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This study investigates empirically the impact of export product concentration (or diversification) on social protection expenditure in both developed and developing countries. The analysis further explores whether this effect depends on countries' degree of openness to international trade.

The analysis has relied on an unbalanced panel data set comprising 112 countries over the period 1980–2010 and used the two-step system generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimator as the econometric approach.

The empirical analysis conveys two messages. First, low-income countries experience a positive effect of export product concentration on social protection expenditure, while for relatively advanced economies, export product diversification positively influences social protection expenditure. Second, countries that further open up their economies to international trade experience a positive effect of export product diversification on social protection expenditure, with the magnitude of this impact increasing as the degree of openness rises.

These findings highlight the relevance of export product diversification for social protection expenditure in both developed and developing countries, notably in the context of greater trade openness.

The diversification of export products is one means for developed and developing countries alike to increase the scope for social protection expenditure.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this topic had not been addressed.

Purpose – Since the mid-1980s, unemployment policy reforms in Europe and throughout the rich democracies have stressed publicly supported activation of the unemployed through both reductions in perceived disincentives to work as well as commitments for improved training, employment services, and related policies. In this chapter, I systematically explore the domestic and international political economic sources of these policy changes.

Methodology/approach – I test a set of hypotheses – original and derivative – about the domestic and international determinants of labor market policy change through pooled time-series cross-section analysis of 1980-to-2002 annual data from 18 capitalist democracies. The dependent variables consist of national spending on active labor market policy, measures of passive unemployment compensation benefits, and the ratio of active to passive unemployment program spending. Causal models account for spatial diffusion of policy reforms as well as core political and economic determinants of policy change.

Findings – I find that Left party governments and coordinated market institutions buoy resources for active labor market programs, maintain relatively generous passive unemployment supports and entitlements, and, at the same time, foster a shift to more active social policy. International trade openness promotes generous active labor market policies while more left-leaning voters and veto points within the polity significantly constrain reductions in unemployment benefits and entitlement rights. De-industrialization reinforces policy reforms toward activation while high unemployment rates engender cuts in passive unemployment benefits and eligibility conditions.

Originality/value – Overall, the chapter demonstrates that the economic effects on policy change notwithstanding, politics fundamentally matters: domestic political dynamics and variations in institutions explain the preponderance of the change (or lack thereof) in unemployment policy.

This paper aims to examine Canadian government measures to support country’s economic recovery and sustainable development. The goal is to examine whether all orders of government are working well to deliver the required help to Canadians.

The theoretical foundations for this article are drawn from liberal and institutionalist approaches to comparative politics. Specifically, the proposed study draws on political tensions that occur because of actions of self-centered regional (provincial) governments who legitimize individual policies based on their self-centered economic and political objectives.

Nowadays, we can observe the primary role of the state in supporting and regulating the health governance systems, the economy and social life. Many informal groups have unstructured approach, which does not require them to follow existing strategies. The challenges caused by COVID-19 have led to the resurgence of collective, state-based approaches to the recovery. The key findings illuminate the importance of crisis communication activities which should be implemented properly. This implies that all disclosures must be timely and truthful.

The study helps to better understand the events that disrupt parts of the Canadian economy during pandemic. It reviews the essential functions that are critical for reliable operation of infrastructure services to ensure safety and well-being of the population. During the COVID-19, federal–provincial–territorial collaboration runs into resistance because of competing interests, resource constraints, legacies from past conflicts and lack of coordination. In contrast to managers, who often focus on tangible short-term results, today’s leadership more often seeks intangible long-term results. This means that the central–local government relations tend to be more informal.

In the face of external shock, such as COVID-19, it did not take much time for Canadian provincial governments to realize that they cannot cope with a wide range of challenges alone. In these circumstances, the narratives of how governments work together during the challenging time to impact their desired outcomes are of crucial importance.

In this chapter, we examine the development of a technology path in the nanotube (NT) field – one of the most well-developed areas of nanotechnology. Although early developments suggested that there were equally viable pathways related to the development of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and others made with organic molecules and polymers, carbon-based technologies became valorized. We show how the carbon science path developed and try to unpack how it happened. We argue that it was not due to the inherent efficiency or applications of CNTs, but to sociopolitical dynamics. Even though much intellectual property research focuses on patent-level analysis, we underscore the importance of patent categories as key cognitive elements that organize the different knowledge domains within the world of NT patenting. We show that interlinkages between patent categories are crucial to the formation and development of a particular technology path. In unpacking the selection of the carbon science path, we highlight the key role played by a cadre of star scientists and the political neglect of alternative pathways as the field herded toward the CNT path.

On 23 June 2016, 51.9% of those who voted in the UK referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) opted to leave. The impact of this result upon both British and European politics has been profoundly disruptive and divisive. It not only marks a ‘seismic moment in post-war British politics’ (McGowan, 2018, p. 4) but has also disrupted expectations for the European project; no Member State had previously left the Union. Political institutions have been thrown into disarray, many citizens remain in a situation of existential uncertainty, and the political realm is cleaving. What has come to be known as ‘Brexit’ seemingly marks a crisis; a tear or a wrench in the very fabric of European politics, or perhaps a knot in which different socio-political tendencies have become entangled. In this chapter, the authors are interested not so much in diagnosing the factors that led to Brexit as they are the different interpretations that the ‘Brexit crisis’ is now being given. The authors map out five readings of ‘the Brexit crisis’ and contend that any attempt to grasp the meaning of Brexit demands drawing on all of them.

Charitable Choice Policy, the heart of President Bush’s Faith‐Based Initiative, is the direct government funding of religious organizations for the purpose of carrying out government programs. The Bush presidential administration has called for the application of Charitable Choice Policy to all kinds of social services. Advocates for child‐abuse victims contend that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy would further dismantle essential social services provided to abused children. Others have argued Charitable Choice Policy is unconstitutional because it crosses the boundary separating church and state. Rather than drastically altering the US social‐policy landscape, this paper demonstrates that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy already is in place for childabuse services across many of the fifty states. One reason this phenomenon is ignored is due to the reliance on the public‐private dichotomy for studying social policies and services. This paper contends that relying on the public‐private dichotomy leads researchers to overlook important configurations of actors and institutions that provide services to abused children. It offers an alternate framework to the public‐private dichotomy useful for the analysis of social policy in general and, in particular, Charitable Choice Policy affecting services to abused children. Employing a new methodological approach, fuzzy‐sets analysis, demonstrates the degree to which social services for abused children match ideal types. It suggests relationships between religious organizations and governments are essential to the provision of services to abused children in the United States. Given the direction in which the Bush Charitable Choice Policy will push social‐policy programs, scholars should ask whether abused children will be placed in circumstances that other social groups will not and why.

The aim of this paper is to propose an integrative framework of organizational decline on the firm‐level.

In recent years, there has been a growing number of contributions to the research field of organizational decline from diverse theoretical perspectives and different levels of analysis. In this paper, an integrative framework of organizational decline on the firm‐level is proposed that relies on a process perspective, combining insights from organizational ecology, path dependence and the resource‐based view.

Different theoretical perspectives are used to explore various aspects of the problem of organizational decline. A theoretical framework as a theoretical perspective is developed to guide research and to interconnect diverse theoretical findings. Based on the suggested framework, two archetypes are distinguished which lead an organization to insolvency: malabsorptive incompetence and maladapted competencies.

The proposed framework allows the capture of the dynamic process of organizational decline and the identification of the triggers driving organizational decline.