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Automation and artificial intelligence, with their skill-biased characteristic, were estimated to benefit high-skilled workers while displacing the low-skilled. Their uneven distribution of technological dividends and costs led to calls for policy interventions. This paper aims to answer: ‘What kind of government and business intervention can deliver needed skills to large parts of the population?’ in facing automation challenges to labor markets by investigating Switzerland’s vocational education and training (VET) policy. This paper identifies its policy eco-system and argues that, while historically – embedded particularities are hard to replicate, the Swiss case still inspires us with cross-country implications. These implications are underpinned by a solid stock of social capital, which enables behavioral internalization and anticipated reciprocity. Viewing social capital as constructive rather than endowed, this paper argues that building social capital is a viable and practical approach to VET policy learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the diverse approaches of EU members' integration with the EU through modelling, and assesses the applicability of each model to Taiwan-China relations. Building upon two variables: 'the association with national identity and reorientation or not', and 'being the leading or founding member or not' four EU members' integrative models stand out. The German model is proved to be the most integrationist, followed by the Finnish and the French models. The UK model appears to be the least committed. Due to sovereignty controversies, the visionary German and French models are not applicable to Taiwan-China integrations and the prospects are for the pragmatic Finnish model at best, and the UK model at worst. These modelling outcomes can then explain why the growing economic integration between the two sides has not produced spillover effects into the political arena. This paper therefore argues that it would be in China's interest to make Taiwan an equal leading player in Taiwan-China integrations, and to transform its 'one-China policy' from the current political and sovereignty contents to a cultural and value-laden concept. Among the theories being examined, (neo)realist-constructivism demonstrates more applicability than two mainstream integration theories - neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of policy-making by the Blair government on the issue of the UK's European Monetary Union (EMU)/Eurozone membership. The Blair government inherited a 'wait and see' policy from its predecessor, and introduced its own variations in the detail of this policy. In particular, five economic tests were invented and placed at the centre of EMU policy-making, in order to depoliticise the political risks during a general election and referendum while also serving the needs of party management. This paper applies four well-known theories of policy-making to the EMU policy case: the broker state pluralist model, instrumental Marxism, the core executive model and rational choice theory. This paper demonstrates that each model possesses a degree of applicability, but argues that instrumental Marxism seems the most appropriate theoretical model among those examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]