Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Measures of socio-economic status are usually based upon people's occupational status. So, in a survey of fifteen year olds conducted in their schools, how can you collect such information about their parents? The most convenient method is to ask the young people themselves to describe their parents' occupations. This method is cost-effective and does not require making contact with parents, a stage which would be likely to increase non-response of students to the survey, as well as item non-response to the required questions. But can one trust the socio-economic data obtained this way?

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was conducted in 2000. Students aged 15 to 16 were assessed in their literacy skills and a chief aim of this study was to see how socio-economic status was associated with literacy. Student’s reporting of their parents’ occupation and highest level of education was used as an indicator of parental social economic status. During the pilot study in England, conducted in 1999, the reliability of this proxy data was investigated. Students reported details of their parents occupations and education at school by self-completion questionnaire. Interviews were then carried out by telephone with 307 mothers and 244 fathers of these students. Measures of socio-economic status and educational attainment derived from both sources were compared.

This paper describes the reliability of student reporting and identifies areas of weakness. It also identifies implications for the analysis of data as the quality of reporting was related to students' literacy skills.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Developing a viable environment protection policy is a skill and effectiveness of a political system. This paper focuses on the Soviet legislative and political response to various forms of environmental change. I argue that in the USSR materialistic viewpoint of economic and technological growth was progressive and causal agent of political and social development affecting environmental politics. By exploring ideational, institutional and market approaches, and by assessing the historical and developmental peculiarities of governmental structure, this paper discloses the most important variables affecting the enactment of environmental protection legislation. I claim that state corporatism effectively limited the debate on the virtues of alternative approaches in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Soviet scholars and politicians considered law as a constructive force and an agent for transformation, where law states policies and guides administrative agencies, public organizations and individual citizens. Soviet environmental legislation was developed under the terms of rationality, scientific appropriateness and moral and educational emphasis. However, the evolution towards more effective environmental law was slow and legislative approach was conservative and incrementalist. This paper concludes that hierarchical structure of society and strong belief in economic growth, technological advances and scientific rationality affected attitudes toward environment and shaped environmental policies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyses the impact of consensus democracy and corporatism on socio-economic performance in twenty industrialized democracies. In the literature, there have been constructed several hypotheses between the relationship between on the one hand a wide range of institutions and on the other hand several indicators of performance. In the past, it has been argued that corporatism contributes to lower rates of inflation and unemployment. This has been questioned by some neo-liberals and by Calmfors & Driffill, who have found a hump-shaped relation between the wage bargaining level and performance. In Patterns of democracy Lijphart claims that the performance of the majoritarian model of consensus democracy is not superior over the consensus model. This paper focuses on the interaction between consensus democracy and corporatism and how both have an effect on the process of socio-economic policy-making. New measurements of both institutional models are used. This leads to an evaluation of the existing theories and to new results in the comparative study of socio-economic policy-making in industrialized countries.
Check author's web site for an updated version of the paper.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this dissertation I study how law and society in India have addressed the issue of human right to water, in two different issues on access and pollution in the Narmada dam case and Ganga Pollution case respectively. I study the process through which water rights claims are incorporated in domestic legal cultures.
In this study I demonstrate two things- one is the acceptance of the cosmopolitan environmentalism in India that builds through a plural framework that incorporates international environmental norms, constitutional principles and local customary practices. The adaptation of a plural framework of law integrates cultural differences and livelihood needs with the demands of environment. Second, I argue that the core of this environmental belief is built on a syncretic interaction between the global rights debate, social responsibility to protect nature and livelihood concerns, which is an important characteristic of the Indian legal culture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to identify a causal mechanism which accounts for the centralization in excise collection before 1688 and the establishment of an institutional connection between excise revenue and the government’s long-term borrowing in the 1730s. The causal mechanism was produced by a credit crisis due to the government’s excessive issue of short-term credit instruments, a desperate means to meet spending needs. This credit crisis made the government bear all the risks in the financial markets and thus changed the risk distribution between the government (as the principal) and its revenue collectors (as agents), which in turn led to the centralization of tax collection. As it takes time to build the necessary institutions to overcome this credit crisis, the mechanism thus has a built-in temporal dimension. Moreover, I argue that certain structural features in the economy are necessary to sustain the process of institutional innovation from emergence to its consolidation. I will focus on the special position of London in English commerce and finance. I thus try to integrate structure, institutional development, and the unintended consequences of historical events into a unified, process-based account of the English financial revolution.