Regime Perspective Research Articles

Old-Age Income Security System in Korea from the Pension Regime Perspective

Old-Age Income Security System in Korea from the Pension Regime Perspective

Discussion: moving food regimes forward: reflections on symposium essays

All authors in this symposium use a food regime perspective to ask questions about the present which—as these articles demonstrate—have several possible answers. History suggests a time perspective of 25–40 year cycles so far—a food regime 1870–1914, an experimental and chaotic era 1914–1947, and a food regime 1947–1973. It has been less than 40 years since 1973, when food regime analysts agree that a contested and experimental period began. There is no consensus on whether it has already ended or how it might issue into a new food regime. The conversation is more fruitful than the conclusions. I intend these comments as an invitation to join in.

Introduction to the special symposium: reflecting on twenty years of the food regimes approach in agri-food studies

Background to the symposiumTwenty years ago, Harriet Friedmann and PhilipMcMichael published a highly original, influential and—subsequently—controversial article: ‘Agriculture and thestate system: the rise and fall of national agricultures, 1870to the present’ (Friedmann and McMichael 1989). Over thefollowing years, both Friedmann and McMichael, alongwith other collaborators, further developed their insights,challenging agri-food scholars with a new way of framingagri-food power relations as well as providing an approachfor agricultural research and policy analysis that movedfood from the periphery to the centre of wider theoriesabout society and interpretations of the history ofcapitalism.Through the early 1990s, their argument and its signif-icance—described more fully below—gave rise to numer-ous attempts to both validate and extend their theory andposition before a strong critique of the food regimesapproach in the mid-90s dented the ambitions of food-regime scholars to some degree (Goodman and Watts1994). Until the mid-2000s, the food regimes approach wasa typically muted current of thought in agricultural politicaleconomy, before a resurgence of interest in its value coa-lesced around a set of panels at the 2007 joint meetings ofthe AFHVS and the ASFS in Victoria, Canada.One of the editors of this Symposium proposed that thefood regimes progenitors join a panel of other agri-foodscholars to debate the contemporary relevance and pro-ductivity of the food regimes perspective. Back-to-backpanels on ‘Updating Food Regime Analysis for the 21stCentury’ drew a large and engaged audience. Presentationswere provided by Farshad Araghi and Philip McMichaelfrom the US; David Burch, Geoffrey Lawrence, and JaneDixon from Australia; Hugh Campbell from NZ; andHarriet Friedmann from Canada. (In this issue, Le Heronand Lewis’s commentary explores the preponderance ofcontributors from the Antipodes and/or ‘settler states’.) Thepapers included critical reflections on the original contri-butions of food regime analysis combined with new for-mulations that included questions concerning value andecological relations, cultural politics, nutritional knowl-edge and dimensions, and the transformation of corporateand institutional power relationships in an era of neo-lib-eral globalization and financialization.On the strength of the response to these panels, whichindicated renewed interest in food regimes analysis, thepresenters decided to develop a symposium for Agricultureand Human Values to mark the 20th anniversary of the keyFriedmann and McMichael (1989) article. The purpose ofthis Symposium is to rework the papers from the Victoriasessions (along with a contribution by Bill Pritchard andcommentary by Richard Le Heron and Nick Lewis) with thefollowing goals in mind: (1) to situate food regime analysisas a significant contribution to understanding capitalistmodernity—including its changing forms of accumulation,power relationships, value relations and institutional orga-nization on a world scale; (2) to emphasize therefore thecentrality of food relations (such as global divisions oflabor, nutritional and dietary regimens, and differentiatedconsumption patterns) to understanding the ordering and

The Third Food Regime: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in North America

The agricultural sector is currently being shaped by two powerful dynamics as many nations reorganise their national agriculture according to free trade and other supranational agreements while new agricultural biotechnologies are increasingly adopted. This interrelationship between regulatory change and genetic engineering appears set to form the basis of a new food regime. In this article, we compare the role of national and international regulations relating to the technology, and the impact of local resistance to it, in the advanced capitalist countries of Canada and the USA and the developing country of Mexico. Similar to food regime perspectives, our study concludes that neoliberal regulatory reorganisation is an important component of the evolving food regime. Further, Mexico bore the brunt of the technology's negative social impacts, demonstrating how it exacerbates existing inequalities between developed and developing nations. Resistance movements in the country have been sufficient to call into question the inevitability of a homogenous reorganisation of agriculture, however. Evidence suggests that such resistance could modify, or even derail, this technology's role in individual nations, and consequently, in the unfolding food regime as a whole.

