Policy Discontinuity Research Articles

Gender, Crime and Culture in the Twentieth Century: Conversations between Academics and Professionals

This article reflects on a recent ESRC Seminar Series on ‘Gender, Crime and Culture in the Twentieth Century’, outlining key debates. Whilst discussion centred on the relevance of gender as a heuristic category, debates also emerged around the complex relationships between past and present and about the ability of historical inquiry to develop understandings of crime, welfare and criminal justice that are relevant to policy makers or practitioners as well as to academics across the social sciences. Not only did the papers and discussion reveal something of the texture of continuities, reinventions and discontinuities in policy and practice; they also showed how critical historical research could be used to test and evaluate current and proposed measures. Discussion addressed the uses of history as well as models of periodization that have been dominant in criminological and other social-science studies of the twentieth century. A new but increasing body of focused historical research is questioning over-arching meta-narratives, such as the growth of penal-welfarism and the ‘Freudian century’. Dialogue between academics and professionals also led to revealing exchanges, when positions deriving from an ethics of service were juxtaposed with those using the language of social control; these issues were particularly relevant for seminar participants who allied themselves to feminist politics.

Price deflation, money demand, and monetary policy discontinuity: a comparative view of Japan, China, and the United States

In this paper we review the history of deflation in China, Japan, and the United States, and summarize the stylized empirical facts regarding deflation and key real and monetary variables in these economies. Based on a review of the institutional background of deflation in these economies, we argue that deflation in China is largely supply-led, whereas deflation in Japan is demand-led. We discuss the adverse effects of demand-led deflation, and argue that deflation is not simply inflation in reverse. Based on these adverse effects, we explain the basis of a discontinuity in the monetary policy process, and contrast the discontinuity process with the 1930s-era liquidity trap concept. We then provide empirical evidence on an important link in the discontinuity process: the effect of demand-led deflation on money demand. We consider a variety of money demand function estimates for Japan, China, and the United States in order to illustrate that deflation in Japan may have indeed contributed to a discontinuity in monetary policy by shifting the demand for money upward, and we then suggest several implications for central bank policy in a deflationary environment.

Neo-Liberal Industry Policy and Employment Relations in Australia's Shipping Industry

This paper examines Australian neo-liberal shipping policy and the resulting employment characteristics of the current era. The author argues on the basis of documentary and interview research, for a significant discontinuity in contemporary policy and employment practices. These discontinuities are cumulative, and are part of a causal chain involving government, employers, customers and trade unions. With the rise of neo-liberalism, Australian shipping policy has substantially changed course rejecting not only past forms, strategies, and cooperative approaches, but also extent the alternative norms and models of developed world practice in the staffing and regulation of merchant shipping.

Forcing Firms to Talk: Financial Disclosure Regulation and Externalities

We analyze a model of voluntary disclosure by firms and the desirability of disclosure regulation. In our model disclosure is costly, it has private and social value, and its precision is endogenous. We show that (i) a convexity in the value of disclosure can lead to a discontinuity in the disclosure policy; (ii) the Nash equilibrium of a voluntary disclosure game is often socially inefficient; (iii) regulation that requires a minimal precision level sometimes but not always improves welfare; (iii) the same is true for subsidies that change the perceived cost of disclosures; and (iv) neither regulation method dominates the other. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.

Uneasy asylum: France and the Jewish refugee crisis, 1933-1942

1. Introduction 2. Refugee policy and middle-class protest during the Great Depression, 1933-36 3. The conservative crackdown of 1934-35 4. The great invasion I, 1933-36 5. Loyalties in conflict: French Jewry and the refugee crisis, 1933-May 1936 6. Refugee policy during the popular front era 7. Breaking the impasse: colonial and agricultural schemes during the popular front era 8. The deluge: from the Anschluss to Evian 9. The impact of appeasement 10. The crosscurrents of 1939 11. The missed opportunity: refugee policy in wartime 12. The great invasion II, 1936-40 13. The politics of frustration: the remaking of the Jewish relief effort, 1936-40 14. The path to Vichy: continuities and discontinuities in Jewish refugee policy 15. Conclusion.

