Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 310-337).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 103-108). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed May 30, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 176-179).]

Very few narratives go as unchallenged about the transition of Central and Eastern European countries from state socialism to market democracies as the following: before the transitions people in these countries had strong social rights but were lacking any civic and political rights, and while the transformations provided the people with firm civil and political citizenship, they lost out on social rights. In my dissertation I argue that this is an oversimplifying and highly distorted narrative that is blind to the deep inequalities in these societies. My research focused on one particular means of reproducing these inequalities, namely welfare institutions, and explored what recipients of social assistance provision learned about their citizenship in the post-transition Hungarian welfare complex. This analysis not only demonstrated an inextricable interrelationship between civil, political and social citizenship, but also allowed for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which apparent political inequalities were reproduced in practice. By the innovative method of institutional ethnography I constructed a mosaic of the various component elements of the institutional system of social assistance provision in contemporary Hungary and investigated the influence that each had on recipients' civil and political citizenship. This study indicated a marked discrepancy between recipients' ideal and their lived experiences of citizenship, and found that certain characteristics of the system of social assistance provision played a crucial part in reproducing this discrepancy. The high level of discretion in the system, recipients' lack of information, the treatment they underwent in the welfare office, as well as the lack of institutional guarantees that could ensure that they enjoyed equal and fair treatment in all the welfare offices in the country proved to be the most important characteristics of social assistance provision that had direct or indirect effects on recipients' democratic subjectivity.

This thesis is a study of EU migrant citizens' substantive social rights. Much research has concerned itself with the expansion of freedom of movement and cross-border social rights in the EU. However, most of this research has analysed only formal rights, overlooking substantive rights. In the multilevel setting that is the EU, social rights are being adjudicated at a supra-national level, but realised at the national and sub-national level. Numerous different regulations, actors and practices thus shape the substantive social rights of EU migrant citizens, making their rights especially prone to distortion in the process of practical implementation. Examining how formal rights translate into substantive ones is important to understand how and where the lines of exclusion and inclusion of European social citizenship are drawn. Specifically, the thesis looks as how formal social rights translate into substantive rights with a focus on the local level. This is where any pressures from internal EU-migration on social provision are felt, where gaps in the social protection of EU migrant citizens make themselves evident, and where many social rights are exercised. The central research question of the thesis is thus: how are EU migrant citizens' social rights governed at the local level? The thesis adopts a qualitative and explorative method. More specifically, it examines barriers that EU migrant citizens face when trying to access social benefits and services. The study also takes a comparative approach, and contrasts localities across two member states that can be seen as critical cases: Germany and Sweden. In two cities in each country (Berlin and Hamburg, Gothenburg and Stockholm), interviews were conducted with local public administrators, welfare providers and advocacy organisations. The interviews were later related to relevant policy documents in a thematic analysis guided by the overarching research question. The main contribution of the thesis lies in identifying certain direct and indirect factors that shape EU migrant citizens' access to social benefits and services - and thus their substantive social rights. Specifically, the thesis argues that (1) certain structures of welfare systems (which become evident through a bottom-up study of supra-national social rights), and (2) the entrepreneurship of local actors, are crucial to understanding how formal rights of EU migrant citizens translate into substantive ones.

This research examines the financial assistance given by parents to their adult children and the extent to which it is influenced by social policy. In recent years these intergenerational financial transfers have been the subject of much research and a great deal has been learnt about when and why parents make the decision to provide financial assistance (Cox, 1987; Kohli, 1999; Albertini & Kohli, 2012). Furthermore, there has been considerable research on apparent differences in such financial assistance across countries and the extent to which this is attributable to differences in the social policies of these countries (Albertini, Kohli, & Vogel, 2007; Schenk, Dykstra, & Maas, 2010; Brandt & Deindl, 2013). The aim of this research is to further this understanding by considering transfers from different perspectives, first by considering the receipt of transfers rather than the giving of transfers and then by exploring the transfer decision in the context of multi-child families. Through these approaches and by using new data sources and analytical methods, the research estimates the association between social policy and intergenerational financial transfers. Furthermore, it was the specific aim of this research to consider whether such an association would explain cross-national variation in transfer behaviour and the importance of social policies relative to other determinants of transfer behaviour. To achieve these aims a variety of quantitative methods were used to model the giving and receiving of transfers using data from the Survey for Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the European Union’s Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The analysis of this latter dataset represents an important contribution in itself as it allows for the exploration of the receipt of transfers in a comparative perspective for the first time. To incorporate the complex and rich nature of these two datasets, multilevel models are used to model households over time and children within families. The results of these analyses suggest that there is a small association between certain policies and parents providing financial assistance to their adult children. Those in receipt of larger public pensions are marginally more likely to provide financial assistance to their adult children than those with smaller public pensions. As for adult children themselves, those receiving financial assistance from the state in the form of child benefit, housing benefits, social exclusion benefits and educational benefits are fractionally more likely to receive from their parents as well. The estimated coefficients and maximum effect size of such social policies are very small compared to time invariant factors which include the parent’s financial resources and the number of siblings the child has. In addition, the cross-national variation in transfer behaviour identified within the analyses is considerably smaller than in previous research. The research concludes that social policies are of less importance with regards to transfer behaviour than previous research has suggested. Whilst the research identifies a clear association between social policies and transfer behaviour, it is relatively weak compared to other factors. However the research stops short of concluding that social policies do not matter, instead suggesting that future research should critically assess the importance of intergenerational transfers in determining the adult child’s outcomes.

