Beyond the Property Rights Approach: Welfare Policy and the Reform of State‐Owned Enterprises in China

During the pre‐reform era, Chinese state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) operated not only as firms, but also as mini‐welfare states, providing employees with lifetime employment, inexpensive housing, free health care, and pensions. Since China’s market transition began in the late 1970s, however, SOEs have had to bear increasingly heavy burdens for welfare provisions to their employees. The steep increase in welfare spending has not only eroded the base of state revenue, but has also impeded further SOE reforms. To lighten welfare burdens upon SOEs and to remove institutional obstacles to marketization and privatization embedded in the existing welfare system, the Chinese state has imposed many welfare reforms aimed at shifting responsibilities for welfare provision from SOEs to a combination of government, enterprises, communities, and individuals. This article examines the belated welfare reforms in China’s state sector and their impact upon the reform of SOEs. It finds that reform implementation has been sluggish. To achieve the policy goal of welfare reforms, high degrees of state autonomy and capacity are needed.     

Privatisation: An attempt that failed

Throughout the twentieth century doctors in most western countries strongly resisted government attempts to intervene in private medical markets. The support for privatisation that has developed during the current economic recession is welcomed therefore by the medical profession. In several countries campaigns have been staged for a full or partial return to market forces in the health care field. This article traces the course of one such push in Canada where doctors and other advocates of privatisation demanded a larger role for the private sector in the funding and management of Medicare, the national health insurance system. The policy outcome is contrary to the general privatising tendency in many countries: after a period of intense controversy the federal government passed legislation to preserve and strengthen the public aspects of the scheme. The normally powerful medical profession lost its campaign for an infusion of private funds into the health system and for the retention of the right of doctors to set their own fees. Consumer and other non‐producer groups, which have not traditionally played a central role in health policy, mobilised in defense of Medicare and were able to achieve most of their aims.     

Non‐Market Institutions in Economic Development: The Role of the Third Sector

In an article published in this journal in 2005, Dorward et al. argued that non‐market institutions are particularly effective in addressing market failures in the high‐transaction cost institutional environment which is often characteristic of low‐income countries. This comment develops additional theoretical underpinnings of this argument by exploring differences in the capacity for addressing market failure of for‐profit firms, on the one hand, and third sector organizations representing a major type of non‐market institutions, on the other. It is argued that while for‐profit firms address market failures by facilitating market exchange, third sector organizations do so by replacing exchange with self‐sufficiency. This recourse to self‐sufficiency is reflected in the important role of third sector organizations in economic development in low‐income countries.     

An Assessment of Health Policy Reform in Russia

Current fast-track reforms in Russia's health sector involving decentralization and privatization are largely ineffective because they are mistargeted. They do not address the etiology of the major sources of health care problems (i.e., lifestyle, and living, working, and environmental conditions), and they even weaken coordinated efforts to address collective health needs. State government policy measures, democratization, self-organization of society, and economic liberalization, as they are evolving currently, do not ensure sufficient citizen protection and interest articulation in the health sector.     

Entitled to Health? Social Protection in Chile's Plan AUGE

In theory everyone has the right to health. However, in reality many low income households are unable to fully access health services and therefore cannot fully claim their rights. Recently, in an attempt to overcome these limitations, health reforms in Chile under the Plan AUGE have proposed a series of legal entitlements to health care that are available to everyone regardless of income level. While this is an important starting point in ensuring more universal access to health, the process has raised a number of important issues, particularly on how these entitlements have been defined and how far they will be able to transform (gender) inequalities within the health system. Looking at this from a gender perspective enables us to see that despite the shift from a health care system based on redistributive rights towards one based on the right of recognition, certain sectors of the population remain excluded. Decision‐making processes have remained technocratic, and women's groups have been marginalized from the debate around the reform. Moreover, health policy makers continue to ignore the role of the unpaid care economy in health care provision. The current reform has served to reinforce the gender roles around health care.     

