Politics & Society recent issues

Institutions Promoting Gender Egalitarian Families

Olin Wright, E. — 2008-08-07

Creating Gender Egalitarian Societies: An Agenda for Reform

Gornick, J. C., Meyers, M. K. — 2008-08-07

In this article, we describe the social and economic changes that have contributed to contemporary problems of work—family conflict, gender inequality, and risks to children's healthy development. We draw on feminist welfare state scholarship to outline an institutional arrangement that would support an earner—carer society—a social arrangement in which women and men engage symmetrically in paid work and unpaid caregiving and where young children have ample time with their parents. We present a blueprint for work—family reconciliation policies in three areas—paid family-leave provisions, working-time regulations, and early childhood education and care—and we identify key policy design principles. We describe and assess these work—family reconciliation policies as they operate in six European countries widely considered to be policy exemplars: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, and France. We close with an analysis of potential objections to these policies.

Long Leaves, Child Well-Being, and Gender Equality

Bergmann, B. R. — 2008-08-07

Of the measures for resolving work—family conflict proposed by Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers, government programs that provide or pay for nonparental child care would advance gender equality. However, paid parental leaves of six months for both parents, and the encouragement of part-time work, would retard it, and possibly reverse some of the advances toward gender equality that have been made in the home and the workplace. Female jobholders would increase their time at home to a much greater extent than would male jobholders, increasing the share women do of child care, cleaning, cooking, and laundry. In the workplace, employers would become more reluctant to place women in nonroutine jobs, where substitution of one worker for another is difficult. Finally, recent studies of the effect on young children of nonparental care are reviewed. They can be interpreted in more than one way, and the lessons drawn from them depend crucially on the opinions of those doing the analysis.

Strong Gender Egalitarianism

Brighouse, H., Olin Wright, E. — 2008-08-07

Perhaps the most intractable aspect of gender inequality concerns inequalities within the family around the domestic division of labor, especially over child care and other forms of caregiving. These enduring gender inequalities constitute a significant obstacle to achieving "strong gender egalitarianism"—a structure of social relations in which the division of labor around housework and caregiving within the family and occupational distributions within the public sphere are unaffected by gender. This article explores three kinds of publicly supported parental caregiving leaves that bear on the potential for public policy to transform this private realm of inequality: (1) equality-impeding policies (e.g., unpaid caregiving leaves), (2) equality-enabling policies (e.g., paid caregiving leaves given to families), and (3) equality-promoting policies (e.g., paid caregiving leaves given to individuals rather than families). The authors defend the third of these as necessary, given the importance of cultural constraints on the slow erosion of the gender division of labor over caregiving activities.

Reforming Care

Folbre, N. — 2008-08-07

This essay argues that concerns regarding the impact of work/family balance on gender inequality should be extended to broader analysis of all care work. Paid or unpaid care devoted to all dependents (including the sick and elderly as well as children) has distinctive characteristics that contribute to disempowerment and underpayment. Expenditures of money as well as time increase economic vulnerability. Public policies should provide greater support for caregiving outside the market, improve the supply and quality of purchased care services, and challenge conventional accounting systems that mismeasure economic welfare.

Global Constraints on Gender Equality in Care Work

Hassim, S. — 2008-08-07

Gornick and Meyers offer proposals for advancing gender egalitarianism in care of children and in the labor market. This article examines the extent to which these proposals can be extended beyond the United States and other wealthy countries. I argue that the Gornick and Meyers proposals are dependent on a particular set of global and national labor market factors, and on a peculiar configuration of institutions and political forces. The article lays out some of these key contours of the global care labor market, as well as the divergent nature of public and private institutions in developing countries. I venture that the Gornick and Meyers proposals for egalitarianism are not universalizable without radical changes in the global arena.

The Political Path to a Dual Earner/Dual Carer Society: Pitfalls and Possibilities

Morgan, K. J. — 2008-08-07

What are the political pathways to the dual earner/dual caregiver model? Are most countries likely to attain only a partial transformation of policies and societies, rather than a full embrace of this model? This article examines the development of work-family policies in Western Europe to probe the politics and consequences of these programs. In many countries, the political context frustrates efforts to enact a unified, comprehensive vision like the dual earner/dual caregiver model. Rather than achieving gender-egalitarian arrangements for work and care, countries may stall halfway there. Advocates should be careful in what they ask for and be aware of the challenge of keeping gender-egalitarian goals at the center of a policy-making process over which they will not have full control.

