American welfare strategies: Three programs under the social security act

In the United States, a single piece of legislation, the Social Security Act, is the major vehicle through which the cash assistance to citizens is provided. This act contains many subprograms, programs so different in concept, administration and programmatic implication that many people do not know that the same piece of legislation makes them all possible. In this paper three programs—“social security,” “unemployment compensation,” and “public assistance”—are examined in a sociohistorical, sociocultural context. The roots of these programs are analyzed, their current operations outlined, and the policy problems currently confronting them are detailed. The ways in which the programs relate to the political mythology of the society is seen as important. Because of the continual conflicts arising out of the administration of public assistance, three special cases involving that program are mentioned.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45457/1/11077_2005_Article_BF01727600.pd

Political appeasement and academic critique: The case of environmentalism

Contains fulltext : 112150.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)5 juni 201317 p

Soldiers or bureaucrats? conflict and the military’s role in policy-making

One of the most striking institutional features of many less developed countries is that their militaries are closely involved in policy-making, potentially having a large impact on economic outcomes. This paper examines the role of the military in setting policy. For this purpose it develops one of the first models of the military, where its political involvement can take two forms: direct when the military runs the government, and indirect when it influences policy without governing directly. We focus on civilian regimes and find that war decreases the payoff to the military from both forms of involvement, but also makes staging successful coups easier. In equilibrium, an increase in the likelihood of war makes indirect involvement less likely; its impact on coups, which are aimed at establishing direct control, is non-monotonic. We show empirical evidence for this non-monotonic relationship, with coups being least likely for low and high probabilities of war