Social policy has become an increasingly prominent component of the European Union's policy-making responsibilities. Today, for example, a highly developed body of law regulates equal treatment in social security and co-ordinates national security schemes; national health services have opened up to patients and service providers from other states; and rules govern the translation of educational and vocational certificates across member states. This state of affairs is all the more remarkable given the relatively limited resources at the EU's disposal and the initial intentions of its founders. During negotiations for the Treaty of Rome in the 1950s, social policy was viewed as the exclusive provenance of the member states. There were to be provisions to facilitate labour mobility within the common market, but until the 1970s social policy making at the EU-level was modest. However, plans for the internal market moved social policy on the EU's decision-making agenda. The Social Chapter was adopted in 1989, and the Single European Act expanded EU competencies in social policy. The Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice all expanded competencies further, so that by the time the heads of government met in Lisbon in 2007 to sign the EU's latest treaty, the extent of supranational control over important aspects of social policy making was quite impressive. This important book provides a full account of the evolution of social policy in the EU and of its current reach. It examines the reasons for the increased role of the EU in the area, in spite of formidable obstacles, and details its effects in member states, where social provision is often the biggest item in government budgets and a crucial issue in national elections. Drawing on research done on welfare states around the world and on European integration, this book provides a distinctive and sophisticated account of social policy in Europe, showing how it must now be understood in the context of multi-level governance in which EU institutions play a pivotal role.

Using an analytical framework based on Foucault's concept of governmentality, and through unique case-studies, this volume explores the ongoing transformations taking place in the Swedish welfare state.

A fast reduction of regional disparities within the EU is unlikely. Regional policy will thus remain an important European topic. This text analyzes regional policy and its co-ordination with other European and national public policies, namely investment grants, research and development policy and transport policy. The analysis identifies shortcomings within EU regional policy as well as co-ordination, problems with other public policies, and demonstrates how cohesion problems are often due to a lack of policy co-ordination at the domestic level.

The economic operating system keeps crashing. It's time to upgrade to a new one. Five decades ago, The Limits to Growth shocked the world by showing that population and industrial growth were pushing humanity towards a cliff. Today the world recognizes that we are now at the cliff edge: Earth has crossed multiple planetary boundaries while widespread inequality is causing deep instabilities in societies. There seems to be no way out. Earth For All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future. Using powerful state-of-the-art computer modeling to explore policies likely to deliver the most good for the majority of people, a leading group of scientists and economists from around the world present five extraordinary turnarounds to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation. Coverage includes: Results of new global modeling that indicates falling well-being and rising social tensions heighten risk of regional societal collapses Two alternative scenarios - Too-Little-Too-Late vs The Giant Leap - and what they mean for our collective future Five system-shifting steps that can upend poverty and inequality, lift up marginalized people, and transform our food and energy systems by 2050 A clear pathway to reboot our global economic system so it works for all people and the planet. Written in an open, accessible, and inspirational style using clear language and high impact visuals, Earth For All is a profound vision for uncertain times and a map to a better future. This survival guide for humanity is required reading for everyone concerned about living well on a fragile planet.

This volume discusses teacher training, pay and incentives, equity and diversity among the student population, and the use of indicators to assess educational progress and to inform decision making. Chapters in each section emphasize policies that schools should adopt to address the respective issues.

This is a study of how policy ideas, first raised as definitions of specific problems and as solutions for those problems, get translated into formal public policy. Specifically, the work tracks the making of energy and telecommunications policy, taking the reader inside the legislative policy debate involving elected officials, administrators, industry representatives, lobbyists, and citizen representatives. The author analyzes the many legislative proposals representing the preferences of the various participants which, over the course of the seven-year policy cycle seen here, illustrate the process of synthesis and analysis which underlies congressional policy making today.

This book explores the complex relationship between public policy and scandal. By critically examining some of the landmark scandals of the postwar period, using a variety of contemporary records and by close examination of the public inquiries which followed, this book describes the process whereby scandals are constructed and pursued, and demonstrates how scandals coincide with key shifts in public policy, in ways that are more complex and reciprocal than might first appear.

In 1993, Congress created a student loan repayment plan intended to enable high-debt graduates to accept low-income, public service jobs by reducing their loan payments and eventually forgiving part of their debts. But this Congressional initiative only helps those with catastrophically low incomes. It has failed to attract many users because, as implemented through regulations of the U.S. Department of Education, it requires payment over too long a period (25 years before forgiveness). Many students go to graduate and professional schools in pursuit of careers in public service. But they often must borrow $100,000 or more to finance their education. Their loan repayment obligations become so high that they can no longer afford to follow their ideals, and they abandon their plans to have public service careers and seek employment with corporations or firms offering high salaries. The income-contingent repayment plan should have appealed to would-be public interest lawyers, who are among the graduates with the highest debt-to-income ratios; but the plan has failed them, and Schrag explores why and how the plan should be reformed, either by Congress or by the federal administration.

