This paper analyzes the significance of public works in rural areas in the Great Depression by examining work opportunities in village forests. Research to date on the significance of public works has been based on estimations and incomplete data, and has failed to examine public works project wage allocation in the context of village politics. This paper examines the case of Zakouji Village, Shimoina District, Nagano Prefecture, and clarifies the following three points. First, the village forests of the Shimoina District functioned as a safety net, and many unemployed villagers could earn some money by working in the forests. In Zakouji village, however, forestry resources were so exhausted that the village authorities decided to prohibit people from entering them. Second, those who lost the chance to work in the forest formed a movement against the village authorities. In public works from 1932 to 1934, those who participated in the movement had more chance of being employed. Third, as a result, the public works had a function to suppress social unrest in Zakouji Village, but the wages paid to workers in public works were very low. The destitute needed to enter the forest to survive and the village authorities had no choice but to permit them to do so, with the result that Zakouji village's forest was more and more devastated. While this paper concludes that public works were partly able to suppress social unrest, it is not adequate to evaluate the economic effect of public works overall.

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French social reform at the end of the 19th century is characterized not only by increasing state intervention in labor and social policies, but by a wide range of private company initiatives in welfare services. The object of this article is to examine the significance of welfare policy in the industrial world, termed industrial paternalism under the French Third Republic. First of all, factors which pushed employers to promote industrial paternalism were as follows: firstly, shortage of labor caused by underpopulation and industrial location; secondly, the unstable nature of workers' lives in the market-economic system; and thirdly, increasing state intervention by means of bureaucratic organization and social legislation. In the case of Societe de Pont-a-Mousson, a leading iron foundry in Lorraine, a strike in 1905 brought about the development of industrial paternalism. Through discourse and a company welfare system, management sought to establish labor-management solidarity by ensuring the subsistence of employees. In this way, the capital-labor conciliation policy, which contributed to a fixed labor force, took on a mixture of solidarism theory and patronage theory. From the aspect of social reform, industrial paternalism was closely related to patronage theory advocated by the school of Le Play. In particular, on the occasion of the International Exposition in 1889, Emile Cheysson's ideas on patronage gave a practical role in social management to private companies' welfare systems in the context of the social economy. The concept of social economy at that time embraced various systems designed to ensure the survival of workers by private initiatives. Additionally, the Musee social founded in 1894 concretized social economy, through which patronage and solidarism shared an approach based on mutualism in the matter of social organization. Therefore, the social recognition of industrial paternalism owed much to patronage theory. But, in decline at the end of the 19th century, patronage had to share with solidarism both in viewpoint and practice in social reform to preserve its significance under the Third Republic. Social economy, which joined patronage and solidarism, thus proved to be one of the conceptual bases of the French social security system in the 20th century.

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This paper, through analysis of the IMF Article 14 Consultation process, aims to clarify how the IMF tried to adjust the UK's macroeconomic policies to get it move to IMF Article 8 status. There are many studies about sterling convertibility, which was inevitable so that the international monetary system could be restored to its function in the postwar world. However, previous studies have paid little attention to the activity of the IMF. As a result, the influence of the "Bretton Woods system," the principles of which were exchange stability, trade liberalization, and multilateral system of payments, on the operations of the major countries' macroeconomic policies has not been sufficiently examined. By focusing on the "universal" framework of macroeconomic policy coordination and reexamining the role of the IMF, this paper tries to present a new perspective on the history of the international monetary system in 1950s, the commonly held image of which has been constructed by focusing only major countries' activities. The consultation with the UK was conducted from 1952 to 1959, and the UK's transition to Article 8 status was realized in February 1961. In this period, the IMF actively participated in the process of removing the UK's exchange restrictions, based on international institutional logic which attaches more importance to "universal interests" (e.g. exchange stabilization and establishment of the multilateral system of payments) than the UK's private interests. In the first half of the 1950s, the IMF positively pursued the establishment of the multilateral payments system, through international monetary cooperation. On the one hand, it required the US, a large creditor country, to modify its commercial policy, and on the other, it called for the UK to make sterling convertible by making use of the Fund's resources. At this stage, the IMF did not firmly request the UK to make efforts to check inflation and relax exchange restrictions. However, the IMF changed its strategy in the mid-1950s when it faced the UK's economic vulnerabilities in contrast to the developing international economic situation in which the dollar shortage was gradually reduced. Based on the Monetary Approach, it did insist that the UK should endeavor to attain monetary stability. Then, once monetary stability was achieved, the IMF immediately launched the removal of the dollar discrimination maintained by the UK. This paper suggests that the supranational framework of macroeconomic policy coordination which adjusted the major countries' strategies to the design of the IMF was behind the stability and establishment of the international monetary system in 1950s.

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This article focuses on the political action "Industriearbeiter, aufs Land," or "industrial workers, to the country," which was implemented at almost the same time as agricultural collectivization (1952-1960). This political action was a response to agricultural crises, such as the increase in abandoned farmland, and simultaneously was expected by the Socialist United Party (SED) to rationalize and mechanize socialist agriculture. Previous studies of collectivization mostly ignore this action and refer to it only as a total failure that resulted in a decline in agricultural production, or as evidence showing the endurance of what are termed "traditional agro-social milieus." The impact of this action on agriculture has not been sufficiently analyzed. This paper therefore will clarify the actual impact of this action through an analysis of archive documents from a collective farm (LPG). This action was comprehensively implemented in this LPG that it was transformed into what should be termed an "industrial-workers-type." farm from our analysis we demonstrate the following findings. First, the action should be viewed from not only "party-state" perspective, but in terms of multilayered power relations. Second, the action became particularly significant in the southern region of East Germany and it was this significance that led to its failure. Third, the suburb condition enabled local politicians to send industrial workers to the LPG, but it was this condition that led to the failure of the action.

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