Progressive Social Policies Research Articles

An Experiential Learning Opportunity in Norway: Computation for Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering Students.

The global learning initiative at Northeastern University is focused on fostering intercultural communication skills. The Dialogue of Civilization (DOC) program serves as a mechanism to achieve such a goal by offering faculty-led international experiences. In this paper, we have presented a detailed account of a DOC program that took place in Norway. The primary objective of the program was to teach mechanical engineering and bio-engineering students computational skills while stimulating critical thinking about the cultural and social aspects of technology and engineering in Norway. The program focused on two courses: a technical course and a special topics course. The technical course introduced students to finite element analysis, with practical applications and site visits in Norway to enhance experiential learning. In the special topics course, the interplay between modern technologies, like green energy, state policies, and the rights and traditions of the indigenous Sámi people was explored. The course highlighted both the progressive social policies in Norway and the historical discrimination against the Sámi. Student feedback was positive and experiential learning components such as guest lectures and site visits were particularly appreciated. Additional surveys showed that students' self-confidence was higher following the DOC program. In addition, female-identifying students had higher confidence in their future success after completion of this program as compared to their male-identifying counterparts. Our paper is expected to serve as a resource for educators seeking to integrate technical education with intercultural experiences and discussions on social and cultural impacts in engineering.

Policy whiplash: How California Title IX coordinators navigated local, state, and federal policy changes during the Trump administration

AbstractFederal Title IX policy requires institutions of higher education (IHEs) to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct. Based on 23 in‐depth interviews, this study explores California Title IX coordinator experiences at a critical policy juncture—the recension of the Obama‐era guidance and the implementation of the Trump administration Title IX rules and regulations—to understand how they responded to, implemented, or resisted federal mandates. Most California Title IX officers reported that the recension of Obama guidelines had limited impact on their daily operations because they lived in a state with more progressive social policy. Participants singled out California case law, state statues, the California Education Code and university system mandates as protective legislation to ensure survivors’ rights. By contrast, the new Title IX regulations that became law in August 2020 were perceived as more consequential. The tight implementation time frame, combined with the complicated and unfunded policy directives, imposed heavy burdens on their administrative offices. Title IX officers foresaw implementation consequences to campus safety, survivors’ willingness to report, and to the credibility of the Title IX office. Taken together, their experiences lend support to progressive state legislative action, restorative justice approaches and for a survivor bill of rights as important counterpoints to federal Title IX policy.

Policy transfer and policy experimentation in China: the case of state-sponsored student loans

ABSTRACT As part of efforts to mass higher education, China introduced state-sponsored student loans around the turn of the century, a progressive social policy reflecting the country’s move toward increased marketization and decentralization in delivering educational services. The loan scheme, open to low-income students, is a voluntary policy transfer that draws on lessons from abroad. Unexpectedly, it stalled soon after implementation. Subsequent local experimentation brought it back on track. This article uses the Dolowitz and Marsh policy transfer framework to identify and explain the unsuccessful transfer. It also uses Heilmann’s model to examine the local experimentation that brought about institutional change nationwide. The article argues that policy transfer, in conjunction with policy experimentation, provides practical frameworks for capturing the subtleties of China’s hierarchical governance and the different complications experienced throughout the policy process. The article thus contributes to the integration of policy transfer and experimentation as a broader toolbox for policy analysis.

Disability policies, transnationalism and policy diffusion: ‘Asocial’ models of inclusion for children and youth in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)

This paper examines the advances made by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the inclusion of children with disabilities and youth within mainstream policies on education, employment, health, and social care provisions and the implications on their outcomes. Theoretically, this paper advances critical disability studies and addresses stigma and discrimination as barriers to progressive social policies. It also critically examines the diffusion of the social model of disability, which finds expression in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Methodologically, this paper uses latent class analysis (LCA) to analyse clusters of LMICs, regarding the adoption of social-legal provisions as stipulated by the CRPD. Finally, the paper concludes with a paradigm shift within the sociology of disability towards a sociology of enablement within the fold of emancipatory politics that addresses stigma and discrimination.

