Welfare Effort and Poverty from the Monetary and Capabilities Approach: A Cross-Country Analysis in Latin American and the Caribbean (1990-2010)

There is abundant empirical evidence on the negative relationship between welfare effort and poverty. However, poverty indicators traditionally used have been representative of the monetary approach, excluding its multidimensional reality from the analysis. Using three regression techniques for the period 1990-2010 and controlling for demographic and cyclical factors, this paper examines the relationship between social spending per capita —as the indicator of welfare effort— and poverty in up to 21 countries of the region. The proportion of the population with an income below its national basic basket of goods and services (PM1) and the proportion of population with an income below 50% of the median income per capita (PM2) were the two poverty indicators considered from the monetarist approach to measure poverty. From the capability approach the proportion of the population with food inadequacy (PC1) and the proportion of the population without access to improved water sources or sanitation facilities (PC2) were used. The fi ndings confi rm that social spending is actually useful to explain changes in poverty (PM1, PC1 and PC2), as there is a high negative and signifi cant correlation between the variables before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. In two regression techniques, social spending per capita did not show a negative relationship with the PM2. Countries with greater welfare effort for the period 1990-2010 were not necessarily those with the lowest level of poverty. Ultimately social spending per capita was more useful to explain changes in poverty from the capability approach.

Talking about the genes for cancer. A study of lay and professional knowledge of cancer genetics

This paper is concerned with the ways in which people who work in and use a cancer genetics clinic in the UK talk about the ‘gene for cancer’. By conceptualising such a gene as a boundary object, and using empirical data derived from clinic consultations, observations in a genetics laboratory and interviews with patients, the author seeks to illustrate how the various parties involved adopt different discursive strategies to appropriate, describe and understand what is apparently the ‘same’ thing. The consequent focus on the ways in which the rhetorical and syntactical features of lay and professional talk interlink and diverge, illustrates not merely how our contemporary knowledge of genes and genetics is structured, but also how different publics position themselves with respect to the biochemistry of life.

A Blueprint for Democratic Policing Anywhere in the World? Police Reform, Political Transition and Conflict Resolution in Northern Ireland

This article provides an overview of the police reform process undertaken in Northern Ireland since 1999 as part of a broader program of conflict resolution. It considers the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP), which proposed a number of changes to policing structures and arrangements in Northern Ireland, and it assesses the degree to which these have been operationalized in the 8 years since the ICP published its report. It suggests that although the police reform process in Northern Ireland has been moderately successful and provides a number of international best practice lessons, the overall pace of change has been hindered by difficulties of implementation and, more fundamentally, by developments in the political sphere and civil society.