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Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the history of extra-legislative royal commissions in England, beginning with William the Conqueror's 1080 commission of bishops and nobles' representatives to investigate the legitimacy of land ownership claims. Pointedly discussed is Lord Beveridge's 1941 white paper on social legislation titled "Social Insurance and Allied Services."

The NSA affair has, among other things, shown the dimensions to which commercial espionage and the outsourcing of information gathering have grown. From the early modernist's point of view, this is not as surprising as it might appear - the development seems to have early modern parallels. The article shows how espionage was organized around 1700, discusses the term and argues that informal, commercial actors were highly relevant. This is demonstrated by looking at the English government's initiatives to gain information about France during the War of the Spanish Succession. A striking example for an espionage network working on a commercial basis and cooperating with the English government, is Pierre Jurieu's and Etienne Caillaud's Rotterdam based spy network. It is shown how this network worked in practice and how it gathered political relevant information for the English government. In the conclusion, I try to answer the more general question what the existence of commercial espionage in the early modern as well as in the postmodern period can tell us about the history of espionage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares government sponsored services and programs in Great Britain and Germany aimed at the care, infrastructure for, and education of children under three years old. The article concludes that this social investment in early childhood is rationalized in economic terms in both Great Britain and Germany, but that child care policies have different aims that reflect divergent national traditions.

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)