Suchergebnisse

This is a short note on the limits of Varieties of Capitalism and the potential of the Keynes-Kalecki approach proposed by Baccaro and Pontusson for overcoming them. It identifies the main problem as a failure to define capitalism itself. This effectively reduces the approach to a comparison of the U.S. and German economies at the end of the 20th century. It is in particular unable to recognize let alone explain the very different U.S. economic system in the immediate postwar decades or how the more recent emphasis on the market emerged to take its place. The promise of the Keynes-Kalecki approach is that it will overcome these limits, but the promise has not yet been realized.

This article extends the concept of street-level bureaucracy to address the problem of the inflexibility and rigidity of governmental rules and regulations, a problem at the heart of the standard economic argument against an active government role in the management of the economy. In so doing, it seeks to create a conceptual bridge over which a range of social science disciplines can be drawn into the debate about public sector management and thereby expand the repertoire of policy tools. The article draws primarily on research on one class of street-level bureaucratic organizations, labor inspection organizations in Latin America and southern Europe, and secondarily on a project focusing on DARPA, the research arm of the US Department of Defense. In both organizations, line officers have wide discretion in program development and management and in effect adjust to changing economic and social conditions in a way not unlike the market. These adjustments are grounded in tacit rules that evolve through discussion among the line agents coping day-to-day with novel cases. Management can influence that evolution by entering into the ongoing discussion and giving it direction. Various ways in which it might do so are examined.

AbstractThis article extends the concept of street‐level bureaucracy to address the problem of the inflexibility and rigidity of governmental rules and regulations, a problem at the heart of the standard economic argument against an active government role in the management of the economy. In so doing, it seeks to create a conceptual bridge over which a range of social science disciplines can be drawn into the debate about public sector management and thereby expand the repertoire of policy tools. The article draws primarily on research on one class of street‐level bureaucratic organizations, labor inspection organizations in Latin America and southern Europe, and secondarily on a project focusing on DARPA, the research arm of the US Department of Defense. In both organizations, line officers have wide discretion in program development and management and in effect adjust to changing economic and social conditions in a way not unlike the market. These adjustments are grounded in tacit rules that evolve through discussion among the line agents coping day‐to‐day with novel cases. Management can influence that evolution by entering into the ongoing discussion and giving it direction. Various ways in which it might do so are examined.

URL is to book. Chapter listed in TOC ; This paper compares and contrasts the U.S. and French systems of labor market regulation. The U.S. system is specialized: Regulating authority is dispersed among a host of different agencies each with a relatively narrow jurisdiction, and as a result with responsibility for a very limited domain. Authority is further divided between the federal and the state governments. The French system is a unified or general system: A single agency is responsible for the enforcement of the whole labor code. As a result, the French system is a street-level bureaucracy in which considerable power and authority rests with the line agents, the work inspectors themselves. The structure of the system (quite paradoxically in the light of the centralization generally attributed to the French state) gives the inspectors virtually complete autonomy in the geographic area to which they are assigned. As a result, and contrary to the contrast generally drawn between civil law and common law countries, at least in the literature of economics, the French system is considerably more flexible and able to adjust to variations in economic and social conditions across the territory but also over time than is the U.S. system. The contrast is of broader importance because the French system was adopted by Spain (and Italy) and from there spread to Latin America, where the issue of labor standards enforcement has become central to bilateral trade treaties with the United States. The paper goes on to discuss the various managerial issues posed by the two systems and the problems of reconciling their contrasting dynamics in a unified global trading regime.

In this presidential address, Michael J. Piore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks about the relationship between sociology & economics, specifically the potential function of this relationship in light of the recent political crossroads as the nation shifts away from public policy dominated by neoliberalism & the Washington Consensus. According to Piore, the most significant obstacle to progress in understanding the relationship between economics & sociology is the way is that fact that we conceptualize society as "static & conservative." This, Piore argues, causes us to see society as a constraint upon economic activity. Piore suggests that society should be viewed as dynamic & belonging to a "sovereign sphere" so when it crosses the economy in models it does so as an "equal & active force.". C. Goger

This paper focuses on the role of social intermediaries in the evolution of the economy. By 'social intermediaries' I mean those institutions that mediate between the economy and other realms of social activity and maintain a balance between them. Among institutions of this kind are trade unions and governmental organizations but also cooperatives, household‐based enterprises, religious institutions, and, increasingly, networks of professionals and business people based on race, sex, ethnicity and religion.

This article is addressed to the theory of the international migration of workers to low-wage sectors of developed industrial economies from underdeveloped regions. Its starting point is the framework of analysis originally put forward in Birds of Passage, a framework built around the notion of circular migration through the secondary sector of a dual labor market. It then discusses how that theory might be amended in light of recent developments in migration patterns to encompass enclave economies, immigrant entrepreneurship, and the settlement process.