Housing in the face of crisis: The influence of Israel's 2011 protest on housing policy

Do social protests affect government housing-related decisions? If so, in what way? To answer this question this study examines the influence of Israel's 2011 social protest on the government's housing policy, using an empirical cumulative-aggregative analysis of housing-related decisions over the past two decades. The empirical analysis is based on two generic classifications of government interventions commonly used in housing literature: first, decisions aimed at increasing the housing stock (supply-side), as opposed to policies aimed at augmenting consumers' financial capacity to obtain adequate housing (demand-side); and second, decisions that encourage homeownership as opposed to those that promote rental housing. The research findings show that the 2011 social protest definitely affected Israel's housing policy, because it prompted the government to engage in housing. However, the interventions introduced focused largely on increasing the inventory of housing units (supply-side) for homeownership and benefited mainly members of the middle class who qualify for mortgages and investors. Thus, despite the increase in government involvement in the post-protest period, Israel's housing policy has remained neoliberal, though in an advanced form of neoliberalism that combines market-oriented policies with centralized tendencies, which we call “centralized neoliberalism.” The study discusses the findings and their implications for various population groups. Given the current global affordable-housing crisis, the findings are relevant to many countries whose existing neoliberal housing policy is failing to address housing-market problems and challenges.     

SUPPLY-SIDE MULTIREGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT MODELS*

ABSTRACT This paper introduces a new class of supply-side multiregional input-output (MRIO) models and provides the necessary and sufficient conditions on the regional trade matrices that ensure that a generalized supply-side model will be convergent. The paper also introduces a new version of the row coefficient model, conceived as the “mirror image” of the Chenery-Moses demand-side column coefficient MRIO model. Given that the conventional supply-side input-output model has been shown to perform equally as well as the demand side model in forecasting exercises, the supply-side MRIO model is expected to be of value for policy and planning purposes. Moreover, this model is of potential theoretical value for a broad synthesis of demand-side and supply-side MRIO models.     

Riding Routes and Itinerant Borders: Autonomy of Migration and Border Externalization

Despite technological upgrading of borders at the edges of Europe, “Fortress Europe” continues to fail as an effective means of controlling irregular migration. As a consequence, European states are restructuring their border regimes by externalizing migration management to non‐EU countries beyond the border and creating new programs and policies to do so. Autonomy of Migration (AoM) offers a distinct way for thinking about border control mechanisms and goals of managing mobility. AoM does not read this off‐shoring of borders through the lens of centralized and coordinated state powers, but develops an autonomous gaze that supplements these institutional readings of apparatuses of capture with a view that takes as its starting point the ways in which border architectures, institutions, and policies interact with and react to the turbulence of migrant mobilities. By engaging current EU externalization policies, this paper illustrates the shifting relationship between border control and mobility.     

交通拥堵治理的空间与基础设施政策综述

交通拥堵是制约国内外城市可持续发展的瓶颈问题之一,给城市经济、社会与环境带来诸多负面影响.本文聚焦城市交通拥堵的结构性因素,系统归纳和综述了引导可持续出行行为的空间政策(如城市空间结构和土地利用政策)与基础设施供应侧政策(如道路和公共交通基础设施投资政策),及其在交通拥堵治理上的理论探讨、学术争论焦点、实证分析及当前亟...     

Listing and protecting culturally significant events: intangible cultural heritage and policy considerations for hockey broadcasting in Canada

ABSTRACT

Listed events are policies enacted by states to protect the free-to-air rights of specific television and radio broadcasts that are identified as being of particular national significance. Some states (including the UK, Belgium, and Argentina) have begun to adopt these listed events policies, typically regarding significant national sporting events. We re-conceptualize listed events as a practical means by which to protect the intangible cultural heritage of states – an issue addressed by international institutions such as ICOMOS and UNESCO. Furthermore, we engage in a critical analysis regarding both the merits and potential problems involved in the possibility of Canada adopting listed broadcasting events policies, specifically involving hockey broadcasts.     

Chinese strategies in a US-hegemonic global order: accommodating and hedging

China's economic, political and military influence has been increasing at a time when the United States, as sole superpower, dominates the international order. This article outlines Chinese elite perspectives on the current global order and shows not only how these perceptions have affected China's policies towards the United States, but also how they have influenced China's regional and global policies more broadly. It argues that variants of realist logic that interpret Chinese behaviour as a form of balancing are not particularly helpful, and do not capture the essence of Chinese strategies that are underpinned by an overwhelming focus on its domestic development needs. The article posits that Chinese leaders have accepted that they operate in a unipolar order and have chosen not to stick out for negotiating positions that the United States would see as seriously detrimental to its interests. However, Beijing couples this accommodating approach with policies designed to ensure that, were relations seriously to deteriorate with Washington, China could draw on deepened regional and global ties to thwart any US effort to interrupt its domestic objectives. China's hope is that a more 'democratic' international order will emerge, which means not multipolarity as such but a 'concert of great powers system' that will operate to forge multilateral cooperation among the major states.     

