Since the 2010 earthquake shook Haiti, there have been numerous calls for a national dialogue in the country to bring together all the parties involved in order to find solutions to Haiti’s woes. While several iterations of a national dialogue have been attempted in Haiti and abroad, more must be done to address the many social, economic, and political challenges that Haitians have faced for decades. As the situation worsens in the country, Haitians must unite to wrestle with the many issues they face and find common ground needed to rebuild a more democratic and resilient Haiti. Through a partnership with the Coalition for an Inclusive Dialogue in Haiti (The Coalition), this participatory-action dissertation explores how public deliberation and social capital can build a participant-generated framework for an inclusive dialogue in Haiti. Using deliberative mini publics, the Coalition aims to leverage the development of social capital to propose an inclusive dialogue framework that can build deliberative capacity among Haitians at home and abroad. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, deliberative forums, survey questionnaires, and focus groups, this dissertation offers several propositions on what factors can facilitate or hinder an inclusive dialogue in Haiti. Moreover, it offers insights into what a truly inclusive dialogue in Haiti could resemble. Finally, this participatory-action dissertation introduces an Inclusive Dialogue Framework, which includes the first dialogue, lakou conversations, intergroup dialogues, and citizen assemblies. Since the 2010 earthquake shook Haiti, there have been numerous calls for a national dialogue in the country to bring together all the parties involved in order to find solutions to Haiti's woes. While several iterations of a national dialogue have been attempted in Haiti and abroad, more must be done to address the many social, economic, and political challenges that Haitians have faced for decades. As the situation worsens in the country, Haitians must unite to wrestle with the many issues they face and find common ground needed to rebuild a more democratic and resilient Haiti. Through a partnership with the Coalition for an Inclusive Dialogue in Haiti (The Coalition), this participatory-action dissertation explores how public deliberation and social capital can build a participant-generated framework for an inclusive dialogue in Haiti. Using deliberative mini publics, the Coalition aims to leverage the development of social capital to propose an inclusive dialogue framework that can build deliberative capacity among Haitians at home and abroad. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, deliberative forums, survey questionnaires, and focus groups, this dissertation offers several propositions on what factors can facilitate or hinder an inclusive dialogue in Haiti. Moreover, it offers insights into what a truly inclusive dialogue in Haiti could resemble. Finally, this participatory-action dissertation introduces an Inclusive Dialogue Framework, which includes the first dialogue, lakou conversations, intergroup dialogues, and citizen assemblies.

Varieties of Capitalism theory predicts that the skill specificity of workers determines their demand for social protection. In this thesis, I test this assumption using a measure of occupational mobility between pre- and post-unemployment, which I apply to European workers in different skill groups as defined by Fleckenstein et al., (2011). Using this measure as an indicator of the portability of workers' skills, I then evaluate whether the lower marketability of human capital investments is associated with greater demand for unemployment protection. The findings demonstrate that whilst this relationship is apparent in certain countries, notably Coordinated Market Economies such as Germany, the assumptions do not apply across institutional settings. Consequently, skill specificity cannot explain variation in attitudes towards unemployment protection policies between countries.

The ongoing debate over welfare in the United States is rooted in the long-standing tension between the nation’s commitment to providing for its most vulnerable and a deep-seated belief that such support can corrupt its recipients. Social Security has struck this balance and appeals to the masses with its pay-as-you-go system and universally distributed benefits. Yet, the solvency of Social Security is threatening the program that has attempted to guard against old age and disability for the last eighty years. This paper examines how the perception of poverty in the United States is a hindrance when tackling social welfare policies. Further, the failure of the Supreme Court to recognize economic security as a fundamental constitutional right and a lack of public support to contribute funds are added challenges in the implementation of social insurance and public assistance programs. The most promising solution to restore the short and long-term solvency of Social Security ultimately involves relaxing immigration laws to highly skilled workers and raising the retirement age for the rising generation.

