Making EMU a success

One year has elapsed since the European Monetary Union was created between eleven of the fifteen European Union member states. During 1999 the economic prospects for euroland have dramatically improved, with projected growth in 2000 and 2001 well above earlier expectations. This article argues that the recovery, by itself, cannot solve Europe's unemployment problem, neither can monetary union per se, despite its substantial benefits. The authors discuss these benefits and assess the current economic situation in Europe. They recommend a bold, coordinated approach, a growth pact for Europe, based on the three complementary legs: substantial tax cuts; an accommodating monetary policy; and structural reform. They discuss the conditions in which such a pact would be successful.     

The Heath Government and British Defence Policy in Southeast Asia at the End of Empire (1970-71)

This article examines the rationale behind the Heath government's1970 decision to negotiate a Five Power Defence agreement withAustralia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and to maintaina small British military contingent in Southeast Asia as a partof this new politico-military framework. It argues that whileits overriding foreign policy concern was to end Britain's problematicrelationship with the European Economic Community and to makemembership of this grouping the cornerstone of its foreign policy,the Heath government was careful not to cast Britain's post-imperialfuture in purely European terms. The successful negotiationof the Five Power Defence Arrangements in 1970–71 wasinstrumental in achieving this by ensuring that London wouldmaintain close links with key Commonwealth partners in the Asianregion. In what was not only an attempt to neutralize potentialdomestic opposition to Britain's entry into the EEC, but alsoa lingering reluctance to do away with the rhetoric of Britainas a leading power with extra-European interests, Heath waseager to show that by making a contribution to the stabilityof Southeast Asia, Britain still had a role to play outsideEurope.     

Harold Macmillan and the Deadline Crisis Over Berlin 1958-9

This article examines postwar British foreign policy by analysingthe decision-making process in Whitehall during the ‘deadlinecrisis’, the months between Khrushchev's ultimatum inNovember 1958 and Macmillan's famous voyage of discovery inFebruary 1959. The role played by the then British governmentduring this critical period of the Cold War was widely ignoreduntil the opening of the British archives for the late 1950sand early 1960s, under the thirty-year rule. Since then, scholarshave paid more attention to it. Diplomatic history is affectedgreatly by lack of access to public records; by utilizing previouslywithheld government documents, this paper results in a considerablereassessment of Britain's policy during the early cirisis months.Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that Macmillan'scontinuous attempts to shape alliance policy from behind thecurtain put alliance consensus at risk, provoked a deep breachof confidence and so diminshed his scope for effective actionseverely. His visit to Moscow did, in fact, achieve very little,if anything at all.     

Norms,coercion and contracting in the struggle against ‘harmful’ tax competition

The world's richest and most powerful countries have become increasingly concerned about revenue lost to tax havens, and fear that tax competition might spark a fiscal ‘race to the bottom’, yet they have failed to pressure much smaller and weaker tax haven states into reform. This article argues that the OECD-sponsored campaign against ‘harmful’ tax competition has been unsuccessful because regulative norms have severely constrained the means legitimately able to be employed. Early decisions on how the campaign was designed subsequently brought norms into play which have not only ruled out the use of coercion, but also the use of side payments, despite the massive potential benefits available to both sides from a deal between tax havens and OECD states. The failure to strike a deal cannot be explained by high transaction costs nor by corporate lobbying in defence of tax shelters. Regulative norms can thus affect economic bargaining in the international arena by preventing mutually advantageous exchanges that are nevertheless regarded as inappropriate.     

Germany and the European Union: from ‘tamed power’ to normalized power?

Germany has traditionally played a key role in promoting European Union solutions to domestic policy problems. In doing so it gained a reputation as a ‘tamed power’ (Katzenstein). This article reviews Germany's diplomacy two decades after unification. It explores the ‘tamed power’ hypothesis with reference to three policy areas: constitutional reform in the EU; Justice and Home Affairs policy; and an issue that has made German European policy very salient of late, the management of the Eurozone. The article argues that Germany has become a much less inclusive actor in European policy, pursuing policy solutions through ‘pioneer groups’ where these offer greater promise than the EU itself and becoming increasingly attentive to domestic political constraints. The article argues that Germany has become a normalized power, with significant implications for the EU.     

Pension Exclusion in Grey Capitalism: Mapping the Pensions Gap in Britain

The switch in Britain's pension policy towards private funded schemes and a liberal style of state regulation have exposed variations in individuals' ability and willingness to undertake pensions saving. This paper focuses on the patterns of exclusion and the geographies of pension consumption created by this reform. It argues that there are new patterns of pension provision which have important but neglected spatial dimensions. First, it shows that widening inequality among current pensioners involves a North-South divide in income and benefit take-up. Second, private second tier pension coverage, especially the take-up of personal policies, is found to be lower in areas with lower levels of income among existing pensioners. The paper considers whether the Government's new stakeholder pensions are likely to be able to fill this pensions gap.     

The Politics of Citizenship in 1940s Britain: The British Nationality Act

The article examines the enactment of the British NationalityAct, 1948. The legislation created a legal status—Citizenshipof the UK and Colonies—that included Britons and ‘colonial’British subjects under a single definition of British citizenship,and entrenched their right to enter the UK. Between 1948 and1962, some 500, 000 non-white British subjects entered underthe legislation, despite documented evidence of elite suspicionof non-white Commonwealth migration. The article argues thatthis apparent contradiction can only be understood by examiningthe legislation in the context of past migration patterns andBritain's international position in 1948. The legislation wasonly marginally related to migration; it was rather an attemptto maintain a uniform definition of subjecthood in the faceof Canada's unilateral introduction of its own citizenship,and it was an affirmation of Britain's place as head of a Commonwealthstructure founded on the relationship between the UK and theOld Dominions. ^* For comments on earlier drafts, I owe my thanks to John Dorwin,Katie Goebs, Iain McLean, and Desmond King.     

Accordism and the environment: The resource assessment commission and national environmental policy‐making

This paper explores the reform of environmental policy‐making by the Hawke government through its creation of the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC). The paper pursues two themes. First, it argues that this reform must be seen within the broader context of the Hawke government's approach to public policy generally. The paper argues that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has instituted a model for policy politics based on key strategic and normative approaches—a model this paper refers to as ‘Accordism’. Secondly, this paper looks at the RAC and in so doing argues that, on the basis of the norms that underpinned the reform of environmental policy‐making based on this body, the Commission may be placed squarely within the ‘Accordist’ paradigm.     

The Tax Policy Regime in American Politics, 1941-1951

This article analyzes the inception of the mass income tax during the Second World War as a decisive moment when relations among state, market, and citizens were reconfigured in a durable way. The state institutionalized the means to devise tax reform–a policy regime–during this formative period of partisan conflict over macroeconomic management strategies. The approach to policy analysis presented here illuminates the process by which political choices are made among competing policy visions embedded in state agencies. This study demonstrates that a policy regime perspective, when applied in a complementary way with interest-driven or institutionalist accounts, is best equipped to bring important but tacit constraints into clear analytical focus.     

Transforming the Developmental Welfare State in East Asia

This article attempts to explain changes and continuity in the developmental welfare states in Korea and Taiwan within the East Asian context. It first elaborates two strands of welfare developmentalism (selective vs. inclusive), and establishes that the welfare state in both countries fell into the selective category of developmental welfare states before the Asian economic crisis of 1997. The key principles of the selective strand of welfare developmentalism are productivism, selective social investment and authoritarianism; inclusive welfare development is based on productivism, universal social investment and democratic governance. The article then argues that the policy reform toward an inclusive welfare state in Korea and Taiwan was triggered by the need for structural reform in the economy. The need for economic reform, together with democratization, created institutional space in policy‐making for advocacy coalitions, which made successful advances towards greater social rights. Finally, the article argues that the experiences of Korea and Taiwan counter the neo‐liberal assertion that the role of social policy in economic development is minor, and emphasizes that the idea of an inclusive developmental welfare state should be explored in the wider context of economic and social development.     

