Organizations and Alienation: The Mediation Hypothesis Revisited*

It is a widely accepted premise of mass society theory that voluntary associations play an important integrating role in modern society by mediating between the individual and the remote influences on life, work, and politics. There are two major variants of the mediation hypothesis: (1) purely social interaction within organizations lessens alienation in immediate relationships; (2) interaction accompanied by political exposures reduces alienation in the political domain. Controlling for social class, activity in instrumental, political groups is associated with significantly lower levels of political alienation. Activity in nonpolitical, social organizations is found to have more general attitudinal consequences—both for levels of social alienation and for estrangement from political processes. These patterns suggest that, despite the consistent effects of SES on nonalienative beliefs, voluntary associations provide independent settings of social and political integration.     

The role of educational institutions in the clientization of immigrants: The Swedish case

European nations are multicultural societies. Multiculturalism is more a part of these countries' intellectual debates, however, than part of their policies and practices. The public and governmental sectors of Europe still remain monocultural. Monoculturalism, which entails the cultural hegemony of the ‘white majority’ of European societies over ‘other’ cultural groups, is a part of the systematic reproduction of an established social order. Formal education is an important means of reproduction of the monocultural order. European monoculturalism is based on an ethnocentrism that has a long tradition in the Western worldview and is institutionalized in its political, judicial, educational and bureaucratic systems. Western monoculturalism has become increasingly problematic in the face of growing multiculturalism in Europe and jeopardizes the existing social order. The integration of diverse immigrant groups into the host societies is not compatible with the reproduction of Western cultural hegemony, a hegemony through which the policy of integration is simply reduced to a political goal that limits immigrants' action to that of adjusting themselves to objective norms and rules. Monoculturally educated groups, who are supposed to help immigrants become integrated into such societies, paradoxically construct obstacles to their integration.     

Religious effects on environmentalism

Understanding of religious influences on environmentalism has been biased by political conflicts. This article summarizes the demographic parameters of environmental concern, then evaluates religious and political influences on that concern and related activity, using General Social Surveys data. It assesses influences on willingness to pay for environmental programs, individual environmental behaviors, and participation in political activities for related causes. Young people and women express greater environmental concern, but older persons more often engage in individual environmental activities such as recycling. The association of fundamentalism with political conservatism compounds interpretation of religion because political conservatives are antagonistic to environmentalism. Religious affiliation strength has positive effects on environmental concern, and worship attendance has positive effects on individual environmental behaviors, when fundamentalism and political variables are controlled. This article is part of the third stage of literature on religion and environmentalism in which positive as well as negative patterns are recognized.     

Vernetzte Zusammenarbeit erfolgreich gestalten – eine Analyse der Relevanz sozialer Fertigkeiten der Mitglieder in Gesundheitsnetzwerken

Due to recent strategic network building among health care partners a more differentiated discussion about the crucial structural and the personal success factors for network building and cooperation is needed. On that note, research has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the network agents’ individual soft skills. At the same time the empirical insights into this research topic are still scarce and the assumed interrelation between an agent’s individual repertoire of skills and his influence on the collaboration remain hypothetical so far. In the present paper we use the construct of so-called “political skills” to empirically test the impact of these skills on how they will contribute to the network members’ success within the cooperation. Using social network analysis the interaction structures between members in a doctors’ network (N = 37) are mapped and related to the individual level of political skills. It can be shown that primarily the dimension “networking ability” contributes to a beneficial role within the cooperation in terms of high prestige and high engagement as perceived by the other network members. In addition, members who scored high on that dimension are more likely to obtain benefits on an individual level (gaining new patients) as well as on a group level (identification with the network). One core implication that derives from the study’s results is the necessity to focus not only on strategic aspects with regard to building and designing health care networks, but also to develop and to foster personal soft-skills.     

The transformation of Industrial Citizenship in the course of European integration

The question of the social dimension of European integration has so far remained unsettled. While on the European level, the civil and political dimension of citizenship has been strengthened, the evolution of economic and social rights are unclear, contradictory—and still under-investigated. Our contribution applies citizenship as a central category of modernization theory to inquire into European integration. In particular, our focus is set on the analysis of Economic Citizenship as a specific category of civil rights in the case of Germany. We discuss these dynamics by drawing on the example of three policy fields which illustrate various levels of Economic Citizenship. In this article we are pursuing two goals: Firstly, we revise Marshall's modernization theory against the background of European integration. Secondly, we draw attention to the concept of Industrial Citizenship, which has so far been neglected as a source of further development. We argue that in the process of European integration, industrial rights develop through a double movement, meaning an individual extension of market-based rights complemented through national de-collectivization and—connected to this—a re-stratification of market correcting rights.     