This research aims to investigate current volunteer use in public libraries in England. Volunteer use is not a new phenomenon, and has been an integral part of public library provision for many years. However recent Government policies, together with greater financial austerity, have resulted in a change in public service delivery. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of volunteers involved within the public library service, and the growth of community run libraries, resulting in much public and professional concern. An interpretivist research approach was used to investigate stakeholder opinions regarding volunteer use, and involved a two phase process. Initially a Delphi survey explored attitudes of 15 English public library service managers, followed by in-depth investigation of two case study library authorities, located in the North-East of England. Surveys, interviews and focus groups, helped to build a rich picture of volunteer use amongst the groups of stakeholders. Findings clearly indicated that volunteer use has moved from additionality to replacement of staff, and is increasingly being used by local authorities as a solution to budget reductions required as a result of economic austerity. A hybrid approach to library service provision has developed, using a combination of paid staff and volunteers, which indicates a fundamental culture shift within public libraries. Research results identified concerns relating to the long term viability of a hybrid approach, and how this impacted on the wider community in terms of service provision. Key concerns were raised concerning advocacy, sensitivity, the fragility of relationships, and the provision of an accountable and high quality service. Formal and informal control mechanisms need to be employed by library service managers to ensure that they reap the benefits of volunteer use, thereby avoiding social exclusion, clarifying stakeholder boundaries, and delivering a high quality accountable service. Training library managers in new volunteer management skills, and adopting a volunteer relationship management approach may help to ensure that this new arrangement is mutually beneficial for all concerned.

The thesis follows the development of charity, both as a theological concept and as the activity of increasing number of social institutions, over two centuries. The main narrative of the thesis follows these two themes, but it also identifies other background factors, particularly developments in social history. It uses insights from anthropological gift theory, reflected in part in the concept of noblesse oblige, a standpoint which both demands support from the rich to the poor and legitimates social divisions: points frequently made in charity sermons. The thesis explores the development of theologies of charity, in particular in the writings of Butler, Wesley, Sumner, Chalmers, Maurice, and Westcott, and also considers the philosophy of J S Mill and T H Green. From these, it is argued that the key development in theoretical analyses of charity is a shift in discourse from an emphasis on the duty of the rich to behave charitably (as in Butler's concept of benevolence) to a concern with the outcome of such giving on the recipients of charity. This is first seen in the writings and practice of the early leaders of the evangelical revival who saw the poor as children of God, but also as being in need of moral reformation. With the advent of a Christian approach to economics based on the thinking of Malthus and Sumner, a harsher approach developed which saw charity as undermining a divinely ordered social economy and was expressed in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The reaction against this led to a split in thinking about charity: on the one side a mix of economic theory, Comtean altruism and Greenian Idealism resulted in the growth of an autonomous, secular and professional approach to charity exemplified by C S Loch, and on the other a changing Christian approach to the position of the poor in society, going back to Maurice which was expressed in a call for justice rather than charity by the Christian Socialists of the late nineteenth century. Meanwhile, other political developments were resulting in a greater state involvement in what had hitherto been an independent field of charitable work, and resulted in very different patterns of welfare, in which charity took second place to state provision. The thesis ends by revisiting the split in discourse between givers and receivers of charity, and argues that both sides need to be considered in any theological discussion, including the need for recipients to be allowed to reciprocate to others.

This thesis consists of four self-contained articles which focus on different aspects of citizens' demand for and governments' supply of social policy in Latin American democracies. The underlying questions that link the four papers are a) do social and economic grievances affect citizens' propensity to protest? and, b) do democratic governments in the region use social policy as an instrument to mitigate social discontent and violent crime? In the first two papers, I use public opinion data in order to examine the determinants of citizens' participation in protest with a special focus on dissatisfaction with the quality of public services, demands for inequality-reduction policies and economic deprivation. The results show that among other factors, protest participation is motivated by citizens' discontent over the quality of basic social services, support for redistributive policies, and relative economic deprivation. The third and fourth papers analyze the "supply side" of social spending in the region focusing on collective protest and violent crime, respectively. The third article argues that under democracy, organized labor is in a better position relative to other groups in society to obtain social policy concessions as a consequence of their collective action efforts. The results show that whereas social security spending increases as a consequence of labor militancy, cutbacks in human capital spending are less likely as peaceful large-scale demonstrations increase. The fourth paper argues that political leaders use education spending as an instrument to mitigate violent crime. It also argues that the effect of violent crime on education spending is larger when leftist governments are in power. The empirical analysis provides support for these arguments.