Fathers’ Leave Reduces Sexist Attitudes

Research shows that sexist attitudes are deeply ingrained, with adverse consequences in the socioeconomic and political sphere. We argue that parental leave for fathers—a policy reform that disrupts traditional gender roles and promotes less stereotypical ones—has the power to decrease attitudinal gender bias. Contrasting the attitudes of new parents who were (and were not) directly affected by a real-world policy reform that tripled the amount of fathers’ leave, we provide causal evidence that the reform increased gender-egalitarian views in the socioeconomic and political domains among mothers and fathers, and raised support for pro-female policies that potentially displace men among mothers. In contrast, informational, indirect exposure to the reform among the general public produced no attitudinal change. These results show that direct exposure to progressive social policy can weaken sexist attitudes, providing governments with a practical and effective tool to reduce harmful biases.

The impact of voter turnout on referendum outcomes: evidence from Ireland

We estimate the causal effect of voter turnout on referendum outcomes in Ireland using a newly created dataset that links 25 years of constituency-level referendum results to a variety of demographic and economic characteristics, as well as daily rainfall amounts. Our instrumental variables methodology uses rainfall as an instrument for voter turnout to overcome issues of endogeneity. By exploiting Ireland’s extensive experience with referendums, we are the first to explore the heterogeneous effects of turnout by referendum type (social issues versus regime-related issues). We find that a one-percentage-point increase in turnout is associated with a 1.6-percentage-point increase in support for progressively liberal social policies, which include issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. For regime-related issues, such as EU economic treaties, we find no statistically significant effect of voter turnout on referendum outcomes. Our finding that turnout benefits socially progressive policies is consistent with a related strand of literature for general elections that indicates higher turnout benefits left-wing political parties.

Comparative Perspectives on Zimbabwe and South Africa’s Social Policy Response to covid-19

Abstract Zimbabwe and South Africa have been burdened by the challenges of poverty and inequality, a consequence of their historical legacy and post-colonial developmental challenges. To counter these, the development and adoption of progressive social policies has been witnessed. In 2020, the social policy architecture of both countries was put to the test by the covid-19 pandemic. What has been the social policy response to covid-19 by the two countries and how effective has it been? This is the major question which this article addresses, utilising the transformative social policy framework as a conceptual and heuristic tool to undertake a comparative analysis of social policy responses to covid-19. It shows that responses crystallised around cash transfers, food mitigation and health interventions. Although timely, these interventions proved inadequate in addressing the welfare needs of citizens. The article highlights the limitations of the current social policy paradigm in mitigating covid-19-induced shocks and reducing vulnerability.

Social Work in Brazil in the Vortex of Three crises: Pandemic, Social and Political

Abstract Social work in Brazil advocates a radical and critical model of social work theorisation and practice. This article explores the Brazilian theoretical and practice model, identifying the profession as being in the vortex of Covid-19, increasing state economic austerity, attacks on previously hard-won progressive social policy and increasing inequality and precarity. This provides a challenging practice environment. The professional re-conceptualisation model proposes that social work needs to fully theorise social difficulties to ensure that the profession intervenes to address the causes of the problems, rather than manifestations underlying them. This is undertaken through aligning itself with working-class conflicts, promoting rights and refusing to accept the rolling back of support already won. The Brazilian framework, located within its social realities, offers an opportunity for social work globally to consider what lessons can be learnt, to recognise the uniqueness of its perspectives and provide solidarity through its recognition.

Why is progressive policy reform in Kosovo uncertain, despite the accelerated power shift to the left?

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the arrival in power, for the first time, of a left-wing majority in Kosovo. Nowhere in the Western Balkans and Europe was the impact of the pandemic on politics so salient and extensive. The power shift created an unlikely opportunity for progressive social policy change. However, as shown by policy responses during the first year of the pandemic, substantial policy change is still uncertain. Although political parties have begun to matter more in policy choices, expansive change is constrained by the broader unfavourable conjuncture involving, among others, the existing neo-liberal welfare regime, its feedback on policy learning, mobile right-wing actors with influence in state institutions and global organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Union – all of which may rather favour the status quo.

Assessing the Labour Government’s new procurement approach through a Māori economic justice perspective

INTRODUCTION: Social procurement—the intentional generation of social value through an organisation’s procurement and commissioning processes—is being adopted globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand as progressive social policy. Some of the issues that lie behind calls for economic justice, such as economic opportunity, rights for vulnerable workers, and unemployment, may be addressed through social procurement. While Māori may also benefit from this, there are other factors that should be considered from a Te Tiriti perspective.METHOD: In this research brief, we outline the context behind the government’s current initiatives, drawing on policy and research literature as part of a scoping study aimed at developing a Te Tiriti approach to social procurement.CONCLUSION: We conclude by noting the opportunities for economic justice for Māori, but also some of the caveats drawn from international and Aotearoa New Zealand literature.

