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`Glasnost Hungarian style' forms part of a process of reform initiated from `above'. From `below', there has been a remarkable renaissance of civil society, with increasing numbers of people becoming actively involved in public and political life. At the same time, gathering social and economic crisis threatens to destabilize the country, while institutional structures inherited almost intact from the Stalinist period serve as a strait-jacket, precluding any meaningful and lasting change. This is particularly evident in the print media, a field which is strictly regulated and controlled. Licensing of newspapers and periodicals, allocation of newsprint, strict price controls, almost non-existent opportunities for the entry of new actors into the field, a high degree of press concentration in the hands of the power elite — all these characterize the situation in the Hungarian press. All of these factors are incompatible with movement towards a democratic and pluralistic socialist society, but change in these areas is predicated on the reform of political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the largest 250 companies in Australia in the early 1990s and their network of interlocking directorates. It examines the institutional profile of Australian big business and the impact of globalisation. It finds that international capital has not, as yet. made major inroads into the core of Australian big business although global finance capital has had a major impact on its mode of operating. It argues that the greatest area for structural change is the privatisation of government-owned enterprises. Following the precedents of US and international studies the paper then explores key features of the theory of financial hegemony. The paper uses network analysis of interlocking directorships to assess the centrality of banks and the direction of ties among big businesses. Australian banks are heavily interlocked and 'attract' executives of other companies to their boards but they do not constitute the core of the intercorporate network as in the US. As outlined by Australian scholars the systemic conditions of capitalist hegemony in this country involve uncritical acceptance of big business leadership. These conditions privilege all large, Australian public companies (the 'private sector') as the core institutions of class power. Centralisation and hierarchy within big business parallels these conditions of public culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing number of recipients of disability and long-term sickness benefits has resulted in the introduction of specific employability programmes in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In the UK Pathways to Work involved enabling and support measures for benefit recipients with long-term health conditions. In Denmark ‘flex-jobs’ are an integral occupational health intervention for both employed and unemployed people with reduced working capacity. Through a comparative analysis primarily based on stakeholder interviews in both countries, this paper argues that the concept of an inclusive labour market strategy is crucial to assisting these groups into work, underpinned by governance and a politics of representation. In Denmark both the role of the social partners and subsidized employment are significant. In the UK governance has been constrained and insufficient attention has been paid to income security. Comparing these two models highlights policy learning for the UK from the successes of and challenges to the Danish model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues against what we call 'the local trap', in which development researchers and practitioners falsely assume that localized decision-making is inherently more socially just or ecologically sustainable. The local trap constrains research on a range of topics in development research, including productive conservation networks, agro-forestry, community-based natural resource management, common property regimes and community-based collaboration. We use recent research on scale in political and economic geography to argue that scales and scalar arrangements are socially constructed through political struggle; they are never ontologically given. In other words, there is nothing inherent about any scale or scalar arrangement. Therefore, an arrangement in which resources or decisions are controlled locally is no more likely to lead to ecologically sustainable or socially just outcomes than an arrangement in which the regional, national or global scale predominates. Because scales are produced through socio-political struggle, the outcomes of a given scalar arrangement are dependent on the political agenda(s) of those empowered by the arrangement. When we start from the assumption that there is nothing inherent about scale, we cannot assume the political and ecological dynamics of a particular scalar configuration. We must instead make those dynamics the object of critical inquiry. The paper uses a case study of beekeeping in the Brazilian Amazon to illustrate the range of both positive and negative outcomes that can result when decision-making is localized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the change in China's TV program import over the past 30 years from 1958 to 1988 - before, during and after the Cultural Revolution. The emphasis is placed on the reform period in the 1980s. The study indicates that, along with the globalization of television, many changes have occurred in China's TV program import channel, import purpose, import criterion, import format and import category. The paper provides descriptions, interpretations and analyses of what has happened in China's TV program importation, why these changes occurred and what these changes meant. The author concludes that the China's reform policies - open-door policy, decentralization policy and pluralism policy - were the fundamental factors for the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the shift toward increasingly coercive means of collecting debt from working class and poor borrowers, with a specific focus on incarceration. Placing this trend within an historical trajectory, it is argued that