Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives

Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives
Author: Robert R. Kaufman
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004-11-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780801880490

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives studies the politics of efforts to reform education and health services in Latin America in the 1990s. Both sectors were common targets of reform—education because of its economic importance, health care because of needs to reduce great inequities of access and opportunities to increase domestic savings presented by reforms. Both sectors also have large numbers of unionized public employees, whose presence affects patronage as well as political power. The book presents case studies that offer a wealth of new information not previously accessible to the English-speaking academic and policy community. For health care, these cover Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Peru; for eductaion, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Four chapters by the editors set out for each sector the goals, structure, and outcomes of reform efforts. Contributors are Marta Arretche, Josefina Bruni Celli, Mary A. Clark, Javier Corrales, Sonia M. Draibe, Christina Ewig, Alec Ian Gershberg, Alejandra Gonzalez Rossetti, Merilee S. Grindle, Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Pamela S. Lowden, and Patricia Ramirez.

Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives

Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives
Author: Robert R. Kaufman
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2004-11-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Lowden, and Patricia Ramirez.--Thomas J. Bossert "British Bulletin of Publications on Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal, and Spain"

Development, Democracy, and Welfare States

Development, Democracy, and Welfare States
Author: Stephan Haggard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691214158

This is the first book to compare the distinctive welfare states of Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman trace the historical origins of social policy in these regions to crucial political changes in the mid-twentieth century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization. After World War II, communist regimes in Eastern Europe adopted wide-ranging socialist entitlements while conservative dictatorships in East Asia sharply limited social security but invested in education. In Latin America, where welfare systems were instituted earlier, unequal social-security systems favored formal sector workers and the middle class. Haggard and Kaufman compare the different welfare paths of the countries in these regions following democratization and the move toward more open economies. Although these transformations generated pressure to reform existing welfare systems, economic performance and welfare legacies exerted a more profound influence. The authors show how exclusionary welfare systems and economic crisis in Latin America created incentives to adopt liberal social-policy reforms, while social entitlements from the communist era limited the scope of liberal reforms in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. In East Asia, high growth and permissive fiscal conditions provided opportunities to broaden social entitlements in the new democracies. This book highlights the importance of placing the contemporary effects of democratization and globalization into a broader historical context.

The Puzzle of Latin American Economic Development

The Puzzle of Latin American Economic Development
Author: Patrice M. Franko
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 716
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780742553538

Provides the basic economic tools for students to understand the problems in the countries of Latin America. This third edition analyzes challenges to the neoliberal model of development and highlights macroeconomic changes in the region. It explores the contradictions of growth, and focuses on factors of competitiveness.

Do the Poor Count?

Do the Poor Count?
Author: Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2015-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 027105056X

Latin America’s flirtation with neoliberal economic restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s (the so-called Washington Consensus strategy) had the effect of increasing income inequality throughout the region. The aim of this economic policy was in part to create the conditions for stable democracy by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, both human and capital, but the widening gap between rich and poor threatened to undermine political stability. At the heart of the dilemma faced by these new democracies is the question of accountability: Are all citizens equally capable of holding the government accountable if it does not represent their interests? In this book, Michelle Taylor-Robinson investigates both the formal institutions of democracy (such as electoral rules and the design of the legislative and executive branches) and informal institutions (such as the nomination procedures of political parties and patron-client relationships) to see what incentives legislators have to pay attention to the needs of poor people and thereby adequately represent their interests.

Social Protection in Developing Countries

Social Protection in Developing Countries
Author: Katja Bender
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136178503

Providing universal access to social protection and health systems for all members of society, including the poor and vulnerable, is increasingly considered crucial to international development debates. This is the first book to explore from an interdisciplinary and global perspective the reforms of social protection systems introduced in recent years by many governments of low and middle-income countries. Although a growing body of literature has been concerned with the design and impact of social protection, less attention has been directed towards analyzing and explaining these reform processes themselves. Through case studies of African, Asian, and Latin American countries, this book examines the ‘global phenomenon’ of recent social protection reforms in low and middle-income areas, and how it differs across countries both in terms of scope and speed of institutional change. Exploring the major domestic and international factors affecting the political feasibility of social protection reform, the book outlines the successes and failures of recent reform initiatives. This invaluable book combines contributions from both academics and practitioner experts to give students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of social security, economics, law and political science an in-depth understanding of political reform processes in developing countries.

