Advanced Industrial Societies Research Articles

A Productive Decade in the Tradition of Canadian Sociology

Canadian sociology is now a very diversified field. Important studies or books have been published in most major areas, including the new developing ones: social networks, consumption, social capital, gay studies, communication studies, and sports, among others. On the one hand, it is interesting to note that a majority of empirical studies now take gender into account and make a clear distinction between men and women whenever it is pertinent. Looking at the number of books published recently one cannot say that the life experience of women has been ignored. On the other hand, the situation is different when one considers national duality, English Canada and Quebec. Many studies consider the latter, but a certain number continue to present the whole of Canada as a normative unit overlooking the differences, which may be important in some cases. Language has always been an important barrier which has, to some extent, created two different sociologies in Canada, even when taking into account that francophone scholars refer to their English-speaking colleagues more frequently. Compared to France, the United States, Great Britain or Germany -- countries of reference for many English and French speaking sociologists -- social theory is less well developed in Canada. In English Canada, there is no equivalent to Fernand Dumont or Michel Freitag, two great thinkers who have built important theories. In this short contribution, I will refer to seven books and I would also like to include at least four others to this list. Of course other studies should also be added as the nineties produced a large number of excellent publications. Canadian sociologists continue to express a strong interest in stratification, and especially in class analysis, a topic privileged since the publication of the seminal work of John Porter in 1965. I have therefore chosen some books in this field, especially important for English speaking sociology. Canadian sociologists did not participate in the international research program initiated by John Golthorpe on social class in advanced industrial societies (the Casmin Project), but a team of researchers was involved in another project -- which adopted an approach closer to a Marxist one -- directed by Eric Olin Wright. Two Canadian sociologists, Wallace Clement and John Myles, were involved in this last research enterprise where they analysed the role of class and gender in the stratification process in Canada and in other developed countries. The results of this research, Relations of Ruling (1994), have suggested that new relations of ruling were constructed around class and gender in all advanced capitalist societies. The feminization of class structure has had an important impact on the worker's claims and work issues, and it brought new issues to the table: pay equity, child care, paid leaves of absence to care for family, and policies against sexual harassment. It also transformed the material interest of the working class and the conditions under which the capital-labour wage relation is negotiated. Among many interesting results, I will mention two findings. First, their comparative analysis showed that Nordic families (including Canadian ones) tend to be less patriarchal in terms of decision-making. Second, postindustrialism in Canada has brought a break with the industrial past and nation-specific class attitudes have been either resilient in the face of, or reinforced by, postindustrialism. Social class was probably the key concept of Anglo-Canadian sociology during the seventies and eighties, as we can see in reading the table of content of the two major journals of sociology published in English. However, is social class still a useful concept in explaining social phenomena? Today the answer is not as clear. For example, research done by Statistics Canada showed that wage polarization or growing labour market insecurity have grown within, not between, social classes. …

Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary France: A “Silent Counterrevolution”?

Postmaterialist theory (PMT) challenges Lipset and Rokkan's freezing hypothesis by arguing that conflict over noneconomic values is transforming the political sociology of advanced industrial societies. Hardly studied is PMT's claim that support for the contemporary far Right stems from a reaction against the social and moral libertarianism of postwar generations. An analysis of cross-time data on the class, generational, and ideological profiles of voting for a French far Right party (the Front national) provides weak support for PMT. The discussion focuses on class and religious cleavages in postwar France and the discrepancy between voter attitudes and party platforms.

The point of production: work environment in advanced industrial societies

How do science and politics interact in the definition of work-related injury and disease? How is worker safety affected by the overall power relations within society? The world today faces bewildering new choices about technology use, the organization of work, and methods of production. Far from taking place in a vacuum, these choices have life-and-death implications for working people and communities. This book integrates theory, data, and case examples to analyze workplace health and safety battles and the roles of such key players as labour, public health professionals, management, regulatory bodies, and the state. It examines the point of production where raw materials are fashioned into products situating issues of occupational and environmental health within their political, economic and social context. Providing an alternative to classical economic explanations, the authors also take a fresh look at the point of production: what is the rationale that guides industrial decision-making, and how can we ameliorate its human costs?

Explaining Deindustrialization: Globalization, Failure, or Success?