Forcing Firms to Talk: Financial Disclosure Regulation and Externalities

In this paper we analyze a model of voluntary disclosure by firms in financial markets. We focus on externalities that arise when firm values are correlated and the disclosures made by one firm affect the valuation of other firms. In our model, firms can choose the precision of their disclosure, and disclosure, which is costly, has social value. In the case of one firm, we uncover interesting economies of scale in the value of the disclosure, which lead to discontinuities in the optimal disclosure policy as parameters of the model change. For example, the optimal precision may jump from zero to a positive level when the prior precision regarding the firm's value is at a threshold level. For the case of multiple firms, we show that because of the externality in the firms' valuation, the Nash equilibrium disclosure policies are often socially inefficient. Thus, there is scope for disclosure regulation to improve welfare. We study the possibilities of mandating a minimal precision level for the disclosure or setting a system of subsidies that reduce the perceived cost of disclosure. While both methods can sometimes improve welfare, for each method there are cases (where firms differ in their cost or other parameters) where welfare is not improved. Neither of these methods of regulation dominates the other in all situations.

Shifting Agendas, Changing Regulatory Structures And The ‘New’ Politics Of Environmental Pollution: British Coastal Water Policy, 1955–1995

Policies in areas or subsystems which are dominated by well‐established policy communities tend to stability. However, policies that have firm political support and a solid ideological underpinning are occasionally subject to marked and whole‐sale shifts which then stabilize around a new equilibrium position. This article examines one such discontinuity in policy: British coastal water policy between the 1950s and the 1990s. Once the concern of engineers and local authority interests, the question of how to deal with the sewage generated by coastal communities is now deeply contested between a wide variety of different actors including environmental groups and European authorities. What was once a relatively well‐managed, professionalized policy community has become unstable as new ideas and domestic regulatory structures have forced the government to justify principles and practices that were implicit or simply rhetorical. This empirical example of what Weale has termed the ‘new’ politics of pollution, is tested against models of social learning developed by Paul Sabatier and Peter Hall, both of which lay great stress on the importance of changing ideas and beliefs as the main ‘motor’ of policy change.

Inducing transboundary regionalism in asymmetric situations: The case of the German‐Polish Border

The German‐Polish border region, located along the European Union's eastern boundary, is characterized by sharp disparities in living standards and development. It also is a zone of contact between two very different political traditions and cultures that often have confronted each other in conflict. Since 1990, cooperation attempts on the German‐Polish border have been actively encouraged by EU and German government agencies and supported through the creation of Euroregions, intergovernmental advisory boards, and other international bodies. Transboundary regionalism is seen as a means of promoting integrated development and socioeconomic cohesion within the context of European expansion and integration. However, evaluations of German‐Polish cooperation indicate that the creation of new institutions of cross‐border planning is not enough; in order to be effective, German‐Polish transboundary regionalism must not only prevail against policy discontinuities caused by administrative mismatches but also transcend traditional interagency rivalries within national contexts. Furthermore, it must engage both communities and senior governments on both sides of the border as partners in a regional development dialogue. This would require combining available resources at various levels, including a synergistic utilization of transboundary links of public and private agencies at various levels. Nevertheless, a vital question remains as to the proper mix of formal institutions and informal networks required in order to achieve this. Here, experiences from other international border regions, such as the U.S.‐Mexican borderlands, could provide important comparative insights.

Trends in the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus associated with discontinuation of an isolation policy.

The number of patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) before and after discontinuing placement of patients into private rooms was determined. The mean monthly number of patients with MRSA decreased from 34 to 22, and the proportion of S aureus isolates that were MRSA decreased from 34% to 20%. We found no evidence that failure to isolate patients with MRSA resulted in an increased prevalence of MRSA.

