Paternalistic Government Research Articles

Basic Needs: Paternalistic Government Welfare Policy with Distortionary Taxation

This article analyzes government welfare policy in a general equilibrium setting with distortionary taxation. Government welfare policy is in accordance with the preferences of donor-taxpayers who want the consumption-leisure bundle of recipients to satisfy “basic needs.” The main focus is on the optimal level of employment for a destitute welfare recipient from the donor-taxpayer's perspective. This optimal level depends on the distortionary cost of taxation, whether the donor regards leisure or work as a basic “need,” and the distribution of the recipient's income if work is required. It is argued that donor appropriation of income resulting from mandatory recipient work in the private sector is not necessarily superior to either letting recipients retain their income or having the government appropriate the recipient's income from mandatory public sector employment.

A helyi hatalom és a lakossági részvétel esélyei

The author examines the functioning of loval government in the context of workplace – residence and centre – locality and states that thé centre and workplace have become predominant as a result of the specifically retarded social development in East Europe. This development took place under a similarly traditional, paternalist government which permeated both the politics of the central power and the labour organizations. The Socialist transformation of the country raised hopes for radical changes in this field but industrialization and urbanization programmes in the 1950s strengthened the central power and increased the role of the workplace. The role of the locality and residence was inevitably pushed into the background. Changes in this situation were only brought by the reform programmes of the 1960s, primarily within the enterprises where paternalist management carne to be replaced by modern methods of business organization. Changes in the relationship between centre and locality came, however, with a certain time lag as this issue has only recently been discovered as an important, so far neglected area of socialist democratization.

The Ox and Me: A View from Atop an Organization

Reflecting on a transforming era as one manager in its midst reminds me of that flea. There she sits, atop a huge organization. Is she audacious, or just optimistic? Just how is she helping with the ploughing? We are experiencing one of the few periods of history when circumstances have changed so much that we have been forced to challenge our assumptions-about such fundamental concepts as power, leadership, organization and success. We are contemplating the nature of the ox, the role of the flea, the job in the fields. We are in the midst of what Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science, called a paradigm shift.2 It is what Kurt Lewin pictured as the middle of the change process described as freeze, unfreeze, refreeze. From the ambiguity is emerging a new order. The conventional wisdom about the inevitability of bureaucracy, leadership by command, and paternalistic government is no longer wisdom and is less and less conventional. The fundamental shift is in how we think about people: the human factor. Earlier concepts of scientific implied that humans were the source of error in an otherwise smoothly logical system. Distrust and control of the individual is now giving way to respect for the individual as the key to success. That is the essence hiding in the simplicity of Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y.3 Our assumptions about human nature ride along with our management practices.

District Officers in Decline: The Erosion of British Authority in the Bombay Countryside, 1919 to 1947

The paradox of the authoritarian rule of the Indian Raj at the heart of Britain's liberal empire was one that ran continuously through the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism. Both as the unpaid arsenal of Eastern expansion and defence, and as the essential stop-gap to Britain's multilateral pattern of trade, India was the necessary if incongruous adjunct of Liberal England, supporting the doctrines of progress at home on the basis of the autocratic control of its British-born hierophants over the numberless ‘contented masses’ of the Indian countryside. The resulting contrast between the increasingly self-governing white dominions, and the Indian maverick upholding in chains the very fabric of the empire, was also reflected in the political thinking of the motherland itself, by way of the stresses and contradictions which the conditions of the Raj's existence served to create within the liberal framework of the Victorian intellectual world. At the core of the Victorian liberal empire stood the strictly paternalistic government of the Raj in India; at the centre of the ‘benevolent despotism’ that British rule in the subcontinent adopted stood the steel frame of the Indian Civil Service, ‘much more of a government corporation than of a purely civil service’ and the creator as much as the executor of British policy there.

Consumer Attitudes, Judicial Decision, Government Regulation, and the Insurance Market

This article presents an overview and commentary on the changing environment of the insurance market. It assesses and interprets the impacts of such actions as the consumer movement, judicial decisions, legislative change and regulatory activity on the private market. Socio-economic political changes in process are briefly sketched historically, and current regulations, legislation and judicial decisions are used, with some impact analysis, to illustrate present and potential effects on the insurance market. Government and consumer expectations from an industry subject to many legislative and judicial constraints are noted, with some of the implications stated. Government and consumer actions in recent years have had a profound effect on the market environment for the insurance industry. The significance of the impact and the resulting problems can be ascertained to some extent by a review and correlation of events leading to this changed environment and an interpretation of the results of these actions, such as the new rights influences, judicial decisions and legislative and regulatory changes. In assessing the insurance industry in this new environment, the assumption is a private enterprise system operating under a paternalistic government, a government which establishes certain criteria or values as social standards for the commonweal and sponsors the achievement of these standards by intervention in one form or another.' Changes and Their Significance For the past three quarters of a century the environment in which the U.S. enterprise system operates has been undergoing change. The role of Dr. John F. Adams is Director of the Center of Insurance Research and Professor of Insurance, Georgia State University. He also is Director of Insurance and Fringe Benefits at Georgia State University. He has served as Assistant Vice President of Financial Affairs, Temple University. He has worked in government and private business as a consultant. Dr. Adams is a past president of ARIA. This paper was presented at the 1975 Annual Meeting of ARIA. 1 Social Security and Public Assistance are thought of as minimum welfare standards provided directly by government intervention; Workers' Compensation is an industrial program based on legislation and regulatory procedures; the FAIR plan offers an example of facilitative government action to influence developments; judicial actions in the liability area, together with their impact on the public, offer examples of influence in product development without facilitative or other action.

