Public Policy Debate Research Articles

The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order by Leon Fink

Reviewed by: The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order by Leon Fink Michael K. Rosenow Leon Fink, The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2015) Leon Fink is at it again. First, in 2002, he encouraged labour historians to think about the future by asking “What is to Be Done – In Labor History.” (Labor History, 43, no. 4: 419–424) He hoped they would respect what had been the strengths of the field while also looking for new paths to understand old questions. Now, in The Long Gilded Age he is following his own prescription. He hopes to convince labour historians that an America-inthe-world approach, or what Fink calls a “grounded globalism,” can offer fresh insights to traditional themes of working-class history. (8) The five essays consider how political ideas, the question of workers’ power, and internationalism shaped the politics, industrial relations, and reform movements of the era. Fink explores the options available to the historical actors of 1880 to 1920 and thinks just as seriously about what might have been as much as what was. Fink showcases the promise of his approach by narrowly focusing each essay on a specific theme and using political culture and contingency as connective threads to tie them together. A discussion of the promises and perils of free labour ideology in Chapter 1 serves as a cultural frame for the Long Gilded Age. Fink suggests that the labour movement vacillated between embracing and challenging the individualist focus of free labour. Leaders used the ideology to expose deformations in market culture such as contract, convict, and sweatshop labour. However, employers mobilized other interpretations of free labour to privilege individual property rights and the right to work over collective concerns. Fink draws two conclusions from this history. First, free labour ideology limited workers’ ability to steer economic development in a mutualist direction by creating a paradox: the ideas that had the potential to set them free also provided employers powerful tools to limit workers’ successes. Second, this outcome was not predetermined. Fink compares the United States with France to show how two countries responded differently to similar economic changes. Whereas [End Page 352] Americans chose individual liberty, the French emphasized collective obligation. Fink continues to explore the themes of political culture and contingency in the next three chapters. In Chapter 2, he reexamines three key clashes between capital and labour, focusing on the central figures of the Homestead, Pullman, and anthracite strikes to explain the decisions they made and identify other possible options. Even readers familiar with these strikes will appreciate Fink’s examination. He eschews simple narrative strategies that celebrate heroes and demonize villains. Instead, he situates the pivotal actors, such as Andrew Carnegie, Eugene Debs, and Mark Hanna, in the moment and explains their actions within the context of their times. Fink asserts that the lessons to be derived from the strikes are that the power of capital was not unassailable and that no single system of labour relations existed during the period. Possibilities therefore existed for alternative outcomes. American workers could have formed industrial unions and labour parties just as their British and Australian counterparts did. Labour could have won collective bargaining rights through a tripartite system of power that balanced the interests of business, labour, and the state in the wake of the anthracite strike. The fact that American workers failed in these endeavors allows Fink to showcase the interpretive power of identifying historical contingencies. From the battlefields of the three strikes, Fink moves to public policy debates in Chapter 3. He considers how US intellectuals, particularly those academics affiliated with the Wisconsin Idea of social reform such as Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons, inspired progressive reform but ultimately failed to establish the research university as a powerful advocate for American workers. Fink contrasts this history of unrealized potential with the experiences of the British Fabians and German Verein who managed some key reforms and wielded influence in their respective countries. From the hallowed halls of the University of Wisconsin, in Chapter 4, Fink next looks...

Parents' Family Time and Work Schedules: The Split‐Shift Schedule in Spain

This study used data on couples from the 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (N= 1,416) to analyze how work schedules are associated with family, couple, parent–child, and non‐family leisure activities. Spain is clearly an interesting case for the institutionalized split‐shift schedule, a long lunch break rooted in the traditionalsiestathat splits the workday between morning and evening. Results showed strong negative associations between the split shift and both family and parent–child activities. The evening shift was negatively associated with couple and family time, but not with parent–child time. Women spent much more time than men in parent–child activities for all work categories, and they were more responsive to the spouse's work hours. Men were substantially more active than women in non‐family leisure, considering both individuals' and their spouses' work schedules. Altogether, this study has important implications for scientific and public policy debates.