This collection brings together essays to address the crisis of Higher Education today, focusing on its neoliberalization. Higher Education has been under assault for several decades as neoliberalism's preference for market-based reforms sweeps across the US political economy. The recent push for neoliberalizing the academy comes at a time when it is ripe for change, especially as it continues to confront growing financial pressure, particularly in the public sector. The resulting cutbacks in public funding, especially to state universities, led to a variety of debilitating changes: increases in tuition, growing student debt, more students combining working and schooling, declining graduation rates for minorities and low-income students, increased reliance on adjuncts and temporary faculty, and most recently growing interest in mass processing of students via online instruction. While many serious questions arise once we begin to examine what is happening in higher education today, one particularly critical question concerns the implications of these changes on the relationship of education to as yet still unrealized democratic ideals. The 12 essays collected in this volume create important resources for students, faculty, citizens and policymakers who want to find ways to address contemporary threats to the higher education-democracy connection. This book was originally published as a special issue of New Political Science.

In this new interpretation of the modernization and secularization of Turkey, Andrew Davison demonstrates the usefulness of hermeneutics in political analysis. A hermeneutic approach, he argues, illuminates the complex relations between religion and politics in post-Ottoman Turkey and, more broadly, between politics and matters of culture, tradition, national identity, and conscience in the modern world. Led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a modernist Turkish elite in the 1920s wrested political power from an empire in which Islam had exercised great political, social, and cultural power. Ataturk instituted policies designed to end Islamic power by secularizing politics and the state. Through the lens of hermeneutics, this book examines the ideas and policies of the secularizers and those who contested the process. Davison reinterprets the founding principles and practices of a modern, secular Turkey and closely reexamines the crucial ideas of the Turkish nationalist thinker Ziya Goekalp, who laid the conceptual groundwork for Turkey's Westernization experience. The application of hermeneutics, the author finds, remedies the methodological shortcomings of Western political analysts and provides a better understanding of the processes of secularization in Turkey as well as elsewhere in the modern world.

Germany has played a leading role in the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union. This study assesses the influence of German policy makers on EU policy and the impact of EU membership on foreign policy making at the national level. The book concludes that limitations remain on the Europeanization of German foreign and security policy and Germany's ability to play a leading role in military crisis management.

This book offers the first full examination of the legal role of public guardianship in 25 years, comparing current conditions to those when the last study was published in 1981. Public Guardianship: In the Best Interests of Incapacitated People? is written to advance public understanding of what happens to disabled and elderly adults when no family member or friend is available to be a caregiver or guardian should it become necessary. It is the first major study on this critically important issue since 1981. Conducted by experts in gerontology, social work, public policy, and public health, it finds that, although progress has been made, guardianship programs around the country still are hampered by limited staff and resources. Public Guardianship analyzes the full range of state statutes governing guardianship, including guardian eligibility, investigation, due process, rights, powers, costs, and monitoring. The authors report their case studies of public guardianship programs, marshaling and comparing field data from their surveys of stakeholders in ten states. The book concludes with a variety of recommendations for improving guardianship programs, including the authors' Model Public Guardian Act. Includes case studies on public guardianship programs in ten different states Offers bibliographic listings of works cited in the text Presents tables and charts showing important data

A study of British foreign policy in the years after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Policy towards Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey, the Middle East, USA and the Far East is examined alongside themes such as the role of Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Cabinet in policy formulation. The evolution and execution of policy is set alongside the limitations imposed on British statesment by the dominions, armed forces, economic weakness and domestic politics.

39 One of the main challenges facing the member states of the European Union (EU) is 40 the fundamental need to accept the strategic importance of entrepreneurship as a force 41 for regional development and economic growth. Definition of this urgent objective 42 is set in the context of the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000, where there 43 was focus on other operational goals directed to improving performance in European 44 regions in terms of different variables indicating the level of economic activity, 45 particularly employment, real convergence, economic reform, and social cohesion. 46 In 2003, the European Commission (EC) initiated the public debate around the 47 need to strengthen entrepreneurship in the European Union, through publication of 48 the "Green Paper on Entrepreneurship" in Europe which raised two fundamental 49 questions for reflection by policymakers, entrepreneurs, and individuals: (a) why 50 do so few Europeans set up their own business? and (b) why are so few European 51 businesses growing? 52 Later, in the context of the 2004 Spring European Council, the European 53 Commission launched the "Entrepreneurship Action Plan" which aimed fundamen- 54 tally to: (1) change the way society views entrepreneurs, (2) create conditions to 55 encourage more individuals to become entrepreneurs, (3) allow SMEs and entre- 56 preneurs to be more competitive and assume a more important role in determining 57 growth, (4) improve conditions for access to finance by SMEs and entrepreneurs, 58

Higher education in Britain has changed out of all recognition in recent years. We have moved from an elite to a mass system with more students, broader and more complex curricula, huge variations in what it means to be a student, and with institutions forging different relations to both the wider society and to the state. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the very understanding of what is meant by higher education has little in common with how it was interpreted but twenty years ago.