ON THE PLAUSIBILITY OF THE SUPPLY—DRIVEN INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL: A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR INPUT-COEFFICIENT CHANGE*

ABSTRACT. Oosterhaven (1988) labels the supply-driven input-output model “theoretically implausible” and criticizes the straightforward use of the model for impact studies. This comment extends and corrects some of the issues addressed by Oosterhaven. We derive the characteristics which industry production relations must possess to be consistent with the implied changes in industry inputs and outputs when supply-side input-output models are employed for impact analysis. First, it is shown that an implicit assumption is the characteristic of perfect substitutability among all inputs in each industry production function. This is the polar opposite of the Leontief assumption of zero elasticity of factor substitution among all inputs, and is very unrealistic for large changes from the initially observed solution since it implies that all inputs are non-essential in the production process and that any input can be substituted for all others simultaneously. Second, it is shown that the model may still be reasonable for approximating the effect of small changes since the implied production relation may be interpreted as a cost minimizing choice for a standard constant-returns-to-scale production function linearized around the initial solution under the assumption that relative prices are unchanged. Under this alternative interpretation, the supply-side model may be expected to provide a reasonable approximation, useful for analyzing changes in the neighborhood of the initial solution, but would appear to be inappropriate for analyzing large changes.     

Chiefs,hunters and adventurers: the foundation of the Okavango/Moremi National Park,Botswana

This article is about the politics of wildlife management in Botswana. The existing literature on the origins of wildlife conservation in Africa has portrayed the formation of protected areas as an imposition of colonial state authorities. Preservationist policies are usually cast as the product of European conservationist ideas, and related notions of the ‘wilderness’ value of African landscapes. Many recent studies have emphasized the negative effects of such ideas and policies in a colonial context: they have drawn attention to the way in which they devalued local African ideas, undermined local management strategies, and criminalized access to important economic and cultural resources. The case discussed here, however, suggests that this interpretation needs closer scrutiny: the meaning and impact of global ideas and policies of wildlife conservation depends on how they are localized in particular places. The key actors in the foundation of Botswana's Okavango/Moremi National Park in the 1960s were not state officials but local BaTawana chiefs and a network of hunters and adventurers turned conservationists. The initiative was conceived as a means of protecting wildlife from the depredations of illegal South African hunting parties and ensuring future local use, and was initially opposed by the colonial state. The article discusses why Okavango/Moremi was an exception, and why the initial coalition of African and local settler interests came to see preservationist policies as being in their interest.     

Vested Interests and the Diffusion of Education Reform across the States

How do interest groups shape the diffusion of policies they oppose across the states? This study explores this question using the case of teachers' unions and education reform policies. Using a novel dataset on charter, voucher, and performance pay policies spanning 1992–2013, I find evidence that strength of the teachers' unions decreases the likelihood of performance pay and that additional strength is less impactful with more Democratic control of the legislature. Teachers' unions are weakly related to a lack of charter laws and do not impact voucher laws. The latter two policies are more strongly associated with policymaker learning and education reform advocacy groups, respectively. These findings suggest that vested interests most strongly impact the policies that most fundamentally threaten their organizational strength and that this effect is conditioned on the party in power; increases in interest group strength are not necessary when policymakers are already sympathetic.     

Islamism revisited

While contemporary Islamism is a response to the domestic political situation in many Muslim countries, as well as to US and western policies in the Muslim world, it is also about religious assertion and the forging of an alternative ideology, not only as a means of empowerment but also as a means of establishing a particular social order. The debate is as much an internal one as it is a global one and in many ways mirrors the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political and cultural independence.     

Women and Rural Development Policies: The Changing Agenda

The aim of this paper is to review and evaluate policies directed at rural women in the Third World, as reflected in WID research and policy documents. This review covers the assumptions behind the advocacy of direct assistance to rural women, the goals that are sought in providing such assistance and the means advocated to achieve them. An attempt is made to show how the agenda of mainstream WID research and policy formulation has closely followed, reflected and responded to changing international priorities in matters of development assistance in a manner that leaves crucial redistributive and political issues tangentially addressed and unresolved.     

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.     

Imagining middle powers

Discussions of middle powers in international relations scholarship are hampered by a lack of clarity about what the term ‘middle power’ actually means. This has not stopped increasing numbers of states that cannot claim great power ranking but resist being categorised as small powers imagining middle power status for themselves in regional and global affairs. In an attempt to shed light on middle power imagining, three concepts of middle power are identified. It is contended that one or more of these concepts influences the foreign policies of states ambitious for middle power recognition in regional and global affairs. Identifying which concept, or which combination of concepts, influences a state's middle power imagining may contribute to deeper understandings of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of its foreign policies.     