The 'War' in Russia's 'Hybrid Warfare'

Abstract: The war in Ukraine has refocused Western attention on Russia and its ability to project power, particularly in terms of through the so-called Doctrine. At the same time, Russian military thinking--and actions--are rapidly evolving. This article reflects on the increasingly prominent role of conventional force, including the use of high intensity firepower, in Russian war fighting capabilities, and advocates the need for a shift in our conceptualization of Russian actions from warfare to state mobilization. Since Russia's annexation of Crimea in February and March 2014, there has been much discussion of Russian aggression in its neighborhood, Russian rearmament--even militarization--and a newly robust and competitive foreign and security policy that threatens both the international order and even the West itself. Much of this debate has had the feel of a response to an unwelcome surprise: few had paid attention to the Russian military since the end of the Cold War (with the partial exception of its successful, but rather moderate performance in the Russo-Georgia war in 2008), and few had predicted the intervention of competent, disciplined and well-equipped Russian special forces in Crimea in 2014. In their haste to come to grips with what was going on in rather fast moving circumstances, observers traced their way back through recent history using the distorting light shed by hindsight. Some oft-cited older speeches by Vladimir Putin were rediscovered and embellished with other much less widely-known sources to suggest not only that the Russian operation was long pre-planned, but that Moscow had developed a new way of achieving its goals while avoiding direct armed confrontation with the militarily superior West. One of these less well-known sources was an article published under the name of Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery in the Russian newspaper Voenno-Promyshlenni Kurier 'm early 2013. Relying heavily on this source, which some considered prophetic given the events in February 2014, many Western commentators suggested the Russian operation in Crimea (and subsequently in Eastern Ukraine) heralded the emergence of a new Russian form of warfare, reflected in what has become known as the Gerasimov doctrine, the contours of which had been set out in that article. (1) This supposedly new form of war conferred numerous advantages on Moscow, observers argued, since it heightened the sense of ambiguity in Russian actions, and provided Russian leadership with an asymmetric tool to undercut Western advantages: since Moscow would be unable to win a conventional war with the West, it seeks to challenge it in other ways. Furthermore, it fits readily into Western debates about the increasing roles of special forces and strategic communications in conflict. Even as the situation in Ukraine evolved and Russia intervened in the war in Syria, this discussion of became the bedrock of the wider public policy and media debate about Russian actions, particularly about potential further hybrid threats to NATO member states, and about how NATO and the EU might respond to and deter them. The terms remain a central aspect of the media and public policy debate in NATO and its member states as they explore and try to grasp Russian ambiguous warfare. At the same time, while the term war offers some assistance to understanding specific elements of Russian activity, it underplays important aspects discussed by Gerasimov, and offers only a partial view of evolving Russian activity, capabilities, and intentions. One result is thinking about Russia has become increasingly abstract, not to say artificial, as Western observers and officials have created an image of Russian warfare that the Russians themselves do not recognize. Another result is too many have overlooked the increasingly obvious role of conventional force in Russian military thinking. …

Concealed carry bans and the American college campus: a law, social sciences, and policy perspective

Should individuals on American college campuses be permitted to carry concealed weapons? This issue positions second Amendment liberty guarantees against personal safety concerns and learning environment interests. Current policy prescription has yet to appropriately balance these competing demands. Accordingly, this article reviews and comments on three key dimensions of the concealed carry ban controversy. This includes a presentation of the governing case law, a recounting of the relevant social science findings, and a discussion of the societal forces and human dynamics that both inform and influence this public policy debate. We argue that these forces and dynamics constitute cultural impediments to achieving meaningful consensus-building legislation. The manuscript concludes by proposing several justice-based reformist directions with relevancies for academic researchers, political officials, and policy-makers.

Eutanasia activa, una mirada a la situación internacional

International situation on euthanasia varies among countries. Even though in most of the countries worldwide active euthanasia is forbidden by law, to the date four countries (The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Colombia) have approved and regulated by law active euthanasia (defined as “physician’s intentionally administering a treatment -usually medicationto cause the patient’s death, with the patient’s full, informed consent”). For a country like Chile, in which all types of euthanasia are forbidden by law, it is important to look forward to the international situation, in order to enrich public policy debate, based on the international empirical experience.

