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Avoiding the Inappropriate: The European Commission and Sanctions under the Stability and Growth Pact
Get PDFFiscal policy surveillance, including the possibility to impose financial sanctions, has been an important feature of Economic and Monetary Union since its inception. With the reform of fiscal rules in the aftermath of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, coercive provisions have been made stricter and the Commission has formally gained power vis-à-vis the Council. Nevertheless, sanctions under the Stability and Growth Pact for budgetary non-compliance have so far not been imposed. This article asks why the Commission has until now refrained from proposing such sanctions. Using minimalist process-tracing methods, three post-crisis cases in which the imposition of fines was possible, are analysed. Applying an adaptation of normative institutionalism, it is argued that the mechanism entitled “normative-strategic minimum enforcement” provides an explanation of why no sanctions are imposed in the cases studied: Given that the Commission does not perceive punitive action as appropriate, it strategically refrains from applying the enforcement provisions to their full extent
Measuring the Generosity of Parental Leave Policies
Get PDFIn order to investigate and compare welfare states or specific welfare programmes, scientists, opinion‐makers and politicians rely on indicators. As many of the concepts or objects studied are somewhat abstract, these indicators can often only be approximations. In comparative welfare‐state research, scholars have suggested several approximating indicators to quantitatively measure and compare the generosity of public welfare provision, with a special focus on cash benefits. These indicators include social spending, social rights and benefit receipt. We present these indicators systematically, and critically discuss how suitable they are for comparing the generosity of parenting leave policies in developed welfare states. Subsequently, we illustrate how the operationalisation of leave generosity by means of different indicators can lead to different rankings, interpretations and qualifications of countries. Hence, indicator choices have to be considered carefully and suitably justified, depending on the actual research interest
Engaging with Hard‐To‐Reach Clients: Towards the Last Resort Response by Welfare Workers
Get PDFClient non‐cooperation is a widely recognised problem in welfare services. Being ‘hard‐to‐reach’ is considered a risk especially for the most vulnerable clients, for example in terms of increased homelessness. Such clients pose challenges to social inclusion, and services make some allowances to achieve engagement. However, even a minimum level of cooperation is required from hard‐to‐reach clients. In the context of home visiting, we study welfare workers’ efforts to engage with clients who continuously avoid contact. We examine three services in Finland, England, and Sweden that provide floating support to clients in their own accommodation. Utilising Robert Emerson’s idea of ‘the last resort,’ we analyse how workers justify their decisions to continue or terminate the support with the hard‐to‐reach. The data consist of team meeting recordings and home visit observations. We aim to demonstrate that justifications deployed to make the decision to end the home visiting service or tighten control, draw on ‘last resort responses.’ We identify three types of justifications: retrospective summaries on past failures to reach the client, intensifying remedial actions to engage clients, and characterisations of clients as uncooperative. While such justifications can be seen to draw on shared ethics, they have different ethical implications
Constructing the “Competent” Pupil: Optimizing Human Futures Through Testing?
Get PDFIn the last decade, the German transition system has witnessed the large‐scale introduction of so‐called “analysis of potentials” (Potenzialanalysen) in secondary compulsory schooling. In most German Länder, 8th graders must participate in a two‐day assessment center which combines psychometric testing with observations of their social and professional competencies in pre‐specified tasks. The programmatic aim of these assessments is to “introduce pupils early to choosing a job” (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung [BMBF], 2017, p. 2) as well as to enhance the propensity of pupils to “take responsibility for their own future” (BMBF, 2017, p. 9). In the context of the German school‐to‐work system, the introduction of these new forms of diagnostics bear witness to a new preventive political rationality that aims at reducing the entry age into upper secondary education, reduce the recourse to so‐called “transition measures” and optimizing transitions into an apprenticeship market that is characterized by structural inequalities and “mismatch” between pupils’ job aspirations and the offers in apprenticeship places. However, little is known on the role of competency testing devices for the construction of further trajectories and aspirations and their role in the reproduction of inequalities in transitions from school to work. Based on an in‐depth analysis of policy documents and competency profiles (the documents handed out to the pupils after undergoing testing), the article reconstructs the political rationale for the introduction of the so‐called Potenzialanalysen. Based on a Foucauldian framework, we show how pupils are constructed as “competent” subjects. We show that competency assessments are part and parcel of a political rationality that aims at the promotion of a specific (future‐oriented, optimized, self‐regulated) relation to one’s own biographical future on the side of the pupils. Our results demonstrate that competency profiles construct the process of choosing a job as an individualized project of the self and that they invisibilize structural barriers and power relations. In doing so, competency assessments potentially contribute to the reproduction of inequalities in post‐secondary education through delegating “cooling out” processes from institutional gatekeepers to the interiority of persons
From Home to Community: Reflecting Emotions Related to Mobility
Get PDFThis study investigates how clients’ emotions are invoked and reflected in client–worker interactions and themeanings they have regarding leaving home. We concentrate on floating support work, which aims to support people suffering from mental health and substance abuse‐related issues to improve their living in the community. Our theoretical framework is based on the geography of emotions, and we draw on both the interactional and relational approaches thereto. The research material is gathered from Finland and England. We draw on mobile ethnographic and discursive approaches, and our data consists of transcriptions and field notes gathered during floating support visits (N = 19) that took place either at or outside of a client’s home. Our findings demonstrate how the connections between places and emotions, the emotions connected to leaving one’s home, the emotions reflected while being out in the community, and the reflections of emotions after being out in the community are constructed and reflected in client–worker interactions. The study highlights that these emotions are a necessary and demanding part of promoting clients’ social inclusion in the context of floating support work