Integrated Services in Activation Policies in Finland and Italy: A Critical Appraisal

The integration of welfare services in activation policies has been one of the common answers to welfare challenges in EU member states over the last two decades. The process has been interwoven with the rescaling both downwards and upwards of welfare regulative authorities. The article discusses the role of integrated services in activation policies in relation to the centralisation and decentralisation of welfare policies in a comparative perspective of different EU welfare regimes and highlights the role of local institutional milieus in shaping path-dependent modes of governance in integrated services.

Popular music policy making and the Instrumental Policy Behaviour Process

AbstractPopular music policy making incorporates the art and rationality of ‘governmentality’. In doing so it seeks to move beyond benign policy making efforts and some of the prevailing approaches to cultural policy studies – primarily arts policy – to apply interventionary strategies into the space dominated by global recording companies. Major recording companies and the business-as-usual approach of Return on Investment dominates local and national popular music through the macro-level perspective of global trade regimes, thereby avoiding the micro-level activities needed by citizens locally. Critical approaches to the potential loss of localised music production in the face of globalisation are drawn from the heterodox, interdisciplinary schools of institutional economics which, in this case, uses instrumentalism to create a model that insists on research-based popular music making policies that respond to citizen needs. Using examples from the Australian experience, the Instrumental Policy Behaviour Process (IPBP) is proposed as a model for generating localised, resource-allocating approaches to popular music policy making.

Do Welfare State Regimes Determine Public Sector Reforms? Choice Reforms in American, Swedish and German Schools

The idea that modern welfare states can be grouped into distinct regimes dominates contemporary studies of welfare state restructuring, and several studies have concluded welfare state reforms to be correlated with regime structures. These studies build, however, on analyses of only cash‐benefit programmes whereas social services are almost neglected in current welfare state research. Thus, the aim of this article is to test the explanatory capacity of the welfare state regime perspective in relation to reforms in the service dimension of advanced welfare states – normally termed ‘public sector reforms’. For this purpose, the author has conducted a focused comparison of the degree to which archetypical examples of the liberal regime (United States), the social democratic regime (Sweden) and the conservative regime (Germany) have introduced vouchers and parental choice into their public primary schools. Schools and education have ranked high on the public sector reform agenda since the 1980s, while the school choice issue signifies core aspects of the rationale of the reform movement: re‐arranging public provision of services into quasi‐markets. The article identifies, however, a clear lack of correlation between adoption of the school‐choice policy and welfare state regimes. Instead, the reforms undertaken in all three countries seem closely related to the institutional rules of political decision making.

Going beyond The three worlds of welfare capitalism: regime theory and public health research

International research on the social determinants of health has increasingly started to integrate a welfare state regimes perspective. Although this is to be welcomed, to date there has been an...

Woodrow Wilson's Ideas About Local Government Reform: A Regime Perspective on the New Push for Citizen Engagement in Public Administration

New scholarship promoting direct citizen engagement in public administration is grounded in a rejection of the theory and ethos of the administrative state, including the presumptively conventional views of Woodrow Wilson. Yet Wilson's ideas in this regard were hardly conventional. As part of his sweeping prescriptive vision for a national administrative system in the United States, Wilson promoted cities as the exclusive locus of direct citizen engagement in administration. Scholars and practitioners of the new participatory governance who attend to Wilson's ideas can acquire a valuable regime-level perspective on redefining the role of the public in public management and governance.

