Organizational theory in political sociology

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be productively extended in various ways in scholarship on states, political parties, advocacy organizations, and business influences in politics. I highlight the genealogy of the new institutionalism and its variants (World Polity and institutional logics), population ecology (and the growing interest in both categories and audiences, alongside studies of the “ecology of ideology”), and research that follows in the broad tradition of resource dependence theory (and the link to more management-oriented approaches such as “non-market strategy” and stakeholder theories of organizational political activities). I also emphasize how novel theories of social movements and fields have offered innovative insights that incorporate organizational and political processes. I conclude by elaborating an agenda for how political sociologists can go further in maintaining and extending their highly productive and rewarding engagements with organizational theory.     

Ecologically unequal exchange: A theory of global environmental injustice

In this article, we review the theory of ecologically unequal exchange and its relevance for global environmental injustice. According to this theory, global political–economic factors, especially the structure of international trade, shape the unequal distribution of environmental harms and human development; wealthier and more powerful Global North nations have disproportionate access to both natural resources and sink capacity for waste in Global South nations. We discuss how the theory has roots in multiple perspectives on development, world‐systems analysis, environmental sociology, and ecological economics. We detail research that tests hypotheses derived from ecological unequal exchange theory on several environmental harms, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water pollution as well as related human well‐being outcomes. We also discuss research on social forces that counter the harmful impacts of ecologically unequal exchange, including institutions, organizations, and environmental justice movements. We suggest that ecologically unequal exchange theory provides an important global political–economic approach for research in environmental sociology and other environmental social sciences as well as for sustainability studies more broadly.     

Social media,political expression,and participation in Confucian Asia

This study reviews and analyzes the published empirical research on the role of social media in promoting political expression and participation in Confucian Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to providing a narrative review of the literature, our analyses show clear numerical estimates of the relationships among different types of social media use (i.e., informational, expressive, relational, and recreational), political expression, and participation in Confucian states. The findings reiterate the importance of the expressive use of social media, showing its moderately strong relationship with participation. The findings also show weak positive relationships with informational and relational uses. We also examine the role of political systems in these relationships and conclude that the strongest relationships are in democratic states, followed by hybrid and authoritarian systems.     

Social identities, class identity and political perspectives

There has been considerable controversy over the extent to which class is a salient social identity, and the importance of other social identities Marshall and his colleagues (1988) argue that class identity remains a salient frame of reference in people's daily lives while Saunders (1989;1990) and Emmison and Western (1990) argue that class identity is not as strong as they claim, and the importance of other social identities cannot be denied. However, proponents and opponents in the debate are agreed that the salience of social identities depends upon the context in which they are found which cannot be fully explored in highly-structured interviews. Drawing on data from a ‘qualitative re-study’ of the Affluent Worker series, it will be argued that people have many different identities, including a strong class identity, which co-exist at the same time. That said, their class identity is the most important influence on the formation of political perspectives. This finding concurs with the Essex team and Saunders even though he has sought to distance himself from this conclusion.     

Social capital,guanxi and political influence in Chinese government relations

Social capital has emerged as a promising theoretical approach to understanding political influence in the public relations literature. However, the rationale of using social capital to influence corporate government relations in authoritarian societies is indistinct. To remedy this, we integrate Bourdieu’s (1986) and Lin’s (2001) social capital theories to explore how applying a variant form of social capital (e.g., guanxi) might shape corporate government relations in authoritarian China. A multi-method, qualitative approach was employed involving 44 interviews, participant observation and document review. The findings highlighted an underexamined “vertical” dimension of social capital (i.e., links with authority in a hierarchy), which enables corporations to exercise agency over the pre-existing and often vague regulatory environment. This study adds a new perspective to social capital with hierarchical guanxi that enriches our understanding of guanxi-based political influence in Chinese corporate government relations.     

Social contacts and political behaviour in Northern Ireland, 1968–1978

Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this note examines the political consequences of different types of social contacts between two rigidly segregated religious communities. Multivariate analysis is applied to two large sample surveys, one collected in 1968 before the present civil disturbances began, the other in 1978, some nine years after the start of the violence. The results show that while social contacts between friends, workmates or neighbours of the opposite religion have no consistent political importance, social contacts with relatives by marriage of the opposite religion is significant for both surveys. Certain types of social contact therefore have a stronger political contact than others, and in the context of Northern Ireland social contacts involving immediate kin are more important than other forms of contact.     

Social influences on corporate political donations in Britain

It is argued that institutional features of the British state create collective action problems for the mobilization of corporations as donors to the Conservative Party. Social factors are necessary for overcoming these problems. Using social network analyses, the effect that interlocking directorates have on 250 large British corporations' decisions to donate are analysed. