Suchergebnisse

This paper examines spillover effects in corporate tax policy for African economies. Using a balanced panel data in statutory corporate income tax (CIT) rate for 34 African countries over the period 1995-2013, we find positive interaction between CIT rates in Africa only when common time trend effects are not controlled. We conclude that the evidence of pure corporate tax competition among African countries is weak. These countries' tendency to implement similar fiscal policies under the common intellectual assistance may explain the positive slope reaction between their CIT rates. Regarding corporate tax base spillovers, estimation results indicate that cuts in foreign countries' average corporate tax rate reduce the host country's corporate tax base. When the host country reacts to a one percentage point cut in foreign countries' CIT rates by cutting its own CIT rate in the same proportion, this ultimately results in a net erosion of its corporate tax base by 0.4%. This represents a 2.3 % loss of corporate tax revenue. Moreover, we find strategic complement responses in corporate tax base policies suggesting that countries react to the uptake of measures that tend to reduce the corporate tax burden in other countries by also undertaking similar measures.

This paper examines spillover effects in corporate tax policy for African economies. Using a balanced panel data in statutory corporate income tax (CIT) rate for 34 African countries over the period 1995-2013, we find positive interaction between CIT rates in Africa only when common time trend effects are not controlled. We conclude that the evidence of pure corporate tax competition among African countries is weak. These countries' tendency to implement similar fiscal policies under the common intellectual assistance may explain the positive slope reaction between their CIT rates. Regarding corporate tax base spillovers, estimation results indicate that cuts in foreign countries' average corporate tax rate reduce the host country's corporate tax base. When the host country reacts to a one percentage point cut in foreign countries' CIT rates by cutting its own CIT rate in the same proportion, this ultimately results in a net erosion of its corporate tax base by 0.4%. This represents a 2.3 % loss of corporate tax revenue. Moreover, we find strategic complement responses in corporate tax base policies suggesting that countries react to the uptake of measures that tend to reduce the corporate tax burden in other countries by also undertaking similar measures.

This article has focused on the relatively low priority accorded industrial wastes compared to human wastes by the public health community in the period from 1876 through 1932. The critical reason for this prioritization was the potential for acute health effects from human wastes as compared with the belief that industrial wastes had only indirect effects. State departments of health normally only responded to industrial wastes when they endangered the potable nature of water supplies or interfered with water and sewage treatment processes. Within the public health community, however, a relatively small group of interdisciplinary professionals argued for attention to the indirect health effects of industrial wastes and their impacts on the total stream environment. In conjunction with other groups interested in clean streams--such as sportsmen and manufacturers who required high quality process water--they pushed for a broader state legislative mandate in regard to pollution control. Some states created new bureaus or boards with responsibility for industrial wastes and the larger stream environment but the attack on industrial pollution remained limited in this period. The final significant development regarding industrial pollution and public health concerned the formulation by Streeter-Phelps of the Public Health Service of a theory of stream purification with a set of general quantitative indicators. This application was of particular importance in regard to the high-oxygen consuming nature of organic industrial wastes and the wide variety of effluents that existed. Industrial wastes constituted what Harvey Brooks, in his essay "Science Indicators and Science Priorities" calls a very "messy" research problem--one that does "not lend itself to elegant and widely applicable generalizations."(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

We illustrate the power of "logical models" (Taagepera, 2007) by offering a three-parameter model of the relationship between the effective number of parties and electoral turnout that makes use of the constraints on what parameter values are internally coherent given boundary conditions to specify functional form, and seeks not optimal curve fitting but rather a direct model testing. In our model, one parameter reflects an effect that generally acts to increase turnout as the effective number of parties increases, another an effect that generally acts to decrease turnout as the effective number of parties increases, while a third parameter allows for baseline variation in turnout across countries (or within countries across elections). We fit this model to district-level data from 237 elections held in 17 countries, representing a wide range of electoral system types generating multi-party contests, with over 20,000 district-election observations. The basic intuition, that turnout rises to a peak as the effective number of parties increases and then falls slowly, fits our data pretty well. © 2013 © 2013 Elections, Public Opinion & Parties.

