Author: Adam D. Sheingate
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823935
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
A long-dominant reading of American politics holds that public policy in the United States is easily captured by special interest groups. Countering this view, Adam Sheingate traces the development of government intervention in agriculture from its nineteenth-century origins to contemporary struggles over farm subsidies. His considered conclusion is that American institutions have not given agricultural interest groups any particular advantages in the policy process, in part because opposing lobbies also enjoy access to policymakers. In fact, the high degree of conflict and pluralism maintained by American institutions made possible substantial retrenchment of the agricultural welfare state during the 1980s and 1990s. In Japan and France--two countries with markedly different institutional characters than the United States--powerful agricultural interests and a historically close relationship between farmers, bureaucrats, and politicians continue to preclude a roll-back of farm subsidies. This well-crafted study not only puts a new spin on agricultural policy, but also makes a strong case for the broader claim that the relatively decentralized American political system is actually less prone to capture and rule by subgovernments than the more centralized political systems found in France and Japan. Sheingate's historical, comparative approach also demonstrates, in a widely useful way, how past institutional developments shape current policies and options.
Author: Ann-Christina L. Knudsen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457653
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
In 2007 the farm subsidies of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy took over 40 percent of the entire EU budget. How did a sector of diminishing social and economic importance manage to maintain such political prominence? The conventional answer focuses on the negotiations among the member states of the European Community from 1958 onwards. That story holds that the political priority, given to the CAP, as well as its long-term stability, resides in a basic devil's bargain between French agriculture and German industry. In Farmers on Welfare, a landmark new account of the making of the single largest European policy ever, Ann-Christina L. Knudsen suggests that this accepted narrative is rather too neat. In particular, she argues, it neglects how a broad agreement was made in the 1960s that related to national welfare state policies aiming to improve incomes for farmers. Drawing on extensive archival research from a variety of political actors across the Community, she illustrates how and why this supranational farm regime was created in the 1960s, and also provides us with a detailed narrative history of how national and European administrations gradually learned about this kind of cooperation.By tracing how the farm welfare objective was gradually implemented in other common policies, Knudsen offers an alternative account of European integration history.
Author: David Garland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199672660
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
This 'Very Short Introduction' discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.
Author: Larry Patriquin
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860 examines the evolution of public assistance for the poor in England from the late medieval era to the Industrial Revolution. Placing poor relief in the context of the unprecedented class relations of agrarian capitalism and the rise of a unique non-absolutist state, it accounts for why relief in England was distinct, with comparisons made to Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany. The author argues that poor relief was a substitute for access to land and common rights, a virtual exchange of money as compensation for the creation of absolute private property. In a work both challenging and provocative, Larry Patriquin makes a case for a class-based reinterpretation of the origins of the welfare state. Clearly written and well organized, this new explanation of the 'great transformation' will contribute to debates in British history, Marxism, social welfare, historiography, theories of the state, and the transition to capitalism.
Author: Robert H. Bates
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520282566
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Following independence, most countries in Africa sought to develop, but their governments pursued policies that actually undermined their rural economies. Examining the origins of Africa’s “growth tragedy,” Markets and States in Tropical Africa has for decades shaped the thinking of practitioners and scholars alike. Robert H. Bates’s analysis now faces a challenge, however: the revival of economic growth on the continent. In this edition, Bates provides a new preface and chapter that address the seeds of Africa’s recovery and discuss the significance of the continent’s success for the arguments of this classic work.
Author: Lee J. Alston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 62
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Book Description
Author: Jack D. Douglas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315133287
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
"The Myth of the Welfare Stale is a basic and sweeping explanation of the rise and fall of great powers, and of the profound impacts of these megastates on ordinary lives. Its central theme is the rise of bureaucratic collectivization in American society. It is Douglas's conviction, which he supports with a wealth of detail, that statist bureaucracies produce siagnation, often exacerbated by inflation, which in turn produces the waning of state power.Douglas has his own set of ""isms"" that require concerted attention: mass mediated rationalism, scientism, technologism, credentialism, and expertism. People who make policies have little, if any, awareness of the actual way social processes evolve: agricultural policy is set by people who know little of farming, arid manufacturing policy is set by people who have never set foot on a factory floor. In light of this ""soaring average ignorance,"" it is little wonder that policy-making has Alice-in-Wonderland characteristics and effects.Douglas sees the notion of a welfare state as a contradiction in terms; its widespread insinuation into the culture is made possible by its weak mythological form and benign-sounding characteristics. In fact, welfare states in whatever form they appear have failed in their purpose: to redistribute income or increase real wealth. The megastates are the source of social instability and economic downturn. They grow like a tidal drift. They start out to correct the historical grievances of the laissez-faire states, only to increase the problems they seek to correct. In this, the welfare state is a weakened form of the totalitarian state, producing similarly unhappy results.Professor Douglas has produced a work of ""anti-policy"" - arguing that freedom leavened by an ordinary sense of self-interest and social concern can overcome the shortfalls of the megastates and their myth-making, self-serving, propensities."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Giovanni Federico
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837723
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This book, a comprehensive history of world agriculture during this period, explains how these feats were accomplished. Feeding the World synthesizes two hundred years of agricultural development throughout the world, providing all essential data and extensive references to the literature. It covers, systematically, all the factors that have affected agricultural performance: environment, accumulation of inputs, technical progress, institutional change, commercialization, agricultural policies, and more. The last chapter discusses the contribution of agriculture to modern economic growth. The book is global in its reach and analysis, and represents a grand synthesis of an enormous topic.
Author: Christina L. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture and state
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
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Author: Monica Prasad
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071549
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
The Land of Too Much presents a simple but powerful hypothesis that addresses three questions: Why does the United States have more poverty than any other developed country? Why did it experience an attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the greatest economic meltdown in seventy-five years? Although the United States is often considered a liberal, laissez-faire state, Monica Prasad marshals convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, she argues that a strong tradition of government intervention undermined the development of a European-style welfare state. The demand-side theory of comparative political economy she develops here explains how and why this happened. Her argument begins in the late nineteenth century, when America’s explosive economic growth overwhelmed world markets, causing price declines everywhere. While European countries adopted protectionist policies in response, in the United States lower prices spurred an agrarian movement that rearranged the political landscape. The federal government instituted progressive taxation and a series of strict financial regulations that ironically resulted in more freely available credit. As European countries developed growth models focused on investment and exports, the United States developed a growth model based on consumption. These large-scale interventions led to economic growth that met citizen needs through private credit rather than through social welfare policies. Among the outcomes have been higher poverty, a backlash against taxation and regulation, and a housing bubble fueled by “mortgage Keynesianism.” This book will launch a thousand debates.
