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Abstract: While government support is often a function of its economic record, this is not always the case. We look at the forces that lead some citizens to focus on economic issues while other citizens are more interested in foreign policy, corruption, social policy, or some other issue. Data compiled from 32 countries participating in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project demonstrate that while the economy is generally viewed as important, the economy's place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and also electoral contexts. If the economy is not perceived as important, its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated. Our data suggest that the economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns when the economy is in a recession, in countries with volatile economies, if the citizen in unemployed, or if the citizen is economically vulnerable. Governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy, though we do not find clear evidence that terrorist attacks or participation in wars do the same. Thus variations in the economy's salience need to be further incorporated into studies of economic voting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Neighbourhood' is a long standing concept in public policy and one that re-emerged in the UK from 1997 under the New Labour administration. This paper builds on the work of Lowndes and Sullivan (2008) which identified four distinct rationales for neighbourhoodworking - civic, social, political and economic. The framework is tested through primary research in the city of Manchester, and in the context of significant shifts in UK urban policy since 2006. The research shows that different rationales are held by actors at different locations within the complex system of multi-level governance within which neighbourhood policy is made and implemented. National policy makers and neighbourhood based actors have been effectively allied around neighbourhood based working as a means of empowering citizens, particularly those in deprived neighbourhoods. Actors at the city level, however, have focused on a more diffuse concept of 'place', which aims to reflect wider market dynamics and facilitate 'entrepreneurial' urban strategies. Neighbourhood working is linked to service improvement and regarded primarily in instrumental terms. As central government policy moves away from 'top down' interventions in deprived neighbourhoods towards narratives around city-wide 'place shaping', rationales for a neighbourhood approach to regeneration are coming under further challenge. The paper concludes by suggesting that 'neighbourhood' may be best seen as an 'empty signifier' within urban policy, the meaning of which is contested among policy actors, and only temporarily fixed in specific temporal and spatial contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to counter changes in family structures, a number of nation states are designing policies to make men fit into families. In the case of the USA, decision makers view fatherhood and marriage as the cure for poverty among African Americans. To assert that training these men to be better fathers and husbands will help them improve other dimensions of their lives (particularly poverty) is a good idea, but it is also simplistic. Decision makers rely on an intra-group, which privileges an individualistic and cultural approach, in their development of policies. This approach tends to ignore that other subsystems, such as previously existing policies, can have an impact on the effectiveness of marriage and fatherhood promotion. Using the USA as a case study, I hypothesise that the effectiveness of fatherhood and marriage promotion is limited because of their interaction with other policies. Fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives will be negatively affected by the absence of a progressive national urban policy, particularly in the area of economic development and in the context of current crime policies. The socio-economic and cultural reality faced by African American men must be incorporated into the decision-making processes in order to identify the most effective policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes changes in French economic policy over the past twenty years. It describes the movement from the dirigiste state, which sought to steer the economy, to what I call the "social anesthesia state." The social anesthesia state seeks to permit the French economy to reorganize on a more market-rational basis by pacifying and demobilizing the potential victims and opponents of economic liberalization. After describing this shift in French policy, the achievements and limitations of the social anesthesia state, I turn to recent developments. I focus on the strategies of the second Chirac administration, which has been in power since 2002. The Chirac administration has pursued a strategy of limited liberalism that appears to have introduced just enough change to anger the voters, but not enough to resolve France's economic problems. As a result, a debate has opened within the French right between proponents of a "social turn," led by President Chirac, and those favoring a sharper neo-liberal course of action, notably Chirac's main rival, Nicolas Sarkozy ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores how the difference in the implementation of economic policy can affect national welfare reform efforts in Denmark and Great Britain. Factors that influence business enterprises to participate in economic programs; Role of active labor market and social policy in the perpetuation of welfare regime programs; Difference of the programmatic designs of Danish and British active labor market plans.

It is now widely held that left governments in Europe have abandoned traditional Social Democratic policies in favour of a ‘third way’ of adulterated neo-liberalism. This paper assesses the extent to which this interpretation holds across the five largest West European states, and examines possible explanations for this putative rightwards drift, and the varying extent to which different parties have adopted a ‘third way’ discourse. Three types of explanations are considered: those that stress the role of international economic constraints, those that emphasise the changing electoral opportunity structures resulting from socio-economic change, and those that emphasise the changing organisational features of contemporary political parties. It is concluded that ideological change in Social Democratic parties can be usefully interpreted in terms of the ways in which socio-economic changes are filtered through the longstanding political cleavages which structure party competition in Western Europe. This perspective suggests that the historical importance of the religious cleavage is a key factor influencing Social Democratic parties’ willingness to embrace conservative economic policies as a response to economic and electoral constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]