Although this is the second issue of Volume 9, it is the first issue to appear under my Editorship. The journal has been remarkably successful in its first eight years of life and I intend that, in its new five-issues-per-year format, it will be even more successful in the future. The journal will contain the usual mixture of individual articles and special topic-related issues, the latter often introduced by guest editors.
The current issue has a particular focus around issues of Poverty, Inequality, and Deprivation, though it also covers topics in relation to gender and power. Substantive areas covered include the elderly, ethnic inequality, household budgeting, and poverty policy in the EU.
The first of the articles on Poverty, Inequality and Deprivation is that by Olli Kangas and Velli-Matti Ritakallio of the Danish national Institute for Social Research and the University of Turku on ‘Relative to What? Cross-national picture of European poverty measured by regional, national and European standards’. In the article they present data from surveys on poverty, comparing the differences among regions across nations as well as those between particular nations, using the standard European poverty-line measure. Using data from the fourth wave of the Luxembourg Income Study, they report on the situation in 13 of the member states of the EU. They confirm the general view of the homogeneity and relative equality of the Scandinavian countries and the relative absence of poverty in the Central European nations, together with the highest concentrations of poverty in the Mediterranean societies. At a regional level, however, they found substantial variation, with Italy and Spain showing particularly marked regional disparities. They note some of the implications of these findings for policy conclusions drawn at an EU level.
Christopher Whelan of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin looks at patterns of material deprivation in Ireland. The transition from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) provides the context, and Whelan shows that the new instrument allows comparability with earlier research and that it also helps to disclose the existence of clusters of multiple deprivations. Whelan relates this to the official Irish definition of poverty in terms of exclusion from established levels of material resources and lifestyles. He is optimistic that the new approach will allow refined analysis and policy conclusions to be drawn from its use.
In ‘Child poverty, employment and ethnicity in the UK: the role and limitations of policy’, Lucinda Platt of the University of Essex explores discrepancies between two British policy initiatives on child poverty and ethnic minority employment. Having reviewed the evidence on the ethnic differentiation of child poverty, Platt draws out a research agenda that would help to articulate these two areas of policy more effectively. This involves recognizing the information and analytical gaps in the policy-research nexus, and she suggests the need for more research, using currently available data, on poverty gaps, variations in family and household type, and the composition of income. She points out, however, that it is not currently possible to answer questions relating to the dynamics of long-term poverty, and she looks to new data collection ventures that may help in this crucial area.
Ingo Bode of the University of Duisburg-Essen argues in ‘New moral economies of welfare. The case of domiciliary elder care in Germany, France and Britain’ that the deregulation of social welfare provision across Europe has transformed the ways in which domiciliary care for elderly people is organised. The new ‘moral economy’, rooted in changing civic rationales and professional norms, is emerging across Europe, despite historical variations in national patterns of welfare provision. Using the cases of Germany, France, and Britain, the analysis suggests problems for theories of path dependent national variations such as that of Esping-Andersen.
The final paper in this section of the journal is a new departure for the journal in that it is an ‘Opinion and Debate’ piece intended as a contribution to the discussion of policy initiatives. In ‘Challenges facing the EU: Scope for a coherent response’, Graham Room of the University of Bath looks at issues arising from attempts to renew the Lisbon strategy. Room argues for the need to face the challenges inherent in this policy strategy, but also the need to face the challenges implied for our own research agendas. This is seen as an aspect of the development of effective technologies of policy learning and adaptation.
The first of the other articles in the journal is that by Johs Hjellbrekke, Brigitte Le Roux, Olav Korsnes, Frederic Lebaron, Lennart Rosenlund, and Henry Rouanet of Bergen University, Stavanger Regional College, University of Amiens, and the CNRS. In ‘The Norwegian field of power anno 2000’, the authors report on a study of Norwegian elites using the methods of multiple correspondence analysis pioneered by Pierre Bourdieu and his research team. They show that power relations define a social space organised around three axes of economic capital, educational and social capital, and the differentiation of judicial from other social activities. It is shown that these structuring forces are generic yet sustain national variations in power structure. In the Norwegian case it is shown that this centres around a system of the tri-partite regulation of industrial relations and a form of voluntary, negotiated corporatism.
In ‘Gender Budgeting in Belgium’, Nathalie Holvoet of the University of Antwerp looks to research that, she claims, promotes gender equality more effectively than strategies of gender mainstreaming. Gender budgeting – taking account of the differential impact of state budgetary decisions on males and females – originated in Australia but has spread in a number of European countries, and Holvoet reviews evidence from the Belgian case and argues for the need for a closer integration of research with the policy agenda.
An impressive array of topics are broached in the articles included in this issue. Taken together, they give an intriguing picture of the power structure and policy frameworks that shape the class, gender, ethnic, and age divisions of European societies.