work-life balance. Families, and particularly women, are still the central piece of a system of welfare that is increasingly challenged. ; Peer reviewed

In this paper we use the Portuguese component of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions {EU-SILC) to develop a measure of consistent poverty in Portugal. It is widely agreed that being poor does not simply mean not having enough monetary resources. It also reflects a lack of access to the resources required to enjoy a minimum standard of living and participation in the society one belor]gs to. The coexistence of material deprivation and monetary poverty leads to the con'cept of consistent poverty. The assessment of material deprivation and the identification of the households and individuals living in consistent poverty could become essential parts of the national anti-poverty strategy and crucial instruments in the definition of the target groups in social policy.

AbstractIn the 1990s – during the restructuring of large state enterprises – Central European economies experienced high unemployment. Social policy expenditures, particularly targeted to the non‐employed, grew faster than expected due to the need to finance the out‐of‐the‐labour categories. In 1992, after the Passive Labour Market Policies' reforms, the pace of transition decelerated. Unemployment dynamics, speed of transition and non‐employment policies are modelled based on the assumption that the labour force is shrinking over time. Dismissed workers have the opportunity to choose an outside‐option alternative to labour force participation. Individual uncertainty is assumed in a first phase of transition, while aggregate uncertainty – generating opposition to restructuring – is modelled in a second phase. The model predicts a slowdown in the speed of transition.

This article presents a set of observations on some of the ways in which individuals come to learn that they are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). In doing so, we draw on field data collected in a study of informed consent in HCV clinical research and published reports on HCV surveillance and testing. The concept of illness trajectory is used to illustrate the process of disease discovery. Various circumstances, some related and some unrelated to HCV symptoms, initiate the illness trajectory and the diagnostic search for HCV disease. We borrow the concept of "The Accidental Tourist" to illustrate the unexpected journey of HCV disease discovery. We conclude by considering some implications of the diagnostic search phase of the HCV trajectory for HCV social policy, clinical care, and future research.

English
The Act that established the Greater London Authority (GLA) incorporated many of New Labour's aspirations for modern governance. Among those aspirations was the notion of policy integration, or 'joining up'. The Mayor of Greater London was required to develop a number of strategies, broadly in the planning and environmental policy domains, and to ensure that those strategies meshed into a coherent overall strategy for promoting London's economic, social and environmental well-being. How would this work in practice, given the need for coordination between the GLA and a number of related functional bodies, and given the political imperative for the GLA to make an impact quickly? Through our analysis of the strategy development and integration efforts of the GLA in its first nine months, we have gleaned new insights into the highly complex and difficult process of policy integration. We argue that the high aspirations of the Act for policy integration have not been met, policy integration instead being narrowly interpreted as the coordination of strategies to the Mayor's political agenda. Finally, we reflect on the likelihood of the GLA, as currently constituted, evolving to meet the functional requirement of policy integration.

Weitgehend unbeachtet haben in den letzten Jahren wichtige Veränderungen im deutschen System der Arbeitsbeziehungen stattgefunden. Von besonderer Bedeutung sind dabei die Aufnahme sozialpolitischer Themen in den Gegenstandsbereich der Tarifverhandlungen, insbesondere der Alterssicherung und der Altersteilzeit; die Ausweitung und Festigung der betrieblichen Bündnisse zur Sicherung von Beschäftigung und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit; sowie die Ausbreitung betrieblich regulierter leistungs- und ertragsabhängiger Entlohnungsformen. Der Flächentarif hat diese Entwicklungen kaum behindert und hat sich im Gegenteil zunehmend pragmatisch an sie angepasst. ; In recent years major changes have taken place in German industrial relations that have gone mostly unnoticed. Of particular significance are the inclusion in collective bargaining of several areas of social policy, like old age pensions and early retirement; the growth and lasting establishment of company-level Alliances for Employment and Competitiveness; and the expansion of contingent pay negotiated at the workplace. The system of industry-wide collective agree-ments has not stood in the way of with these developments and indeed has pragmatically adjusted to them.

This paper section assesses the relative importance of the arguments about the challenges to the welfare state coming from the international political economy (global trade competition, the internationalisation of finance) and from the domestic political economy (rapid technoloical change, the shift from industrial production to services, the transformation of the world of work, demographic change and changing household and family patterns) and the interaction between these external and domestic pressures. As the nature of this interaction manifests itself differently in different types of welfare states, there are different predicament of adjustment challenges facing the national welfare states of the European Union. The final section concerns the prospects for the European social policy integration against the background of the regime-specific problems and domestic and international challenges.

The Swedish government recently published a report on priorities in health care. It was written by a cross party group of politicians and drew extensively on the views of the public, health professionals, experience of earlier local exercises in priority setting, and research based evidence. It laid down an ethical framework for approaching issues of health care rationing. Underpinning the framework are the principles of human dignity, need and solidarity, and cost efficiency. The Swedish approach thus contrasts with the British experience of many local initiatives but an absence of national political guidance. The absence of political consensus on many aspects of social policy in the United Kingdom is a major obstacle to developing an agreed ethical framework within which decision makers in the National Health Service can work.

This paper examines household level economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe before and during the transformations of their economies. The authors test the assumptions that the economic transitions would increase poverty and income inequality within the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and that vulnerable populations would bear a disproportionate burden of the economic decline. The data suggest that while Central European economies suffered rapid declines, the poverty rates of individuals increased only slightly. A simulation of the effects of adding the informal economy on the income distribution in Hungary showed some changes in inequality calculations while aggregate consumption patterns showed increases in consumption of durables and luxury goods. The adverse effects of macroeconomic decline were thought to be buffered by government social policy and other household coping behavior.

In his address to the First Congress of Africanists in Accra on 12 December 1962, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah reminded his audience that they were united by the fact that they wanted to find out the truth about Africa, and when they had found out, they would proclaim it to the world. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah thus underscored the duality of the role of the Africanists in the second half of the twentieth century. Those engaged in African studies were charged to search for the truth about Africa with scientific and academic rigor. They were also exhorted to make known and to share the results of their research and discoveries with the world at large. African studies, according to Dr. Nkrumah, should help to create the launching pad for progressive and dynamic social policy.

The private sector is useful for addressing affordability and accessibility in the Chinese health system. However, the role of the private sector in health-care service delivery and health insurance is still limited in China. Strict regulations, insurance designation bias against private hospitals, insufficient risk-managing capacity and crowding-out effect of expanding social health insurance schemes have hampered private sector involvement.