How divided is the attitudinal context for policymaking? Changes in public attitudes to the welfare state, inequality and immigration over two decades in Britain

AbstractIf public attitudes towards the welfare state, inequality and immigration are becoming increasingly polarized, as recent political events might suggest, the space for progressive social policies is more constrained. Using data from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) spanning 23years, we analyse trends in these attitudes, examining whether there has been divergence between those who have been more and less exposed to disadvantage through changes in the economy and the welfare state across more than two decades. Taken in this longer term context, and examining characteristics not previously considered in relation to public attitudes such as lone parenthood and disability, we find little evidence of polarization in attitudes to welfare, inequality and immigration and even some evidence of attitudinal gaps narrowing. We conclude that given this lack of division, there may be greater room for more pro‐welfare and progressive policies than the prevalent narrative of polarization suggests.

The Catholic Religious Presence in Civil Society: A Waning Influence

The Catholic Church is becoming a waning influence in global civil society. This is due, in part, to demographic changes that show an increasing loss of adherents within the Church’s traditional strongholds. Coupled with the growth of liberal social policies and continuing revelations about the crimes of sexual abuse by its clergy, the Church is being forced to reconsider how to continue as a moral advocate in civil society. It has sought to do this by recalibrating its position in global church-state relations, moving toward a non-ideological or “third way” of politics, and seeking non-partisan solutions to social justice needs. However, even this shift has not been sufficient to address the erosion of the Church’s positive, political influence globally. For the Church to be successful in this goal, it will be necessary to totally re-set its social agenda as well as its religious priorities. Such tasks, however, will be difficult at best and almost impossible to accomplish where the primary obstacle for successful political efficacy and internally meaningful change is the Church’s own mismanagement of its two-millennia-old ecclesiastical structure.

Linking political exposures to child and maternal health outcomes: a realist review

BackgroundConceptual and theoretical links between politics and public health are longstanding. Internationally comparative systematic review evidence has shown links between four key political exposures – the welfare state, political tradition, democracy and globalisation – on population health outcomes. However, the pathways through which these influences may operate have not been systematically appraised. Therefore, focusing on child and maternal health outcomes, we present a realist re-analysis of the dataset from a recent systematic review.MethodsThe database from a recent systematic review on the political determinants of health was used as the data source for this realist review. Included studies from the systematic review were re-evaluated and those relating to child and/or maternal health outcomes were included in the realist synthesis. Initial programme theories were generated through realist engagement with the prior systematic review. These programme theories were adjudicated and refined through detailed engagement with the evidence base using a realist re-synthesis involving two independent reviewers. The revised theories that best corresponded to the evidence base formed the final programme theories.ResultsOut of the 176 included studies from the systematic review, a total of 67 included child and/or maternal health outcomes and were included in the realist re-analysis. Sixty-three of these studies were ecological and data were collected between 1950 and 2014. Six initial programme theories were generated. Following theory adjudication, three theories in revised form were supported and formed the final programme theories. These related to a more generous welfare state leading to better child and maternal health especially in developed countries through progressive social welfare policies, left-of-centre political tradition leading to lower child mortality and low birth weight especially in developed countries through greater focus on welfare measures, and increased globalisation leading to greater child and infant mortality and youth smoking rates in LMECs through greater influence of multinational corporations and neoliberal trade organisations.ConclusionWe present a realist re-analysis of a large systematically identified body of evidence on how four key political exposures – the welfare state, democracy, political tradition and globalisation – relate to child and maternal health outcomes. Three final programme theories were supported.

Does clientelism hinder progressive social policy in Latin America?

Latin American welfare systems are truncated and marked by regressive spending patterns. Contributing an electoral microfoundation for the endurance of narrow social policies in the region, we argue that clientelism hollows out support for welfare progressivity. On the one hand, clientelism distorts the link between the vested interest of low-income earners and redistributive policies so that the poor are more likely to support parties with a residualistic social policy agenda; by paying off the poor in return for their vote, clientelistic parties gain greater leverage to pursue liberal social policies. On the other, clientelism induces uncertainty in the provision of public goods among middle and high-income earners, which makes them more likely to opt for residualistic social policies as well. We investigate how clientelism influences electoral support for parties with residualistic social policy platforms by merging information on party strategies from an expert survey with public opinion data for Latin America. Findings confirm that clientelistic practices have an impact on the electoral support for political parties which promote a liberal welfare state.

