Who is protected from budget cuts?

We propose a method for estimating the mean impact of an assigned social program when it is not feasible to do a pre-intervention baseline survey but it is feasible to track ex-participants. In our triple-difference estimator; measured outcome changes are compared between continuing participants and matched ex-participants, after netting out the outcome changes for a matched comparison group who never participated. With sufficient followup observations one can test the joint conditions required for correctly identifying the gains to current participants. We apply the method to a workfare program in Argentina. Significant impacts on participants' current incomes

Martinez Pastur, G., Peri, P.L., Lecinas, M.V., Soler, R., Bahamonde, H.A., Valenzuela, A.E.J., Cabello, J.L., Anderson C.B. 2016. Long-term socio-ecological research in Southern Patagonia: Interdisciplinary strategies to achieve natural resource conservation by sustainable management under scenarios of global change. Ecosistemas 25(1): 49-57. Doi.: 10.7818/ECOS.2016.25-1.06 The ecological, social, institutional and political dimensions of environmental problems encompass spatial and temporal scales that exceed the majority of scientific research projects. An alternative that has increased over time throughout the world is the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) or Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) approach, but this initiative has thematic and geographic gaps. One of these is Argentina, but there is a great quantity of experience that can be brought to bear on the integration of our country into this network. The objective of this work is to evaluate the general framework of long-term ecological research in Argentina, particularly southern Patagonia. We take two lines of investigation as case studies (i) the ecology and conservation of native forests via forestry management, and (ii) the ecology and management of biological invasions. A summary of research (past and present) is presented, the principal results obtained, strategies applied and lessons learned. This review allows us to make inferences regarding the feasibility of implementing this type of program in Argentina, which can be sustained over time and be integrated between disciplines and with decision-makers. We conclude that there are both great potential and opportunities to consolidate an LTER/LTSER-type network in Argentina.

Much of the discussion concerning postmethod pedagogies centers on the dichotomy between professional and personal theories or the debate over teachers as theorizers or practitioners. This chapter is set at the Facultad de Humanidades, Artes y Ciencias Sociales, a state-run college that is part of the Autonomous University of Entre Rios, Argentina. Consequently, the development of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in Foreign Language Didactics depicted in this case study poses numerous difficulties to both student-teachers and their instructors. The development of the Foreign Language Didactics 1 syllabus was primarily based on the contents of a book for student-teachers by a well-known author and publisher that has been in use by the people program since the 1980s. Understanding student-teachers and supporting their learning through adequate mechanisms should help unveil their existing cognitions and establish the extent to which these are congruent with the classroom practices the people expect them to engage in.

This study investigates how transnational telecollaborative projects can advance Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Latin American secondary schools by linking virtual exchange with locally grounded civic action. Using a mixed-methods case study design, the research examines two projects developed through a six-week teacher training program in Argentina, implemented with partner schools in Peru and Mexico. Data were collected through pre- and post-project surveys, teacher reflections, student-created digital artifacts, and reflective discussions, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic coding guided by UNESCO’s GCE competency framework, with triangulation across sources to ensure reliability. Findings indicate that in the inequality project (Argentina–Peru), 87% of students reported increased awareness of how discrimination operates across cultural contexts, while 91% expressed stronger commitment to ethical digital behavior. In the climate action project (Argentina–Mexico), 73% of participants adopted new sustainability practices and reported greater confidence using English for authentic intercultural communication. Across both initiatives, 85% of students indicated feeling more responsible for contributing to social or environmental change, while teachers reported professional growth in digital pedagogy, project-based learning, and intercultural facilitation. The results highlight the transformative potential of transnational telecollaboration in developing the cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral competencies essential to Global Citizenship Education (GCE). They also show that low-cost, technology-enabled models can overcome barriers to traditional exchange and offer scalable, inclusive strategies for action-oriented global learning in underrepresented contexts.