Policy layering has received significant scholarly attention in recent years as a means to explain and understand the outcomes of policy implementation efforts, particularly within the context of incremental change. However, little is known about how processes of policy layering and institutional legacies play out in (relatively rare) system-wide and transformative policy reforms. This article presents a critical case study of one such reform—the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). In examining the implementation experiences of the NDIS, we resist the bifurcation of the study of policy dynamics into a stability versus big bang dualism by revealing that many influential and constraining factors in a layering process are common across both incremental and transformative reforms. Moreover, we find that layering is not merely an unfortunate by-product of previous institutional structures but a tool that is actively sought and used by policy makers to tackle implementation challenges that, once set in motion, can move beyond the ability of policy makers to control.

The most prevalent criticism of U.S. policy toward Latin America is that it takes Latin America for granted or that Latin America would be better off if it did. According to this view, Latin America is either neglected or treated shabbily. The florid rhetoric that U.S. policymakers sometimes use to describe the "special relationship" with Latin America raises expectations that are never fulfilled. Abraham Lowenthal has repeatedly described this policy cycle as "a burst of interest followed by concrete decisions that contradict the very policies just announced." He continues, "Whether calling its approach a 'Good Neighbor Policy,' an 'Alliance for Progress,' [or] a 'Mature Partnership,' one administration after another has promised to improve U.S.-Latin American relations," but all have failed.

Abstract
During the last decade of the twentieth century, 3.4 km2 of Lisbon's eastern waterfront was converted from an industrial, commercial and working-class residence area into a high-end residential, office, leisure and consumption complex now called Parque das Nações. Expo '98 constituted the occasion for implementing this publicly-funded project that is part of the global, competitive and uneven logic that characterizes contemporary urban development. Parque das Nações was envisioned to become a place where residents, workers and visitors could experience everyday life in a stressless and informal manner: its public spaces were planned to be used as relaxing, breathing spaces in the heart of a modern and busy metropolis. Building on the seminal works of Lefebvre (1974) and De Certeau (2005), this article pursues two main objectives: to describe the process of new-build gentrification, triggered by Expo '98, that resulted in today's Parque das Nações and to show how its public spaces, although they are excessively planned and controlled, produce and become products of multiple forms of spatial practices, experiences and social interactions.

AbstractThis study asks how neoliberal reform became the hegemonic framework for racial justice and educational equity. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I examine three reform projects that operate on different terrains – or scales – of 'governmentality': that of broad public sense-making, that of district policymaking, and that of individual and community-based subjectivities. The first project (Chapter Two) was a national publicity campaign funded by the Broad and Gates foundations. In this chapter, I use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to understand how reformers used language to shape public consciousness, pointing to the continuity of an educational "crisis discourse" first manufactured in the Reagan era. Chapter Three examines the state takeover and neoliberal reconstruction of an urban school district. Using the theoretical framework of "disaster capitalism" (Klein, 2007), I trace how the neoliberal reform network penetrated the district, fundamentally reshaping its structures and processes. In the fourth chapter, I use ethnographic methods to study the effects of 'punitive privatization' on a school site steeped in historical traditions of anti-racist and anti-capitalist critique. I argue that neoliberal accountability is "devitalizing" (McDermott & Hall, 2007) to the political vision and practices of the school, and that it works to co-opt dissent and redirect parent participation. Taken together, these projects demonstrate both coercive and consensual processes: the corporate reform network penetrates public institutions and democratic processes, redirecting them to do the work of marketization and capital accumulation. At the same time, it employs sophisticated and well-funded marketing to articulate these projects across a breadth of terrains and at different scales. Each project demonstrates how market advocates, driven by venture-philanthropic funding, position their work as the only possible means for racial justice and educational equity. The findings point to two powerful aspects of neoliberalism: its role in creating and manipulating educational crises and its ability to absorb and reframe challenges to capitalism.