Gender and sexual violence,forced marriages,and primitive accumulation during the Cambodian genocide, 1975–1979

Abstract

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million men, women, and children died during the Cambodian genocide. These deaths are attributed to specific administrative policies and practices initiated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), all of which were geared toward the basic objective of increasing agricultural production as a means of building socialism. A crucial question regarding these practices was whether the CPK implemented policies designed specifically to destroy the traditional family structure of Cambodia. Drawing on the work of Silvia Federici, this article argues that policies and practices forwarded by the CPK constitute a variation of primitive accumulation; and that transformations of the traditional family structure were conditioned by the overall social organization of production initiated by the CPK. However, a more pressing form of gendered violence is apparent – a mode that pivots on the social ordering of the CPK’s political economy.     

Lights and Shadows of Urban Water Demand Management: The Case of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

The economic, social, and environmental limits of supplying water to metropolitan areas through conventional means (reservoirs, water transfers, etc.) have resulted in growing consideration of demand management actions as well as in the use of non-conventional sources of supply. In terms of demand management, economic instruments (pricing and taxes), domestic water-saving technologies, and educational campaigns to encourage water saving during periods of drought have received special attention. While demand management policies have an effect on conserving water and therefore should be welcome, they present problems and uncertainties as well. Using the example of the metropolitan region of Barcelona, in this article I argue that water demand management policies may be insufficient for reaching their ultimate goal of controlled water consumption when confronted with structural changes in urban development such as the expansion of low-density growth, the multiplication of the number of households, or gains in income, all of which lead to a potentially greater demand for water. This calls for more integration of water policies with land use and urban development policies.     

Japan's FTA politics and the problem of agricultural trade liberalisation

Japan's willingness to negotiate Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is not matched by a readiness to liberalise agricultural trade. Japan has used a variety of mechanisms to limit the extent of agricultural concessions in FTAs. Public choice theory predicts that FTAs are a more effective instrument for opening Japan's agricultural market than the WTO because they reshape the domestic politics of Japanese trade in ways that are conducive to further market opening. FTAs do this by altering the domestic politics of trade policymaking on the demand side as well as some aspects of the supply side. On the demand side, business groups mobilise even more strongly to demand an end to agricultural protection, whilst on the supply side, the value of FTAs for broader state interests are recognised by politician-leaders. Various structural obstacles in the policymaking process, however, prevent the altered demand and supply-side dynamics from necessarily delivering free trade outcomes.     

Human rights,domestic politics,and informal agreements: parliamentary challenges to international cooperation on migration management

ABSTRACT

Developed and developing countries are increasingly cooperating on migration management, and human rights NGOs have harshly criticised these instruments for cooperation. This article asks how and to what extent parliaments are challenging policies for international cooperation on migration management. On the one hand parliaments have traditionally been described as ‘moral tribunes’ in international relations, due to their principled support for human rights. On the other hand, parliaments are increasingly operating in political systems marked by anti-immigrant sentiment and increased support for right-wing populist parties. How do parliaments navigate between these two poles when it comes to international cooperation on migration management? Based on examples from Australia, the EU and Israel, this article shows that the use of non-legally binding instruments for cooperation limits the formal role of parliaments, but also and more importantly that there is a lack of political will to scrutinise these instruments and hold executives to account (notwithstanding attempts by some members of parliament or some political groupings to challenge policies through informal means). The lack of political contestation implies that, as far as migration management is concerned, ‘politics stop at the water's edge’.     

Community as a Policy Instrument: A Comparative Analysis

Over recent decades. "community" has been a powerful theme in social policy development not only in the United States but elsewhere in North America and Europe as well. Existing analyses of the concept, however, tended to approach it more from philosophical and sociological perspectives than from the standpoint of policy analysis. This article examines the uses of community as a policy instrument, considering its diverse applications us policy objective, policy means, and policy rhetoric. A cross-section of major community-oriented policies in the United States and Quebec is analyzed, providing a basis file policy-level, regime-level, and political culture comparison. Identifying the key components that community policies may incorporate, we propose a schema for systematically describing deferent types of interventions. Finally. we review the difficulties encountered in implementing policies with a community orientation and the need to avoid simplistic judgments of success and failure.     

The governance of national cultural organisations: comparative study of performance contracts with the main cultural organisations in England,France and Catalonia (Spain)

In some European countries, performance contracts have become an instrument for the governance and control of major cultural organisations by the public administration. The negotiation and signing of a performance contract are mainly aimed at developing the goals of cultural policies by means of large organisations in order to achieve the traditional objectives of cultural democratisation and other instrumental objectives (economic development, urban regeneration or social inclusion). Nevertheless, the development level of performance contracts varies when we compare England, France and Catalonia (Spain). Each particular level of development is conditioned by the overall administrative and institutional context and the development level of results-based management and an accountability culture. The level of public funding and the degree of autonomy of management within each organisation can also explain why in some cases governance has been contractualised whereas in other cases either progress is more rhetorical than real.