This open access book explores China's unique path to modernization, highlighting its journey from ancient civilization to modern society. It examines China's efforts from the mid-19th century's internal and external struggles to its contemporary economic achievements. The book covers historical, social, and economic aspects, emphasizing the balance between autonomous development and global int…
This open access edited volume introduces the concept of causal mechanisms to explore new ways of explaining the global dynamics of social policy, and shows that a mechanism-based approach provides several advantages over established approaches for studying social policy The introductory chapter outlines the mechanism-based approach, which stands out by modularisation and a clear focus on acto…
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of social protection in Latin America, its origins, institutions, and outcomes. The chapters are organised in three groups. The earlier chapters discuss in turn appropriate methods, an analytical framework, and core institutions. The book advocates a causal inference approach to the study of the institutions that have dominated social protection in t…
This open access book examines how civil society organizations in Poland, Russia, and Sweden (re)act to transformations of opportunities and limitations in access to various forms of resources. The volume’s contributions discuss the constraints associated with different types of resources as well as organizations’ capacities to generate resources—or compensate for their lack—as they neg…
This open access book assesses how the Covid-19 pandemic caught higher education systems throughout the world by surprise. It maps out the responses of higher education institutions to the challenges and strategic opportunities brought about by the pandemic, and examines the effects such responses may have. Bringing together scholars and case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, …
This open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each ch…
This book is open access under a CC BY license. Interest in social innovation continues to rise, from governments setting up social innovation 'labs' to large corporations developing social innovation strategies. Yet theory lags behind practice, and this hampers our ability to understand social innovation and make the most of its potential. This collection brings together work by leading social…
Community development and schools : interrelationships, conflict and power / Mildred E. Warner, Jason Reece, Xue Zhang -- Youth demographic trends and equity considerations / Jason Reece -- The cost of tax incentives to public schools / Christine Wen, Greg LeRoy -- Urban schools and the growth machine / Jason Reece and Victoria Abou-Ghalioum -- School-centered community development : lessons fr…
This open access book presents detailed findings about the ethical, legal, and social acceptance of robots in the German and European context. The key resource is the Bremen AI Delphi survey of scientists and politicians and a related population survey. The focus is on trust in robotic assistance, human willingness to use this assistance, and the expected personal well-being in human-robot inte…
This open access book analyses the idea that medicine and psychology have a substantial (and underestimated) impact on Western welfare states. Based on mixed-methods analyses conducted in Germany, it analyses this influence on debates and policies related to unemployment, poverty, and childhood. The book demonstrates how the turn to neoliberalism and social investment thinking has created this …