Estates against the state? Evidence from the 2005 wave of French riots

Violent anti-state rioting has erupted in many neighborhoods in Western Europe over the last thirty years. Conventional explanations emphasize socioeconomic or ethno-racial grievances, the under-representation of immigrant minorities, or the effects of national integration models on state-minority relations. Much less attention has been paid to the particular characteristics of the neighborhoods in which anti-state rioting takes place. I argue that living in neighborhoods with large social-housing estates fuels grievances over territorial stigmatization, poor administration and heavy-handed policing. In addition, rioters hailing from such urban areas enjoy tactical advantages and employ territorially anchored networks and identities. Using an original municipal-level dataset from the 2005 wave of anti-state riots in France and controlling for competing explanations the paper provides evidence that the propensity and intensity of anti-state rioting are associated with the presence of large social-housing estates. Further supporting evidence for the hypothesized mechanisms is subsequently provided from the 2005 and previous rioting episodes in France.     

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.     

Interrogating the Limits of Welfare Reforms in Singapore

As population demographics change and economic crises spread and deepen, welfare reform has become an urgent problem in many developed countries. As elsewhere in East Asia, the state in Singapore has in recent years stepped up its efforts to deal with issues of healthcare, education, support for care, retirement and even unemployment. Much of this has been in response to demographic shifts, economic trends and, importantly, political pressures. This article evaluates the possibilities and limits of recent reforms. It looks at some promising aspects of reform, such as increases in spending in certain areas, before examining the limitations of the reforms. These include the fact that most resources have been directed toward supporting businesses, while increases in direct spending on citizens have been limited and conditional rather than universal; furthermore, little or no attention has been paid to the issue of women's underemployment. These features suggest constraints within the logic and principles of welfare, which continue to define citizens as having limited rights and entitlements, and citizenship as entailing regular employment and heavy obligations toward the family. The analysis of reforms sheds light on how the appearance of expansion can mask continuing limitations. The case of Singapore illustrates the importance of looking not just at expenditure but also at the principles and logics in which welfare reforms are embedded, in a variety of national contexts.     

Multilevel Instruments for Infrastructure Investment: Evaluating State Revolving Funds for Water

In recent decades, the federal government has introduced complex, multilevel state‐operated revolving loan fund programs as an instrument for promoting state and local investment in national infrastructure priorities while limiting direct federal involvement in implementation. A federally funded state revolving fund (SRF) program combines features of a categorical matching grant to states and a subsidized loan program to localities, both of which should lower the effective price of infrastructure investment and therefore promote higher levels of infrastructure investment. However, little evidence exists to date on whether these programs stimulate new subnational spending or instead displace spending that would have occurred otherwise. We evaluate the stimulus effects of SRFs by examining the two largest such programs, the Clean Water and the Drinking Water SRF Programs. Analyzing 17 years of state‐level panel data, we find evidence that the flow of federal funds to states under the SRF programs stimulates new local investment in wastewater infrastructure, but not in drinking water infrastructure. In discussing several possible explanations for these divergent results, we argue for further research that emphasizes the intergovernmental features of this financing tool.     

Policy Interaction in the Provision of Unemployment Insurance and Low-Income Assistance by State Governments

In this paper we investigate empirical relationships between Unemployment Insurance (UI) and welfare policies using a unique database covering 48 states annually from 1973 through 1989. We first document substantial variation across states in UI program outcomes. Having established that UI is so variable, we explore the simultaneous interaction between UI and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid, and total state and local welfare spending. Our econometric results indicate substitution between the two cash assistance programs, AFDC and UI, by state governments. On the other hand, states that operate relatively generous UI programs also tend to allocate more resources to Medicaid and other in-kind, low-income assistance programs.     

‘Operation Restore Public Hope’: Youth and the Magic of Modernity in Vanuatu

ABSTRACT This paper explores the measures known as ‘Operation Restore Public Hope,’ which were authorized during the State of Emergency in January 1998 in Port Vila, Vanuatu, after rioting and looting erupted over the alleged government mismanagement of the mandatory workers' savings fund. The excessive police violence associated with these ‘clean‐up measures’, I argue, undermined the state's claim ‘to restore public hope’ and illuminated the changing relationship between kastomary leaders and the state as well as their competing strategies to define and maintain social order. The extraordinary events of the State of Emergency point to the confluence of sorcery practices and police violence; underline the contested nature of everyday life, and draw attention to the disciplining of young bodies in new urban spaces. Exploring the deployment of a sorcery technique to counter police violence highlights the landscapes of modern power in Vanuatu where magical and state practices coexist with regimes of violence.     

