As the government continues to open up child protection and social work in England to a commercial market place, what is the social cost of privatising public services? And what effect has the failure of previous privatisations had on their provision? This book, by best-selling author and expert social worker Ray Jones, is the first to tell the story of how crucial social work services, including those for families and children, are now being out-sourced to private companies. Detailing how the failures of previous privatisations have led to the deterioration of services for the public, it shows how this trend threatens the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children and disabled adults.
While the caisses, begun by Alphonse Desjardins in 1900, are usually seen as committed exclusively to noble ideas such as the betterment of the poor, Ronald Rudin takes a more realistic approach by examining the interests of those involved in its affairs. The petite bourgeoisie who founded the movement were sincere about helping the poor but, as Rudin reveals, they had their own concerns as well. They believed that the decentralized organization and local influence of the caisses would help them to re-establish the power they had wielded in an earlier age. Members of a rising middle class, however, wanted to centralize the movement and did not accept its founders' views on such matters as the role of the caisses as agents of Catholicism and nationalism. These ideological conflicts, which resulted in a major schism within the caisses populaires in 1945, foreshadowed the debates leading up to the Quiet Revolution. In Whose Interest? is not a narrowly focused institutional history. Rather, the history of the caisses is seen in the context of the evolving social structure of Quebec and clarifies our understanding of the social and economic history of the province over a period of nearly fifty years.
A groundbreaking study of labor unions that advances a new theory of organizational leadership and governance In the Interest of Others develops a new theory of organizational leadership and governance to explain why some organizations expand their scope of action in ways that do not benefit their members directly. John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi document eighty years of such activism by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia. They systematically compare the ILWU and WWF to the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, two American transport industry labor unions that actively discouraged the pursuit of political causes unrelated to their own economic interests. Drawing on a wealth of original data, Ahlquist and Levi show how activist organizations can profoundly transform the views of members about their political efficacy and the collective actions they are willing to contemplate. They find that leaders who ask for support of projects without obvious material benefits must first demonstrate their ability to deliver the goods and services members expect. These leaders must also build governance institutions that coordinate expectations about their objectives and the behavior of members. In the Interest of Others reveals how activist labor unions expand the community of fate and provoke preferences that transcend the private interests of individual members. Ahlquist and Levi then extend this logic to other membership organizations, including religious groups, political parties, and the state itself.
This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.
Introduction -- Defining the public interest in the US and European patent systems -- Confronting the questions of life-form patentability -- Commodification, animal dignity, and patent-system publics -- Forging new patent politics through the human embryonic stem cell debates -- Human genes, plants, and the distributive implications of patents -- Conclusion
From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.