the law has always been central to creating and securing the social relations of debt as class relations. While the abolition of debtors’ prisons in the 19th century helped to shift struggles between debtors and creditors out of public view and into the depoliticized realm of ‘the law’, a number of factors have led to its reappearance in the contemporary era. These include (1) changes to bankruptcy legislation that have given creditors greater power over debtors, (2) the emergence of the debt-buying industry and (3) the growing privatization, decentralization and commercialization of the state, which have transformed it into a creditor that relies on its power to punish to compel payment from some of the poorest debtors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the extent to which party systems are nationalized in four federations. In doing so, the research addresses two questions. First, is dual accountability operational across decentralized countries, or do sub-national voters turn to national cues as a means to economize in a complex information environment? By bringing a cross-national dataset to bear on this question, we are able to provide insight into where and why dual accountability might operate. Second, what explains variation in the extent to which party systems are nationalized across countries and time? We build on previous literature to suggest a number of factors likely to impact the extent of nationalization. We examine those factors in the context of provincial-level elections in Argentina, Canada, Germany and the United States. Using national and sub-national economic data, we find little evidence of dual accountability in any of our countries. We find that economic performance matters little for regional electoral outcomes, and where it does, sub-national outcomes reflect national rather than sub-national conditions. More important are the roles of partisan relations across levels of government and election timing. Sub-national co-partisans of the nationally governing party lose votes, particularly as the time from the most recent national election grows. The strength of these effects varies across our cases in predictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralization and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes according to features related to centralization is established by using cluster analysis and an indicator for centralization is developed by employing multidimensional scaling. Subsequently, on the basis of Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data, the effectiveness and efficiency in reducing poverty through social assistance payments are calculated using several measures of poverty for five selected EU systems and the linkage of their distributive impacts to the degree of centralization is examined. Concerning effectiveness in poverty alleviation, the results provide some evidence that extremely centralized systems are more effective with regard to redistribution than extremely decentralized schemes. However, for systems with a medium degree of centralization, the hypothesis that greater decentralization leads to more effectiveness is not supported. With respect to efficiency, no support is lent to the hypothesis that a higher degree of decentralization is accompanied by a better distributive efficiency. Rather, the results seem to suggest that systems with a medium degree of decentralization do better than either extremely centralized or extremely decentralized systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work in Israel's indigenous Arab society developed late relative to its Jewish counterpart. Based on primary and secondary sources and semi-structured interviews with Arab social workers who were employed in social welfare bureaus during the years under review, the article describes and explains the development of social work in Israel's Arab society in its formative years. The findings indicate this social work developed under government policies that recognized the needs of Arab society but allocated its welfare bureaus fewer resources than to the country's Jewish society. These policies also failed to recognize the Arab narrative in welfare delivery and to incorporate Arab representation in decision-making. The relevant bodies in Israel that dealt with social work, primarily the Ministry of Welfare, used various strategies to maintain a dual system of welfare services – one for Jewish citizens and a poorer one for Arabs citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From both a practical and a theoretical perspective, improved public sector performance has preoccupied policymakers, managers, and analysts around the world. There is broad enthusiasm for performance-based initiatives to remedy service delivery failures, but conceptual boundaries are often vague, and empirical evidence for their effectiveness is mixed. This article reviews current thinking regarding service delivery improvement, and assesses several pathways to improved performance. We examine the pathways pursued in Indonesia’s rich experience with service delivery improvement, which shed particular light on the political economic factors shaping performance-based initiatives, and draw implications for reforms in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that policy makers, in government especially, use crude output measures such as the link with performance to argue the case for, or more often against, employee participation. The paper considers the problems associated with the use of such crude output measures but argues that researchers cannot avoid the question of what impact participation has on organisational effectiveness. Data from a universal survey of companies given in-depth assistance by ACAS are used to show that, according to managers directly involved, a particular form of participation, the joint working party, has a strong positive benefit to the organisation. This was true of both union and non-union firms. This has important policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last quarter of a century, Greece, alongside other southern European economies, witnessed a burgeoning of new enterprises and the creation of a significant number of jobs in the garment industry. Many