Urbanization and Socioeconomic Status in the European Regions: The Role of Population Ageing and Capital City Regions

Using the European Community Household Panel data survey and confirmatory factor analysis, this paper explores the causal relationship between the multidimensional concepts of urbanization and socioeconomic status in the European Union. It shows that income, education and occupation are strongly related to status, and the density of population area and the town size, to urbanization. The relationship between urbanization and status is positive. This means that urban areas contain the residences of the elite, such as the rich, those with high levels of educational attainment and people with high-calibre jobs. This paper does not provide evidence to support the idea that individuals lose socioeconomic status as they age and that status is higher in capital city regions. The relationship between urbanization and status is relatively stronger for the old working-age cohort and for the non-capital city regions. These results have policy implications with regard to social welfare and urban and regional planning and development.     

The Spending-Service Connection

This research tests the relationship between state and local spending for health and hospitals, a set of health service measures, and three final policy outcomes—low birthweight infants, infant mortality, and child deaths. The analysis includes several proxies for service demand—state resources, percentage of single-teen births, and percentage of the population without health insurance. The multiple regression equations also incorporate a measure of federal spending on health and an indicator of state spending for Medicaid. This first stage of the analysis can account for only a limited amount of variation in per capita state and local health and hospital spending. Health expenditures, however, are prominently related to health workers per 10,000 population, while hospital spending buys hospital beds. The final step in the analysis uses path models. The results show that neither spending nor the intermediate-level health outputs (including a measure of prenatal care) are significantly related to the final three outcome variables. Single-teen births is the dominant influence in the final equations.     

Effects of U.S. States' Social Welfare Systems on Population Health

Social scientists have studied the welfare state extensively. Many studies seek to understand the determinants of the welfare state; however, a few have explored the social consequences of social welfare systems, especially on health outcomes of the population. Even though cross-national comparative studies support the thesis that the welfare state regime type, which represents different levels of commitment on social welfare, is closely linked to population health, there is little research to support this argument at a sub-national level. To fill the gap, this study explores the effects of the U.S. states' social welfare systems on health using age-adjusted mortality rates as a proxy for population health. By operationalizing social welfare systems as three dimensions—public expenditures, tax structures, and welfare program rules—we find that more generous education spending, progressive tax systems, and more lenient welfare program rules help to improve population health. The model corrects for first-order serial correlation using Prais-Winsten regression methods and is estimated with state and year-fixed effects.     

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.     

Symbolic Racism,Institutional Bias,and Welfare Drug Testing Legislation: Racial Biases Matter

Since the devolution of welfare policymaking to the states after the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, there has been contentious debate about drug testing welfare applicants. Beyond elite rhetoric and debate points about the implications of welfare drug testing, extant research remains limited insofar as providing theoretical understanding about what factors influence state proposal of legislation requiring welfare applicants to submit to drug tests. I develop and test expectations that derive from research on welfare attitudes, social construction theory, and policy design—specifically, hypotheses that the proportion of blacks on state temporary assistance for needy families caseloads, as well as state‐aggregate levels of symbolic racism, significantly influence state proposal of drug testing legislation. My multilevel analysis of every state proposal of welfare drug testing legislation from 2008 to 2014 yields strong evidence in support of these hypotheses and paints a more complete picture of the influence of racial attitudes on state welfare policymaking. Specifically, while much research finds evidence of institutional racial biases in the implementation of welfare policy, the evidence presented herein shows that these biases, as well as public biases, influence policymaking at the proposal stage. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of recent significant electoral gains made by Republicans in state legislatures.     

DEFENSE SPENDING AND STATE ECONOMIC GROWTH*

Little evidence is currently available on the regional growth effects of federal defense spending. In this study, econometric models for state personal income and manufacturing employment between 1976 and 1985 are specified and estimated. Pooled cross-sectional time-series data are used, and the estimation procedure corrects for serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and contemporaneous cross-sectional correlation. The results indicate that aggregate defense spending has a positive effect on both growth measures. However, when defense expenditures are disaggregated, only investment-type outlays appear to consistently affect state economic growth.     

Confronting modernization: rethinking Changsha’s rice riot of 1910

By analyzing the role of urban commoners who participated in Changsha’s rice riot of April 1910, we can better understand how the city’s folk traditions and unique urban culture contributed to the intense climate that characterized state/society relations during the late Qing dynasty. Oral history interviews conducted by Liu Duping during the 1970s mainly describe the attack on the government yamen, an attack carried out and led by local carpenters. After reading some of these accounts we can also appreciate how the rioters were not simply an unruly mob incited by local gentry. By attacking a specific government compound and symbols of state authority, in some ways local carpenters expressed their own justification for rioting. While the role of Ye Dehui and other gentry in helping lead the rioters should not be discounted, such characters also need to be understood not simply as conservative hardliners, but within the broader context of late Qing intellectuals.     

Sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state: Québec and Canadian federalism

ABSTRACT. This article examines the relationship between sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state through the case of Québec in Canada. It argues that social policy presents mobilisation and identity‐building potential for sub‐state nationalism, and that nationalist movements affect the structure of welfare states. Nationalism and the welfare state revolve around the notion of solidarity. Because they often involve transfers of money between citizens, social programmes raise the issue of the specific community whose members should exhibit social and economic solidarity. From this perspective, nationalist movements are likely to seek the congruence between the ‘national community’ (as conceptualised by their leaders) and the ‘social community’ (the community where redistributive mechanisms should operate). Moreover, the political discourse of social policy lends itself well to national identity‐building because it is typically underpinned by collective values and principles. Finally, pressures stemming from sub‐state nationalism tend to reshape the policy agenda at both the state and the sub‐state level while favouring the asymmetrical decentralisation of the welfare state.     