Jefferson in Montreal: The Unusual Intervention of a Long-Deceased American President into the Debate over Québec’s Charter of Values

The last Quebec election campaign featured an interesting (if unusual) injection of a long-dead American president into the heated public-policy debate over the Parti quebecois’s proposed “charter of values,” which if adopted would have imposed certain restrictions on the manner in which civil servants and some others would be permitted to give symbolic expression to their religious convictions while functioning in the public sphere. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and his involvement in the contemporary domestic political arena was invoked by two Quebec cabinet ministers, Bernard Drainville and Jean-Francois Lisee, in late 2013. They sought to rebut allegations that the proposed charter represented a retrograde and anti-democratic attack upon civil liberties; to do so, they invoked the author of the Declaration of Independence and a major source of inspiration for the Bill of Rights. This article assesses the Drainville-Lisee thesis by examining what American scholars have claimed about Jefferson’s f...

The hidden role of racial bias in support for policies related to inequality and crime

Since the Jim Crow era, overtly racist attitudes toward African-Americans have decreased. During this same period, however, racial inequalities have persisted and the approach to addressing such inequalities has shifted away from social assistance and toward punitive controls. This article poses an explanation for this seeming paradox, drawing on measures of implicit racial affect in a nationally representative survey to reveal a persisting relevance of racial bias in understandings of and support for public policies—even among those explicitly denying such bias. Among non-Hispanic whites, implicit racial bias is significantly associated with opposition to policies designed to ameliorate these inequalities as well as support for punitive crime policies. Racial bias appears to play a less important role in support or opposition to these policies among Hispanic whites and especially among African-Americans. Implications for public policy debates are discussed.

Corporate Responsibility and a Firm's Reasons for Acting

In this paper I consider the issue of corporate responsibility though a discussion of the types of reasons that may be given for a firm’s actions and outcomes. These reasons may variously be given by the firm as explanation or justification, or by persons affected by the firm as endorsement or critique, or as part of the public policy debate about the scope and limits of a firm’s activities. To provide a structure for this analysis I outline a model that seeks to describe the possible extent of a firm’s responsibility for the outcomes of its activities through an idea of four dimensions of value. This locates firms along a minimal-maximal spectrum of corporate responsibility, without assuming where this location might be for any particular firm. I then discuss the question of reasons. This starts with some thoughts about agency and responsibility, and then considers the distinction between various types of reasons. I use the minimal-maximal spectrum to map out the various arguments. I group the arguments under the following headings: four dimensions of value; a minimal-maximal spectrum of corporate responsibility; reasons and agency: individual responsibility; reasons and agency: corporate responsibility; minimal corporate responsibility; formal and informal reasons; internal and external reasons; reasons and minimal responsibility: four examples of an appeal to ethical significance; wide and narrow instrumentalism; instrumentalism and self interest; further issues; concluding comments. This arguments presented in this paper are part of an attempt to analyse the conceptual issues that arise from corporate responsibility. Many of these arguments are suggestions, others are more fully developed. I have included both. I hope these ideas stimulate further discussion.

Frequency and attendance at popular music concerts in the USA: Does facility age matter?

Popular music is a valuable community amenity in the USA. State and local governments often encourage concert development by subsidizing construction and operation of concert venues. The facilities most likely to receive public support also host professional sports franchises. Public policy arguments supporting subsidization often maintain that concert frequency declines as facilities age, thus necessitating their replacement. Anecdotal evidence is inconsistent on the matter. Using a two-year pooled cross-section of 1234 concerts in 80 professional sports facilities from July 2012 to June 2014, the present study tests if facility age predicts changes in concert frequency and attendance. The results lend support to subsidy proponents' arguments, but the magnitude of the age effects is unlikely to warrant significant subsidy levels.

Theex turpi causaprinciple inHoungaandServier

In Hounga v Allen the majority of the Supreme Court employed a test for the application of the ex turpi causa defence involving the balancing of public policy arguments for and against allowing the defence. Although this has attracted some early academic support, this note will argue it is inconsistent with authority and principle. The later decision in Servier v Apotex does not address the Hounga decision directly but strongly endorses a more conservative approach to the ex turpi causa principle. The resulting tension between these two Supreme Court decisions is likely further to destabilise the law in this area. This note advances arguments in favour of the Servier approach, summarises both decisions in terms of their consistency with authority and considers the ways in which Servier may have limited the effects of Hounga.

