Legislating Safety Nets: Comparing Recent Social Protection Laws in Asia

In recent years, several Asian countries have begun moving away from patchwork welfare programs toward providing more comprehensive social protection. This is a significant shift in a region where social welfare has not been politically popular, and the family has traditionally absorbed the burden of supporting the young, the old, and the ailing. Two of these states-India and Indonesia-have put new social protection initiatives into law rather than simply formulating executive policy. In this article, I examine recent social protection laws in both countries. I look in particular at India\u27s National Food Security Law, passed in 2013, and Indonesia\u27s laws on the National Social Security System, passed in 2004 and 2011. These laws deserve attention because they aim not just to extend benefits, but also to advance economic and social rights, which are recognized in both India and Indonesia at the constitutional level. Thus, these recent social protection laws potentially deepen what Brinks and Gauri describe as the legalization of welfare policy, whereby legal rights assume importance in policy, and legal professionals, judges in particular, become significant in implementing them. As such, these laws are likely to, and arguably should, impose quite hard-edged obligations on the government and enable individuals to hold the government to its obligations. At the same time, recent social protection laws have the potential to allay concerns that legal enforcement of economic social rights distorts policy and dilutes the separation of powers. Through my analysis, I show that social protection laws in both India and Indonesia have primarily expanded the policies that preceded them, rather than fundamentally restructured how particular forms of social protection are delivered. Further, none of these laws define the socioeconomic rights underlying them in a detailed, substantive manner, creating rights that are minimal and definite, or broad but weak. I go on to argue that despite gaps, flaws, and missed opportunities, these laws-with the sum of rights, remedies, and accountability mechanisms they contain-have made the rights to food and social security more stable, and are likely to make them more accessible to individuals

Minimal Cooperation and Group Roles

Cooperation has been analyzed primarily in the context of theories of collective intentionality. These discussions have primarily focused on interactions between pairs or small groups of agents who know one another personally. Cooperative game theory has also been used to argue for a form of cooperation in large unorganized groups. Here I consider a form of minimal cooperation that can arise among members of potentially large organized groups (e.g., corporate teams, committees, governmental bodies). I argue that members of organized groups can be minimally cooperative in virtue of playing roles in an organizational structure and having a common goal. The minimal form of cooperation I argue for is not grounded in collective intentions involving symmetric mental states, special collective intentional modes, or joint commitments. More generally, I show how considering minimal cooperation in the context of organized groups provides an opportunity to reevaluate the extent to which the social world and social phenomena depend on internalist mental factors (e.g., intentions, beliefs) and externalist non-mental factors (e.g., documents, laws, job descriptions). The view of minimal cooperation among members of organized groups I offer provides support for an externalist rather than internalist theory of at least one social phenomenon

Does Board Gender Diversity Influence Financial Performance? Evidence from Spain

In recent years, several countries have enacted guidelines and/or mandatory laws to increase the presence of women on the boards of companies. Through these regulatory interventions, the aim is to eradicate the social and labor grievances that women have traditionally experienced and which has relegated them to smaller-scale jobs. Nevertheless, and despite the advances achieved, the female representation in the boardroom remains far from the desired levels. In this context, it is now necessary to enhance the advantages of board gender diversity from both ethical and economic points of view. This article examines the relation between board gender diversity and economic results in Spain: the second country in the world to legally require gender quotas in boardrooms and historically characterized by a minimal female participation in the workforce. Based on a sample of 125 non-financial firms listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009, our findings show that in the period analyzed the increase of the number of women on boards was over 98 %. This suggests that compulsory legislation offers an efficient framework to execute the recommendation of Spanish codes of good governance by means of the increase in the number of women in the boards of firms. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the number of women on the boards is positively related to higher economic results. Therefore, both results suggest that gender diversity in boardrooms should be incremented, mandatory laws being a key factor to do so

Legal Marriage and Political Liberalism

Can or must political liberals recognize any form of legal marriage? If so, on what grounds and what type(s) of marriage can they recognize? Elizabeth Brake argues that political liberals can and must support the social bases of adult caring relationships through the public recognition and support of minimal marriage. She thinks that political liberals cannot recognize a more robust form of marriage than her minimal marriage. Clare Chambers argues that the state should abolish legal marriage and replace it with the marriage-free state, which endorses piecemeal practice-based personal relationship laws. In this thesis, I will argue that the marriage-free state is superior to minimal marriage even in an ideal society because the marriage-free state can secure the rights and entitlements that are important for minimal marriage and do so in a way that is more inclusive of vulnerable persons

Intellectual Property Today: Of Myths and Paradoxes

It is often claimed or assumed that intellectual property laws are necessary to encourage individual creativity and inventiveness and that society would be worse off without such laws. This article suggests that, in the field of copyrights and patents at least, such claims rest on myth and paradox rather than proof, and should be viewed sceptically. With its minimal standards for eligibility, copyright today seems less concerned with authors, art and literature than with protecting the distributors of standardized industrial products, and sometimes is even used to prevent the dissemination of knowledge by becoming a tool of censorship. Patent law too requires major rethinking if its promise of bettering mankind by encouraging socially useful discoveries and inventions and the dissemination of knowledge is to be realized. The article concludes that intellectual property laws should no longer be analyzed in terms of outmoded notions of property: more particularistic inquiries are needed to ensure that these laws adequately serve valid social ends

Language and the New Zealand state : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Public Policy at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

The purpose of this research was to determine how and why the New Zealand government has intervened in language. Three language groups were investigated: Te Reo Maori, Languages Other Than English or Maori, and The English Language. For each language, a summary of language policies has been provided. The policies have then been analysed by applying various theories of the state. Four theories have been used: the Minimal State, the Instrumental State, the Just State, and the Ethical State. The research has sought to establish how the imperatives created by each theory may have been used to justify policies for each language group. The adopted method is secondary analysis, using a combination of documents from the government, the media and academic sources. Each item of text used has been categorised according to which model of the state it represents. Excerpts from the texts themselves have been interspersed with analysis by the researcher, placing them within the context of the theoretical model with which they are most closely aligned. In this way, it could be ascertained whether government discourse on language policy has provided any evidence that theoretical models of the state have been used in policy-making. The research is qualitative in nature, with a high degree of subjective interpretation. The result is a detailed description of language policies in New Zealand and of the imperatives behind them, which demonstrates the inadequacy of any one theory of the state for explaining the intricacies of why public policy is created