Many Supported Residential Facility (SRF) residents express a desire to live in more independent accommodation, however relatively few achieve this. Two of the issues preventing this are a lack of housing alternatives and support. This study examines the relevant literature and legislation, to gather documentary evidence and demographic data about South Australian SRFs and their residents. This is augmented by interviews with five key informants, to discover what other factors inhibit SRF residents from moving on to alternative accommodation. Findings indicate that recovery and rehabilitation are inhibited in SRFs and that current standards are barely sustaining people. Data suggests that legislation has a negative impact on residents and service delivery. This research recommends that the South Australian Government take up its legislative and ministerial responsibility to SRFs and their residents as a matter of urgency, especially in relation to fire safety. Secondly, that there is a review of The Legislation to incorporate citizenship rights and individualised care. And lastly, that in the interim, funding tied to service agreements is made available to SRFs, so that they become a place to recover and not the end of the line.

Over the last five decades, a rich literature on the welfare state has developed. Multiple theories and models seek to explain the contemporary welfare state, including structural functionalist, structural-Marxist and Marxist perspectives, culturalist approaches, pluralist analyses, neo-institutionalist theories, power resources theory, Harold Wilensky and Lebeaux’s dual model, Richard Titmuss’s tri-polar model, and Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s tri-polar model, all designed to account for the emergence of and variations among welfare states. However, these theories and models originated within the developed world, and empirical examinations of these theories are largely restricted within this part of the world. The welfare state literature is too confined to the West today. This study examines key welfare state theories and models in the contexts of developing and least developed nations employing a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and comparative methodologies. It suggests that social policies and programs in the developing nations can be systematically understood in the light of mainstream Western theories and models of the welfare state. Therefore, in addition to challenging current practices that limit the study of the welfare state within particular geographical areas, the research presented here provides rationale for increased efforts to understand welfare policies and programs in developing nations. This will increase our knowledge about the applicability of theories in the developing world and will enrich the understanding of the developed world, and thus contribute to the advancement of welfare state scholarship. / February 2016

The author focuses on the fact that at the present stage the information support of the population is becoming one of the most important tasks of state authorities and social protection, in particular. The main priority of the social protection authorities in this area is that citizens receive the necessary information as quickly as possible, regardless of their location and reduction in the number of citizens who need social support, but do not receive it due to the lack of information about their rights. The paper reveals the theoretical, regulatory, and practical foundations for organizing public information on social support measures, and gives recommendations for its improvement. / Автор акцентирует внимание на том, что на современном этапе информационное обеспечение населения становится одной из важнейших задач органов государственной власти и социальной защиты, в частности. Основным приоритетом органов социальной защиты в данной области является как можно более быстрое получение гражданами необходимой информации, независимо от места их нахождения и снижение количества граждан, которые нуждаются в оказании социальной поддержки, но не получают ее из-за отсутствия информации о своих правах. В работе раскрываются теоретические, нормативно-правовые и практические основы деятельности по организации информирования населения о мерах социальной поддержки, даются рекомендации по ее совершенствованию.

South Africa faces a high disease burden and a limited public capacity to provide care to the ill. Research from the UK and sub-Saharan Africa suggests the burden often falls to children, who also take over domestic responsibilities necessary for household survival. To date, there is limited research exploring the relationship between parental illness and children’ responsibilities, or the moderating effect of socio-demographic variables. The thesis is comprised of three research phases. The first is a literature review to summarise existing research and identify substantial gaps, which included limited amounts of quantitative evidence on this topic and a lack of a tool to as-sess child responsibility that had both been adapted to the South African context and included caring responsibilities. The second research phase consists of an exploratory study of n = 349 children living with ill adults in urban and rural communities in the Western Cape province of South Africa to investigate their range of responsibility, which included caring for an ill parent, household chores, childcare, and income-generation. The resulting data were used to create the Child Responsibility Measure, which assesses the range and time burden of re-sponsibilities among South African children. The third research phase is a cross-sectional quantitative survey of n = 2,476 pairs of children and parents from urban and rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Resulting data on parental health, socio-demographics, and child responsibilities were analysed with multiple regres-sions to determine drivers of children’s responsibility. Among the findings were that parental illnesses increase the likelihood children provide care and have larger responsibility workloads, and girls are more likely to take on all types of responsibility excluding income-generating activities, which were more common in boys. Additionally, while urban children were more likely to provide personal care, rural children had greater responsibility workloads.