Although sociologists have expressed growing interest in globalization, they have devoted little sustained empirical attention to the many claims made in its name. I focus on the link that has been drawn between globalization and the deindustrialization of the advanced industrial societies. To examine this, I employ a pooled time-series of cross-sections data set that combines observations on 18 OECD nations across the 1968-1992 period. Fixed-effects regression models that control for unmeasured country-specific effects reveal support for arguments that implicate foreign direct investment and North-South trade in the declining percentage of the labor force employed in manufacturing in the OECD countries. Regression results also show that deindustrialization across this period is largely explained by a model that combines an attention to the post-Golden Age troubles of northern manufacturing with classic generalizations of the process of development. Interpretation of the empirical findings is tempered by an exercise in counterfactual history, which reveals that deindustrialization would have been considerable in these countries even if the upswings in direct investment and southern imports had not occurred or if the performance of the manufacturing sector had been stronger

Explaining Deindustrialization: Globalization, Failure, Or Success?

Although sociologists have expressed growing interest in globalization, they have devoted little sustained empirical attention to the many claims made in its name. I focus on the link that has been drawn between globalization and the deindustrialization of the advanced industrial societies. To examine this, I employ a pooled time-series of cross-sections data set that combines observations on 18 OECD nations across the 1968–1992 period. Fixed-effects regression models that control for unmeasured country-specific effects reveal support for arguments that implicate foreign direct investment and North-South trade in the declining percentage of the labor force employed in manufacturing in the OECD countries. Regression results also show that deindustrialization across this period is largely explained by a model that combines an attention to the post-Golden Age “troubles” of northern manufacturing with classic generalizations of the process of development. Interpretation of the empirical findings is tempered by an exercise in counterfactual history, which reveals that deindustrialization would have been considerable in these countries even if the upswings in direct investment and southern imports had not occurred or if the performance of the manufacturing sector had been stronger.

Communication and awareness about dying in the 1990s.

Since the 1960s communication and awareness about dying in modern western societies have been topics for debate, with a considerable amount of literature on the need for open communication and the strategies which can be used by health professionals to improve their communication with patients facing a terminal prognosis. Despite the difficulties of comparing studies using different methodologies and the additional problems of ascertaining patients' knowledge and awareness about their impending deaths, the trend is clear. In advanced industrial societies there is increasing evidence that doctors have shifted from a policy of 'withholding' to a policy of 'revealing' to the patient his or her terminal prognosis. This change in medical practice is further supported by other data which show an increase in the percentage of those patients who were aware they were dying from chronic diseases, especially cancer. However, despite the perceived trend towards open disclosure of the patient's terminal illness, recent studies have suggested that in their daily encounters with dying patients health workers employ 'conditional' rather than 'full open disclosure'. Such moderating strategies in discussing the patient's prognosis may be employed despite open awareness of a patient's prognosis. This paper examines this apparent paradox by analysing the complex tensions and conflicts of such communication through a discussion of existing literature on modes of communication and patient awareness.

The Effect of Economic Priorities on the Measurement of Value Change: New Experimental Evidence

The Euro-Barometer values battery has provided much of the empirical evidence for the thesis that a shift from materialist to postmaterialist values has occurred in advanced industrial societies over the past two decades. It has been argued, however, that this widely used instrument is seriously flawed because of its sensitivity to current economic conditions. We present data from experiments in Canada and Germany that tested the performance of the values battery in an era of joblessness. Analyses reveal that (1) substituting an unemployment statement for the standard inflation statement in the battery has major consequences for the classification of respondents as materialist or postmaterialist and (2) answers to the battery are conditioned by the interaction between its content and respondents' economic issue concerns. These findings support the argument that much of the shift from materialist to postmaterialist values recorded by the Euro-Barometer since the early 1980s is a measurement artifact.

The Hare and the Tortoise: Dead in the Heat? Cross-National Differences and Knowledge Gaps in Environmental Policy

