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This article examines the impact of the two world wars on welfare legislation in 16 western countries. We use Poisson regressions to test our hypothesis that war was a catalyst of welfare legislation, especially in countries that were heavily exposed to the dreadful effects of war. By welfare legislation, we mean the inaugural adoption and major reforms across four programmes (old age and disability benefits, sickness and maternity benefits, unemployment compensation and family allowances). Our findings suggest that both world wars are key factors for explaining the timing of comprehensive welfare reforms and outweigh the significance of other factors such as regime type or level of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, offences considered 'impossible' of commission have been problematic for the law of attempts. There is no consensus as to whether there is a legally relevant difference between the concepts of 'factual impossibility' and 'legal impossibility'. This is significant because it possesses implications for legal and moral responsibility, and also because it highlights uncertainty in the law. This article examines how impossibility has been treated in criminal attempt cases. An analysis of case law from three Commonwealth countries, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia was conducted. The results indicate that inconsistency in the approach towards impossibility attempts is a consequence of differing doctrinal frameworks. Unlike New Zealand, Canada and Australia generally adopt a subjective approach; not surprisingly they rely on consequentialist rather than retributivist rationales of punishment. Despite being criticized as an area of law based on 'abstract conceptions,' this study demonstrates that impossibility cases raise broader social policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of egalitarianism on the development and reformation of imperial honours systems in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as their subsequent impact on honours policies in Great Britain. Topics include damehoods and knighthoods, national identities, potential conflicts between democracy and hereditary titles, public debates about titles, and the views of officials such as the politicians John Howard, Simon Upton, and Sir James Parr.

This paper builds on the insights of Sawer and Laycock (2009) to explore similarities in the use of populist discourse by former Australian Prime John Howard and current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While Sawer and Laycock label this discourse ‘market populism’ and focus on economic issues, here it is argued that Howard and Harper's populism is better understood as ‘mainstream populism’ due to the equal importance of sociocultural issues in their discourses. To demonstrate this, the treatment of issues such as immigration, multiculturalism, the culture wars, criminal justice, and childcare is considered. It is further suggested that such populist policies were used to satisfy rival wings of their respective parties – neoliberals and social conservatives – that do not always share the same priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines public concerns associated with a rise in the privatization of prisons. It is stated that private prisons are generally owned by for-profit corporations that may benefit from the imprisonment of individuals, and that these corporations are also not accountable to the public as governments are. Focus is on private prisons established in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., three countries noted to share features of social policy organization, such as federalist governments and common-law systems.

Using a ‘most-similar-systems’ design, several major theories of welfare state development are shown to have some weaknesses in comparing the Australian and Canadian welfare states during the Golden Age. I offer instead a party competition theory, with the degree of party system polarisation as a key variable. Located in a highly polarised party system, the Australian Liberals adopted a directional social policy strategy and further shifted the Australian welfare state in favour of the middle class. Located in a less polarised party system, the Canadian Liberals adopted a more proximity-based brokerage strategy of social policy and co-opted the left's popular social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elders in Canada, Japan and Australia are an increasing proportion of the population. This research focused on (1) the expected familial roles for care provision of frail elderly and (2) the relationship of expected familial roles to social policy toward elder care. Using a case study method, analysis of government documents such as annual reports, white papers, and Web sites was undertaken. Results show that elders in Australia and Canada desire independence from offspring, whereas filial responsibility for elders in Japan is a cultural ideal. In all three countries, societal expectations fit the current federal governmental policies of shifting the burden of care to families, but families in need find limited societal assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the welfare state of the six major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States. It offers empirical evidence from a multicountry set of studies and discuss the methodology behind the empirical studies of the six major OECD countries. According to the author social welfare expenditures were self-financed, and could not have been a source of fiscal deficits or a drag on growth.

