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Scholars increasingly recognize the centrality of legal ideas and language to the political vision that inspires American conservatism. However, relevant studies have been limited to the discursive practices that motivate conservative activism at the grass-root level. Exploration of the legal discourses employed by prominent public officials thus carries significant scholarly potential. For example, this chapter's investigation of President Ronald Reagan reveals that his political vision was suffused with legal discourse. Reagan's legal discourse, moreover, has exerted constitutive effects both on American conservatism and on the form and substance of a great deal of contemporary American public policy.

This article examines the persistence of a “rights” movement in a political environment rife with the language of personal responsibility. Through an analysis of interviews of welfare rights activists in three states, this article explores the frequency and type of both “rights” and “needs” discourse frameworks. Neither rights nor needs language is employed frequently in the interviews. Activists do not view the language of rights and needs as necessarily conflictual. Furthermore, race appears to play some role in discourse choices between rights and needs. African American women utilize both rights and needs rhetoric, while White women prefer needs language. The results offer evidence of the centrality of race in understanding discourse choices among those struggling to gain recognition of basic human needs and rights.

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

Revitalising the debate about how to operationalise and measure the extent of welfare states – the so-called dependent variable problem – recent research claims a close theoretical interaction between three different indicators: aggregated data on social expenditure, social rights and social benefit receipt. It is suggested that they all serve as an approximation of welfare state generosity as a dependent variable and help understand variation between as well as change of welfare states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these three indicators statistically relate to each other, using data on unemployment cash benefits.

To this end, a time series cross-sectional analysis is carried out, covering 16 European countries for the period 2003–2011.

Results confirm theoretical reflections on the link between the different indicators, whereby higher levels of social expenditure are positively associated with more generous social rights as well as higher levels of benefit receipt. Additionally, the study points to an ambivalent relation between benefit access and benefit levels within indicators as well as across them. This suggests competing policy choices in European welfare states, whereby more generous benefit access implies lower benefit levels and vice versa.

The study contributes to the existing dependent variable literature in a twofold way. First, the conceptual link between the three different indicators and the assumptions they are associated with are critically reviewed. Second, by providing a statistical analysis of the relation between the different indicators across 16 countries, the study goes beyond theoretical elaborations about their association as well as existing small-N or medium-N case time trend studies.

The insights of T. H. Marshall and Pierre Bourdieu are drawn upon, integrated and extended to show how social spending policies have been key sites for historical struggles over the boundaries and rights of American citizenship. In the 19th century, paupers forfeited their civil and political rights in exchange for relief. Rather than break definitively with this legacy, major policy innovations in the United States that expanded state involvement in social provision generated struggles over whether to model the new policies on or distinguish them from traditional poor relief. At stake in these struggles were the citizenship status and rights of the policies’ clients. Both the emergence of such citizenship struggles and their outcomes are explained. These struggles emerged when policy innovations created new groups of clients, the new policy treated clients in contradictory ways and policy elites formed ties to social movements with stakes in the status and rights of the policy's clients. The outcomes of the struggles have been shaped by the institutional structure of the policy and the manner and extent to which the policy became entangled in racial politics. Historical evidence for these claims is provided by a case study of the Works Progress Administration, an important but understudied component of the New Deal welfare state.

Over the past 30 years asylum has become an issue of great political significance, public interest and media coverage in most “Western” countries. Policies and laws designed to deal with asylum seekers have proliferated, as have the resources required to manage them. These developments have come as a result of the rise of asylum as a social, political and economic “problem” which is seen to necessitate urgent action. Within this context, some countries, such as Britain, have sought to limit asylum seekers’ social and economic rights. In Britain specifically this has involved making paid employment illegal for asylum seekers, and in the process making the government liable for the living costs of such individuals – creating a situation of forced welfare dependency. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper provides a review of research into work and welfare policy relating to asylum seekers in Britain. The paper focuses particularly on three key issues which are affected by asylum policies relating to work and welfare. These have all received particular scholarly attention in recent years: destitution, illegal working and forced labour, and the impact on integration outcomes.

In the final section the author proposes some directions for future research.

The review is, of course, not exhaustive, but does provide an overview of key themes in the literature and should be of interest to scholars interested in the politics, sociology and social policy of asylum.

At global fora which discuss the regulation of international migration the Philippine government is typically hailed a “good practice example” for its institutional as well as legal framework and proactive interest in the welfare of its citizens. The Philippine history of migration policy making is indeed shaped by a shift from “exporting workers” to an increasingly comprehensive rights-sensitive approach that addresses most aspects of migration: the regulation of recruitment agencies, pre-migration training, insurance systems, overseas voting rights, consular services, social rights of the left behind, and re-integration of returned migrants. This state of affairs, however, has not always been like that and is largely the result of activism by the vibrant migrant rights movement in the Philippines which reaches across the world. The case of the Philippine also shows mixed approaches to government-social movement relations, characterized by both pressure politics and critical engagement.

Considerable gaps and loopholes remain in this web of rights-based policy aspects. Structural weaknesses are major problems that need to be addressed if labor migration is to evolve into a truly choice-driven economic decision. Still, comparatively and historically speaking, the Philippines have come a long way. The combined effects of leadership from below and leadership from above had led to some concrete results – even if far from perfect – in the betterment of many migrants’ lives.

Paper argues that the proper approach to the topic of economic welfare should include an appreciation that markets are not characterized by an endogenous tendency towards equilibrium. The economists, Schumpeter, Keynes and Minsky are right in this regard as opposed to Adam Smith and contemporary economic orthodoxy. However, today’s liberal political theories largely assumes the tendency towards equilibrium and so are inadequate to deal with economic issues such as economic welfare which arise in conditions of non-equilibrium. The purpose of this paper is to propose Winfield’s reconstruction of Hegel’s social philosophy as more fitted to deal with market realities.

Paper starts with a debate within economics and uses it as a basis to evaluate different schools of normative philosophy. Paper concludes by showing how the preferred philosophy is capable to rule between different economic policies responding to economic disequilibrium.

Hegelian philosophy has capacity to adjudicate between economic policies to resolve market failure that contemporary liberal theory lacks.

Paper provides the ethical justification for economic policies that have heretofore only been recommend by economists.

Paper points to the largely overlooked fact that most contemporary political theory assumes market equilibrium. Paper argues that Hegelian philosophy provides the ethical justification for certain post-Keynesian economic policies, a position no one else is making.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the issues of animal rights in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry, and to suggest ethical guidelines for the operation of animal‐based attractions.

The issue is presented through an extensive literature review, in addition to current examples and demonstrations from the industry.

For years, the H&T industry has been heavily criticized for its inconsiderate and even cruel use of animals for entertainment purposes. However, there are clear indications, presented in this paper, of a growing tendency to adopt approaches that emphasize animal welfare and even animal rights.

The growing awareness of animal rights, the changing public opinion and the influence of animal rights' movements is forcing animal attractions to re‐evaluate their attitudes toward the use of animals. Generally, animal attractions should adopt an approach that combines entertainment, education and welfare concerns. Specific guidelines for each component and recommendations are provided. However, this issue requires further discussion and research to clarify key problems.

The paper is of value to researchers and practitioners who are interested in the development of H&T ethics regarding the use of animals.