producers were beneficiaries of the decentralisation of production from large corporations in core countries (particularly Germany) to localised networks, through sub-contracting arrangements. Our paper highlights the case of garment-led industrial growth in the Macedonian countryside. We set out to explore the nature of the labour régime which lies at the heart of the recent expansion. The argument is that medium- scale primary sub-contractors have introduced novel practices of employment in the locality, while their household and small-scale secondary counterparts have based their enterprise strategy upon redefining their links with traditional institutions, especially the family-oriented domestic domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes decentralization and commercialization reforms in the Yemeni urban water and sanitation sector. The case study shows that sector reforms to increase the performance and independence of water utilities in developing countries can become entangled in conflicting political agendas, leading to the derailing of reforms. The reform process in the Yemeni case is presented as part of sector-wide policy change due to increasing scarcity, supply crises, and pressure from donors. A measurement framework for the level of decentralization and commercialization of water utilities is developed and applied. The future reform pathways are outlined, giving consideration to the current political reality in Yemen. Points for practitioners: Water decentralization reforms need to follow technical considerations regarding the capacity and independence of utilities in order to enhance any positive impacts of decentralization. Institutional conflicts are difficult to tackle during an ongoing reform process, particularly in a context of corruption, politicization, and state fragility. There is a need for more context-specific reform agendas and better strategies to deal with conflicts and shield utilities from political interference. Further, effective commercialization requires a level of accountability at the local level and improved capacities of staff. Such capacities can be enhanced through trainings ahead of reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contentious debate on evidence-based Global Mental Health care is challenged by the primary mental health program of Jamaica. Political independence in 1962 ushered in the postcolonial Jamaican Government and the deinstitutionalization of the country's only mental hospital along with a plethora of mental health public policy innovations. The training locally of mental health professionals catalyzed institutional change. The mental health challenge for descendants of African people enslaved in Jamaica is to reverse the psychological impact of 500 years of European racism and colonial oppression and create a blueprint for the decolonization of GMH. The core innovations were the gradual downsizing and dismantling of the colonial mental hospital and the establishment of a novel community mental health initiative. The successful management of acute psychosis in open medical wards of general hospitals and a Diversion at the Point of Arrest Programme (DAPA) resulted in the reduction of stigma and the assimilation of mental health care into medicine in Jamaica. Successful decentralization has led to unmasking underlying social psychopathology and the subsequent development of primary prevention therapeutic programs based on psychohistoriographic cultural therapy and the Dream-A-World Cultural Therapy interventions. The Jamaican experience suggests that diversity in GMH must be approached not simply as a demographic fact but with postcolonial strategies that counter the historical legacy of structural violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multi-tiered states, subnational policymakers face a dilemma: on one hand, they must ensure the social legitimacy of their subnational unit by owning relevant policies including their potentially negative consequences; on the other, they have to manage their budget responsibly, which limits the scope of policy development. We study this dilemma in relation to social policies, by examining how the constituent units and municipalities in Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland deal with it, taking social assistance as an empirical example. Our analysis suggests that the combination of the federation's history and a multinational political context affects the incentives and the choices made by the policymakers regarding ownership and disownership of policy competencies in the field of social assistance. By analysing mechanisms that are likely to play out in multi-tiered welfare states, our article contributes to both the social policy and the political science literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of decentralization on community participation in formal organizations in post-communist Albania. Do community members take advantage of the new forms of local governance introduced with decentralization? What barriers to participation do they face? The study did not find any support for the theoretical expectation that decentralization promotes greater community engagement with formal organizations. Findings provide insights into how communist legacies and post-communist developments affect perceptions and attitudes toward formal organizations. We discuss several lessons on how to strengthen community participation in formal organizations and inform community-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisational changes of the public sector have led to increased decentralisation of public services. Only fully fledged financial accounting and reporting systems guarantee the consolidated information needed by executive and legislative bodies to fulfil their duties in financial management and the supervision of network entities. Consolidated financial statements may serve to increase accountability and transparency towards internal and external stakeholders. The article aims at giving an overview of consolidation approaches in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It will focus on the methods applied and the guiding principles followed to define the perimeter of consolidation. The analysis