The rejection of authoritarian policy legacies: Family policy in Spain (1975–1995)

In contrast to other European Union member states, very few resources are dedicated in post‐authoritarian Spain to family policy. This article explains this weakness of family measures in terms of the reaction of post‐Francoist policy‐makers against Francoist family programmes, which were pro‐natalist and anti‐feminist, and occupied an important position in the propaganda and rituals of the regime. The article concludes that while post‐authoritarian policies tend to be a continuation of preceding policies, this is not always so. An examination of the conditions under which discontinuities in public policy before and after authoritarian rule tend to appear is also undertaken.

Trends in the Prevalence of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Associated with Discontinuation of an Isolation Policy

Trends in the Prevalence of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Associated with Discontinuation of an Isolation Policy

Adverse selection and equilibrium in liability insurance markets

Models of asymmetric information in insurance markets typically consider insurance buyers with Bernoulli loss distributions differing in expected loss. This article analyzes markets where buyer loss distributions are characterized by mean-preserving spreads and insurers can classify applicants in terms of expected values but not by risk. Because liability losses are characterized by skewed continuous probability distributions, both discrete and continuous loss distributions are considered. In contrast to the single separating equilibrium in the classic Rothschild-Stiglitz insurance market, multiple separating equilibria are identified in this article: three in the discrete case and four in the continuous case. The possibility of extreme discontinuities in insurer policy offers provides a new explanation for crises in liability insurance markets.

The Philippines and ASEAN: Options for Aquino

Since February 1986 the world has closely watched President Corazon Aquino's Philippines. Quite naturally most of the attention has been focused on the domestic struggle to institutionalize people power both administratively and in the process of creating a new constitution. Observations on the foreign policy implications of the regime change have generally dealt with discussions of the future of the U.S. military base rights in the Philippines. While the U.S.-Philippines security relationship is important-some would even say vital-there is another set of interdependencies that deserves attention, the Philippines as one of the six state actors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Manila is slated to be the site of ASEAN's third summit meeting, now scheduled for December 1987. An examination of the Aquino government's international behavior in the ASEAN regional framework gives some insight into both continuities and discontinuities in Philippines foreign policy under Aquino, as well as illustrates some of the broader issues of the dynamics of regionalism in Southeast Asia.

The Politics of Management: the Corporate Governance Issue

THE TERM CORPORATE GOVERNANCE HAS COME INTO USE TO describe both the purposes and the methods which determine the structure and the control of companies. A wide range of legal, regulatory and less formalized arrangements is thus embraced. In the UK in recent years discussion has related to a number of interrelated issues: the structure and functioning of boards of directors, reporting to shareholders and the ways in which shareholders use their power. These issues have a bearing upon business performance, though the debate about ways to improve the quality of management embraces also the cultural factors, the educational system and training arrangements; and performance depends too upon factors wholly or largely beyond the influence of managers, such as the tensions from class-division, over-powerful unions and the uncertainties which flow from discontinuities in public policy which are especially evident in the British political system. But in the general debate the corporate governance issues have perhaps had less attention than they deserve; the discussion has been confined to a limited circle. It is proposed here to concentrate on non-executive directors.

A note on nonrenewable resource extraction under discontinuous price policy

Temporal discontinuities in public policy with respect to nonrenewable resource pricing can have significant impacts on the time patterns of resource extraction. These impacts arise from the effect of price discontinuities on the relative values of Hotelling rents across time periods. Whether faced with intertemporal price continuity or price discontinuity, the planning task of the wealth-maximizing producer is to equate the present value of each period's marginal contribution to the stream of net revenues from production across time. This rule for extraction provides the key to understanding the response to a price jump such as occurs upon the removal of price controls. The rational producer holds back at least some output until the price jump occurs. At the moment, the producer pushes output up sharply, raising marginal extraction cost by the absolute amount of the price jump and, thereby, maintaining the value of the Hotelling rent given by the gap between price and marginal extraction cost. US natural gas policy options, as well as plausible alternatives, are simulated to illustrate the effects of discontinuous regulatory regimes. 15 references, 1 table.