The Fund provides considerable support to low-income countries (LICs). This includes concessional financing from the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), which currently carries an interest rate of zero percent. Since 2010, over half of Fund-supported arrangements have involved a PRGT facility. Support for poverty reduction is a core objective of arrangements supported by these facilities. This paper examines how PRGT-supported programs safeguard spending on poor and vulnerable groups within the broader framework of promoting inclusive growth. In some cases, national poverty reduction programs seek to shift expenditures toward social programs in the context of generally higher spending supported by domestic revenue mobilization, grants, or debt financing. In other cases, the goal is to safeguard poor and vulnerable groups from fiscal adjustment and reform measures that could adversely affect them by adopting countervailing policy measures to strengthen social safety nets. In discussing social safeguards, this paper focuses on how and if these objectives are reflected satisfactorily in the design of PRGT and PSI-supported programs. The effectiveness of social spending in improving social outcomes, including by durably reducing poverty, is beyond the scope of the paper.

Policy advice is a core function of government that until quite recently remained outside the formal processes of performance evaluation. Evaluation, by its very nature, is designed to question both the effectiveness and relevance of government activities; applying it to policy advice opens up a traditionally confidential and politically sensitive arena. This paper reports on an evaluation experiment in Australian government — policy management reviews (PMRs) — that sought to evaluate the quality of central agency policy advice. It traces the development of the PMR model around interdepartmental committee processes, the bureaucratic politics that diluted the focus on policy outcomes, and examines how central agencies steered evaluation away from questions of public accountability towards arrangements for achieving more effective control of the processes underpinning production of advice. By targeting the process rather than outcomes of policy advising, PMRs sought unsuccessfully to adhere to the divide between management and policy and, in doing so, marked out the limits to performance evaluation.

Wildlife law and policy

The health outcomes of increased poverty and inequalities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been substantially amplified as a consequence of converging multiple crises. Brazil has some of the world's largest conditional cash transfer (Programa Bolsa Família [PBF]), social pension (Beneficio de Prestacão Continuada [BPC]), and primary health care (Estratégia de Saúde da Família [ESF]) programs that could act as mitigating interventions during the current polycrisis era of increasing poverty, slow or contracting economic growth, and conflicts. To evaluate the combined association of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer, social pension, and primary health care programs with the reduction of morbidity and mortality over the last 2 decades and forecast their potential mitigation of the current global polycrisis and beyond. This cohort study used a longitudinal ecological design with multivariable negative binomial regression models (adjusted for relevant socioeconomic, demographic, and health care variables) integrating the retrospective analysis from 2000 to 2019, with dynamic microsimulation models to forecast potential child mortality scenarios up to 2030. Participants included a cohort of 2548 Brazilian municipalities from 2004 to 2019, projected from 2020 to 2030. Data analysis was performed from September 2022 to February 2023. PBF coverage of the target population (those who were poorest) was categorized into 4 levels: low (0%-29.9%), intermediate (30.0%-69.9%), high (70.0%-99.9%), and consolidated (≥100%). ESF coverage was categorized as null (0), low (0.1%-29.9%), intermediate (30.0%-69.9%), and consolidated (70.0%-100%). BPC coverage was categorized by terciles. Age-standardized, all-cause mortality and hospitalization rates calculated for the entire population and by age group (<5 years, 5-29 years, 30-69 years, and ≥70 years). Among the 2548 Brazilian municipalities studied from 2004 to 2019, the mean (SD) age-standardized mortality rate decreased by 16.64% (from 6.73 [1.14] to 5.61 [0.94] deaths per 1000 population). Consolidated coverages of social welfare programs studied were all associated with reductions in overall mortality rates (PBF: rate ratio [RR], 0.95 [95% CI, 0.94-0.96]; ESF: RR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.93-0.94]; BPC: RR, 0.91 [95% CI, 0.91-0.92]), having all together prevented an estimated 1 462 626 (95% CI, 1 332 128-1 596 924) deaths over the period 2004 to 2019. The results were higher on mortality for the group younger than age 5 years (PBF: RR, 0.87 [95% CI, 0.85-0.90]; ESF: RR, 0.89 [95% CI, 0.87-0.93]; BPC: RR, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.82-0.86]), on mortality for the group aged 70 years and older, and on hospitalizations. Considering a shorter scenario of economic crisis, a mitigation strategy that will increase the coverage of PBF, BPC, and ESF to proportionally cover the newly poor and at-risk individuals was projected to avert 1 305 359 (95% CI, 1 163 659-1 449 256) deaths and 6 593 224 (95% CI, 5 534 591-7 651 327) hospitalizations up to 2030, compared with fiscal austerity scenarios that would reduce the coverage of these interventions. This cohort study's results suggest that combined expansion of conditional cash transfers, social pensions, and primary health care should be considered a viable strategy to mitigate the adverse health outcomes of the current global polycrisis in LMICs, whereas the implementation of fiscal austerity measures could result in large numbers of preventable deaths.