Radar and Air Defence in the 1930s

The article sets out to demonstrate that radar played a central,but hitherto unrecognized, role in the formation of Britishair policy during the 1930s. It is generally conceived thatthe secret of radar was stumbled across, as if by accident,in early 1935, and was then employed to devastating effect inthe Battle of Britain. The article, however, shows that thedesire for an effective instrument for air defence had gestatedduring the First World Wart—when Britain sought to fightoff the Zeppelin and Gotha bombing raids—and the searchcontinued throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Moreover, theprinciple of radar had been known since 1904, but scientificbackwardness precluded practical progress. There is detailedexamination of the intricate political manoeuvring by PrimeMinister Stanley Baldwin and others which accompanied the adoptionof radar as Britain's primary line of defence against the Luftwaffein preference to the increasingly obsolete doctrine of bomberdeterrence. In conclusion, radar was deliberately developed,and consciously conceived of, as a device that would be slottedinto a proved framework of observation and organization constructedon top of Britain's First World War air defence system.     

'A Suitable Person for Suitable Cases': The Gendering of Juvenile Courts in England, c. 1910-39

This article examines the relationship between the introductionof women Justices of the Peace (JPs) in 1919 and the gendereddevelopment of juvenile courts in England, c. 1910–39.It argues that the campaigns for the appointment of women asJPs and for new methods of dealing with delinquent childrenwere closely connected from 1910 onwards, when the proposalwas first made that ‘suitable’ persons should beappointed to hear ‘suitable’ cases in magistratescourts. Using evidence drawn from government records and othersources, the article examines the interaction of the two campaignsand of feminist and penal reform groups in securing the remodellingof London's juvenile justice system in the Juvenile Courts (Metropolis)Act of 1920. It argues that these arrangements, and similarones adopted elsewhere in England, consciously reflected presumedfamilial and gender roles. It concludes that the replicationof the ‘traditional’ family in the composition ofthe court may have limited the ability of the youth justicesystem to be innovative in its approach to juvenile delinquencyin the period up to 1939. ^* a.f.logan{at}kent.ac.uk     

Formalization and its Discontents: Conceptual Fallacies and Ways Forward

The concept of formalization has long underpinned policy interventions and measures intended to connect informal entities with state institutions or formal economic structures. However, despite the policy enthusiasm, the outcomes of formalization policies have frequently been disappointing. This article argues that this disconnect lies in the concept of formalization itself and that common approaches to formalization are often rooted in three conceptual fallacies: a binary distinction between formal and informal economic actors, a lack of appreciation for the diversity of informal economic actors and the idea that ‘becoming’ formal necessarily spurs positive externalities. These conceptual confusions pay insufficient attention to contextual complexity and the political and social dynamics that shape informality in a given context and they are frequently rooted in the practicalities and power structures that shape knowledge creation in this area. This article demonstrates this through case studies of tax registration and property titling. Thus, it argues for a new research agenda on formalization that challenges both its conventional conceptual foundations and the practices of research that engage with it.     

Excavating the Logic of British Urban Policy: Neoliberalism as the "Crisis of Crisis–Management"

This paper suggests that crisis theories provide a framework for analyzing the urban spaces of neoliberalism. Drawing on crisis–theoretic approaches to state theory, we examine the path–dependent links between neoliberalism, urban policy, and Britain's cyclical and crisis–prone cities through three tendencies: the geographies of state regulation, the institutionalization of interurban competition, and rescaling as the "crisis of crisis–management." These are used to explore the argument that Britain's cities are hosts to ineffectual regulatory strategies because urban policy appears to be a response to the sociopolitical and geographical contradictions of previous rounds of urban policy, and not the underpinning contradictions of accumulation.
Whether state power is able to manage and reproduce the highly oppressive, irrational, and self–contradictory capitalist system is of course an open question. (Offe 1984:257)     

论18世纪末至20世纪初英国对华陆路战略:以西藏为中心

本文利用了中英文文献资料,在充分吸收前人研究成果的基础上,以西藏为中心,对18世纪末至20世纪初英国的对华陆路战略进行了深入系统的研究。文章分析了英国实施对华陆路战略的原因、阶段、特征与影响,认为英国对华陆路战略包括战略展开阶段、试图干涉阶段、武装进攻准备阶段和武装侵略阶段,具有前后连贯、体系完整、循序渐进和手段多样等特征。本文认为,近代“西藏独立”正是英国对华陆路战略的直接产物。     

EXTERNALITIES AND PARTIAL TAX REFORM: DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO TAX ROAD FREIGHT (BUT NOT PASSENGER) TRANSPORT?*