Mitterrand's France in the Atlantic System: A Foreign Policy of Accommodation

The installation of a government in France has posed two kinds of dilemmas for the study of foreign policy and international relations in the Atlantic system. A first set of questions concerns the continuities and discontinuities in the foreign policy of the Fifth Republic, the significance of the Gaullist legacy for shaping defense and security policy, the specifically Socialist characteristics of foreign policy decision-making and external behavior, and the effects economic experimentation may have on the external capabilities of the independent-minded and activist Fifth Republic. A second set of questions focuses on the effects the foreign policy of a France may have on bilateral relations with the United States and, more generally, on relations among Atlantic states in both the security and economic arenas. During the three years of responsibility in Paris, assessments of the foreign policy behavior and implications of France have varied dramatically; many aspects of French foreign and security policy, and the new state of Atlantic relations with a regime at its core, remain puzzling and inconclusive.1

Porfirian Labor Politics: Working Class Organizations in Mexico City and Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1902

Most studies of relations between government and organized labor in Mexico stand firmly on the supposition that the Revolution of 1910 marked a sharp break with the past. The labor policies of the Díaz regime have alternately been described as either brutally repressive or as neutral and aloof in keeping with nineteenth century liberal doctrine (especially before 1906). If either of these somewhat contradictory characterizations are true, then the case for discontinuity in labor policies is clearly confirmed.This essay will argue that neither description of labor policies during the Díaz regime is accurate. Rather, patterns of interaction between the Díaz government and urban working class organizations, especially in Mexico City, shaped the evolution of the Mexican labor movement and national labor policy along lines followed ever since. The Díaz government developed a flexible and sophisticated array of labor policy instruments that was based upon cooperation with and subsidies to progovernment labor organizations as well as political rewards and the other fruits of cooptation for labor leaders loyal to the regime. With its labor allies, the Díaz government promoted modes of organization which retarded labor militancy, sponsored informal as well as official mediation between workers and employers during strikes and other conflicts, and disseminated propaganda and instituted educational programs, including pro-government labor newspapers and schools for the working class, designed to promote labor's identification of its own well-being with the interests of the state. While the Revolution of 1910 and the later developments of the Cárdenas era institutionalized statelabor relations as never before, the objectives and instrumentalities of contemporary labor relations have their origin in the Porfiriato.

More on “The Culmination of the Bourbon Reforms”: A Perspective from New Granada

The Jacques Barbier-John Fisher exchange in the February 1978 issue of this journal, following upon Barbier's article of February 1977, further elucidates the difficult questions concerning continuity and discontinuity in colonial policy after the death of Jose de Galvez. The arguments they advanced and their points of difference, although pregnant with implications for the whole empire, were focused on Peru and to a lesser extent, in the case of Barbier, on New Spain. The experience of New Granada provides additional insights. Barbier argued that adjustments in colonial policy following the death of Galvez, although stressing a need to economize and representing a pragmatic retreat from unpopular political and fiscal initiatives, by no means signaled an end to Bourbon determination to pursue less controversial economic and commercial innovations and to harness the fruits of those innovations for the benefit of the imperial government. The fate of the Bourbon reforms in New Granada generally supports Barbier's thesis. The regime of Charles IV, acting through Antonio Valdes, elected to temper those policies which antagonized, or threatened to antagonize, the creole patriciate, but it did not bring the reforms to a halt. Certainly, there was no reluctance to exploit the opportunities afforded by a growing economy and expanding trade. The agent for policy adjustments was Viceroy Francisco Gil y Lemos, the same figure who, as described by Fisher, later caused the Peruvian mining reform so much difficulty. A confidant of Valdes, Gil served for seven months in New Granada during 1789 before transferring to Peru.' In New Granada, Gil acted simultaneously to defuse a difficult political situation and to correct a two-million peso deficit in the colonial treasury. Because the Comunero Rebellion of 1781 had