Protecting the national body -- Creating a colonial disease -- Sacred duties, public spaces -- Institutionalizing american leprosy -- Leprosy and citizenship -- Negotiating an end to segregation

The key questions addressed in this book relate to how we should understand social welfare today. Is it a mechanism for promoting the virtues of altruism and other-regarding social values through the design of compassionate social policies which seek to enhance the quality of social relationships between citizens, or, is it a self-reproducing sub-system of law and politics which operates in accordance with its own internal logic, independently of the human agents who try to steer it towards benign social outcomes? This book questions whether the language of the enlightenment is the most appropriate to describe a socio-political project that is struggling to keep pace with the rapidly changing economic and political conditions which now exist in a neo-liberal global world.The main sociological theorists guiding the analysis here are Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Habermas and Norbert Elias, among others. The key themes analysed in the book are street-level bureaucracy and the interface between the welfare system and the citizen; sensemaking in welfare organisations and in society; the relationship between lay morality and the policy making process; the link between the third sector and philanthrocapitalism; and the emotional dimension of social policy, especially in relation to social work practice. It will appeal to social science students of social and political theory, as well as those seeking an understanding of the changing context of contemporary issues in social policy.

This report integrates the main findings of SOLIDUS work package 5 "Channelling solidarity: inputs from third sector, social innovation and co-creation of public goods",looking at third sector and social economy organisations as a transit zone for solidarity actions. Furthermore, it examines social innovations and initiatives that impact social policy by means of collaboration with public institutions with special focus on the distribution of roles and tasks between public, private and third sectors that indicates social solidarity across national and local contexts, employing a solidarity economy lens that has personal autonomy, social justice and democratisation as core drivers. The report includes 1) a short conceptual overview and methodology, 2) trends of collaboration between public administration and third sector/ social economy organisations in SOLIDUS countries before and after economic and fiscal crises as well as post-crisis policies of austerity that have increased socio-economic inequality, 3) a cross-country analysis looking at the social, economic and democratic dimensions of collaboration and 4) the key drivers and barriers for collaboration towards social solidarity in different contexts. It concludes with reflections on changing patterns of collaboration and the need to incorporate personal autonomy and solidarity economy considerations in political and public logics. ; This report integrates the main findings of SOLIDUS work package 5 "Channelling solidarity: inputs from third sector, social innovation and co-creation of public goods",looking at third sector and social economy organisations as a transit zone for solidarity actions. Furthermore, it examines social innovations and initiatives that impact social policy by means of collaboration with public institutions with special focus on the distribution of roles and tasks between public, private and third sectors that indicates social solidarity across national and local contexts, employing a solidarity economy lens that has personal autonomy, social justice and democratisation as core drivers. The report includes 1) a short conceptual overview and methodology, 2) trends of collaboration between public administration and third sector/ social economy organisations in SOLIDUS countries before and after economic and fiscal crises as well as post-crisis policies of austerity that have increased socio-economic inequality, 3) a cross-country analysis looking at the social, economic and democratic dimensions of collaboration and 4) the key drivers and barriers for collaboration towards social solidarity in different contexts. It concludes with reflections on changing patterns of collaboration and the need to incorporate personal autonomy and solidarity economy considerations in political and public logics.

Agricultural Policy Reform and the WTO provides insights into the effects of the Uruguay Round WTO agreement on agricultural policy and global markets, and considers what is at stake in the Doha Development Agenda Round. The contributors to the book deal with a broad range of topics, including the evolution of domestic and trade policies in the last ten years across developed and developing countries and proposals made in the agricultural negotiation regarding market access, export subsidies and domestic support; new issues emergent in agricultural trade negotiations are also explored, including: * interaction between national regulatory systems and the deepening integration of the international trade regime * intellectual property rights protection * food safety * quality regulations * antidumping trade protection. Finally, the future of international trade relations is discussed, in particular the implications of enforcing domestic regulations to comply with international rules. This rich collection of research and analysis will be invaluable to researchers, academics and policymakers with an interest in agricultural policy analysis and international economics