Documents Gingrich, Jane 3 results

"The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this ‘middle-class shift' in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences."

"How do house prices affect variation in school quality and citizen satisfaction with education? In this paper, we show that the structure of socio-economic inequality produced by the housing market has dramatic effects on both citizen's preferences over education and its provision, along the lines suggested by scholars in the tradition of Tiebout. In particular, growing housing prices permit wealthier individuals to ‘target' education in ways that exclude lower income citizens. Districts with higher house prices have higher average academic performance but also greater variation in performance and a greater number of schools opting out of local authority control. Moreover, in districts with high variation in school performance, owners of expensive housing are more satisfied with schooling than are non-owners, with the reverse pattern obtaining in districts with low academic variation."