A critique of integration

The term ‘integration’ is a category used both in political discourse and in sociological analysis. In political discourse, in the public debate, it has become a magic word which accompanies repression when a political power is unable to deal with major difficulties, particularly in poor neighbourhoods. The so-called ‘models of integration’ are all failing, whether in the United Kingdom after the terrorist attacks of 2005, in the Netherlands after the murder of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, or in France after the riots of 2005. In political and social life, integration is far from able to account for realities or to implement public policies successfully. From a sociological perspective, integration is connected with approaches which are centred on society or the social system, much more than with those that deal with the subjectivity of individuals and their capacity for personal or collective action. This means that integration belongs much more to traditional sociological thinking than to the new contemporary sociological imagination.     

The public sphere and debates about europe in Britain

This article undertakes an analysis of British public debates on European integration by recourse to an original data set on political claims-making. The public sphere is conceptualized as a space where citizens interact through their acts of public communication. Such public communications are an important source of the Europe-building process, because they potentially provide public inputs to the elite-led processes of European political institutional integration. Our empirical findings show that British public debates are internalized within the nation-state rather than creating links to supra- or transnational European polities. In addition, we find relatively low levels of civil society engagement compared to that of political elites, and a high level of political competition between the two major political parties, Labour and Conservative. Overall, we argue that elite ambivalence to Britain's position within the European Union has created this climate of uncertainty and political competition over Europe.     

Of River Linkage and Issue Linkage: Transboundary Conflict and Cooperation on the River Meuse

Abstract

It is a truism in mainstream International Relations that issue linkage promotes regime formation and integration. The present article applies this idea to the transboundary lower river Meuse and finds its history of integration to be a tortuous one. Contextual political factors have at times promoted integration, at times fragmentation. The path towards regional integration, then, has not been not linear, but has consisted of conflict and cooperation, of (Meuse–Scheldt) river linkage and issue linkage, but also counterlinkage and non-linkage. Clearly linkage is not necessarily positive. I will argue that this does not need to be problematic, but suggest accepting more complexity in the analysis of river integration. I propose a way to create some order in the many available concepts of linkage to map out the role of linkage in integration.     

Rethinking Public Opinion in Penal Policymaking: Recommendations for Research

Public opinion is often described as a powerful force in penal policymaking in the USA. Unfortunately, research on public opinion in penal policymaking has been limited by inattention to a number of important variables: definitions of public opinion, individual and interpersonal constructions of public opinion by political leaders themselves, state differences in historical contexts and political cultures regarding public engagement and political influence, and diversity in the roles of public opinion at different levels of government. This paper considers current dilemmas in this area of inquiry and reviews recent research in order to highlight potentially fruitful new directions for research.     

Unthinking the European Higher Education Area – differentiated integration and Bologna's different configurations

Differentiated integration was conceived of as a political methodology and as a technology to achieve a European “union” in the field of knowledge policies. However, the non-achievement with regard to the political goals of the European Higher Education Area has highlighted the limitations of this approach to promote furthering the EHEA. In this paper, unthinking is both a research strategy aiming to question those limits and a pedagogical tactic to question the assumptions about the futures. As a research strategy, articulations between unity and diversity are examined. Based on the analysis of the documents endorsed by the Education Ministers in keeping the pace of the Bologna process, the paper contributes to expand knowledge on the nature of Bologna’s differences and underlines the paradoxes in dealing with those differences. As a pedagogical tactic, unthinking questions the assumptions about the future scenarios sketched for higher education. Alternative ways to further integration are discussed on the basis of the idea of integration of the “differences”, bringing to the centre education as a political concern, as higher education institutions, professors, and students/graduates are those at the core of the political management of the “differences”.     