Class Divisions among Women

Shalev, M. — 2008-08-07

By exploring how gender norms and material interests vary between women in different classes, this article highlights interactions between class and gender that mitigate against the mobilization of political support for activist family policies in the United States. Ironically, while educated women in professional and managerial jobs are ideologically most favorable toward the dual earner/dual carer model, it is not in their economic interest for the state to make it happen. Scandinavian-style interventions would impose costs on relatively privileged women in their role as child care consumers. There is also reason to believe that these interventions would indirectly undermine their labor market attainments.

Between the Washington Consensus and Another World: Interrogating United States Hegemony and Alternative Visions

2008-05-21

Swimming Against the Current: The Rise of a Hidden Developmental State in the United States

Block, F. — 2008-05-21

Despite the dominant role of market fundamentalist ideas in U.S. politics over the last thirty years, the Federal government has dramatically expanded its capacity to finance and support efforts of the private sector to commercialize new technologies. But the partisan logic of U.S. politics has worked to make these efforts invisible to mainstream public debate. The consequence is that while this "hidden developmental state" has had a major impact on the structure of the U.S. national innovation system, its ability to be effective in the future is very much in doubt. The article ends by arguing that the importance of these developmental initiatives to the U.S. economy could present a significant opening for new progressive initiatives.

Law, Politics, and Access to Essential Medicines in Developing Countries

Klug, H. — 2008-05-21

This article argues that to advance the struggle for access to essential medicines, it is necessary to identify the global and local regimes that shape the rules that give impetus to particular policy options, while undermining others. In exploring the role of law and politics in this process, the author first outlines the globalization of a standardized, corporate-inspired, intellectual property regime. Second, the author uses the example of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to demonstrate how the stability of this new regime came under pressure, both locally and globally. Finally, it is argued that while the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and the social movements that emerged in response to government inaction have effectively challenged the TRIPS regime, this complex contestation has reached an unsustainable stalemate in which development aid, corporate, and non-governmental philanthropy is simultaneously providing increased availability to drugs while precluding a more lasting solution to the crisis of access to essential medicines in developing countries.

The World Social Forum and the Global Left

De Sousa Santos, B. — 2008-05-21

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to put the development of the World Social Forum (WSF) within a broad theoretical and historical context. Specifically, my goal is to understand the WSF in relation to the crises of left thinking and practice of the last thirty or forty years. Second, it offers an analysis of some recent debates about the future of the WSF. It raises questions concerning its organizational makeup and asks whether it should continue as it is, or rather give way to other kinds of initiatives and struggles. Against critics such as Walden Bello, I argue that the WSF should continue and, given certain organizational changes, will contribute to the theory and practice of left movements throughout the world in the twenty-first century.

Is an Alternative Globalization Possible?

Evans, P. — 2008-05-21

Building on Polanyi's concept of the "double-movement" through which society defends itself against domination by the self-regulating market, this article sets out some key organizational and ideological hurdles that the contemporary "movement of movements" must surmount to challenge the hegemony of neo-liberal globalization. After outlining neo-liberalism's failures, it makes an argument for the possibility of "counter-hegemonic globalization," defined as a globally organized project of transformation aimed at replacing the dominant (hegemonic) global regime with one that maximizes democratic political control and makes the equitable development of human capabilities and environmental stewardship its priorities.

Telling the Difference: Guerrillas and Paramilitaries in the Colombian War

Gutierrez Sanin, F. — 2008-02-15

The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences— regarding both their social composition and their internal/external behavior—and claims that the key to understanding them is the set of organizational devices that each group crafts in its process of survival and growth. All this suggests that a main tenet of the early political economy of war, that all non-state armed groups can be understood as being strategically identical, is flawed. It also poses a classificatory challenge.