Twenty‐first Century Industrial Policy in a Small Developing Country: The Challenges of Reviving Manufacturing in Rwanda

The Rwandan government — widely lauded for its political commitment to development — has refocused its efforts on reviving growth in the manufacturing sector. This article examines how pressures from different levels — international, regional and domestic — have shaped the evolving political economy of two priority sectors (apparel and cement). To achieve its goals of manufacturing sector growth, the Rwandan government aims to access foreign markets (on preferential terms) and larger regional markets while developing effective state–business relationships with locally based firms. Despite the government's political commitment to reviving its manufacturing sector, its strategy has been both shaped and impeded by shifting pressures at the international level (through Rwanda's recent suspension from the African Growth and Opportunity Act), the regional level (through competition from regional firms) and the domestic level (through over‐reliance on single firms). Within the current industrial policy literature, there is limited reflection on how developing countries are dealing with the multi‐scalar challenges of enacting industrial policy in a much‐changed global trading environment. This article contributes to the industrial policy literature by addressing this lacuna.     

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy‐makers as their agents, and policy‐makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms.     

Paying Attention to Politics: Public Responsiveness and Welfare Policy Change

In order for the democratic process to work properly, it is vital that the public pays attention to politics and signals its opinions and preferences back to its representatives; if this is not the case, representatives have less incentive to represent. This article deals with the question of whether and how the public responds to welfare policy change. The thermostatic model departs from the assumption that the public responds to policy change with negative feedback, in relation to its preferred level of policy. The empirical analysis tests this model on public responses following the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care. Did the reform trigger a thermostatic response from the public, and how should this be interpreted? A contribution in relation to previous research is the inclusion of ideological orientation and proximity, variables which, I argue, condition the nature and direction of public responsiveness. The study was designed as a natural experiment in which preferences of privatization of health care were measured before and after the health care reform of 2009/2010. The results provide partial support for the thermostatic model: preferences for further privatization decrease after the reform, but primarily within one subgroup. Additionally, public responses are demonstrated to vary according to ideological orientation, where the right‐oriented react thermostatically and the left‐oriented do not. The article contributes to a further understanding of the relation between policymaking and public opinion and to the expansion of thermostatic theory.     

Integrating Gender Interests into Health Policy

This article reviews current initiatives to integrate gender interests into health policy in Chile. The analysis outlines the debates that have arisen around the questions of mainstreaming gender, in relation to state institutions, NGOs and grassroots organizations. The discussion highlights both the constraints and opportunities identified in the literature. The study locates the Chilean case study within these broader debates and draws some overall conclusions. Despite the limitations posed by the broader context of neo‐liberal health sector reforms, the experience of the Chilean gender mainstreaming initiative does suggest that there is some cause for optimism.     

The Informal Financial Sector in Bangladesh: An Appraisal of its Role in Development

Informal financial markets in developing countries, and their role in the development process itself, form a relatively neglected area when it comes to research and policy planning. It seems, however, that this may be due to inaccurate perceptions of the value and effectiveness of this sector, and of its relationship to formal sector financial institutions. This paper uses data from an extensive research project on informal financial markets in Bangladesh to examine the size of the informal market, its relationship to the formal financial sector and the part it plays in the process of development. The paper concludes that, in all these aspects, the informal financial markets are more important, more efficient and more equitable than is generally supposed.     

Rethinking Development Space in Emerging Countries: Turkey's Conservative Countermovement

Despite an increasingly flexible global policy context, most emerging countries refuse to venture beyond their pre‐existing development strategies. This article contends that in some cases domestic political constraints under liberalized markets might preclude policy dynamism. In particular, it draws attention to the tension between market expansion and social cohesion as a formative influence over policy patterns. This tension is sometimes addressed through a conservative countermovement whereby liberally‐oriented governments entice sections of the poor into broad electoral coalitions by employing palliative interventions alongside market‐expanding policies. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is one example. Central to the Turkish case has been the redeployment of the country's historic foreign capital‐dependent pattern of growth in the service of selective redistribution and credit‐fuelled consumerism. The ensuing deficit‐led neoliberal populism assured stable and equitable growth in the extraordinary international and domestic context of the mid‐2000s, but has proven unfeasible since the global crisis. However, this coupling of market and social preferences has become politically so firmly entrenched in time that it now constrains the policy options to address Turkey's developmental impasse.     