Realism, Politics and Culture in Middle East Arms Control Negotiations

AbstractThe history of arms control efforts in the Middle East consists of numerous initiatives, but very limited results. From the first efforts to negotiate WMD limits and non-proliferation arrangements in the 1960s, through various regional initiatives, frameworks, proposals, discussions, and negotiations, the obstacles to agreement on mutual limitations remained dominant. Frequent discussions in the UN of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone (MENWFZ), the multi-lateral Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) talks initiated during the 1991 Middle East Peace Conference, and the regional dimensions of global frameworks such as the NPT, CWC, and CTBT have all failed to produce results.Detailed analysis of these efforts highlights the impact of realist security-based factors, the structure and process of the interactions, as well as the cultural and domestic political dimensions. The existential conflicts, reflected in protracted territorial disputes and denials of legitimacy and compounded by a fundamental asymmetry, created a zero-sum framework in the region. The region is characterized by a great deal of instability and competition; this situation, in turn, contributed to the efforts to acquire WMD. In terms of domestic politics, the regional cooperation required for arms limitation is often inconsistent with the dominant articulated political interests and regime perspectives. In addition, misunderstandings and misperceptions frequently occur due to the complexities of cross-cultural communications in the Middle East. Numerous dialogues have not narrowed the gaps or transformed the zero-sum frameworks into cooperative ones. Hopes for the creation of successful regional mechanisms for limiting arms depend on overcoming the obstacles encountered in past efforts.

China's Policies for Minority Nationalities in Higher Education: Negotiating National Values and Ethnic Identities

China's Policies for Minority Nationalities in Higher Education: Negotiating National Values and Ethnic Identities

Opportunity and constraint in business‐to‐business relationships: insights from strategic choice and zones of manoeuvre

This paper has two main objectives. The first is to discuss a case study analysis of a supply network in the UK naval shipbuilding sector. The case study is designed to provide an empirical exploration of the core theoretical propositions contained in the power regimes perspective. This perspective proposes that dyadic power structures matter for an understanding of opportunity and constraint in business‐to‐business relationship management. The second objective is to discuss how this conceptualization of opportunity and constraint might be extended and made richer by a focus on strategic choice and zones of manoeuvre. Some of the core organization theory literature is reviewed and possible analytical linkages to the power regimes perspective are identified.

The art of the possible: relationship management in power regimes and supply chains

This paper outlines the general theoretical approach adopted in the power regime perspective on sourcing and relationship management. The paper focuses on the art of the possible. This means that managers have to develop sourcing relationships that are appropriate given the circumstances in which they find themselves. To understand appropriateness it is argued that buyers and suppliers must understand the five sourcing choices available and the power circumstances that exist between them in supply chain networks. Only by understanding the power regime that exists can buyers and suppliers fully understand what is the appropriate way for them to manage relationships.

Shareholder Value, Management Culture and Production Regimes in the Transformation of the German Chemical-Pharmaceutical Industry

One of the greatest points of controversy in the recent literature in political economy is the extent to which “shareholder value” oriented institutional investors are drivers of change in national systems of corporate governance. This article argues that the key question is how management cultures shape managerial responses to pressures for change from capital markets. Empirical evidence for this argument is provided through an examination of changes since the mid-1990s at the “Big Three” German integrated chemical/pharmaceutical companies: Hoechst, Bayer and BASF. Despite facing similar demands from shareholder-value oriented investors, management at the three companies have pursued quite different strategies. The end result, however, may be the same from a production regime perspective, that is, the long-run withdrawal of “Big Pharma” from Germany as a location for R&D due to a more favorable institutional framework in the US.

Shareholder Value, Management Culture and Production Regimes in the Transformation of the German Chemical-Pharmaceutical Industry

One of the greatest points of controversy in the recent literature in political economy is the extent to which shareholder value oriented institutional investors are drivers of change in national systems of corporate governance. This article argues that the key question is how management cultures shape managerial responses to pressures for change from capital markets. Empirical evidence for this argument is provided through an examination of changes since the mid-1990s at the Big Three German integrated chemical/pharmaceutical companies: Hoechst, Bayer and BASF. Despite facing similar demands from shareholder-value oriented investors, management at the three companies have pursued quite different strategies. The end result, however, may be the same from a production regime perspective, that is, the long-run withdrawal of Big Pharma from Germany as a location for R&D due to a more favorable institutional framework in the US.

