How well do India's social service programs serve the poor?

Reaching India's poor calls for greatly improved social service delivery systems, better targeting of the poor, more coordination between agencies, policies aimed at income generation, and more involvement of the poor and of nongovernmental organizations. The authors of this paper found that India's social services were used relatively little by the poor. The health and education of the poor has improved but not as much for the population as a whole. The reasons that all social service programs did so little to alleviate poverty are similar. Physical access to education and health services has improved but inequalities exist because of biases in locating facilities. The access of the poor to housing, social security, and social welfare services has been limited because these services were inadequate relative to needs and because services leak to the nonpoor. Social service policies are not comprehensive enough and the quality of services is low. Issues common to the social sector delivery systems are weak management, ineffective targeting, and inflexible service delivery systems that result in a mismatch between perceived needs and services delivered. The bureaucracy is inadequate to reach the poor. Existing capacity and resources are inadequate, particularly for education and health.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction

The rise and fall of the fast breeder reactor technology in the UK: between engineering “dreams” and economic “realities”?

This report explores the evolution of the fast breeder nuclear reactor programmes in the UK, from the period of great promises and expectations in the 1950s and 1960s towards their progressive abandonment in the 1980s and 1990s. The project, of which this report is an element, aims thereby to draw lessons relevant for the current “nuclear renaissance” and medium-term planning on the future of nuclear power. Given that the fast breeder programmes were closely interlinked with the general evolution of nuclear power in the UK, this report includes a fairly detailed historical description of this more general ‘nuclear context’. This primarily chronological description of the evolution of the UK fast breeder programmes provides a basis for a comparison between the evolution of the British and French fast breeder reactor programmes. A central question in such a comparison concerns the lateness of the abandonment of the fast breeder programme in France, as compared to most other countries developing this technology. The cross-country comparison will explore the relative influence of the contextual and historical conditions within which the nuclear technologies have evolved in France and the UK on the one hand, and the ‘universal’ factors common to the evolution of socio-technical systems in general on the other. This exploratory research was based on documentary analysis and eleven interviews of experts involved in, or with knowledge of, the UK fast breeder reactor (FBR) programmes

Social Effectiveness of Tertiary Education for Adults in Mid-life

No abstract available

The Role of Active Labour Market Programmes in Employment Policy

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the Irish labour market since approximately 1980 with a particular focus on the central role of active labour market programmes in public policy. Active labour market programmes (ALMP) is an umbrella term for all measures aimed at increasing either the supply of or demand for labour. We will outline the theoretical rationale for labour market programmes and discuss their implementation and development in the Irish context. Specifically we will outline the levels of expenditure and throughput on labour market programmes and attempt to place Ireland in a comparative international perspective. Briefly we will examine some of the attempts which have been made to evaluate the effectiveness of labour market programmes in terms of the employment and income outcomes of participants. We will pay particular attention to long-term unemployment which was such a key feature of the Irish labour market throughout the 1980s and 1990s.Public Policy, Employment Policy, Active Labour Market Prorgammes, Active Labor Market Progams, ALMP, Ireland

Ideal (and Real) Types of Welfare State

In the extensive literature that has been dedicated during the past fifteen years to the comparative analysis of the welfare states, a significant number of studies have focused on the identification of the ideal regimes or types, in addition to their empirical validation. The celebrated work, Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, by Esping-Andersen (1990) constituted the point of departure for a vigorous academic debate which, as a response to some of the criticisms that were raised by the study, led to the construction of various alternative typologies, as well as a prodigious output of empirical studies aiming to identify what is termed in the present paper, real types. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on the current state of knowledge with regard to the differences and similarities in the welfare states following the scientific contributions made over the past fifteen years. Two general conclusions emerge in particular: firstly, that the diversity of typologies has not contributed to the desired clarification; and secondly, that the results of the studies are inconclusive, both with regard to the precise number of real types of welfare state – despite the fact that all of them confirm the existence of at least three types – and to the classification of the countries concerned. The existence of significant divergences, and even of contradictory results, highlights the need for continued research. However, rather than simply constructing new typologies, it is necessary to incorporate into empirical analyses a temporal evaluation of the effects of the reforms introduced in the welfare states.Welfare state; welfare regimes; typology; social policy; social security; comparative research.

Challenge and co-operation: civil society activism for access to HIV treatment in Thailand.

Civil society has been a driving force behind efforts to increase access to treatment in Thailand. A focus on HIV medicines brought civil society and non-governmental and government actors together to fight for a single cause, creating a platform for joint action on practical issues to improve care for people with HIV/AIDS (PHA) within the public health system. The Thai Network of People with HIV/AIDS, in partnership with other actors, has provided concrete support for patients and for the health system as a whole; its efforts have contributed significantly to the availability of affordable generic medicines, early treatment for opportunistic infections, and an informed and responsible approach towards antiretroviral treatment that is critical to good adherence and treatment success. This change in perception of PHA from 'passive receiver' to 'co-provider' of health care has led to improved acceptance and support within the healthcare system. Today, most PHA in Thailand can access treatment, and efforts have shifted to supporting care for excluded populations

'Grow your own': Cold War intelligence and history supermarkets

Most of the records of the three British secret services relating to the Cold War remain closed. Nevertheless, the Open Government initiative in the UK and the Clinton Executive Order of 1995 have resulted in some disclosures, often from consumer agencies who were in receipt of intelligence material. There have also been limited releases from other countries. Against that background, this essay considers two questions: First, how far has the study of intelligence affected the broad context of Cold War history during the last decade? And second, how effective have we been in probing the institutional history of secret services during the Cold War? The essay concludes that while some secret services are breaking new ground by recording their own oral history, academic historians have been less than enterprising in their investigations and tend towards a culture of archival dependency