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The purpose of this paper is to identify common patterns in central authorities' steering of universities and the institutional power in neo-liberal higher education regimes. The paper examines the regulatory mechanisms of England and Japan through Foucault's idea of 'governmentality' and utilises the concept of autonomy to identify the state-university nexus and institutional behaviour. The paper argues that the similar application of technologies of arts in England and Japan - such as financial incentives and output quality management - has not brought about the same effect across the two countries in institutional behaviour and culture. In the case of England, the decline of traditional university autonomy - which isolated the university sector from external pressure - and increasing external influence in the value system are the case, while in Japan, the shift is rather internal within an institution, changing from department to institutional autonomy, which is compatible with the concept of accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there has been a rapid growth in the globalisation of sport and its delivery to world markets, nevertheless there is a variety of models of sport-business whose characteristics are the product of local histories, local political and sporting cultures, local economic conditions and so on. This paper does not seek to deny the increasingly obvious impact of globalisation on professional sport, but rather it seeks to articulate the ways in which such global phenomena are locally mediated in professional soccer systems in five countries, to identify and to explain local responses to global pressures. The five examples include the oldest professional football system, that of England, and a second contrasting European system, France, together with three relatively recently established professional football systems in Japan a developed capitalist economy, Algeria, which is developing a post-socialist sports economy, and China which is experimenting in sport as in other areas with a ‘socialist market economy’. The resultant evolution of professional sporting systems represents distinctive configurations of stakeholders in what are in effect contrasting business models, and reflects a situation of ‘diminishing varieties and increasing contrasts’, in contrast to the claims made by Elias in relation to global cultural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the commonality of social policies on homelessness between Japan and England and to discuss the role of social policy in response to the recent emergence of homelessness throughout the world. Japan and England are regarded as different types of welfare state, and policies towards homelessness in both countries contrast sharply with each other. In some important areas, however, their approaches to homelessness coincide. There is a common 'style' of 'main bypass' policy with a diverse and often subjective implementation. This commonality can be interpreted as a result of the application of some general principles of the welfare state such as work requirement, family principles, moral requirement as a good citizen of the welfare state as well as the narrow and often stereotypical understanding of a person's 'place to live' in a society. Policies concerning homelessness in this common 'style' have not responded satisfactorily to the global emergence of homelessness. Instead, they have often played a part perpetuating situations where homeless people stay in temporary accommodation often facing uncertain and inconsistent treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]