Economic restructuring and the reform of the higher education system

The main argument advanced in favour of the Hawke government's reform of higher education, as contained in the recent White Paper, relates to the imperatives of economic restructuring. A more ‘relevant’ and ‘responsive’ higher education system is, according to the government, the necessary basis of a more advanced and internationally competitive economy. We argue below, however, that the reforms are premised on a false assumption: that the private sector in Australia is capable of and/or interested in exploiting the expected boost in graduates and research for the purposes of developing new technologies and competitive advantages. Indeed, the government has found it necessary to intervene in a centralist manner to induce the appropriate response in the private sector. This is justified as market‐facilitating. In reality it is an act of faith which contradicts both the capacity and agenda of the private sector in Australia.     

COMMODIFYING DANISH HOUSING COMMONS

Housing was a backbone of the Danish welfare state, but this has been profoundly challenged by the past decades of neoliberal housing politics. In this article we outline the rise of the Danish model of association‐based housing on the edge of the market economy (and the state). From this, we demonstrate how homes in private cooperatives through political interventions in the context of a booming real estate market have plunged into the market economy and been transformed into private commodities in all but name, and we investigate how non‐profit housing associations frontally and stealthily are attacked through neoliberal reforms. This carries the seeds for socio‐spatial polarization and may eventually open the gate for commodification – and thus the dismantling of the little that is left of a socially just housing sector. Yet, while the association‐based model was an accessary to the commodification of cooperative housing, it can possibly be an accomplice in sustaining non‐profit housing as a housing commons.     

Politics of Social Policy in a Late Industrializing Country: The Case of Turkey

This article approaches social policy as an integral component of a capitalist society and, by drawing on the notion of the double movement introduced by Karl Polanyi, argues that social policy intervention both limits and contributes to market expansion. While this argument could be generally applied to recent social policy changes in the current context of economic globalization, these changes were shaped against different histories of social policy development in early and late industrializing countries. This article examines the increasing importance of social policy in late industrializing countries by focusing on the case of Turkey. It is argued that social policy transformation in Turkey has involved the expansion of social security coverage along with the privatization and marketization of health and pension systems. A new system of labour market regulation has contributed to the commodification of labour while the ‘state-supported familialism’, which forms an important aspect of current trends in the area of social care, has served to integrate women in the prevailing flexible employment relations by simultaneously sustaining their position in the gender division of roles within traditional family relations. The populist strategy of polarization pursued by the ruling government is discussed to show how opposition to these trends toward privatization, marketization and labour commodification has been isolated.     

Induced Cooperation in Housing Development: Comparing Housing Schemes in Four European Countries

In the development process of housing at a local level, several actors are involved. As a result, there is a need for coordination between the actors. The market can take care of this coordination. However, housing is generally considered to be, at least partly, the responsibility of the public sector. Leaving the development entirely to market forces is not an option for several reasons. But the other extreme, in which the public sector is entirely responsible for housing development is not considered a feasible option either. This paper investigates, using four case studies of housing development processes in different countries, what the role of the public sector, represented by the local planning authority, in such processes is, and how this can be put into effect. To that aim, the notion of 'induced cooperation' is introduced, as an approach for the local planning authority to pursue its housing and land use policy aims in an environment of mutual dependency.     

Politically Engaged Geographical Research with the Community Sector: Is It Encouraged by Australia's Higher Education and Research Institutions?