is carried out through a comparison of legal requirements and standards for consolidation, and the published consolidated financial statements, taking the International Public Sector Accounting Standards as a benchmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method of candidate selection used by parties can influence a number of outcomes related to party organization and representation. In the past decade, Japan’s political parties have increasingly experimented with an ‘open recruitment’ system for selecting new candidates for national elections, but the degree of centralization in the process varies by party. We use candidate and voter survey data to assess whether the new system of recruitment has resulted in intraparty differences in the policy positions of candidates, and their distance from party supporters and the median voter. We find evidence that the new candidate selection method has resulted in the nomination of more centrist and urban-inclined candidates, an indication of greater responsiveness to voters, and that they exhibit higher levels of policy cohesion than their counterparts selected through traditional methods. However, these differences depend on the degree of party centralization in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased complexity and decentralized operations of farmers in China add to the management and control difficulties of the agricultural supply chain (ASC). Using a supply chain simulation is an effective way to investigate the robustness of the supply chain while considering uncertainties in the environment. This study proposed colored Petri nets to model the ASC with uncertainty risks, and the simulation model was able to give directions regarding the maximization of system performance by running different simulation experiments. Then, robust metric models were set up in regard to the delivery time and quantity of the supply chain. The entire system performance was analyzed through using these metric models. Finally, robust optimal strategies were investigated in order to maintain the robustness of the ASC by selecting a suitable partner quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to understand the inclusion of citizens and other actors, the structure of incentives and accountability and service delivery outcomes in relation to participatory forms of urban governance in Indian cities. Under a decentralized set-up, the political nature and the poor attendance of people in participative forums seriously serve to undermine the constitutionally envisaged aim of ‘deepening democracy’. New forms of participatory arrangements have been dominated by the middle classes and/or powerful local leaders, resulting in the disempowerment of poorer members of the communities concerned. Patronage politics were engraved in these new forms, where the targeted delivery of services yielded high dividends for the patrons. All these factors necessitate the effective engagement of the excluded and disadvantageous section of people with the policies, politics and processes of participatory governance in Indian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many governments in Africa and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America have created new local government (LG) jurisdictions as part of their decentralization policies. However, most decentralization studies have focused on fiscal, political and administrative assignments between levels of government. Much less attention has been given to the number and size of LG jurisdictions. Often, these are considered to be an accident of history, but the reality is not so. This article pursues five propositions concerning the rationale for creating LG jurisdictions and examines their relevance in the Uganda context. The article concludes that creation of LG jurisdictions in Uganda neither conforms to the policy objective of bringing services closer to the people nor to promoting participatory democratic governance. Instead, the practice conforms to central government gerrymandering tactics of forging an electoral alliance with small jurisdictions and to extend neo-patrimonial networks to win votes in order to stay in power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article calls for research on new technologies at a level of analysis where what seems unchanged is salient and yet the newness of the new technology is given due consideration. It demonstrates the value of this approach by analyzing the decentralization of information systems wherein user-generated content eventually provided the unexpected winning solution for service providers who had long struggled in making their content attractive to the public at large. It identifies three stages in the decentralization process: hierarchy (top-down), open-hierarchy (top-down network, bottom-up content creation), and un-order (bottom-up). The analysis indicates that the Achilles’ heel of hierarchical systems is content creation and that creates pressure to move towards more open configurations that allow for user-generated content. The authors suggest that the framework presented in this article will prompt a more sophisticated analysis of the next new technology even if it does not have a similar development pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

German employment relations are characterized by a distinct dual system. First, working conditions and wages are determined by industry-level collective bargaining agreements. Second, on the establishment-level, the works council is responsible for employer–employee negotiations. However, since the mid-1980s, an increasing number of areas of regulation have been transferred from the industry- to the establishment-level using so-called opening clauses. The analysis in this article relies on rich German establishment data and reveals new insights into the institutional machinery of wage bargaining. While the existence of such clauses is related to higher wages, their application results in wage cuts of roughly the same size. The results also suggest that works councils, on average, are able to prevent the negative wage effects of opening clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Institutions figure prominently in explanations for