ABSTRACT Externalities such as pollution and road congestion are jointly produced by the use of intermediate inputs by firms and the consumption of final goods by households. To cope with such externalities, policy proposals often suggest partial tax reforms. This paper uses a simple general equilibrium model to explore the effects of a reform of taxes on freight transport in a second‐best setting. The theoretical model shows that the welfare effect of higher freight taxes is positive, unless passenger transport is severely under‐taxed and the tax reform attracts substantially more passenger transport. Moreover, the optimal freight tax may be below or above marginal external cost. Budgetary neutral tax reform exercises with a numerical simulation model for the U.K. suggest that, under a wide variety of parameter values, higher freight transport taxes are indeed welfare increasing. The welfare gain of freight tax reform rises with the level of the passenger tax, but the optimal freight tax declines at higher taxes on passenger transport. Substantial net benefits of tax reform are obtained only under labor tax recycling of the revenues.     

俄国1861年改革后农民赋役负担探析

俄国1861年农民改革废除了农民的封建人身依附关系,农民成为法定的自由人,同时可以获得土地所有权。但是改革后的赋役负担制约了农民自由权利和土地所有权的实现。政府仍奉行严厉的赋税政策,农民想尽各种办法筹集税款,却终难摆脱欠税的命运。农民承担的劳役租、代役租和混合租在改革后均转变为代役租,加之担负着各种实物义务,农民的经济负担愈益沉重。繁重的赋役负担迫使大量农民破产,严重阻碍了农民经济的发展。     

WHAT DO BUSINESS CLIMATE INDEXES TEACH US ABOUT STATE POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH?*

ABSTRACT State business climate indexes capture state policies that might affect economic growth. State rankings in these indexes vary wildly, raising questions about what the indexes measure and which policies are important for growth. Indexes focused on productivity do not predict economic growth, while indexes emphasizing taxes and costs predict growth of employment, wages, and output. Analysis of sub‐indexes of the tax‐and‐cost‐related indexes points to two policy factors associated with faster growth: less spending on welfare and transfer payments; and more uniform and simpler corporate tax structures. But factors beyond the control of policy have a stronger relationship with economic growth.     

The ideological roots of failure: the application of kinetic neo‐liberalism to Iraq

This article argues that American policy towards Iraq went through four major shifts between the invasion in 2003 and the announcement of the surge in 2007. The best way to understand the Bush administration's evolving policy towards Iraq is by examining the ideological parameters within which it was made. The article assesses various approaches to understanding the relationship between ideology, policy making and foreign policy, concluding that ideology shapes the paradigm and analytical categories within which foreign policy is made. A major change in foreign policy originates either from the decision‐maker consciously recognizing and attempting to rework the ideational parameters within which policy is made or in reaction to ‘discrepant information’ or ‘anomalies’ that destabilize the paradigm and its analytical categories. The article goes on to examine the extent to which both neo‐liberalism and neo‐conservatism shaped George W. Bush's foreign policy. It identifies a series of major analytical categories that originate from within these two doctrines and shaped policy towards Iraq. The article argues that the four major shifts in Bush's policy towards Iraq were forced upon the administration by the rising tide of politically motivated violence. Ultimately this violence forced Bush to abandon the major analytical categories that, up to 2007, had given his policy coherence. In order to extricate his administration from the quagmire that Iraq had become by 2006, Bush totally transformed his approach, dropping the previously dominant neo‐liberal paradigm and adopting a counter‐insurgency doctrine.     

China's Household Registration System under Reform

China's household registration system is the central element in a policy of rapid industrialization with low urbanization. Figures on the non-agricultural population show that the system was initially successful, but less so during the 1980s. As a result, a number of reforms were introduced, which are described in some detail here. The registration system must be viewed as playing three interrelated roles: it is an instrument of development policy, aimed at keeping urban populations small while fostering industrial development; a social institution which rigidly divides Chinese society into a rural and an urban segment; and an instrument of state control, which the state employs to cultivate client groups. This article further argues that the contradiction between the need to adapt the system to changing realities, dictated by its developmental role, and the tenacity of the vested interests inherent in the social institutional role of the system, form a major obstacle to fundamental reform.