Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Lessons Learned and Open Questions: Welfare State Building in Post-Communist EU Member States

Published on March 24, 2010 in News and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From Claus Offe, Eurozine

offe_460w
Democracy” in post-communist Europe is strongly associated with high levels of state-sponsored social protection, indicating a culture far removed from the prevalent system of market-mediated private provision. The dissatisfaction with democracy expressed by the many not to have benefited from transition suggests CEE welfare states have a long way to go before they attain western levels of credibility. Their democracies depend on that gap being bridged.

All the new member states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 – apart from the one and a half small Mediterranean islands of Malta and the southern part of Cyprus – share the quality of having emerged, after 1989, from the economic, social, and political regime of state socialism. One of the recurrent themes throughout the chapters of this volume[1] are the following questions: To what extent can the evolution of CEE welfare states be accounted for in terms of path dependency and the continuity of state socialist as well as those institutional patterns that were adopted in the region during the interwar period? And to what extent do we encounter path departures that were conditioned by the two dominant novelties of (a) the breakdown of state socialism with the subsequent deep transformation crisis and (b) the accession of the new members to the European Union and its patterns of capitalist democracy, as well as the conditionalities governing eastern enlargement? In dealing with these questions, the authors share an analytical frame that dominates much of the academic literature on current affairs in CEE. Stated at the most general level, this frame suggests that what we see happening in the region must be accounted for in terms of a joint outcome of “the past” and “the West”.

To Read More…

Community Development Practice: Stories, Method, Meaning

Published on March 17, 2010 in Books and Newsletter. 0 Comments

ingamells-front Community Development Practice: Stories, Method, Meaning edited by Ann Ingamells, Athena Lathouras, Ross Wiseman, Peter Westoby and Fiona Caniglia is available from The Social Sciences imprint.

Thankfully, another publication from the creative Queensland Community Development ‘crowd’…Indeed, what would we do without them in a rather sedate and seemingly stagnant Australian publishing landscape in so far as Community Development is concerned…? What I most particularly appreciate is the editors’ and contributors’ ongoing attempts at creating ‘living theory’ informed by their ongoing practice and their holding on to the spiritual, democratic, relational and dialogical principles for which their work has become known. The book therewith documents its authors’ continuing attempts at developing good practical and reflective support for their ongoing social change efforts, something our local community development scene could very well do with…

Jacques Boulet, editor New Community Quarterly.

C-Span Puts Full Archives on the Web

Published on March 16, 2010 in News and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

16cspan_ca0-articleinlineFrom Brian Stelter in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet.

The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.

Having free online access to the more than 160,000 hours of C-Span footage is “like being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time,” said Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC host.

Ed Morrissey, a senior correspondent for the conservative blog Hot Air (hotair.com), said, “The geek in me wants to find an excuse to start digging.”

For the article…