why radical parties forego their agendas and subject themselves to democratic principles when included in politics. Analyzing the Prosperous Justice Party’s political trajectory across Indonesia’s multi-level government structures between 1999 and 2009, I show that the Islamist party has gradually adopted more moderate behavior not only in national politics, where institutional incentives are conducive to moderation, but also in local politics, where institutional incentives for moderation are weaker. The absence of a strong pattern of invariant association between institutional incentives and the moderation of party behavior points to the importance of party internal mechanisms in moderation processes. Based on primary sources and in-depth interviews with party members, I argue that socio-structural factors shape a party's internal power dynamics and thereby its long-term capacity to adopt more moderate behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1989, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) produced a blueprint for change titled ‘Enterprise based bargaining units: A better way of working’. To a great extent, this document and the corresponding shifts in business, government and union approaches to wage and conditions determination meant that Australia shifted from a centralised to a workplace system of bargaining. After more than two decades of enterprise bargaining, though, we ask the question: Is it still a better way of working? While the Business Council of Australia pointed to a panoply of advantages, we look at the other side of the argument. Decentralisation may be inefficient at a number of levels. First, there is the procedure of bargaining and the resources, expertise and time that is required. Second, there are the outcomes of bargaining, where despite a more individual focus, in many cases, outcomes demonstrate very little variation across enterprises. Finally, there are the collateral consequences of bargaining: conflict, reduced trust and disruption. Is enterprise bargaining still meeting the needs of the actors or has the model run its course? We consider two case studies of bargaining that demonstrate the limitations and advantages of enterprise bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drug services struggle to respond to the UK’s minority communities. Despite some success, suspicion persists. The UK government has advanced localism as a mechanism for supporting communities in developing systems which will meet their needs. Drawing upon three research projects, this article examines the needs of asylum seekers and refugees, the formation of communities and the barriers which leave individuals unnoticed. It explores the potential of localism to engage and support drug users in new communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Active inclusion reforms are radically transforming social policies in Europe. Consequently, the welfare state is changing from a social citizenship approach based on uniform benefits and services towards a system of individualized, targeted welfare intervention. Reforms therefore involve a fundamental re-organization of welfare provision. This transformation is usually discussed as a matter of national regimes for active inclusion and European diffusion of ‘good’ governance. However, active inclusion policies rely on a different social policy approach implying differentiated implementation processes. The implementation of active inclusion reforms can therefore only be understood by taking into account the local level. A series of local studies on French and German minimum income schemes raises questions about national accounts of these schemes, which depict a shift towards workfare. By contrast, this article reveals local variation between market-oriented, bureaucratic and participatory active inclusion strategies dependent on the distinct local governance arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we use logit models to examine the role of the major characteristics of a political party's organization, (1) legitimation, (2) penetration/diffusion, (3) charisma, (4) ideology and (5) centralization/decentralization, in the institutionalization of parties in both pre-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian national parliamentary elections. The article begins by situating this research in the context of the theoretical and empirical literature on party origins, organizational development and institutionalization, in general, and party formation theories in post-communist countries, specifically. The impact of organizational features on electoral success or failure is analysed for 24 parties. The models correctly predicted both the successful and failed parties in the 2007 Russian Duma election and offer reasons for the apparent floating party system in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the effects of the European Social Fund (ESF) on domestic activation policies in the three Belgian regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. We argue that over the last decade the ESF has had a catalytic impact, first on the innovation of activation instruments, second on the governance of employment policies and third on policy framing. We explain how three different mechanisms (leverage, conditionality and learning) generate these effects and how they can account for a differential influence in different regions. We conclude by summarizing our research findings and framework, suggesting its usefulness for analyzing other domestic settings and European policy instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Spanish polity has made the transition in the last three decades from a centralized system to a quasi-federal one characterized as having features of a shared power model with overlapping powers among levels of government. The new system has implied a change in the functions of central government from service delivery to planning and policy design. Enquiring beyond the hierarchy-non-hierarchy role of central government of intergovernmental studies, this article applies control concepts of oversight, mutuality, competition and contrived randomness from grid & group cultural theory in order to empirically examine the evolution of the