Computer techniques for the national archives

H istorians are, by definition, interdisciplinary-they study events not only from diplomatic and military records, but also from social, economic, and intellectual or literary evidence. A researcher who restricts himself to a single source is ahistorical in today's context. The modern researcher is faced not only with the problem of mastering sources in a multiplicity of fields, but also with mastering the structure of the records in which the documentary evidence is imbedded. For true historical perspective on any modern issue, all of the interlocking agency relationships of a vast and paternalistic government must be understood and probed. There is not a subject relating to American national development that can be studied and understood from only one source-from one man's private papers, from one series of newspapers, or from one agency's records. It is fair to ask how today's young historians master these sources in their approach to universal history. Evidence is that they do not. The young scholar avoids general history and takes the route of monographic literature to fleeting fame and fortune. He writes an incident in a single man's career from one collection of personal papers supported by peripheral secondary works. He retreats to an antithetical and intricate analysis of a minute subject, such as the voting record in Chicago's 5th Ward in the 1928 election. The modern, young historian has assumed the position of bricklayer instead of architect of history-he is losing the ability to design new, graceful, lofty arches which bridge the spaces of time. His excuses for this approach are contradictory-on the one hand, the paperwork explosion has made great study and analysis of events impossible or, on the other hand, the advent of the telephone and rapid transportation which can bring people into direct contact has resulted in a lack of documentation of the genesis of historical events. One is confirmed in the view of the young historian as a limited researcher by daily scanning of the registrations at a great repository of documents, such as the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress or the search room of the National Archives: "Southern Reporting of the Civil War," "The Freedman's Bureau in Maryland," "Roosevelt and the Trusts," "The Republican Opposition to Article Ten," "Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918-1919," and onward from peak to peak of American political life. The titles, with minor variations, appear and reappear, and the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Elbridge Gerry, the American Colonization Society, Thomas Ewing, and occasionally Gifford Pinchot are removed from the shelves, poured over, noted, and returned. Their use,

The Press of Thailand: Conditions and Trends

Paternalistic government, political apathy and other influences have helped shape newspapers which are colorful but lack professional standards of accuracy. The author summarizes recent trends toward better performance, reviews the history of press controls, and describes the principal papers.

Industrial Research Reaches Maturity

ABOUT half the industrial research departments in the United States came of age during or immediately following World War II. They have many problems in common with the young men who reached maturity in the same period. They were thrown out of stride by the war; they spent many months in an unnatural regimented existence; they were subsidized by a paternalistic government. Then they were dumped unceremoniously into a realistic world. At the height of the war, any boy or girl who could operate an analytical balance or read a slip stick was considered research department material. A 4F draft classification for a boy was the first item on the specification given the personnel department. A girl who had majored in chemistry or physics could pick the laboratory nearest the camp where her young man was stationed and become an assistant or an associate on an important research project. If ...

Volk und Fuhrer

Volk (people) and Gemeinschaft (communion) and their many compounds occur with increasing frequency in language of Third Reich. We read not only familiar words, Volkslied, and Volkstum, but many neologisms like volkhaft, vlkisch, and so on, that are to be found only in very latest German dictionaries, or not at all.' Volk no longer means only common people, or even humanity at large, but above all political community. Das Deutsche Volk is supreme Nordic nation. The term Gemeinschaft in Nazi sense means fellowship, co6peration, and solidarity of German community; Volksgemeinschaft, or community of people, is felt to be more vital than Gemeinschaft der Heiligen, the communion of saints of Apostles' Creed. Stress on Volk is not original, of course, with Nazi. Since 1900, Regional Art (Heimatkunst) and Youth Movement have made much of comradeship, folk-life, and love of nature. Herder in eighteenth century first stressed importance of common people in literature of a nation as opposed to conventional writers. He invented term Volkslied, which has been anglicized as folksong. Under his inspiration Goethe grew interested in German folksongs, dropped his imitating of French forms and became Germany's most original lyric poet. But Volk of Herder is not Volk of Nazi. The Fiihrer and his satellites use word insidiously in a political double sense, now as common people, now as unique German race and nation. For Hitler is not merely Reichsfilhrer. He is Filhrer des Volkes. The average German, accustomed by tradition to a paternalistic government, is doubtless heartened by Hitler's intimate greeting to him and his fellows as Mein Volk; he is expected to feel that he is an integral part of Volksstaat. The old aristocracy and pedantry are thought to be banished forever. Hitler himself, a man of people, without university training, is doubtless sincere in his effort to make a People's government. He looks on specialized study with suspicion and requires that all prospective university students

The Principles and Organization of British Native Rule in Tropical Africa

The old colonial empire of Great Britain reached its apogee in 1776 to be split asunder by a colonists' revolt against the vexatious mercantilistic policy of the mother country. This catastrophe, however, regrettable as it was for Englishmen, profoundly influenced subsequent British policy towards emigrant sons and daughters and ultimately made possible the present British Commonwealth of Nations. The World War saw another British Empire come to an end. This second empire, while conceding self-determination to settlers in temperate zones, professed to be satisfied with the r1le of benevolent yet despotic overlord for the teeming millions of natives in Britain's tropical dependencies. In these areas, paternalistic government guaranteed law, order, and an increasing measure of material well-being, but little heed was given to the political aspirations of the native peoples. British officials, diligent and in the main conscientious agents of the white man's burden, performed an incorruptible service, but there was too much emphasis upon efficiency in government and not enough regard for training in the art of political responsibility.2 This traditional native policy, so characteristic of the second empire, and best exemplified in India, is now thoroughly discredited. The plain lesson of colonial government in the tropics is that good government is no substitute for self-government;