Lundqvist gave us the memorable metaphor of the hare and the tortoise to compare national policy styles relating to environment (Lundqvist, 1980; Richardson and Watts, 1999[ 1985]). Cross-national comparisons can deliver useful lessons on environmental policy successes as well as on relevant attitudes, values, and behaviors. However, both policy instruments and attitudes require careful contextual analysis if we are to understand the conditions under which they can be transferred. And we must ask, with Caldwell ( 1999), whether research can produce the necessary knowledge in time to help us effectively address the climacteric. And will such research provide answers to problems of global environmental change? Caldwell's title itself encapsulates a range of key challenges to environmental social science. Humanity raises the question of differences within and between nations in attitude and behavior to the environment. Destined touches two nerves: the role of heredity?whether we are epigenetically programmed in ways which will frustrate rational, collective strategies forthe global environment?and of faith, or organized religions, in understanding the degree of individuals' ability or will to modify their environmental behavior. Self-destruct poses the question of how, and what, we destroy, provoking a search for criteria for identifying the authentic human self, and the threats to it. Will a humanity mutated by the effects of hormone concentrations in food and water or by genetic engineering be worthy of the name? And it raises the question of the extent to which the climacteric is the collective responsibility of ail humanity, or primarily the responsibility of advanced industrial societies, and the elites in these societies. Taking a cross-national comparative perspective rooted in Europe, I shall attempt to identify some critical gaps in our knowledge of the attitude-behavior relationship; to draw some lessons from what we know about environmental policy successes; and, finally, to indicate some sources of hope for global environmental governance. Taking consilience (Wilson, 1998) as a metaphor, we do need to map the gaps in the unity of environmental knowledge. One key gap in our understanding of the attitude-behavior relationship in environmental policy (notwithstanding the excellent efforts of authors such as Gardner and Stern, 1996) is the response of the individual to the array of opportunities to behave in an environmentally benign manner. From the bottom-up perspective, the individual citizen may engage in environmentally benign behaviors at three levels: personal conduct, such as energy conservation, recycling, and mobility choices; economic behavior, such as green consumerism, ethical investment, and consumer boycotts; and political action in environmentalist groups or political parties. The opportunities will depend, respectively, on public infrastructure provision, with availability, safety, and convenience key determinants of use; market opportunity structures, including green consumer and ethical investment choices; and political opportunity structures, including social movement and political party activism, opportunities to participate in environmental decision-making, or to challenge decisions in the courts. This complex of decision situations facing the individual in any locality or nation is important both for its informal educational effect?to see an opportunity is to be reminded of the environmental issue?and because we need a better understanding of the role of functional equivalents across nations. A related knowledge gap is in our understanding of the behavior of political leaders. The polls continue to show that Nicholas Watts gained an MSc in Environmental Psychology at Surrey and DPhil in Political Science from the Free University (FU) Berlin, having studied languages and psychology at undergraduate level. He has taught at Surrey; Bristol Polytechnic; Free University, Berlin; University of California, Davis and is presently Principal Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, University of North London. He was previously Senior Research Fellow at the Environmental Policy Research Unit at the Science Center Berlin (WZB) and Research Director of the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society. He has been Visiting/Associate Fellow at the University of Strathclyde (Department of Government); University of Warwick (European Public Policy Institute); University of Lancaster (Center for the Study of Environmental Change); Max Planck Institute for Education and Human Development, Berlin; University College London (Center for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment). His work focuses on interdisciplinary cross-national comparative analysis of environmental awareness, movements, politics, and policy, mainly in the European Union countries and Ukraine. He is a member of the Governing Board and Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, an Executive Committee Member of the UK Council for Graduate Education, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Correspondence to School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Environmental and Social Studies, University of North London, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London N5 2AD, United Kingdom (E-mail: n.watts@unl.ac.uk).

Wage-Setting Institutions and Pay Inequality in Advanced Industrial Societies

The distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies. In this paper, institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992. The most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage-setting, i.e., whether wages are set at the level of the individual, the plant, the industry, or the entire private sector. The impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private-sector wage-setting. The concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter. After controlling for wage-setting institutions, other variables such as the governing coalition, the size of government, international openness, and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact. Economic, political, and norm-based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed.

Immigrants, Labor Markets, and the State, a Comparative Approach: France and the United States, 1880-1930

Immigration, by its transnational nature, lends itself to comparisons. By focusing on the degree of integration of migrants into the national societies in which they settle, scholars can establish national typologies showing different patterns of assimilation. Historians and sociologists of immigration to France, for instance, often oppose the American model to the French one, thus establishing two dissimilar patterns of integration into advanced industrial and postindustrial societies.' To French readers, the United States is given as the archetype of a society formed by immigration. There, they learn, assimilation is accomplished smoothly but incompletely. Immigrants become Americans while maintaining strong ties with their cultures of origin: Americanization and ethnicization are two correlated products of their integration into American life. Immigrants and their descendants contribute to the formation of a multicultural society in which each ethnic group can rightly claim equal representation.2

Public Goods and the Politics of Segregation: An Analysis and Cross-National Comparison

Despite the persistent inequality of advanced industrial society, traditional class politics has receded as an influence on policy. One reason stems from the divergent ways consumption and property interests linked to residence qualify the support of privileged citizens for policies to provide public goods. My analysis of these spatial influences focuses on localized provision of urban environmental amenities in nine midsized urban service centers scattered across France, Germany, and the United States. I first separate out analytically distinct hypotheses about effects from neighborhood dominance, residential exclusion, decentralized settlement and jurisdictional opportunities on political and market interests among this group. Cross-national testing then validates these hypotheses across the variety of national states, public policies, political economies, and political cultures in the sample.