The Historical Impact of Welfare Programs on Poverty: Evidence from the American States

Over the years, there has been a spirited debate over the impact of the welfare expansion associated with the War on Poverty. Many analysts have maintained that public assistance expansion during this period decreased poverty by raising the incomes of the poor (an income enhancement effect), while others have contended that welfare expansion increased poverty by discouraging the poor from working (a work disincentive effect). There has been considerable empirical research about the historical effect of welfare on poverty, nearly all of which relies on the poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of persons with income less than the “poverty threshold”) as an indicator of the extent of poverty. However, this work has not employed designs that allow researchers to sort out distinct income enhancement and work disincentive effects. We develop a model of poverty rates in the American states that permits estimation of these distinct effects—based on state‐level time‐series data observed annually for the years 1960–90—and we find that welfare had both effects during our period of analysis. We also calculate the net impact of increases in welfare benefits on the poverty rate—taking into account both work disincentive and income enhancement effects. Our results indicate that this net impact is dependent on three variables: the initial level of cash benefits, wage levels for unskilled workers, and the share of the benefit increase provided through cash rather than in‐kind assistance. Because of historical trends in these variables, since the 1970s welfare spending has become increasingly less effective in reducing the poverty rate. However, the significance of this result for policymakers must be tempered by evidence that flaws in the poverty rate as an indicator of poverty make it so that any finding about the net effect of an increase in welfare benefits on the poverty rate underestimates welfare's ability to lessen the true extent of poverty.     

LAND AND URBAN ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CHINA*

ABSTRACT Land to accommodate urban development in China is provided through requisitions by government officials, suggesting that land availability may be a constraint on urban economic growth. An econometric model of urban GDP growth suggests that land has constrained economic growth in coastal areas but not elsewhere. Elasticities calculated from the estimated coefficients indicate that land availability has a larger proportional impact on economic growth than domestic and foreign investment, labor supply, and government spending. The estimated parameters provide evidence about arbitrage opportunities created by discrepancies between urban land value and compensation for requisitioned rural land, suggesting rural unrest associated with conversion of farmland to urban uses may have some economic roots.     

Welfare and the Discriminating Public: Evaluating Entitlement Attitudes in Post-Communist Europe

Although post-communist Europe retains elements of its socialist past, public opinion shows discernment in its welfare preferences. This analysis of post-communist social welfare attitudes finds that post-communist societies are selective in their support for social policies. First, welfare preferences center on two underlying realms: government responsibility and government spending; and second, welfare opinions and beliefs are not uniform across several social policies. Although many of the conclusions highlight the selective nature of these preferences, the example of the support for unemployment benefits points to how the transition from communist-era welfare states to capitalist-led assistance continues to influence public opinion in these countries.     

DISGUISED,URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT AND WELFARE IN A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM MODEL WITH SEGMENTED LABOR MARKETS*

ABSTRACT This paper integrates the theory of segmented labor markets with the Ranis-Fei model of dualism to analyze two types of unemployment; disguised unemployment in the rural sector and urban unemployment. The major results obtained are (1) sector-specific accumulation in the urban area may raise unemployment and lower welfare and (2) sector-specific accumulation in the rural sector always raises welfare but increases disguised unemployment. These results highlight the importance of regional resource allocation and the role of the agricultural sector in reducing urban unemployment.     

Federal Aid and Rural County Highway Spending: A Review of the 1980

The Reagan/Bush Administrations cut back federal support for state and local governments during the 1980s, causing total real resources available to finance local roads and bridges to increase very slowly between 1977 and 1989. The effect of federal aid on spending for infrastructure has been subject to debate for many years. Some studies have indicated that federal aid is stimulative, while others report that federal aid substitutes for local resources. This article examines the effect of state and federal aid on county highway spending. The analysis demonstrates that, in 1987, federal aid was stimulative but state aid was not. In light of changes brought about by the Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), we can expect federal aid to have a stronger relationship with local highway spending.     

How much heterogeneity can the welfare state endure? The influence of heterogeneity on attitudes to the welfare state

Cultural and economic heterogeneity is often seen as a major threat to modern welfare states. This article contributes to the discussion of how much heterogeneity the welfare state can endure by theoretically and empirically focusing on the relationship between different levels of national identity and the support for welfare state policies. We analyse the effect of different types of national identity on attitudes towards taxation and redistribution. We show that it is the subjective aspect of national identity, or social cohesion, that in fact matters for predicting attitudes to the welfare state. In comparison, more objective measures of heterogeneity like the inequality of income distribution, language fractionalisation or the percentage of foreign‐born individuals do not have any effect on attitudes to the welfare state.