Health achieving societies: Past discourses, present predilections, and possible future contradictions

Economic growth is not an essential prelude to better health as some countries like Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala have shown. Progressive social policies and investments in the social sector have helped some of these countries in the past. This may be unrelated to the present predilections which could certainly lead to future contradictions, especially in giving rise to new scenarios in public health. We have seen that unrealistic setting of goals, ambitious targets given to an ailing health system, together with a lack of clarity regarding activities can result in poor achievements even with incentives. This is more relevant in the future with the complexity of an epidemiological scenario involving both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. Mere techno-centric packages cannot tackle the complex health issues that India face today, as they ignore the larger structural dimensions of the problem. This is especially important with prolonged old age. This necessitates a focused futuristic vision for the population in general and the elderly in particular with a focus on primary care.

Gender-Based Violence against Women in Intimate and Couple Relationships. The Case of Spain and Italy during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

This article addresses the issue of gender-based violence against women (GBVAW) during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. With an emphasis on intimate partner violence (IPV), it focuses on the degree of government responsiveness to this issue and compares the cases of Spain and Italy: two European countries that – from March to May 2020 – were among the hardest hit during the coronavirus pandemic. The aim of this paper is twofold: to investigate how the two nation-states dealt with violence against women (VAW) during the pandemic – which mostly refers to intimate and couple relationships – and to compare their different degrees of government responsiveness in this specific section of progressive social policies. While COVID-19 was spreading, the country ruled by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez proved to be very active in advancing practical guidelines and measures to deal with GBVAW, whereas Italy, governed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, didn’t act likewise. The article adopts a multi-method approach and argues that the way a specific society presents a social phenomenon influences its response in terms of policies. Furthermore, this investigation claims that the dialogue between civil society and the institutional level needs to be reinvigorated in order to comprehensively address GBVAW. Perhaps, by presenting a comparison between similar cases in a situation of emergency, this article could serve this aim.

Income Inequality and State Parties: Who Gets Represented?

AbstractRecent studies of representation at the national and state levels have provided evidence that elected officials' votes, political parties' platforms, and enacted policy choices are more responsive to the preferences of the affluent, while those with average incomes and the poor have little or no impact on the political process. Yet, this research on the dominance of the affluent has overlooked key partisan differences in the electorate. In this era of hyperpartisanship, we argue that representation occurs through the party system, and we test whether taking this reality into account changes the story of policy dominance by the rich. We combine data on public preferences and state party positions to test for income bias in parties' representation of their own co-partisans. The results show an interesting pattern in which underrepresentation of the poor is driven by Democratic parties pushing the more liberal social policy stances of rich Democrats and Republican parties reflecting the particularly conservative economic policy preferences of rich Republicans. Thus, we have ample evidence that the wealthy, more often than not, do call the shots, but that the degree to which this disproportionate party responsiveness produces less representative policies depends on the party in power and the policy dimension being considered. We conclude by linking this pattern of influence and “coincidental representation” to familiar changes which define the transformation of the New Deal party system.

Bringing in critical frameworks to investigate agenda-setting for the social determinants of health: Lessons from a multiple framework analysis.

Public health scholars have increasingly called for greater attention to the political and policy processes that enable or constrain successful prioritisation of health on government agendas. Much research investigating policy agenda-setting in public health has focused on the use of single frameworks, in particular Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework. More recently, scholars have argued that blending complementary policy frameworks can enable greater attention to a wider range of drivers that influence government agendas away from or towards progressive social and health policies. In this paper, we draw on multiple policy process frameworks in a study of agenda-setting for Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme. Introduced in 2011 after decades of advocacy, this scheme provides federal government-funded parental leave for eighteen weeks' pay at the minimum wage for primary caregivers, with evaluations showing improved health and equity outcomes. Drawing on empirical data collected from documentary sources and interviews with 25 key policy informants, we find that a combination of policy frameworks; in this case, Kingdon's Multiple Streams; Advocacy Coalition Framework; Punctuated Equilibrium; Narrative Policy Framework; and Policy Feedback helped explain how this landmark social policy came about. However, none of these frameworks were adequate without situating them within a critical feminist lens which enabled an explicit focus on the gendered nature of power. We argue that, alongside making use of policy process frameworks, social determinants of health policy research needs to engage with critical frameworks which share an explicit agenda for improving people's daily living conditions and the re-distribution of power, money, and resources in ways that promote health equity.