New Wave Sixties Historiography

New Wave Sixties Historiography David Farber (bio) Doug Rossinow. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. x + 500 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $32.50. Over the last ten years (1988–1998) several books that began as dissertations have been published on “The Sixties”—a period, like the Jacksonian Era, with no dates certain. These books have begun to develop a historiography, as well as fill in a history. Not surprisingly, given both memory (especially the memory of many a dissertation committee member) and mass media representation, one of the most vital of the new historiographical debates focuses on the development and character of the protest movements that animated the era. Despite the call of some older historians for a Sixties history that de-centers white, leftist student activists, the New Left, in particular, has captured the interest of some of the best young scholars. 1 The book at hand, Doug Rossinow’s The Politics of Authenticity (based on his Johns Hopkins dissertation) is among the best scholarly accounts yet written on the development of the New Left. Looking back at some of the early histories of the New Left it is obvious to see why post-Cold War era graduate students find the need for a new historical accounting. As a way to set the historiographic stage, I’ll pick on one of those older works that is still referenced in most U.S. history survey textbooks, The Movement: A History of the New Left, 1959–1972 (1974), by the eminent historian Irwin Unger, with the assistance of Debi Unger. As a first crack at making history out of the Sixties New Left, Unger’s book was a tour de force. Based on a bare handful of sources, notably the national publications of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and a few surveys, and focusing on the Bay area (mainly the Berkeley campus) and New York City (mainly Columbia University), Unger sets out a number of claims in clear and engaging prose. First is the claim advanced by the book’s very title, that “the Movement” is the same singular thing as “the New Left.” The New Left—the “movement”—is then identified as “young men and women who felt more intensely than most the subtle existential oppression imposed by modern America. . . . They felt that they had learned to see through the shiny [End Page 298] surface of life in an advanced industrial society to the ugly gray underbelly.” 2 In addition, Unger notes that the New Left was “composed predominately of well-educated, middle class youth . . . only middle class college students could afford radicalism.” 3 Further, he emphasizes that the group was white and that the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement “helped shape the New Left” but that “racial injustice in America . . . was—along with philistinism, cultural conformity, sexual puritanism, social hypocrisy, economic inequality, and international opportunism—one of those social deficiencies that always exist in varying degrees and can always be used to indict existing society.” 4 In other words, racial injustice and African American activism played no special role in the development of the New Left. Finally, Unger makes almost no mention of religious motives (nor does he mention the large percentage of Jews in the early New Left), and his two pages on the role of women and the development of the women’s movement is highlighted by this attention grabbing claim: “Many Movement women, in fact, were little more than camp followers of the sort that always tag along after men engaged in a dangerous or glamorous calling.” 5 Ouch. Rossinow’s case study of a “‘new’ political left” in Austin, Texas contests key aspects of Unger’s frame. It also compliments, while complicating some of his major claims. In some ways Rossinow’s work simply speaks to different issues and suggests altogether different ways to think about the historical trajectory of leftist politics in Cold War America. Finally, comparing Rossinow’s 1998 dissertation book—written in the era when epistemologically, “there was no King in Israel”—and the eminent Unger’s 1974 publication, written by an advocate (if...

Slipping through the Cracks: The Origins of Aided Self-help Housing, 1918-53

The history of aided self-help housing, that is, of housing built with state assistance by families for their own use, is largely unknown. There is a widespread misapprehensionthat such a policy was first discussed and practised during the 1960s, in the context of the Third World. In fact, it was adopted in the Soviet Union, and in many European nations and cities, notably Vienna and Stockholm, after the First World War. During the 1930s it was incorporated into homestead schemes, and praised, on both sides of the Atlantic. Then, for a time after the Second World War, it was widely debated and adopted in many of the more advanced industrial societies. Unlike public housing or market-oriented policies, aided self-help never had strong political or ideological associations. In one sense this was a strength: at different places and times, it was endorsed from all sides of the political spectrum. In other respects its detachment from parties and ideologies was a weakness. It was not promoted by any political constituency, and aroused opposition from the building industry and trades. At best aided self-help has sometimes filled, and at the worst it has slipped through, the cracks in state housing policy.

