John Hudson

Just finished reading Paul Pierson’s new-ish book [Pierson, P (2004) Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis. Oxford: Princeton University Press.] Have put together the review below for Policy World:

Paul Pierson, Avice Saint Chair in Public Policy at the University of California at Berkley, is probably best known to social policyists for his contributions to the debate on welfare state resilience and retrenchment, notably his 1994 book Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment and two more recent edited collections European Social Policy: Between Fragmentation and Integration (with Liebfried, 1995) and The New Politics of the Welfare State (2001).

(more…)

Ethopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi believes information technology has the power to counteract poverty according to BBC News.

“We are fully committed to ensuring that as many of our poor as possible have this weapon that they need to fight poverty at the earliest possible time” he said.

Currently there are around 30,000 internet connections (total population is 71 million); within six months they aim to up this to 500,000. It will invest around US$40m to do this. 450 secondary schools will be connected to the web, regional and district government offices will be linked and Healthnet will connect all hospitals.

Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit & the DTI have published a new Digital Strategy - Connecting the UK - which Blair and Hewitt say, in its foreword, is:

a clear sign of our continuing commitment to ensure that everyone in our country has the opportunity to benefit from the transformative power of ICT.

It contains a seven point plan, under three broad headings:

Raising our game:Making the UK a world leader in digital excellence

• Action 1: Transform learning with ICT
• Action 2: Set up a “Digital Challenge” for Local Authorities
• Action 3: Make the UK the safest place to use the Internet
• Action 4: Promote the creation of innovative broadband content

Constructing a robust strategy to achieve our vision

• Action 5: Set out a strategy for transformation of delivery of public services
• Action 6: Ofcom’s strategy should consider improving competition and take-up in the broadband market

Tackling social exclusion & bridging the digital divide

• Action 7: Improve accessibility to technology for the digitally excluded and ease of use for the disabled
• Action 8: Review the digital divide in 2008

(more…)

Larry Elliot reports in the Guardian on an interesting paper presented to the Royal Economic Society by Rocco Huang of the World Bank. It:

looked at how tolerant different countries were of uncertainty and investigated whether that was linked to a willingness to devote resources to innovative sectors of the economy. Huang found that that was the case. There is evidence, he says, to show that attitudes to uncertainty differ greatly across countries. The Anglo- Saxon nations and the Scandinavians are far less conservative when it comes to new ideas than southern Europeans.

(more…)