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Persisting unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, labour market flexibility, job insecurity and higher wage inequality, changing patters of work and family life are among the factors that exert pressure on welfare states in Europe.This book explores the potential of an unconditional basic income, without means test or work requirement, to meet the challenges posed by the new social question, compared to policies of subsidized insertion in work. It also assesses the political chances of basic income in various European countries.These themes are highly relevant to policy-makers in the field of labour markets and social security, economists, political philosophers, and a social science audience in general.

Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly

In recent years a set of new ‘postempiricist’ approaches to public policy, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In this book, Frank Fischer brings together this work for the first time and critically examines its implications for the field of public policy studies. He describes the theoretical, methodological and political dimensions of this emerging approach to policy research. The book includes a discussion of the social construction of policy problems, the role of interpretation and narrative analysis in policy inquiry, the dialectics of policy argumentation, and the uses of participatory policy analysis. After an introductory chapter, ten further chapters are arranged in four parts: Part I, Public Policy and the Discursive Construction of Reality (two chapters), introduces the re-emergence of interest in ideas and discourse. It then turns to the postempiricist or constructionist view of social reality, presenting public policy as a discursive construct that turns on multiple interpretations. Part II, Public Policy as Discursive Politics (two chapters), examines more specifically the nature of discursive politics and discourse theory and illustrates through a particular disciplinary debate the theoretical, methodological, and political implications of such a conceptual reframing of policy inquiry. Part III, Discursive Policy Inquiry: Resituating Empirical Analysis (four chapters), offers a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores specific methodological perspectives pertinent to such an orientation, in particular the role of interpretation in policy analysis, narrative policy analysis, and the dialectics of policy argumentation. Part IV, Deliberative Governance (two chapters), discusses the participatory implications of such a method and the role of the policy analyst as facilitator of citizen deliberation .

The long-term character of climate change and the high costs of adaptation measures, in combination with their uncertain effects, turn climate adaptation governance into a torturous process. We systematically review the literature on climate adaptation governance to analyze the scholarly understanding of these complexities. Building on governance literature about long-term and complex policy problems, we develop a conceptual matrix based on the dimensions knowledge and power to systematically study the peer-reviewed literature on climate adaptation governance. We find that about a quarter of the reviewed journal articles do not address the knowledge or power dimension of the governance of climate change adaptation, about half of the articles discuss either the knowledge or the power dimension, and another quarter discuss both knowledge and power. The articles that do address both knowledge and power (1) conceptualize the governance of climate adaptation mainly as a complex system of regulatory frameworks and technical knowledge, (2) assume that regulatory systems can be easily adapted to new knowledge, (3) pay little attention to fluid or unorganized forms of power, e.g., negotiation, and knowledge, e.g., learning, and (4) largely neglect the interplay between the two. We argue that more research on this interplay is needed, and we discuss how puzzling and powering are a promising pair of concepts to study this.

As international travel became cheaper and national economies grew more connected over the past thirty years, millions of people from the Third World emigrated to richer countries. A tenth of the population of Mexico relocated to the United States between 1980 and 2000. Globalization theorists claimed that reception cities could do nothing about this trend, since nations make immigration policy, not cities. In Deflecting Immigration, sociologist Ivan Light shows how Los Angeles reduced the sustained, high-volume influx of poor Latinos who settled there by deflecting a portion of the migration to other cities in the United States. In this manner, Los Angeles tamed globalization’s local impact, and helped to nationalize what had been a regional immigration issue. Los Angeles deflected immigration elsewhere in two ways. First, the protracted network-driven settlement of Mexicans naturally drove up rents in Mexican neighborhoods while reducing immigrants’ wages, rendering Los Angeles a less attractive place to settle. Second, as migration outstripped the city’s capacity to absorb newcomers, Los Angeles gradually became poverty-intolerant. By enforcing existing industrial, occupational, and housing ordinances, Los Angeles shut down some unwanted sweatshops and reduced slums. Their loss reduced the metropolitan region’s accessibility to poor immigrants without reducing its attractiveness to wealthier immigrants. Additionally, ordinances mandating that homes be built on minimum-sized plots of land with attached garages made home ownership in L.A.’s suburbs unaffordable for poor immigrants and prevented low-cost rental housing from being built. Local rules concerning home occupancy and yard maintenance also prevented poor immigrants from crowding together to share housing costs. Unable to find affordable housing or low-wage jobs, approximately one million Latinos were deflected from Los Angeles between 1980 and 2000. The realities of a new global economy are still unfolding, with uncertain consequences for the future of advanced societies, but mass migration from the Third World is unlikely to stop in the next generation. Deflecting Immigration offers a shrewd analysis of how America’s largest immigrant destination independently managed the challenges posed by millions of poor immigrants and, in the process, helped focus attention on immigration as an issue of national importance.

The proliferation of international institutions and their impact has become a central issue in international relations. Why do countries comply with international agreements and how do international institutions influence national policies? Most theories focus on the extent to which international institutions can wield 'carrots and sticks' directly in their relations with states. Xinyuan Dai presents an alternative framework in which they influence national policies indirectly by utilizing non-state actors (NGOs, social movements) and empowering domestic constituencies. In this way, even weak international institutions that lack 'carrots and sticks' may have powerful effects on states. Supported by empirical studies of environmental politics, human rights and economic and security issues, this book sheds fresh light on how and why international institutions matter. It will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers in both international relations and international law.