Suchergebnisse

Russia's government initiated pension reform in 2013 to resolve a crisis: the prolonged recession had created a huge Pension Fund deficit that required unsustainable subsidies from the state budget. The article analyzes four sets of influences on that reform: those from above (high-level policy makers), inside (government ministries, legislators), below (civil society, public opinion), and outside (international actors, policy learning). We find that the strongest influences come from above and inside, and analyze the conflicting policy preferences of key actors on reversal of pension privatization, indexation of payments, and age of eligibility. The policy process is protracted and fails to resolve major issues. Irresolution results from the leadership's effort to avoid blame for pension benefit cuts despite the weakness of civil society's influence. The current reform effort has been tentative, halting, and indecisive, indicating a government with a diminished capacity to resolve this major social policy problem. ; Norges forskningsråd 228196 ; acceptedVersion

The central instruments of social policy include not only social programmes but also how social problems and social inequality are represented in the media. In this article, these representations are analysed, with a particular focus on the meanings attached to actors, events and phenomena in the field of social policy and how they are produced and diffused through society by means of language, symbols and images. The aim of the study is to provide an analysis of the representations of social inequality and social policy in one of modern Russia's official state-run newspapers. The various means of explaining social inequality in the official print media will also be revealed and explained here. This is achieved through a content analysis of the articles in Rossiiskaya Gazeta [Russian Newspaper] from 2005 to 2012.