Public Policy and Accounting Research: What Is to Be Done?

Singleton-Green [2010. The communication gap: Why doesn't accounting research make a greater contribution to debates on accounting policy? Accounting in Europe, 7(2), 129–145] argues that a communication gap between researchers and those involved in public debates on accounting problems significantly reduces the impact of accounting research. A new ICAEW report, The Effects of Mandatory IFRS Adoption in the EU: a Review of Empirical Research, tries to bridge the communication gap on the subject that it covers. The report found not only a significant amount of relevant research, but also that its usefulness was limited in various ways. The paper makes a number of recommendations to researchers: they should point out any biases in the data they use, address some issues through field work, not assume that surrounding institutions are unchanged, be careful to understand the specific features of the countries they cover, investigate differences in previous research, and state the economic significance of their findings. The paper also makes recommendations for non-academic participants in public policy debates, including: they should actively promote relevant research, help researchers get access to information, and help ensure that researchers have the incentives to do what is needed to benefit public policy.

An Examination of Some Central Debates on Sex Trafficking in Research and Public Policy in the United States

This article provides an introduction to some central debates in research and public policy on sex trafficking in the United States, with particular attention to how these debates play out among feminists and concluding with recommendations for guiding principles on future directions for public policy and research.

Consequences of Diversity for Social Cohesion and Prejudice: The Missing Dimension of Intergroup Contact

A controversial claim that diversity has negative consequences for trust and other outcomes spawned a contentious debate in sociology and political science, but was hardly noted in social psychology. I summarize the debate, and argue that the efficacy of direct, face‐to‐face intergroup contact as a means of reducing prejudice is a stark omission, as I illustrate with evidence of the association between diversity, on the one hand, and trust, prejudice, and social capital on the other. I also consider two other contributions of contact theory to this issue, namely that contact with members of one group has an impact on attitudes toward members of other groups; and that contact should be studied via social networks. Despite the importance I attach to contact, I note two “enemies of contact,” resegregation in ostensibly desegregated settings, and negatively valenced contact. Finally, I point to the kind of research we should do, in order to increase the impact of our work on the public policy debate on this issue.

The Financial Secrecy Index: Shedding New Light on the Geography of Secrecy

Both academic research and public policy debate around tax havens and offshore finance typically suffer from a lack of definitional consistency. Unsurprisingly then, there is little agreement about which jurisdictions ought to be considered as tax havens — or which policy measures would result in their not being so considered. In this article we explore and make operational an alternative concept, that of a secrecy jurisdiction and present the findings of the resulting Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). The FSI ranks countries and jurisdictions according to their contribution to opacity in global financial flows, revealing a quite different geography of financial secrecy from the image of small island tax havens that may still dominate popular perceptions and some of the literature on offshore finance. Some major (secrecy-supplying) economies now come into focus. Instead of a binary division between tax havens and others, the results show a secrecy spectrum, on which all jurisdictions can be situated, and that adjustment for the scale of business is necessary in order to compare impact propensity. This approach has the potential to support more precise and granular research findings and policy recommendations.

The Financial Secrecy Index: Shedding New Light on the Geography of Secrecy

Both academic research and public policy debate around tax havens and offshore finance typically suffer from a lack of definitional consistency. Unsurprisingly then, there is little agreement about which jurisdictions ought to be considered as tax havens—or which policy measures would result in their not being so considered. In this article we explore and make operational an alternative concept, that of a secrecy jurisdiction and present the findings of the resulting Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). The FSI ranks countries and jurisdictions according to their contribution to opacity in global financial flows, revealing a quite different geography of financial secrecy from the image of small island tax havens that may still dominate popular perceptions and some of the literature on offshore finance. Some major (secrecy-supplying) economies now come into focus. Instead of a binary division between tax havens and others, the results show a secrecy spectrum, on which all jurisdictions can be situated, and that adjustment for the scale of business is necessary in order to compare impact propensity. This approach has the potential to support more precise and granular research findings and policy recommendations.