role of central government in intergovernmental relations. Although the institutional features of the Spanish polity are expected to foster cooperative intergovernmental relations and a brokerage role of central government fostering mutual (peer) relations of the regions, the text suggests that institutional praxis and the 'youth' of the Spanish decentralization process are accountable for the direction taken by the Spanish polity. The system is characterized by central government still embedded in the inertia of oversight (with examples of fostering mutuality at times and in some policy fields) and by the regions seeking unilateralism through contrived randomness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consolidation of public sector budgets, fulfillment of fiscal policy requirements and reforms in the provision of public services have made cooperation increasingly important on the international stage. From the perspective of agency theory, this has led to greater information asymmetries and has altered reporting requirements. However, representative empirical studies concerning the provision of information on the Internet on the types of cooperation under which public activities are performed are still not available. A census conducted for 498 websites at local, state and federal government levels for Germany, Austria and Switzerland shows that the reporting requirements have not been met in practice. At the local level in Germany, of the 414 towns with more than 30,000 inhabitants, cooperation reports were available online for 143, which corresponds to 34.5 percent. During the period of the investigation, no cooperation report was provided on the Internet by any town in Austria or Switzerland. Four main recommended actions are formulated for practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the roots of social capital formation in Zambézia, Mozambique, using data from the fieldwork and introducing the analytical framework of social knowledge, and examines the issues of decentralization in societies with low stocks of social capital. The case of Zambézia suggests that traditions of collective action for common goods and good local leadership can be a key to enhance stocks of social capital. To overcome inequality and the so-called local capture problems in societies with low stocks of social capital, alternative communication methods, public-civil society partnership and more intensified allocation of researchers in the fi eld are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Danish model represents one of the most solidly-based industrial relation (IR) systems in Europe, and is today internationally regarded as an exemplar owing to its effective combination of flexibility and security in labour-market regulation. But in an increasingly globalized world even this model has come under pressure. The pressure comes from three different directions: (I) from EU regulation; (2) from the national political system; and, (3) from the parties at enterprise level. The organized or centralized decentralization of the collective bargaining system that was seen as the answer to the increased competitive pressure of internationalization would appear to have reached its limit and to have been replaced by a trend towards multi-level regulation. Whether this trend will lead to renewal or erosion of the Danish model will be revealed over the coming years. There are signs that indicate the model's continued robustness, but there are also signs of weakening. The outcome is not only of national interest, but also has international relevance, since Denmark can be seen as the IR model par excellence. As a critical case the development of the Danish model is an indicator of the traditional IR system's future prospects in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 25 years neoliberal philosophies have increasingly informed labour market policies in Australia that have led to increasing levels of wage decentralization. The most recent industrial relations changes aim to decentralize wage setting significantly further than has previously been the case. We argue that this is problematic for gender equity as wage decentralization will entrench rather than challenge the undervaluation of feminized work. In this article we provide an overview of key neoliberal industrial relations policy changes pertinent to gender equity and examine the current state of gender equity in the labour market. Results show that women's labour force participation has steadily increased over time but that a number of negative trends exclude women with substantial caring responsibilities from pursuing a career track. The implications of increasing levels of wage deregulation are that gender wage inequality and the potential for discrimination will grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most European countries trade union membership is declining. A contributory factor to this decline has been the failure of trade unions to recruit new members in marketized services at the same rate as members were being lost from areas of traditionally high unionization. This article examines the approaches adopted by trade unions to raise unionization rates in marketized services and identifies some elements of organizational change that might improve the current situation. Central to these reforms is the re-establishment of articulated trade union structures and activity, requiring greater organizational concentration and scope, on one hand, and decentralization of resources and activity on the other. Pivotal is also to develop agendas that accommodate heterogeneity and the needs of individual members and particular groups, at the same time highlighting the interdependence between individual self-realization and collective regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author explores the wider background of the debates on decentralization and on the role of media in sociopolitical and cultural legitimization in France. He believes that decentralization has resulted to the increase of cultural homogenization and to the continued dominance of metropolitan since it is the cultural critics of the Parisian media. He also discusses the concept of cultural policy as a form of sponsorship.