Tailor-made environmental governance: on the relevance of the covenanting process

The application of Voluntary Agreements (VAs) in environmental policy has changed from a gentlemen's (sic) agreement, via an emphasis on the agreement as a new policy instrument, toward an innovative governance strategy. This strategy reflects a new perception of the manageable society, customized to the present state of the environment and state – market relations in advanced industrial societies. Its main characteristic is the bottom-line of consensual techniques combined with regulatory techniques. Based particularly on Dutch experiences with both environmental covenants and long-term agreements on energy efficiency improvement, this paper sketches the elements of the strategy. It is also shown that the agreement itself is of less importance than the covenanting process. Practical experiences show that a well structured dialogue between public and private parties creates opportunities for an effective joint policy undertaking. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

The Marginal, the Equitable, and the Unparalleled: Lady Dedlock's Case in Dickens's Bleak House

The Marginal, the Equitable, and the Unparalleled: Lady Dedlock’s Case in Dickens’s Bleak House Dieter Paul Polloczek (bio) I Art about ethnicity or race, about class, about gender and sexuality—in short, art that reflects, transforms, or engenders the shifting phantom of human identity—has been advanced by many as the crucial work for our time. In the sixties and seventies, historicism that embodied the contradictions of its culture was collapsing. During the eighties, the “theory canon” in humanities and art departments was in decline because it failed to construct a rationale especially for literary curricula. Contemporary criticism in the nineties has so far focused on the various relations between components of cultures. Among those components, literature and art are considered to play an even more marginal role than they used to. Critics have shifted their attention toward the phenomenon of marginalization as such, for never have so many assumed that the hegemonic “othering” of minorities is an important factor in fashioning dominant or mainstream modes of culture. An increased degree of inclusivity has paradoxically made it even harder for minority groups to articulate their unconstitutional and unethical disadvantages by means of complaint, appeal, or resistance. 1 For almost a decade, the most committed proponents of cultural criticism in advanced industrial societies have been investigating the links between inclusivity and marginalization. These links often serve as ambiguous signs and symptoms of the networking structures of global communication links. In The Mode of Information and The Second Media Age, Mark Poster has explained the contradictory nature of interactivity in these structures. 2 Sometimes it speaks through a radically participatory democracy, sometimes through a covertly neocolonialist buyout of environmental globalism. As a result, criticism in the nineties has predominantly attempted to illuminate and articulate possibilities for the notion of the marginal. However, some critics tend to overestimate the impact of minority [End Page 453] literature on the culture of which it is a part. While it is certainly both possible and desirable to specify the differences such texts are making in terms of crossing and shifting cultural boundaries, these differences must constantly be defined in contradistinction to established literary crossovers. Critics pleading for the cultural relevance of minority texts are thus pressured to reduce the established to the hegemonic. In On the Margins of Modernism, Chana Kronfield has persuasively argued, with an emphasis on Hebrew modernism, that minority literature competes with more established (but perhaps nowadays equally unread) texts for the very acknowledgment of marginalization. 3 Moreover, minority literature has to contend with nonminority forms of making differences. 4 Essentially, minority literature competes for better ways to expose, if not prevent, the damages that this very type of competition generally inflicts on the marginalized. Consider for example some of Toni Morrison’s novels, described by many as a supreme illustration and critique of consumer capitalism’s hegemonic construction of subjectivity. Since the “culture wars” of the late eighties and early nineties, these novels have been making their way from the margins of culture both into our curricula and onto the best-sellers’ bookshelves. Thus, the “minority” aspect of literature—as opposed to its articulation of the marginal—is often overrated, particularly with regard to the transformative impact it may have on the hegemonic features of cultures to which it relates. In cases where that aspect is in fact overrated, a danger arises lest the notion of minorities becomes reified as representative of the contradictions endemic to advanced industrial societies, that is to say, at exactly the point where inclusivity and marginalization connect. This is a danger because then minority literature would assume a role similar to the one established literature was said to play in times of organic historicism: it would be expected to encompass cultural contradictions while participating in them. More important, minority literature is only one single instance of what the constraints and possibilities of marginality can mean for literature. The marginality of modern literature in general emerges from its relation to more socially relevant ways of organizing and transforming knowledge. As I indicated before, this particular type of marginality can be said to derive from the fast-changing conditions of literature’s inclusion in modern cultural processes...

