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Comparative Regional Human Rights Regimes: Defining a Research Agenda
No full textThis article introduces the Comparative Regional Human Rights Regimes Symposium which marks a first attempt at a regime-level comparative analysis of the three main regional human rights courts and commissions. It does so with the aim of laying out why regime level comparative analysis matters and why access, interpretation and remedies offer core markers of a comparative research agenda. The article identifies three distinct contributions that regional comparison makes to comparative international human rights law. First, it allows us to go beyond the binary form that is prevalent in comparative human rights law scholarship that most often juxtaposes (selected elements of) the European and Inter-American human rights regimes, and less frequently the African-Inter-American, or African-European human rights regimes. Second, a comparative research agenda goes beyond existing scholarship on regional comparison that has been largely descriptive in character. Taking a holistic approach to regional human rights regimes, comparisons can be made over time and dynamics of divergences and convergences can be identified and explained. Third, a comparative research agenda allows us to locate regional human rights regimes as part of a more general global evolution of law and institutions. That is, through comparison, we are better placed to evaluate how regional human rights courts and commissions are inscribed in a broader development of regional and international law since the aftermath of World War II
New Public Management Reforms in Europe and their Effects: Findings from a 20-Country Top Executive Survey
No full textThis article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in European countries as perceived by top public sector officials. Using data from an executive survey conducted in 20 European countries, we look at the relationship between five key NPM reforms (downsizing, agencification, contracting out, customer orientation and flexible employment practices) and four dimensions of public sector performance: cost efficiency, service quality, policy coherence and coordination, and equal access to services. Structural equation modelling reveals that treating service users as customers and flexible employment are positively related to improvements on all four dimensions of performance. Contracting out and downsizing are both positively related to improved efficiency, but downsizing is also associated with worse service quality. The creation of autonomous agencies is unrelated to performance. This suggests that policy-makers seeking to modernize the public sector should prioritize managerial reforms within public organizations over structural transformations
Austrian Corporatism and Gradual Institutional Change in the Relationship between Apprenticeship Training and School-based VET
No full textEducation, skill formation, and training continue to be important areas of consideration for both public policy and research. This book examines the particular types of vocational training known as collective skill formation systems, whereby the training (often firm-based apprenticeships) is collectively organized by businesses and unions with state support and cooperation in execution, finance, and monitoring.
With contributions from leading academics, this book is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the varying historical origins of, and recent developments in, vocational training systems, offering in-depth studies on coordinated market economies, namely Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. It also contains comparative chapters that analyse how these countries react to common challenges such as deindustrialization, labour market stratification, academic drift, gender inequalities, and Europeanization.
Whereas previous research has focused on the differences between various kinds of skill regimes, this book focuses on explaining institutional variety within the group of collective skill formation systems. The development of skill formation systems is regarded as a dynamic political process, dependent on the outcome of various political struggles regarding such matters as institutional design and transformations during critical junctures in historical development