The Integrity of Corrupt States: Graft as an Informal State Institution

Darden, K. — 2008-02-15

This article argues that corrupt practices such as bribery and embezzlement, which scholars have previously assumed to be evidence of the breakdown of the state, may reinforce the state's administrative hierarchies under certain conditions. Drawing on a cross-national analysis of 132 countries and a detailed examination of the informal institutions of official graft in Ukraine, the article finds that where graft is systematically tracked, monitored, and granted by state leaders as an informal payment in exchange for compliance, it provides both an added incentive to obey leaders' directives and the potent sanction of criminal prosecution in the event of disobedience. Where graft is informally institutionalized in this way, it provides the basis for state organizations that are effective at collecting taxes, maintaining public order, and repressing political opposition but that may undermine the development of liberal politics.

Institutions and Institutional Purpose: Continuity and Change in East Asian Social Policy

Peng, I., Wong, J. — 2008-02-15

Drawing on theories of institutional evolution, this article contends that despite the centrality of occupationally based social insurance in postwar Korea and Taiwan (and thus the impression of institutional continuity), the welfare state has in fact deepened considerably. The analysis is structured around three distinct eras of social policy reform in Korea and Taiwan: the developmental state, democratic transition, and postindustrialism. The authors contend that during each of these eras, the institutional purposes of social policy were altered to meet certain socioeconomic objectives. New institutional purposes were grafted onto the prevailing social insurance model, changing the outcomes of social policy. The developmental state era was productivist in purpose, democratic reform during the 1980s reoriented social insurance toward universalist and redistributive principles, and the post-1997 era refocused social insurance to meet the imperatives of flexible labor markets, demographic shifts, and economic globalization.

Bringing Public Opinion and Electoral Politics Back In: Explaining the Fate of "Clintonomics" and Its Contemporary Relevance

Shoch, J. — 2008-02-15

In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency committed to an ambitious program of "public investment." Yet the plan Clinton submitted to the Democrat-controlled Congress in early 1993 was sharply scaled back in favor of an emphasis on reducing the federal budget deficit. Congress then made further deep cuts in Clinton's plan. This Democratic retreat from public investment would continue throughout the remainder of Clinton's presidency. In this article, I argue that the fate of "Clintonomics" was due mainly to public opinion and electoral politics. In an epilogue, I examine the implications of this episode for the new intra-Democratic debate over public investment.

Statement of Correction

2008-02-15

Police Power and Race Riots in Paris

Schneider, C. L. — 2008-02-15

This article looks at riots that consumed Paris and much of France for three consecutive weeks in November 2005. The author argues that the uprisings were not instigated by radical Muslims, children of African polygamists, or despairing youth suffering from high unemployment. First and foremost, they were provoked by a terrible incident of police brutality, a tragedy among a litany of similar tragedies. Black and Arab youth were already frustrated: decades of violent enforcement of France's categorical boundaries—both racial and geographic—had filled many with rage. When Minister of Interior Nicholas Sarkozy responded to the violent death of three teenage boys on October 25, 2005, by condemning the boys rather than the police officers who had killed them, he merely reaffirmed what many young blacks and Arabs already believed: that their lives have no value in France.

Retraction: Police Power and Race Riots in Paris

2007-11-13

Industrial Relations, Migration, and Neoliberal Politics: The Case of the European Construction Sector

Lillie, N., Greer, I. — 2007-11-13

Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about di ferences between "national systems," the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels.

The Political Rationalities of Fair-Trade Consumption in the United Kingdom

Clarke, N., Barnett, C., Cloke, P., Malpass, A. — 2007-11-13

This article situates the analysis of fair-trade consumption in the context of debates about civic activism and political participation. It argues that fair-trade consumption should be understood as a political phenomenon, which, through the mediating action of organizations and campaigns, makes claims on states, corporations, and institutions. This argument is made by way of a case study of Traidcraft, a key player in the fair-trade movement in the United Kingdom. The study focuses on how Traidcraft approaches and enrolls its supporters.

What Is the Relationship between Hate Radio and Violence? Rethinking Rwanda's "Radio Machete"

Straus, S. — 2007-11-13

The importance of hate radio pervades commentary on the Rwandan genocide, and Rwanda has become a paradigmatic case of media sparking extreme violence. However, there exists little social scientific analysis of radio's impact on the onset of genocide and the mobilization of genocide participants. Through an analysis of exposure, timing, and content as well as interviews with perpetrators, the article refutes the conventional wisdom that broadcasts from the notorious radio station RTLM were a primary determinant of genocide. Instead, the article finds evidence of conditional media e fects, which take on significance only when situated in a broader context of violence.