As a result of post-war migration Australia has become a religiously plural, multicultural society. Following a careful examination of recent changes in the religious demography of Australia, a comparison of Australia with Canada and New Zealand, and a discussion of the nature of religiously plural, multicultural societies, six factors (three demographic and three social structural) are identified as key in reducing the likelihood of religious intergroup conflict in Australia: The relatively small size of the minority groups vis-à-vis the dominant but nearly equal Catholics and Anglicans, the lack of overlap between ethnic and religious difference, the lack of ghettoization, the fact that religious difference is not politicized, a long history of sorting out intergroup conflict through legislation and courts, and the existence of effective organizations promoting positive intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a purposive sample of 25 interviews supplemented by secondary source material, this comparative study explores the options available to elderly immigrants in two quite similar countries to achieve social security in their old age. The focus is the culturally determined perspectives and practices of aging Italian-born and Indian-born immigrants in the context of public and private sector social welfare policies and provisions in Australia and Canada. Government transfers, occupational superannuation, tax-deductible personal savings, housing, and formal and informal supports are discussed. What is important to the sense of social security of the older people and how well-off or disadvantaged they seem to be are among the questions raised. The design affords an opportunity to test the complex combination of cross-national and cross-cultural comparison. In the certainty that the income deficiencies of today's elderly immigrants cannot be remedied easily or quickly enough to benefit those affected, intervention strategies can be aimed at expanding ethno-specific community supports and quality residential care; such a direction is supported by assessment of service availability in relation to estimates of aging among particular foreign-born immigrant groups. Suggestions are made for future research at the levels of theory and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst quantitive and 'positivist' modes of comparative social policy can reveal significant structural factors involved in the making of welfare states, they too often ignore the role of human agency, intention and political processes. A critical-historical comparative case study of the introduction of 'child endowment' and of 'family allowances' respectively in Australia (1941) and in Canada (1944) reminds us of the interplay between structural constraints and human agency in the history of welfare states. Detailed analysis suggests that institutionalised arrangements in Australia after 1905 to resolve capital-labour conflict via arbitral and wage fixation mechanisms put the question of the adequacy of wages in meeting family needs and with it proposals for child endowment onto the public agenda as early as 1920. In Canada the absence of such mechanisms, and alternative welfare arrangements to deal with family welfare, combined to keep such proposals off the public agenda. After 1939 the development of 'war economies' in Australia and Canada created common contradictions for governments, trying to maintain both industrial peace and anti-inflation policies, which the introduction of family allowances in both countries were attempts to resolve. Consideration is also given to a range of political problems and contexts in both countries which this particular policy measure attempted to deal with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Evidence on labor immigration and capital inflows to three high labor-immigration economies (Australia, Canada, the United States) is examined over periods ranging from 1820-1870 through to 1991. Data show a close association between capital flows and immigration, although causality implications are ambiguous. For the United States, the relation between factor flows is more complex than for the other countries, but flows to the United States have influenced those to smaller economies. All three nations have been subjected to common immigrant push factors through to 1930-1950 but, since World War II, linkages between factor flows have altered. Post-World War II U.S. immigration restrictions have become more important as a global determinant of labor flows, with factor flow policymaking becoming increasingly internationally interdependent.", (excerpt)

"New Zealand's immigration policies and trends since 1945 are compared with those of Canada and Australia. For most of this period, Australia has pursued the more expansive immigration policy while Canada and New Zealand have tended to link immigration intakes to fluctuations in labor demand. All three countries initially discriminated against non-European immigrants but gradually moved towards nondiscriminatory policies based on similar selection criteria and means of assessment. New Zealand has traditionally been more cautious than both Canada and Australia in terms of how many immigrants it accepted and from what sources, but it has recently followed the other two in raising immigration targets encouraging migration from nontraditional sources, particularly Asian countries. Historical, global and national factors are drawn upon to explain the degree of convergence between these three societies.", (excerpt)

"This is a short comparative overview of the present immigration policies of certain Western countries which, as regards questions of migration, are comparable. It is based on data provided by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in Vienna.... It covers the following European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For comparative purposes it also covers three countries overseas which are regarded as typical countries of immigration: Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A.", (excerpt)

"Canada and Australia share many similar post-war demographic characteristics. Both countries have experienced declining rates of natural population growth and adopted increasingly restrictive attitudes towards immigration during the 1970s in the face of rising unemployment. However, both countries have accepted relatively large numbers of political refugees, particularly from south-east Asia, and both have signalled that they intend to raise their migrant intake quotas despite continuing high levels of unemployment.", (excerpt)