The purpose of this book is to place these radical changes within the context of the governance of British higher education. How has the system of governance changed? Do British higher education institutions still exercise autonomous control over their development as was widely believed to be the case but a few years ago? These questions are pursued through a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, to examine the institutional changes which have occurred since the 1988 Education Reform and the emergence of the funding council model of governance. In particular, we want to know how the various institutional actors a" the higher education institutions, the government departments and the funding councils a" interact with one another to shape policy outcomes. Secondly, to explore the political context within which these institutional actors have to work. This means examining the role of the political parties, policy networks and the parliamentary forces all of which have a major stake in influencing the direction of higher education policy. This section of the book incorporates the move towards political devolution in the United Kingdom and examines what is different, and what is similar, about highereducation policy-making in Scotland and Wales in comparison to England. Thirdly, the book observes the process of policy-making and change in relation to critical issues: the funding of higher education, the research assessment exercises, the quality assurance regime, and the widening participation agenda. In effect it examines policy-making in action.

The conclusion looks backwards and forwards. The main themes are highlighted and then two important questions are raised. How stable is the current model of governance? The answer to this question requires an analysis of the pressures for change and of the alternative models that could emerge in its place. The British system of higher education needs to be located within its European, even global, context. Is the system of governance capable of responding positively to the challenges that are likely to emerge given that higher education is now an international commodity?

In this book, highly respected scholars have gathered to discuss the history of investigations of women, children, and the family in order to determine if humane policies have been developed in the past, how to conduct unbiased research today, and how to get the most out of the policy-research alliance in the future.

This multidisciplinary book examines the diverse ways in which environmental disasters with compounding impacts are being governed as they traverse sovereign territories across rapidly urbanising societies in Asia and the Pacific. Combining theoretical advances with contextually rich studies, the book examines efforts to tackle the complexities of cross-border environmental governance. In an urban age in which disasters are not easily contained within neatly delineated jurisdictions, both in terms of their interconnected causalities and their cascading effects, governance structures and mechanisms are faced with major challenges related to cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. This book helps bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering fresh insights and contrasting explanations for variations in transboundary disaster governance regimes among urbanising populations in the Asia-Pacific.

Is the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) an effective and legitimate tool in European social policy-making? Milena Buchs analyses the goals and instruments of the OMC, discusses approaches which theorize its functioning, examines its policy content and develops a framework for its evaluation. Through the examination of a case study the author demonstrates how policy actors apply the OMC in employment in Germany and the United Kingdom. The book concludes that the OMC pursues contradictory goals and is unlikely to achieve them simultaneously.

Many European Union Directives seek to minimize the potential for harm to humans and the environment arising from the use of chemicals. This book takes an interdisciplinary, selective look at the effector mechanisms employed in such directives. It covers the pre-marketing use of toxicology to identify the hazardous properties of chemicals, acknowledging its shortcomings, while contrasting the scientific method with the precautionary principle in developing risk-management practices. The book then goes on to describe the use of bio-indicators, chemical analyses and mathematical modelling for prediction, or to determine the adequacy of chemical safety legislation. The environmental risk assessment of priority chemicals is described and the impact of pesticides on sustainability in agriculture is discussed from the differing standpoints of agronomy and economics. Audience: All professionals concerned with the safe management of chemicals and their use, including teachers, practitioners, policy makers or legislators.

A smart city utilizes ICT technologies to improve the working effectiveness, share various data with the citizens, and enhance political assistance and societal wellbeing. The fundamental needs of a smart and sustainable city are utilizing smart technology for enhancing municipal activities, expanding monetary development, and improving citizens' standards of living. Data-Driven Mathematical Modeling in Smart Cities discusses new mathematical models in smart and sustainable cities using big data, visualization tools in mathematical modeling, machine learning-based mathematical modeling, and more. It further delves into privacy and ethics in data analysis. Covering topics such as deep learning, optimization-based data science, and smart city automation, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, civil engineers, government officials, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This book focuses on the relationship between European integration, its outputs and national institutional and political settings. It explores the political mechanisms through which the EU plays a role in domestic social policy changes.