Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Who Benefits From Early Childcare Subsidy Design In Ireland?, Bernie O'Donoghue Hynes, Noirin Hayes

Articles

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The design of policy tools reveals underlying biases that are not easily identified in policy documents. A review of two early childhood education and care subsidies in Ireland aimed at different target populations exposes differential treatment of children, parents and service providers. It also demonstrates how in a split system ‘early education’ is prioritised over ‘childcare’. The designs serve to reinforce stereotypes that enable the powerful and advantaged to accrue benefits while those perceived to be less deserving are burdened through the maldistribution of resources.

Fifty More Years? Reform And Modernisation Of The Oecd, Richard Woodward

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The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is a vital, if frequently unnoticed, cog in the machine of global governance. On the organisation's 50th anniversary, Richard Woodward assesses whether the OECD's reform programme can secure its future in a changing world.

From Boom To Doom To Boom: Offshore Financial Centres And Development In Small States, Richard Woodward

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During the 1990s tax havens and offshore financial centres (OFCs) were subject to a string of initiatives designed to raise their tax and regulatory regimes to accepted international standards. Many commentators forecast that this would lead to the demise of OFCs, a worry for the many small states whose economic well being depended heavily on the provision of offshore financial services. Despite this regulatory onslaught many small state OFCs have prospered in the new millennium. This paper seeks to explain this apparent paradox by arguing that (1) international initiatives were riddled with loopholes and exceptions that have been gleefully seized …

An Evaluation Of The Community Childcare Subvention Scheme Using Policy Design Theory, Bernie O'Donoghue Hynes, Noirin Hayes

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This paper utilises Policy Design Theory to evaluate policy tool design and selection in Ireland in order to look beyond policy goals and rhetoric to the meanings and assumptions within policy design. A review of the Community Childcare Subvention Scheme (CCSS) reveals it to be an ‘incentive’ tool that is structured around a negative social construction of the target populations as ‘dependants’ with little capacity to solve their own problems. While immediate policy objectives are met through the design of the CCSS, if viewed in a wider context of overall national policy objectives a range of negative side-effects are evident …

Government Policies Must Keep Business On Tight Rein, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan, Brendan O'Rourke

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The unethical behaviour that helped create the economic and banking crisis has caught the attention of some parties.