Suchergebnisse

Social capital is acknowledged as an important factor in local economies. However, depending on their specific characteristics, social capital resources may have both positive and negative effects on socioeconomic development: The outcomes are related to whether the local contexts are endowed with bonding or bridging social capital. This article investigates the impact of the bonding social capital present in a local production system in the Polish region of Łodž. The findings reveal that although the "rise and demise" of this local economy cannot be ascribed only to the quality of social capital, bonding social capital brought positive results in the form of rapid economic growth of the local companies and neutralizing the effects of the post-1989 crisis. It has subsequently hampered cooperative behavior, impeded learning and unlearning, and finally contributed to the incapacity of the local production system to adapt to new market economy conditions. Bonding social capital resources originating from the communist period have been further reproduced through local economic governance mechanisms, heavily influenced by the shadow economy.

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking.

This study investigates the outcomes out-of-pocket payments (OOPP) produce in terms of income-related disparities in unmet health needs (UHN) due to inability to pay and highlights the commodifying effect of OOPP in European healthcare systems. It merges micro data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC) for 2005–2012, with macro data from the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Health Organization (WHO). Our results show that, first, across all European countries and years under study, income determines whether a person reports an occasion within the last year where she needed medical treatment or examination but did not receive it due to inability to pay. Second, the more a country relies on OOPP as a means of healthcare financing, the higher the proportion of respondents who report UHN. Third, the share of OOPP amplifies the effect of income considerably. While the poorest decile has a 2 percentage points higher predicted probability of suffering from financially determined UHN than the richest decile in a country with relatively low OOPP (11% of total health expenditure), this difference soars up to 10 percentage points in a country with relatively high OOPP (25%).

AbstractThis study elucidates the role of international organizations and domestic actors in post‐communist healthcare reforms aiming at a paradigmatic shift in healthcare financing and the introduction of social health insurance in Albania, Latvia and Poland. It inductively derives a causal mechanism behind the reform processes from these case studies. We demonstrate that the agenda setting for changing the healthcare financing paradigm was domestically driven and underpinned by the "nothing like the old regime" causal mechanism. In the context of post‐communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe this mechanism translated into an "anti‐communist backlash". The backlash defined the domestic actors' perception of social health insurance as the only acceptable policy option because of its dissimilarity to the previous healthcare financing paradigm, and led to the rejection of World Bank suggestions to retain tax‐based healthcare financing in Poland and Albania. Doctors as policy entrepreneurs played the key role in agenda setting. Pre‐communist experience with social health insurance schemes and transnational cooperation with German and French experts and doctors served as sources of internal and external validation for the new paradigm.

This papers derives from the project 'Citizens and Governance in the Knowledge-based Society', forming part of the New Modes of Governance (NewGov) Integrated Project under the European Commission's Framework Six Programme, co-ordinated by the European University Institute, Florence, and its Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. In 2005 ca. 70 face-to-face interviews were conducted with local entrepreneurs; representatives of local authorities; representatives of the Municipality of the two case studies; representatives of regional authorities; researchers from the University; experts from regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The interviews were semistructured, with an interview guide based on an inventory of issues. However, the discursive nature of interviews was preserved, which allowed the interviewees to raise additional issues. Secondary sources were also extensively used in the research, using local newspaper, documents, research reports, as well as documents from local public and private institutions, such as the local government or employers associations, and a secondary analysis of quantitative data was carried out. ; Areas of industrial decline, with poor quality local government and poor infrastructure, frequently find a kind of economic success through the shadow economy. But illegality imposes constraints on the kind of success that can be achieved. The study of such areas in central Poland and southern Italy reveals considerable similarities, despite the fact that the former was part of the former state socialist bloc, the latter not. In both regions, small and medium-sized textile and clothing firms were flourishing within the limits of the shadow economy following the collapse of large corporations in the area. There were, however, important differences. Italian public policy has provided some possible routes out of the shadow economy, and its distinctive governance, which has been taken advantage of to a limited extent by firms, while Polish policy continues to deny that the problem exists. Also, because of the presence of leading clothing brands elsewhere in Italy, southern Italian firms have access to routes for upgrading their activities that are largely unavailable to their Polish counterparts.