Peace beyond the State? NGOs in Bosnia and Herzegovina

By examining the work of several NGOs in the context of post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), this essay scrutinizes both the potential and limits of NGO contributions to peace-settlements and long-term stability. While their ability to specialize and reach the grassroots level is of great practical significance, the contribution of NGOs to the reconstruction of war-torn societies is often idealized. NGOs remain severely limited by ad hoc and project-specific funding sources, as well as by the overall policy environment in which they operate. Unless these underlying issues are addressed, NGOs will ultimately become little more than extensions of prevalent multilateral and state-based approaches to post-conflict reconstruction.

Spatial inequality in the Australian youth labour market: The role of neighbourhood composition

Australia has experienced a polarization of income and labour market outcomes over the past 20 years (GREGORY and HUNTER, 1995; HARDING, 1996). This has taken an increasingly spatial dimension (HUNTER. 1995a, 1995b), giving rise to concerns that the spatial pooling of disadvantage may hamper the labour market outcomes of youth growing up in poorer residential areas. This paper explores the role that the differential neighbourhood 'quality' of an individual's residential area at age 16 has on their labour market outcomes at age 18 and age 21. Evidence is found that youth who live in poorer quality neighbourhoods face an increased likelihood of being unemployed at both the age of 18 and 21, even after controlling for personal and family characteristics.

Industry-specific human capital, knowledge labour, and industry wage structure in Taiwan

This paper investigates the role of industry-specific human capital (ISHC) in determining industry wage structure. The model presented in this paper distinguishes between knowledge labour and physical labour. Knowledge labour is physical labour embodied with ISHC. It is postulated that more ISHC-intensive industries, such as high-tech industries, pay higher wages and the wage premiums increase with workers' experience. The hypothesis is tested using a merged sample of 1997 - 1999 manpower utilization survey data from a newly industrialized economy - Taiwan. The findings show support for the effect of ISHC.

Complexity, conflict and uncertainty: Issues in collaboration between child protection and mental health services

This paper provides an analysis of data from a state-wide survey of statutory child protection workers, adult mental health workers, and child mental health workers. Respondents provided details of their experience of collaboration on cases where a parent had mental health problems and there were serious child protection concerns. The survey was conducted as part of a large mixed-method research project on developing best practice at the intersection of child protection and mental health services. Descriptions of 300 cases were provided by 122 respondents. Analyses revealed that a great deal of collaboration occur-red across a wide range of government and community-based agencies; that collaborative processes were often positive and rewarding for workers; and that collaboration was most difficult when the nature of the parental mental illness or the need for child protection intervention was contested. The difficulties experienced included communication, role clarity, competing primary focus, contested parental mental health needs, contested child protection needs, and resources. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attracting, recruiting and retaining male teachers: policy issues in the male teacher debate

Frequent calls for more male teachers are being made in English-speaking countries. Many of these calls are based upon the fact that the teaching profession has become (even more) 'feminized' and the presumption that this has had negative effects for the education of boys. The employment of more male teachers is sometimes suggested as a way to re-masculinize schools so they become more 'boy-friendly' and thus contribute to improving boys' school performance. The focus of this paper is on an Australian education policy document in the state of Queensland that is concerned with the attraction, recruitment and retention of male teachers in the government education system. It considers the failure of this document, as with many of the calls for more male teachers, to take into account complex matters of gender raised by feminism and the sociology of masculinities. The paper then critiques the primary argument given for the need for more male teachers: that is, that male teachers provide boys with much needed role models.

Faith and politics: The rhetoric of church-state separation

Criticism of religiously motivated contributions to public policy debate is largely misconceived. It assumes that the mischief which constitutional separation of church and state is supposed to cure is a domination of the state by the church. This presents only one side of the story. Subservience by the church to the slate should also be avoided. The law of a liberal state is legitimate to the extent that it does not conflict with the basic moral values of its citizens. Therefore, an ongoing conversation about basic values is necessary. Allowing churches and individual believers the freedom to make distinctive 'religious' contributions to this conversation is consistent with the separation of church and state. It is an aspect of the liberal democratic state's obligation to listen to all perspectives on difficult moral issues. A close relationship between church and state, on the other hand, has the capacity to impede the conversation.

On labour market dualism in the Lewis model: A comment

In a special issue of this journal commemorating the 50th anniversary of W. Arthur Lewis's (The Manchester School, Vol. 28 (1954), No. 2, pp. 139-191) seminal paper, the Lewis model is treated as a model of labour market dualism (Fields, The Manchester School, Vol. 72 (2004), No. 6, pp. 724-735). This interpretation is flawed for a number of reasons. First, it overemphasizes the role ascribed by Lewis to intersectoral earnings differentials in his original model. Second, it fails to acknowledge that a major shortcoming of the model was its inability to account for the widening intersectoral earnings differential observed across a wide range of developing economies. For Lewis himself this was one of the 'major theoretical puzzles of the period' (1979, p. 150). Third, it ignores Lewis's subsequent revision of the model (Lewis, The Manchester School, Vol. 47 (1979), No. 3, pp. 211-229) that, ironically, incorporates a dual labour market to resolve this puzzle. However, for Lewis the critical issue was dualism within the modern sector, not, as Fields understands it, labour market dualism between the modern and traditional sectors. Fields's appreciation of the contribution of the Lewis model to understanding the process of wage determination in developing economies is therefore misplaced.

Fixed wages and bonuses in agency contracts: the case of a continuous state space

In this paper, we extend the state-contingent production approach to principal–agent problems to the case where the state space is an atomless continuum. The approach is modelled on the treatment of optimal tax problems. The central observation is that, under reasonable conditions, the optimal contract may involve a fixed wage with a bonus for above-normal performance. This is analogous to the phenomenon of "bunching" at the bottom in the optimal tax literature.

The state-contingent approach to production under uncertainty

The central claim of this paper is that the state-contingent approach provides the best way to think about all problems in the economics of uncertainty, including problems of consumer choice, the theory of the firm, and principal-agent relationships. This claim is illustrated by recent developments in, and applications of, the state-contingent approach.

Rethinking the labour movement in the "new South Africa"

The socio-economic system underpinning apartheid in South Africa was based on the exploitation of black workers in the mines, the factories, the fields and the shops. It is widely recognized that the struggles of the South African black working class contributed decisively to the overthrow of the racist regime. In recognition of the power of organised labour, the democratic government elected in 1994 granted South Africa's unions unprecedented legal and constitutional rights. However, despite these gains, the country's labour movement has been facing a fresh set of challenges, from macroeconomic policy to the factory floor, many of them emanating from labour’s political allies in Government. The purpose of this book is to examine how the South African labour movement is responding to these challenges in the new millennium. A variety of experts on South African labour, both within the country and outside deal with crucial issues: How has South Africa's labour movement reacted to the ANC Government's neoliberal economic agenda? How do the unions relate to an increasingly diversifying, “flexible” and vulnerable workforce? What are labour’s prospects of contributing to a left project in democratic South Africa? What are the challenges facing the unions in relation to new forms of militancy and social movements?