This inquiry into informal networks and policy negotiations is set in the theoretical framework of network governance. It builds theory to explain informal networks by examining neighbourhood associations in post-Katrina New Orleans through a variety of qualitative methodologies including interviews, document analysis, surveying and ethnography. In New Orleans, neighbourhood associations do not engage in social-service delivery, they prioritise neighbourhood protection and neighbourhood change. They represent their neighbourhoods through a system of intensive volunteering not elections. That system burns out neighbourhood leaders and leaves associations constantly looking for new volunteers. These associations partner with non-profits, work with politicians, and engage in fierce conflict when excluded from policy negotiations. Finally, they set their agenda based upon the physical characteristics of their neighbourhoods, investing in local institutions. These findings contribute to network governance theory. New Orleans’ democracy of volunteers introduces a new form of democratic anchorage to governance theory. Actors in informal networks have varying priorities. This demonstrates the importance of early involvement by these actors in policy creation and the ways in which policy construction can ignore community. Neighbourhood associations blackmail, bribe and coerce to create their own power, showing how power at the micro-level includes not only resources and decision-making, but also interest. These findings fit into a broader theme. Negotiations with multiple actors improve policy by incorporating complex priorities and neighbourhood context into the policy system. This wider theme of how to address complexity is the policy equivalent of the wisdom of crowds. Policy-makers can either incorporate complexity such as local context and differing priorities or face the conflict and consequences of ignoring it.

This thesis explores the ideological role of metaphor in British governmental discourses on 'social exclusion'. A hybrid methodology, combining approaches from Corpus Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and cognitive theories of metaphor, is used to address how social exclusion and other metaphors are deployed to create an ideologically vested representation of society. The data consists of linguistic metaphors identified from a 400,000+ word machine-readable corpus of British governmental texts on social exclusion covering a ten year period (1997- 2007). From these surface level features of text, underlying systematic and conceptual metaphors are then inferred. The analysis reveals how the interrelation between social exclusion and a range of other metaphors creates a dichotomous representation of society in which social problems are discursively placed outside society, glossing inequalities within the included mainstream and placing the blame for exclusion on the cultural deficiencies of the excluded. The solution to the problem of exclusion is implicit within the logic of its conceptual structure and involves moving the excluded across the 'boundary' to join the 'insiders'. The welfare state has a key role to play in this and is underpinned by a range of metaphors which anticipate movement on the part of the excluded away from a position of dependence on the state. This expectation of movement is itself metaphorically structured by the notion of a social contract in which the socially excluded have a responsibility to try and include themselves in society in return for the right of (temporary) state support. Key systematic metaphors are explained by reference to a discourse-historical view of ideological change in processes of political party transformation.

Microfinance is a development tool used to reduce poverty among extremely poor households. Impoverished households can access lines of credit through microfinance institutions (MFIs), in order to create a new business, smooth household consumption, fund medical emergencies, etc. Many authors postulate that MFIs are drifting from a welfarist to an institutionalist approach to lending. Using MIXMarket data on specific MFIs in 118 countries between 1995 and 2011, the average loan balance of these organizations will be regressed against measure of outreach and sustainability of these institutions by charter type through a series of four, fixed effects models. The main research question is: given that a positive, overall shift in average loan balance indicates an institutionalist shift in mission, how does this impact microfinance institutions and the demographics they target on the intensive and extensive margins? These analyses will test the theory that MFIs with larger average loan balances serve households closer to the subsistence poverty level, a manifestation of mission drift toward the institutionalist philosophy of lending. The phenomenon of mission drift directly impacts the outcomes of microfinance institutions and the target demographic of the organization. The results of this study indicate that the mission of these organizations is drifting toward the institutionalist philosophy of lending. With this general result, mission drift can be observed within both the internal and external margins of the microfinance industry, which influences the chosen target market, profit generated, and structure of MFIs, as determined by the mission of the organization.