A Brookings Institution Press and Russell Sage Foundation publication The extraordinary swings in the scope and content of the policy agenda during the first Clinton administration revealed a fundamental partisan divide over the social role of the federal government. This book argues that the recent conflicts over social policy represent key elements in strategies that parties designed in an attempt to consolidate their hold over the federal government. Long frustrated by divided government, each party exceeded its electoral mandate in hopes of enacting major policy reforms aimed to shift politics in their direction for the foreseeable future. The book traces the overreaching and limited legislative success that characterized the first Clinton administration's approach to three distinctive features of politics and policymaking: the polarization of political elites; the predominance of advertising campaigns and intense interest group politics as political parties have ceased to mobilize ordinary people; and the unprecedented role that budgetary concerns now play in social policymaking. Although neither party managed to enact its major transforming agenda, Congress did pass new policies--most notably welfare reform--that together with a host of other changes in the states and the private sector altered the landscape for social policy. The poor have been the biggest losers as Democrats and Republicans have fought to win the middle class over to their vision of the future. The authors first analyze the institutions and tools of policymaking, including Congress, the political use of public opinion polling, and the politics of the deficit. They then consider policies designed to win over the middle class, including health care policy, employer-provided social benefits, wages and jobs, and crime policy. Last, they address policies targeted at the disadvantaged, including welfare, affirmative action, and urban policy. In addition to the editor, the contributors include John Ferejohn, Lawrence R. Jacobs, Robert Y. Sha

This textbook introduces and develops new tools to understand the recent economic crisis and how desirable economic policies can be adopted. Gilles provides new institutional concepts for wealth creation, such as network economies, which are based on the social division of labour. This volume investigates the formation of networks and hierarchical authority organisations, with a focus on the role of trust. Gilles also looks at the theory of growth and development, using real world examples and problem sets to put into practice. This title is suitable reading for undergraduate, MSc and postgraduate students in microeconomic analysis, economic theory and political economy.

Most studies of famine and the African food crisis stress how the socio-economic context influences the occurrence of food shortages. By contrast, this book argues that food insecurity itself influences the social and economic organization of the society. Through this approach, the author provides a new interpretation of the causes and consequences of Tanzania's present economic crisis. The book examines the effects of changing food availability on the functioning of the state, the market and clientage networks, over the past seven decades. The conclusion is that clientage is no less important than the state and market as an organizational force in Tanzanian society, and, under heightened food insecurity, the state and market lose ground to clientage.

Social divisions are systematic social inequalities which are frequently regarded as unjust, and are fateful in the lives of individuals.

This volume addresses issues of precariousness in a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, looking at socio-economic transformations as well as the identity formation and political organizing of precarious people. The collection bridges empirical research with social theory to problematize and analyse the precariat.

The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of “ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)” and “middle-class society (so ̄churyu ̄-shakai)” which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so ̄churyu ̄-shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.

Education is intimately connected to many of the most important and contentious questions confronting American society, from race to jobs to taxes, and the competitive pressures of the global economy have only enhanced its significance. Elementary and secondary schooling has long been the province of state and local governments; but when George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, it signaled an unprecedented expansion of the federal role in public education. This book provides the first balanced, in-depth analysis of how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law. Patrick McGuinn, a political scientist with hands-on experience in secondary education, explains how this happened despite the country's long history of decentralized school governance and the longstanding opposition of both liberals and conservatives to an active, reform-oriented federal role in schools. His book provides the essential political context for understanding NCLB, the controversies surrounding its implementation, and forthcoming debates over its reauthorization. how the struggle to define the federal role in school reform took center stage in debates over the appropriate role of the government in promoting opportunity and social welfare. He places the evolution of the federal role in schools within the context of broader institutional, ideological, and political changes that have swept the nation since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, chronicles the concerns raised by the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, and shows how education became a major campaign issue for both parties in the 1990s. McGuinn argues that the emergence of swing issues such as education can facilitate major policy change even as they influence the direction of wider political debates and partisan conflict. McGuinn traces the Republican shift from seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education to embracing federal leadership in school reform, then details the negotiations over NCLB, the forces that shaped its final provisions, and the ways in which the law constitutes a new federal education policy regime - against which states have now begun to rebel. and that only by understanding the unique dynamics of national education politics will reformers be able to craft a more effective national role in school reform.