Regulating Transnational Flows of People: An Institutional Analysis of Passports and Visas as a Regime of Mobility

This article challenges the widely held "mobility thesis" by examining the current regime of mobility in regulating transnational flows of people-namely, passports and visas-from an institutionalist perspective. An institutional device linking individuals to the state, the passport is a manifestation of both citizenship and sovereignty. As such, the passport has to be situated in a broader international context in which "organized hypocrisy" (Krasner 1999) underlies the principle of sovereignty. Furthermore, through the "rite of institutions" (Bourdieu 1991), the passport provides foundations for identification, classification, and trust for individuals. The Taiwan passport provides vivid illustrations of how identification, classification, and trust have been breached by organized hypocrisy and how such a breaching has been experienced by individual citizens. However, it is also shown that some capable individuals, through the leverage of their economic power, are able to circumvent or even take tactical advantage of the current system. The political overtone of the Taiwan passport has exposed the nature of the regime of mobility that has often been depoliticized and undertheorized. Just as passports issued by different states are of different values, there has been an inequality of mobility structured by power asymmetries and economic inequalities in the world system. Such an inequality of mobility may have become enlarged under the impact of globalization but has gone mostly unnoticed. Individuals may try to increase their mobility through various economic means, but differentiated access to mobility may have further reproduced and enhanced unequal social, economic, and political relations.     

Land Privatization and the Differentiation of the Peasantry: Nicaragua's Coffee Revolution, 1850–1920

Abstract The expansion of coffee cultivation in Nicaragua in the 1870s unleashed a social revolution. Previously most land was common property: by 1920 throughout the coffee districts land was privately owned. Influential historians of Nicaragua see this as the capitalist transition. This essay argues that instead of forging a rural proletariat, this social revolution created a differentiated peasantry whose access to land depended on relations of patronage. Peasant resistance to land privatization and the political, as opposed to economic, nature of the process are examined. The essay concludes that this revolution was more incongruent than congruent with a capitalist social order. The relevance of this history for contemporary political debates in Nicaragua is explored.     

CHALLENGES TO EU POLITICAL INTEGRATION AND THE ROLE OF DEMOCRATIZATION1

The European Union project of political integration faces three main challenges. The first concerns the constitutional make-up of the European Union as a political system. Key here is the role of subsidiarity and the question of statehood. The second challenge has to do with the opportunity structures for participation in a multilevel and supra-national context of governance. The third challenge is that of political identity. In the contemporary political debate, the first of the above challenges is discussed almost exclusively in terms of institutional mechanisms, the third in terms of symbolic identification based on culture and language. Opportunity structures for participation are thought to matter as a means of legitimacy or, alternatively, in terms of political acceptability. The underlying assumption is that policy is mainly a matter of technocratic management and politics a question of identity. This is the key problem of the contemporary discourse regarding European integration and the EU democratic deficit.     

Components of intercultural identity: towards an effective integration policy

This research focuses on a group of religious students who integrated into a nonreligious school in order to understand the characteristics of their intercultural identity. I suggest a new perspective in which intercultural identity is analyzed by itself rather than analyzing acculturation strategies taken by the individual. Using an in-depth analysis of the presented case study, I argue that intercultural identity is characterized by three types of components: core, reinterpreted, and transient. Thus, while the existing bidimensional model defines integration as the simultaneous acceptance of different cultures as they are, the present study stresses the importance of reinterpreting components from both cultures as a basis for integration. Accordingly, this paper suggests that an effective integration policy encourages in the individual the ability to develop the reinterpreted components. This type of approach might promote a positive correlation, defined by prior research as ambivalent, between integration and the individual’s emotional well-being and educational achievements.     

George Herbert Mead and the “Division Of Labor”: Macrosociological Implications Of Mead'S Social Psychology*

By presenting some results of an extensive reconstruction of George Herbert Mead's work published as yet only in German it is argued that Mead's work as a whole and particularly his social psychology contain an implicit conception of social order. This can be characterized as the idea that it is not normative integration as such, but communicative coordination that makes possible human society and social order. This is shown by findings on the early development of Mead's ideas (Hegelianism, Definition of the Psychical), on German influences in Mead, and on the meaning of democracy as self-government in Mead's political biography. Some hints to a comparison of Mead with other concepts of social order (Durkheim; negotiated order approach) are given.     