With the application of neoliberal thinking to the higher education sector, measures of research quality and utility have proliferated in efforts to increase academic accountability, innovation, and contributions to public policy. We intend to reignite discussion about community activism and the role of the academic in response to trends in higher education policy and recent debate in Australia about research quality assessment and policy relevance. We challenge the common portrayal of the public sector as the sole locus of policy‐making and argue the case for greater recognition of the role of the community sector and its research partners in policy development and implementation – one that is not given due attention in the discourse on or in measures of research value and impact. Informed by recent literature on governance and interpretative approaches to policy analysis, we draw on our combined experience conducting research with two Australian movements at the forefront of reforms to property rights institutions, legal standards, and norms relating to social and economic equity to outline the institutional tensions and structural impediments facing researchers working with the non‐government sector. The paper documents the progressive roles the academic can play in such work, arguing that institutional change is required within the tertiary sector to support researchers to build closer, more trusting research partnerships in which due attention is given to social impact and relevance.     

Finance and Industrial Policy in Unsuccessful Developmental States: The Case of Pakistan

While a large body of research indicates that state‐directed finance worked for successful East Asian developers, the dominant assumption remains that countries with a weak state capacity, where corruption is rife, should not ‘try this at home’. In this article, that narrative is questioned through a case study of the role of the financial sector in Pakistan, which is widely considered to be a successful case of financial liberalization, contrasting the role of the publicly controlled financial system in the 1970s and 1980s with that of the liberalized financial system in the 2000s. Utilizing archival firm‐level and aggregate data, historic government documents, and interviews with policy makers, financial sector employees and industrialists, it is argued that in the Pakistani case, the withdrawal of state control over the financial sector led to a deterioration of outcomes. This resulted in the allocation of credit away from the productive sectors, namely industry and agriculture, towards unproductive sectors, for speculative purposes; and in the health of the financial sector not improving as expected, with non‐performing loans and corruption remaining a problem, and banks actually becoming a greater burden on government finances. This indicates that even states with weak capacity and flawed industrial policy may be better off with some degree of public control over finance.     

Negotiating Neoliberal Empowerment: Aboriginal People,Educational Restructuring,and Academic Labour in the North of British Columbia,Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post‐secondary education through Aboriginal‐directed programs and policies in non‐Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.     

Fuelling Social Inclusion? Neo‐extractivism,State–Society Relations and Biofuel Policies in Latin America's Southern Cone

Scholarship on neo‐extractivism agrees that this ‘post‐neoliberal’ model of development is founded on an inherent contradiction between the commitment to continue natural resource extraction and the need to legitimize these activities by using their revenues for poverty reduction. Using the cases of the national biofuel policies of the ‘post‐neoliberal’ governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article enquires why and how these policies emerged, how they were implemented, and how the resulting national experiences exemplify the inherent contradictions embedded in neo‐extractivist policies. Adopting a strategic‐relational approach to analyse state–society interaction, it is argued that the scope of progressive policies is conditioned to a large extent by pre‐existing social structures, institutions and state–society interactions. The article shows how progressive reforms intersect with the prevailing interests of agribusiness and state actors and are recast and used for different ends as these interact with powerful actors such as the multinational soybean complex and agrarian movements. It is suggested that the prevailing over‐emphasis in the neo‐extractivist literature on the politics of domination and contestation overlooks the multiple and complex rural responses of the different progressive governments. It also obscures the possibilities to explore the ruptures and continuities of these countries’ governments with previous models, and therefore fails to recognize state advances.     

Policies to promote employment and preserve cultural heritage in the handicraft sector

For many countries around the world, the handicraft sector has served as a means of maintaining and promoting cultural and artistic traditions. It has also been an important source of employment and income. However, the contributions of this sector to total employment and income are not well understood. In this paper, we present data on employment in the handicraft sector in a number of countries in the developing world. We find evidence that this sector employs over 10% of the labor force in many countries, and that further documentation of this employment is needed in order to design policies to maximize opportunities in this sector. We also identify policies that governments can undertake to preserve the cultural heritage embodied in handicrafts and to promote the export of these products. The importance of these policy recommendations is highlighted with the case of Peru, which has faced considerable import competition in the handicraft sector in recent years.