Irrigation development in colonial Java: the history of the Solo Valley works from a technological regime perspective

The circumstances surrounding the abandonment of the enormous irrigation project in the Solo Valley in colonial Indonesia (East Java) have always remained slightly shrouded in mystery. On the one hand, most engineers involved in the Dutch East Indian Department of Public Works could not understand why, in 1903, the Dutch government called off the project - which had been started in 1893 but was suspended in 1898 for budgetary reasons - and thus decided to deviate from the recommendations to continue the project issued by a special state commission. On the other hand, the reorganisation and the general budget cuts the engineers feared never took place. An analysis using the technological regime concept, alongside other concepts and insights from technological development theory, is shown to offer some clarity. The Solo Valley works formed part of an extensive irrigation program launched in 1890 and completed some 30 years later. Just like the other works, the Solo project was set up in the spirit of a specific technological regime, which emerged in 1885 and was characterised by detailed preliminary research and the design of facilities for an entire irrigation area; this is what I term the 'T'echnical Irrigation Regime. After 1920, irrigation projects were embarked upon in which more attention was paid to management and agricultural aspects and which were carried out in a piecemeal fashion. This was governed by a different technological regime which was the result of experience gained between 1885 and 1920; this is what I term the Irrigation Regime. On the one hand, the Solo Valley works project contributed to the shift from the Technical Irrigation Regime to the Technical-Agricultural Irrigation Regime, while on the other hand, it was abandoned because of this regime shift that had partially taken place by 1903. Finally, the gradual nature of technological regime shifts to be abstracted from this historical case is emphasised.

The Tax Policy Regime in American Politics, 1941-1951

This article analyzes the inception of the mass income tax during the Second World War as a decisive moment when relations among state, market, and citizens were reconfigured in a durable way. The state institutionalized the means to devise tax reform–a policy regime–during this formative period of partisan conflict over macroeconomic management strategies. The approach to policy analysis presented here illuminates the process by which political choices are made among competing policy visions embedded in state agencies. This study demonstrates that a policy regime perspective, when applied in a complementary way with interest-driven or institutionalist accounts, is best equipped to bring important but tacit constraints into clear analytical focus.

Towards a Comparative Sociology of Residence and Disablement - Britain and Sweden in Interventionist Welfare Regime Perspective

In the first part of this paper, I developed the interventionist model of disability and, from this, interventionist regime theory. In this part of the paper, my empirical application of these conceptual models will enable me to refute the ?total change? and ?total statis? discourses in British housing and community care research, and the latent convergence that I have shown to predominate in divergent ?welfare regime? theorizing. I will achieve this through a ?middle-range? theorization that demonstrates how British housing and community care policies are infused with elements of both statis and flux, and how British and Swedish housing policies for disabled people are disjunctive constructs particular to these societies. In doing so, I will not enter into intricate details about these housing policies. Rather, I take the broad principles (and aims) that underpin housing policies as the starting points from which I abstract out towards a middle-range theorization.

The impact of a ready‐made state: East Germans in comparative perspective

To understand the impact of reunification upon Germans, we must make before and after comparisons across time, and also across central Europe. The first section shows that from the perspective of comparative Communist regimes, east Germans have been doubly advantaged, in former times because of belonging to a relatively prosperous part of the Soviet bloc and since reunification as subjects of a ‘ready‐made state’ with democracy and a wealthy social market economy. Analysis in the second section of the impact of reunification on west Germans shows that a significant proportion feel less satisfied than before, whereas the opposite is the case for east Germans. The third section introduces comparisons with Austria. Like the Federal Republic, it has enjoyed the advantages of democracy and a market economy, but without the trauma of division and reunification.

Political Exceptionalism in Sunbelt Cities

ABSTRACT: Several scholars have argued that politics in Sunbelt cities in the decades around the turn of the century and after World War II clearly differed from the pattern of politics in Snowbelt cities. This paper evaluates the views of these authors, suggests that the themes presented about Sunbelt exceptionalism are overstated, and urges further research relying on the regime perspective.