CP3 - Life At A Premium: Considering An End-Of-Life Premium In Value-Based Reimbursement

The increasingly explicit use of health technology assessment (HTA) continues to generate substantial public and academic policy debates. One specific issue, which raises a host of concerns, is whether it is proper to treat the benefits of treatment for patients close to the ends of their lives relatively favourably. This might be done by, for example, weighting their benefits more heavily or their costs more lightly than those accruing to other patient groups or by using differential discount (interest) rates or by applying an ‘easier’ threshold condition for the technology in question to be approved. This chapter considers whether it is possible to develop a theoretically coherent, procedurally transparent and inter-decision-consistent value framework to inform reimbursement decisions. This chapter describes the landscape in which the debates for such a framework are taking place and critically evaluates the claims made by different groups for different value premiums from a conceptual and empirical perspective.

Between Flows and Places: Using Geodemographics to Explore EU Migration Across Neighbourhoods in Britain

During the past decade, the growing significance of EU migrants in Britain has attracted considerable media and policy attention. While the rhetoric and public policy debate has focused on national and regional levels, surprisingly, little is known about the emerging settlement patterns of EU migrants at the local level. This paper sheds some light on this important issue by exploring the socio-spatial characteristics of the places of destination/residence of EU migrants and, in doing so, reveals the extent to which the concentration-dispersal framework applies to their settlement pattern. To evaluate whether and in what ways EU migrants have settled across neighbourhoods in Britain, 2001 and 2011 census estimates as well as geodemographic data are used. The findings suggest that EU migrants have consolidated their national presence in Britain because of their growing numbers and unprecedented geographical dispersal. While EU migrants’ settlement does not seem to translate into strong clustering patterns, diverging socio-spatial experiences are found among the largest groups (Polish, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish).

Democracy and Regulating Autonomous Weapons: Biting the Bullet while Missing the Point?

Public policy debate around regulating emerging autonomous weapons systems is vital, but in danger of neglecting crucial challenges. Current analysis focuses around efforts to define autonomy and to incorporate ‘autonomous’ systems within established regulatory systems, particularly international law and arms control treaties and conventions. This emphasises two key decision moments as the focus of regulation: the initiation of hostilities and target engagement, reflecting the just war tradition that provides the intellectual backdrop for much of this debate. This article suggests this underestimates the significance of the potential consequences of such weapons systems, arguing that this consensus disguises the extent to which autonomy can only be meaningfully engaged within the specific context of the circumstances when such systems may be deployed, and that the speed of decision-making by such systems will outstrip regulatory endeavours focused on the two decision moments. This paper thus argues that only wide-ranging debate, especially within democracies leading the development of such systems, about the relationship of autonomous systems to the nature and purpose of military violence and underpinning democratic values and principles, can adequately address the challenge presented by the emergence of contextually autonomous weapons.

In transit: The well-being of migrants from transition and post-transition countries

The extant literature on migration and well-being has focused on migration's consequences for the receiving countries. In this paper, we ask a different but important question: how much do migrants gain from moving to another country? Using Gallup World Poll data and a methodology combining statistical matching and difference-in-differences, we assess migration's effects on the well-being of migrants from transition economies. We contribute to the literature by showing that in addition to increasing household income, migration enhances subjective well-being and satisfaction with freedom. The results are robust to sensitivity checks. Understanding the causal effects of migration on perceived and actual well-being is crucial for an informed public policy debate and has direct implications for social cohesion and integration policy.

Public health, science, and policy debate: being right is not enough.

Public health is usually enacted through public policies, necessitating that the public engage in debates that, ideally, are grounded in solid scientific findings. Mistrust in science, however, has compromised the possibility of deriving sound policy from such debates, partially owing to justified concerns regarding undue interference and even outright manipulation by commercial interests. This situation has generated problematic impasses, one of which is the emergence of an anti-vaccination movement that is already affecting public health, with a resurgence in the United States of preventable diseases thought to have been eradicated. Drawing on British sociologist Harry Collins' work on expertise, we propose a theoretical framework in which the paralyzing, undue public distrust of science can be analyzed and, it is hoped, overcome.