Assessing Conservative Populism: A New Double Movement or Neoliberal Populism?

ABSTRACTThis article examines the populist turn through the lens of changing social policy by relating this to the question of whether or not conservative and far‐right populism represent a break from, or a new mutation of, neoliberalism. Does this shift represent a conservative Polanyian double movement, or a mutation and extension of neoliberalism? This question is examined through a brief account of neoliberalism's failures, both before and after 2008, and how conservative populism challenged it, particularly around the question of liberal social policy. In then defining and discussing neoliberalism, the article shows how conservative populism in some respects challenges it, through its focus on re‐politicization in the face of technocratic and economistic de‐politicization and disenchantment. But the article then demonstrates important similarities and continuities in both neoliberal theory and populist practice.

Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence by Kristen R. Ghodsee

Reviewed by: Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence by Kristen R. Ghodsee Evelyn Preuss Kristen R. Ghodsee. Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence. Nation, 2018. 221 pp. Cloth, $22.00. With the democratic edifice under assault, researchers descend from the ivory tower. Call it scholarly activism. Joseph Stiglitz puts The Price of Inequality (2012) into succinct sentences for those who pay it. Timothy Snyder, with his On Tyranny (2017), instructs a broader, younger audience how to resist authoritarianism. But despite the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement, as well as various “Milestones in Misogyny,” to use Rebecca Solnit’s words for recent political developments, public-facing scholarship remains scarce where tyranny and inequality affect the most intimate sense of identity and being: gender. [End Page 113] Kristen R. Ghodsee fills the gap. Her 2017 New York Times op-ed on gender equality invited debate and resulted in a book offer. Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism compares the situation of women in former Eastern Bloc countries with that of women in Western Europe and the United States. Very well received, the book has been translated into several languages, including German. Surely, Ghodsee’s title provokes. It proposes that socialism, a political system reviled since the harsh frosts of the Cold War, might have served— and still might serve— women better. Yet, while Ghodsee’s title makes a splash, her argument is modest. She aims to make capitalism more tolerable for women by mixing in a few social policies grabbed from the toolbox of history that she claims have been successfully put to work in Northern Europe. The central thesis of the book is that women need economic independence in order to determine their own lives; alleviating women’s domestic responsibilities would enable them to participate in the economy on a footing equal to men. Ghodsee suggests that policies such as workplace guarantees, an increase of public-sector jobs, special education programs, universal health care, and comprehensive childcare could bring about the sort of status, life perspective, and matter-of-course dignity women enjoyed in Eastern Bloc countries. Looking for “a humane alternative to neoliberal capitalism,” she sees that the “democratic socialist societies of Northern Europe [ . . . ] have found ways to combine the political freedoms of the West with the social securities of the East” (17). Eastern European women’s autonomy in life and love, she surmises, derived from their economic independence. Yet, with that hop and skip from North to East and from love to money, Ghodsee lands in a mess. Muddled assignations and disjointed cause and effect are the drawbacks of an otherwise compelling line of thought. First of all, Nordic countries hardly have a large enough public sector to qualify them as socialist. At best, they are market economies buffered by progressive social policies. Second, Nordic countries cannot take credit for Eastern European women’s rights and pursuit of happiness. Such a foreshortening of historical and social perspective casts aside dimensions of politics and culture that greatly contributed to women’s standing in the former Eastern Bloc. The valorization of the private sphere, the importance of informal networks, and the topsy-turvy character of these societies gave women clout. Economic independence alone cannot explain the prestige they enjoyed. And, third, the economics that disadvantage [End Page 114] women to such an enormous degree in the contemporary West cannot be described as capitalist either. The care work pushed onto women in the domestic sphere only remains uncompensated because it is not part of the market. Women’s unpaid labor as a factor of capital accumulation derives from a practice that reaches further back in time than capitalism. Yet, despite— or perhaps because of— such disjunctive reasoning, Ghodsee’s book will continue to prompt debate. It is a most timely reminder that there is a way other than capitalism and to show it to the next generation. And it is a call for feminist German scholars to come down from the ivory tower and make the world their classroom. Evelyn Preuss Yale University Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press