Documents Beland, Daniel 7 results

"In Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox have gathered leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology to provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics. Throughout, they hone in on three central questions. What is the theoretical basis for studying ideas in politics? What are the best methods? What sort of empirical puzzles can be solved by examining ideas and related phenomena such as discourse, policy paradigms, and framing processes? In sum, this is a state-of-the-art academic work on both the role of ideas in politics and the analytical utility that derives from studying them. "

"De Franklin D. Roosevelt à George W. Bush, la question des retraites occupe une place fondamentale dans la vie politique américaine. Cet ouvrage de sociologie politique retrace le parcours du régime fédéral d'assurance vieillesse, de son avènement durant le New Deal jusqu'au débat contemporain sur l'avenir des retraites à travers l'analyse de l'histoire de ce régime, dans le cadre du système américain de protection sociale.
Théoriquement l'ouvrage s'articule autour d'une double critique du néo-institutionnalisme, approche popularisée, entre autres, par Paul Pierson et Theda Skocpol. Tout en rendant justice à l'influence structurante des institutions politiques, la méthode employée prend en considération le rôle des paradigmes et du secteur privé dans l'élaboration des politiques sociales."

"Despite the recent proliferation of literature on nationalism and on social policy, relatively little has been written to analyze the possible interaction between the two. Scholars interested in social citizenship have indirectly dealt with the interaction between national identity and social programs, but they have seldom examined this connection in reference to nationalism. Specialists of nationalism rarely mention social policy, focusing instead on language, culture, ethnicity, and religion. The main objective of this book is to explore the nature of the connection between nationalism and social policy from a comparative and historical perspective. At the theoretical level, this analysis will shed new light on a more general issue: the relationships between identity formation, territorial politics, and social policy.

The cases at the centre of this study are three multinational states, that is, states featuring strong nationalist movements: Canada (Québec), the United Kingdom (Scotland), and Belgium (Flanders).The book looks at the interplay between nationalism and social policy at both the state and sub-state levels through a detailed comparison between these three cases. In its concluding chapter, the book brings in cases of mono-national states, like Germany and the United States to provide broader comparative insight on the meshing of nationalism and social policy. The original theoretical framework for this research is built using insight from selected scholarship on nationalism and on the welfare state."

" The debate on social policy change is not only about the evolving nature of social benefits but also about change in their territorial organization. This territorial issue is central in Belgium. In 2011, the Sixth State Reform featured the decentralization of family allowances, a component of social security. This article explains why such decentralization occurred in Belgium despite the fact that Francophone parties, which effectively have veto power over constitutional reform, had long insisted that no portion of social security would ever be transferred to the constituent units. We argue that increasing political pressure generated by the surge of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) in the context of the government formation crises altered how Francophone parties assessed both the national unity situation and their own political interests. The article also discusses the policy and political implications of the decentralization of family allowances in Belgium."

"Initially published in 1984, John W. Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies has long been classic reading in policy studies. This paper systematically explores its contribution to the analysis of the role of ideas in comparative policy analysis, which has dramatically expanded over the last two decades. Looking at this book about agenda-setting as well as two more recent, and much less cited, chapters by Kingdon, the article explores his perspective on ideas as they relate to the problem, the policy, and the political streams, before addressing crucial issues, such as the role of institutions and the relationship between ideas and interests, that remain central to the current debates within the ever-expanding ideational policy literature. As the article shows, Kingdon's work, including its flaws, makes a powerful and most relevant contribution to the ideational approach to public policy, which is why this article ends with a synthetic agenda for future comparative research on the role of ideas in policy development."