L’Europe sociale : créativité institutionnelle communautaire et réalités nationales

“Social Europe” has been constructed following 50 years of EEC and EU policy-making, which has gradually extricated social questions from a pure rationale of economic integration in order to turn it into a lever for European political integration. The theoretical and disciplinary viewpoints are presented that, together, help us better understand the processes at work. Attention is drawn to three of them. First of all, the evolutionary process of building the EU accounts both for the differences between social Europe and national welfare systems, and for an ongoing process of institutional creation through an accumulation of EU legal achievements (acquis). Secondly, the expansion of the EU to twelve new member states lacking robust labor relation systems, along with globalization, represents a challenge for the future of the “European social model”. Finally, social Europe has not yet undergone an assessment. Problems arise owing to the short shrift given by treaties to questions of social legislation or redistribution, but the “Europeanization of national policies” apparently opens a way toward overcoming these obstacles.     

Primary Integration and Political Involvement

An attempt is made to establish primary integration as a major variable in explaining citizen involvement in political life. It is argued that a convincing case requires a demonstration that the variable is both empirically important and theoretically meaningful. The former is examined through data from a sample survey of an English city. Theoretical meaning is established through focussing upon the idea of sociable talk as a key factor in reality construction, including the construction of political events as a proximate world available for the interest and participation by the individual.     

Political origin and persistence of industrial policy in Africa

ABSTRACT

The literature on industrial policy in Africa has generally explained its political origins in terms of ruling elites’ distribution of benefits to their supporters. However, in competitive political contexts in which policies are deeply political and designed to satisfy clients, such as policies that support party donors, the problem of policy discontinuity is bound to arise because a change in ruling party is bound to alter the direction of distributional policies. The current paper uses Nigeria’s backward integration policy (BIP), an industrial policy on cement production, to sharpen the analytical distinction between the origins and persistence. Although the ruling elites’ political quest for survival explains the origin of Nigeria’s industrial policy on cement (ruling elites were in search of re-election funds and teamed up with domestic capitalists for donations, who in turn influenced the political elites to create policies in their area of business), it does not explain the continuation.     

The political use of the internet: Some insights from two surveys of Italian students

Interest in the Internet's impact on political participation has grown over the last five years. The main claim of most social scientists is to consider the Internet as a new resource for political engagement. However, this claim has not always been backed up by empirical analysis. The aim of this article is to provide empirical evidence on a subject that previous surveys on the Internet have generally ignored: the influence of individual political characteristics on Internet use. The authors compare data from two distinct surveys, carried out in two different periods but which contain some common batteries of questions referring to political participation and Internet use for political purposes. One survey was carried out in 2001 and focused on students at the University of Florence. The second was carried out in 2002 and focused on the participants in the European Social Forum in Florence. The empirical results and interpretations offered are based on a sample of 397 students, extracted from the two databases. The focus of the research is on exploring whether and how the political use of the Internet is shaped by the political characteristics of users, in this case students. The findings of the two studies suggest that, firstly, the more students are engaged in different social and political organizations, the more they use the Internet to achieve political purposes; and, secondly, that different styles of Internet use (to retrieve alternative information, to discuss and to perform political actions) are associated with the political characteristics of users. In particular, the characteristics of offline participation are reproduced online: the Internet is appropriated and shaped by political practices of users.     

DOES ANTIREGIME ACTION UNDER COMMUNIST RULE AFFECT POLITICAL PROTEST AFTER THE FALL?

This article addresses the effects of political protest at a certain time on the actors' protest at a later time. I argue that if there is an effect it is indirect: political protest leads to a change in certain variables that affect participation at a later time. In a first step, these variables are specified, based on previous research. It is assumed that public goods preferences (i.e., political, economic, social discontent, and political alienation), weighted by perceived personal influence, a felt obligation to protest, and integration into protest-promoting networks are the major causes for participation in political protest. In a next step, I propose a theory specifying the effects of protest participation on these variables. The hypotheses are tested by panel data collected in Leipzig (East Germany) referring to the situations of 1989 and 1993. The most important results are that participation in antiregime action in 1989 led to political, social, and economic satisfaction and increased perceived political influence in 1993. There were no effects of participation in the protests in 1989 on accepting felt obligations to protest and on integration into protest-promoting networks in 1993.