Comparative Inclusion: What Spanish Higher Education Teachers Assert
Get PDFFrom a critical comparative perspective (far from more naive and resolute trends) this study delves into the problematisation that comes with recognising comparative education as ‘the science of the difference’ (Nóvoa, 2018). Despite the cementation of discursive, regulatory, and normative governance, of a new higher education regime (Zapp & Ramirez, 2019) revealing the growing isomorphism in the global political and educational discourse of academics, some idiosyncratic characteristics can be detected as a result of the policy implemented in each context. The aim of this article is to compare the beliefs and attitudes of professors from seven Spanish universities regarding diversity, as well as the level of inclusion in higher education, by means of an exploratory, descriptive, and comparative survey. A total of 977 educators participated in a purposive sampling. Descriptive techniques, contrasting differences and comparing proportions allowed us to detect that, although there are no major differences between the teachers’ beliefs and attitudes, some of the minor ones are still worth highlighting. Some of these are the commitment to incorporate diversity in methodologies and teaching resources, in their attempt to meet the needs of diverse people, or the way they perceived personal or institutional commitment to diversity. In conclusion, it is necessary to take a stance on diversity and inclusion that supports the need to stop and reflect on the richness they can provide, from a comparative position and constantly distancing ourselves (Kim, 2020) from today’s university system
The Right to ‘Have a Say’ in the Deinstitutionalisation of Mental Health in Slovenia
Get PDFIn a time when the deinstitutionalisation of mental health services has become a global and European platform and one of the main forms of care provision, a theme such as the transition of care from large institutions down to a more personal community level care might seem outlived, but the fact is that in some European countries the discussion has revolved for almost 35 years around the most basic question concerning the closure of large, asylum‐type mental health institutions. In this article, I provide a historical overview and analysis of deinstitutionalisation processes in the field of mental health in Slovenia from mid‐1980s onwards, interpreted in terms of achievements and gaps in community‐based care and in user participation in these processes. It demonstrates some of the innovative participatory practices and their potential to transform services. A thematic data analysis was used to analyse the data collected from various primary (a focus group) and secondary sources (autobiographies, newspaper articles, round table reports, blogs) that all bear witness to the different periods of deinstitutionalisation and the user perspective in it
Less is More? Evaluating Technical Aspects and User Experiences of Smart Flood Risk Assessment Tools
Get PDFIn light of several recent large-scale flooding events worldwide, the urgency of involving residents in the flood risk management debate is growing. However, this has so far proven to be problematic, mainly because of lacking or ineffective communication between stakeholders. One way to better involve residents in the flood risk management debate is by developing smart applications, dedicated to facilitate and increase the insights of residents into the flood risk and vulnerability of their private properties. However, what is lacking thus far is a systematic evaluation of the technical aspects and the user experiences of such tools. The goal of this article is to explore and evaluate the technical, analytical, and communicative qualities of smart flood risk assessment tools. To this end, a new smart application named FLOODLABEL is used, aiming to inform residents of flood-prone areas about potential flood risks and associated protection measures of their dwellings. Based on this, the article concludes that a smart application like FLOODLABEL can be beneficial for informing residents about flood risks and potential protection measures. However, it also shows that a one-size-fits-all approach is not suitable for informing residents on flood risks, inter alia because how residents perceive risks is not homogeneous. This research is therefore just the first step towards a more systematic evaluation method of smart applications
Policy Assemblages and Policy Resilience: Lessons for Non-Design from Evolutionary Governance Theory
Get PDFEvolutionary governance theory (EGT) provides a basis for holistically analyzing the shifting contexts and dynamics of policymaking in settings with functional differentiation and complex subsystems. Policy assemblages, as mixes of policy tools and goals, are an appropriate unit of analysis for EGT because they embody the theory’s emphasis on co-evolving elements within policy systems. In rational practice, policymakers design policies within assemblages by establishing objectives, collecting information, comparing options, strategizing implementation, and selecting instruments. However, as EGT implies, this logical progression does not always materialize so tidily—some policies emerge from carefully considered blueprints while others evolve from muddled processes, laissez faire happenstance, or happy accident. Products of the latter often include loosely steered, unmoored, and ‘non-designed’ path dependencies that confound linear logic and are understudied in the policy literature. There exists the need for a more intricate analytical vocabulary to describe this underexplored ‘chaotic’ end of the policy design spectrum, as conjuring images of ‘muddles’ or ‘messes’ has exhausted its usefulness. This article introduces a novel metaphor for non-design—the bird nest—to bring studies of policy design and non-design into lexical harmony
Routine or Rare Activity? A Quantitative Assessment of Parliamentary Scrutiny in the European Semester
Get PDFThe European Semester is an EU procedure, designed to facilitate coordination between national and EU actors in planning and implementing economic and fiscal policies and contribute to sustained economic convergence and employment in the EU. Scholars have highlighted this procedure as a crucial area of EU politics for national parliaments since its introduction in 2011. However, national parliaments participate differently in the European Semester. This article investigates which factors (institutional, political, economic) are more likely to intensify parliamentary engagement at the national stage of the procedure, based on a comparative quantitative analysis of parliamentary scrutiny activities across 35 parliaments/chambers in the EU over the 2014–2017 period. The article offers new insights about prospects for greater parliamentary accountability in the European Semester in practice