Immigration and German Cities: Exploring National Policies and Local Outcomes

The presence of sizable foreign-born populations (which include citizensand non-citizens) in advanced industrial societies is the result ofnational policies on immigration, refugees, and labor migration. Theconsequences of these policies, however, are most visible at the locallevel, where newcomers work, settle, and raise their families. Whilenot all immigrants live in cities, they have been particularly concentratedin urban environments. Thus, it is hardly surprising that manyof the socioeconomic, cultural, and political issues and problemsassociated with immigration and the process of immigrant settlementare played out and magnified in cities.

Age and Employment

Abstract. This thematic plenary paper reviews the changing relationship between age and employment. The important role of the labour market in defining the onset of ‘;old age’ in both developed and underdeveloped societies is emphasised at the start and taken for granted in the subsequent analysis. The first and main section of the paper examines the changing relationship between age and employment and three distinct phases are identified in the post‐second world war period. The decline in the age of exit from gainful employment is of great importance in all advanced industrial societies. The second section of the paper focuses on the role of employers in determining the inclusion and exclusion of ageing workers ‐ an issue that has only recently begun to interest researchers in social gerontology. Age discrimination is high on this new research agenda. Brief reference is made to two recent research projects, in Europe and Canada, which have undertaken case studies of employer practices. Despite the development of greater age awareness on the part of employers, the continuation of disadvantage among older workers is emphasised and the ‘;gendered ageism’ experienced by older women is also highlighted. The final key section of the paper argues for a deconstruction of age at the workplace ‐ the replacement of remedial action to combat age barriers with a preventive strategy aimed at avoiding their occurrence.

Religion Re-Emerging

Religion has re-emerged on the worldwide political arena. This should not be written off as a temporary reaction against a necessary process of modernization. An advanced industrial society does not require religion to be separated from politics. The borderline between religion and politics is fluid and constantly contested. Even absolutist regimes in modern societies have sought legitimacy through religion. Today, religion mainly re-emerges voicing a moral protest against political elites who are seen as corrupt and immoral. Such a protest may refer to ethical standards from the past. However, a religious protest does not necessarily try to re-establish the old social structures. The functional logic of secularization can be regarded as an ideology which supports a specific power structure, and which tries to insulate a political elite from a moral critique.

Social Security vs. Educational Opportunity in Advanced Industrial Societies: Is There a Trade-Off?

This research investigates whether specific types of welfare states have different effects on social policy outcomes, to see if variations in national welfare systems are related to the particular institutionalization of the welfare state. It builds on the work of Esping-Andersen (1990), who identified three kinds of welfare regimes in advanced industrial societies, and the effort of Francis Castles (1989) to identify the causes for variation in educational spending by Western societies. Specifically, Castles's model to explain educational spending was modified to examine the applicability of EspingAndersen's welfare state typology to the field of educational policy. The three welfare state types were then tested to determine if variation in educational spending could be associated with the particular constitution of the welfare state. Finally, it was explored if, as Heidenheimer (1981) has suggested, there is evidence of a trade-off between education and other social security policies as alternative welfare state strategies. Esping-Andersen (1990) has identified three distinctive welfare regimes in advanced industrial societies-liberal, conservative, and social democratic. His typology arranges Western welfare states into three clusters, each organized around its own discrete logic of organization, stratification, and societal integration (Esping-Andersen 1990, 3). They differ by their unique social policy agendas and coverage for healthcare, unemployment, and old age compensation benefits. Although education was not among the policy provisions included in Esping-Andersen's description of the social welfare package, it should be. Education policy is clearly one component of a nation's total public policy package; and it is not independent of other social policies. It is the position of this paper that there is a specific relationship between the types of social security programs found in Western societies and the kind of educational policies they support. Therefore, EspingAndersen's typology can also be applied to the field of education policy, and welfare regimes will then also cluster according to their educational policy

Life expectancy, infant mortality and malnutrition in preindustrial Europe: a contemporary explanation.

In Europe's preindustrial and overwhelmingly agricultural society, people did not in general live long lives. While there were exceptions, by our standards, life expectancy was appallingly low for most and almost inconceivable to a modern audience living in an advanced industrial society where longevity is constantly being revised upwards. Europe's impoverished past came to an end in the nineteenth century with the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. But before then, a great deal of suffering had taken place as Europe, as a whole, was plagued by a very high rate of infant mortality that significantly reduced, statistically, overall life expectancy. Clearly many of the sad deaths from the European past were tied to poor nutrition and the apparent lack of key vitamins, substances that modern researchers would consider as absolutely critical for proper cell development and amino-acid synthesis. In fact, it could probably be argued that Europe's preindustrial era was beset by a constant avitaminosis of some kind or another.