Advancing the Human Right to Health

Advancing the Human Right to Health
Author: José M. Zuniga
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0191637637

Advancing the Human Right to Health offers a prospective on the global response to one of the greatest moral, legal, and public health challenges of the 21st century - achieving the human right to health as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other legal instruments. Featuring writings by global thought-leaders in the world of health human rights, the book brings clarity to many of the complex clinical, ethical, economic, legal, and socio-cultural questions raised by injury, disease, and deeper determinants of health, such as poverty. Much more than a primer on the right to health, this book features an examination of profound inequalities in health, which have resulted in millions of people condemned to unnecessary suffering and hastened deaths. In so doing, it provides a thoughtful account of the right to health's parameters, strategies on ways in which to achieve it, and discussion of why it is so essential in a 21st century context. Country-specific case studies provide context for analysing the right to health and assessing whether, and to what extent, this right has influenced critical decision-making that makes a difference in people's lives. Thematic chapters also look at the specific challenges involved in translating the right to health into action. Advancing the Human Right to Health highlights the urgency to build upon the progress made in securing the right to health for all, offering a timely reminder that all stakeholders must redouble their efforts to advance the human right to health.

Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics

Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics
Author: Barry Ames
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134848218

With contributions from leading international scholars, this Handbook offers the most rigorous and up-to-date analyses of virtually every aspect of Brazilian politics, including inequality, environmental politics, foreign policy, economic policy making, social policy, and human rights. The Handbook is divided into three major sections: Part 1 focuses on mass behavior, while Part 2 moves to representation, and Part 3 treats political economy and policy. The Handbook proffers five chapters on mass politics, focusing on corruption, participation, gender, race, and religion; three chapters on civil society, assessing social movements, grass-roots participation, and lobbying; seven chapters focusing on money and campaigns, federalism, retrospective voting, partisanship, ideology, the political right, and negative partisanship; five chapters on coalitional presidentialism, participatory institutions, judicial politics, and the political character of the bureaucracy, and eight chapters on inequality, the environment, foreign policy, economic and industrial policy, social programs, and human rights. This Handbook is an essential resource for students, researchers, and all those looking to understand contemporary Brazilian politics.

Health Capital and Sustainable Socioeconomic Development

Health Capital and Sustainable Socioeconomic Development
Author: Patricia A. Cholewka
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2008-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1420046918

Given ongoing worldwide calamities such as famine, natural disasters, and drug abuse, international attention has increasingly focused upon disease detection, prevention, containment, and treatment. Serving an unmet need in the marketplace, Health Capital and Sustainable Socioeconomic Development highlights mounting evidence of the st

Logics of Socialist Education

Logics of Socialist Education
Author: Tom G. Griffiths
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9400747276

For some, socialism is a potent way of achieving economic, political and social transformations in the twenty-first century, while others find the very term socialism outdated. This book engages readers in a discussion about the viability of socialist views on education and identifies the capacity of some socialist ideas to address a range of widely recognized social ills. It argues that these pervasive social problems, which plague so-called ‘developed’ societies as much as they contribute to the poverty, humiliation and lack of prospects in the rest of the world, fundamentally challenge us to act. In our contemporary world-system, distancing ourselves from the injustices of others is neither viable nor defensible. Rather than waiting for radically new solutions to emerge, this book sees the possibility of transformation in the reconfiguration of existing social logics that comprise our modern societies, including logics of socialism. The book presents case studies that offer a critical examination of education in contemporary socialist contexts, as well as reconsidering examples of education under historical socialism. In charting these alternatives, and retooling past solutions in a nuanced way, it sets out compelling evidence that it is possible to think and act in ways that depart from today’s dominant educational paradigm. It offers contemporary policy makers, researchers, and practitioners a cogent demonstration of the contemporary utility of educational ideas and solutions associated with socialism. A pioneering collection of essays which is central to understanding the historical and contemporary meanings of socialism in the context of neoliberal globalization. It is a most timely contribution to a growing intellectual project that challenges the hegemony of capitalism, while re-thinking and theorizing alternatives. Iveta Silova, Associate Professor of Comparative Education, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA In this significant contribution to recent scholarship the authors use the lens of socialist education to offer an original critique of hegemonic capitalism, and present an intellectually rigorous search for alternatives by reconsidering historical socialism and advancing promising educational experiments that challenge the 'global architecture of education'. Anders Breidlid, Professor of International Education and Development, Oslo University College, Norway