Although we have good evidence to support the notion that early intervention, prevention and community education programs can mitigate the impact of preventable disease, expanded primary health care is also being promoted by Australian governments as a panacea for reducing growth in demand generally. While preventive programs do reduce acute demand, they may not do so the extent that resources, currently allocated to the acute sector, can be substituted to provide the additional primary care services necessary to reduce acute demand permanently. These developments have particular relevance for rural and isolated communities where access to acute services is already very limited. What appears to be occurring, in rural South Australia at least, is that traditional acute services are being reduced and replaced with lower level care and social intervention programs. This is well and good, but eventually the acute care being provided in rural health units now will still need to be provided by other units elsewhere and probably at much higher cost to the system and to consumers. Where rural communities have previously managed much of their own acute service demand, they may now be forced to send patients to more distant centres for care but at much greater social and economic cost to individuals and the system.

In Australia the decade of the 1890s was one of those historical periods which shape the history of a country for many decades afterwards. This is true, in a sense, of any historical period. But the 1890s witnessed an unprecedented level of industrial strife after the rapid spread of trade unionism in the 1880s, a level of economic depression which has only been matched on one other occasion (in the 1930s), and a level of and political experimentation which earned Aus tralia a reputation as the social laboratory of the world. In 1901 the six Aus tralian colonies federated. But the social, political, and economic program of the new Commonwealth of Australia?new protection, state arbitration in indus trial relations, the beginnings of a welfare state, and White Australia?was de veloped in the preceding decade. One of the major actors in Australian politics since 1900, the Labor party, was also established during the 1890s, and its role was central for the development of the new Commonwealth's political program. Despite Australia's reputation as a laboratory at this time, its ad vances in the area of industrial legislation apart from state arbitration of indus trial disputes were quite modest in the late nineteenth century. Before federation in 1901, each of the six independent Australian colonies was responsible for its own industrial legislation, and after federation, as states, they retained jurisdic tion in this area. Industrial legislation was of most concern in the two most pop ulous and industrialized colonies/states, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. Of the two, Victoria was considerably more advanced than NSW. In 1885 it passed a Factory Act that it improved and extended in 1896, the year in which NSW passed its first act. Both acts were fairly limited, merely reproducing Brit ish legislation with all its shortcomings, except that the Victorian Act provided for wage boards composed of employer and employee representatives.1 Miners and seamen also enjoyed some protection under special legislation modeled upon the British, and slightly improved in the 1890s. Apart from the Victorian wage boards, only in the 1899 Early Closing Act in NSW, which helped reduce shop assistants' long hours, and in the 1901 NSW Shearers' Hut Accommoda tion Act, which helped improve some of rural workers' more appalling condi tions, did the Australian colonies enact industrial legislation clearly in advance of anywhere else.2

The state has played a central role in Australian economic life since settlement, a role taken still further with the advent of protectionism and arbitration as part of the Australian Settlement of early in the 20th century. Given this tradition of what Hancock (1930) described as ‘state socialism’, one would expect political economy approaches to figure prominently in accounts of Australian political life. While the impact of economic relations is central to many seminal accounts of Australian politics and government (Hancock 1930; Eggleston 1932), intellectual trends and disciplinary rivalries meant that post-war Australian political science largely neglected research in the political economy tradition; indeed Aitkin’s 1985 survey of the discipline (Aitkin 1985b) did not include a chapter on political economy. Despite this relative neglect during APSA’s formative years, the last two decades have seen increasing numbers of political scientists researching important topics in Australian political economy.KeywordsPolitical EconomyPolitical ScienceAustralian EconomyEconomic GovernanceGlobal Economic SystemThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Swiss municipalities are, to a large extent, responsible for their financial resources. Since these resources primarily depend on income and property taxes from individuals and enterprises, municipality budgets are likely to be directly affected by the current crisis in the financial sector and the economy. This article investigates how municipalities perceived this threat and how they reacted to it. In a nationwide survey conducted at the end of 2009 in all 2596 Swiss municipalities, we asked local secretaries which measures had been launched in order to cope with expected losses in tax income and a possible increase in welfare spending. Did the municipalities rely on Keynesian measures increasing public spending and accepting greater deficits, or did they try to avoid further deficits by using austerity measures and a withdrawal of planned investments? Our results show that only a few municipalities – mainly the bigger ones – expected to be greatly affected by the crisis. Their reactions, however, did not reveal any clear patterns that theory would lead one to expect. Preferences for austerity measures and deficit spending become visible but many municipalities took measures from both theories. The strongest explanatory factors for determining how/why municipalities react are: the municipality’s level of affectedness followed by whether or not the municipality belongs to the French-speaking part of the country. Size also has an impact, whereas the strength of the Social Democrat party is negligible. Explaining what kind of measures municipalities are likely to take is more difficult. However, the more a municipality is affected, the more likely it is to stick to austerity measures. Points for practitioners How to react to a financial crisis is not only a challenging question to answer for the scientific community but also for practitioners being confronted with the crucial decisions to be taken. This contribution shows that the theoretical debates stipulating the exclusiveness of deficit spending or austerity measures is hardly reflecting reality, at least not at the local level. Policymakers are well advised to cut down expenditure and to invest where necessary. This is, at least, what can be learned from the practices of the Swiss municipalities after the 2008 crisis.

ABSTRACTDrawing on the analysis of the experience of elite athletes in Greece during their 4-year preparation for competing in the 2016 Olympic Games, we report on the effects of the austerity measures on the country’s elite sport system and policies. The data set for this study consisted of 16 semi-structured interviews of which 13 were conducted with Greek elite athletes participating in the 2016 Olympic Games and 3 were conducted with staff members of the Greek Olympic Committee supporting the Olympic delegation. The interview questions were based on the four pillars composing the throughput stage of the Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success conceptual framework for analysing sports policy leading to international sporting success. The results clearly indicated that significant factors of the elite sport system were negatively influenced by the austerity measures in Greece. Because of the significant cuts in public spending, Olympic facilities were abandoned, highly qualified coaches became part-time employees, elite athletes were left with almost no opportunities to take part in international sport events and paramedical support for elite athletes was reduced drastically. The programme of the Greek Olympic Committee ‘Adopt an athlete for Rio 2016’ appeared as the only means for Greek elite athletes to make it to Rio de Janeiro, where they earned six Olympic medals. This study concluded that austerity measures have pronounced effects on elite sport systems, but not necessarily on achieving Olympic success.

The 2007–2009 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal adjustments for a panel of 17 OECD countries over the last 30 years, complemented by a case study of selected fiscal adjustment episodes. The paper shows that fiscal adjustments are likely to raise inequality through various channels including their effects on unemployment. Spending-based adjustments tend to worsen inequality more significantly, relative to tax-based adjustments. The composition of austerity measures also matters: progressive taxation and targeted social benefits and subsidies introduced in the context of a broader decline in spending can help offset some of the adverse distributional impact of fiscal adjustments.

Australian energy policy: shortfalls and roadblocks for sustainable change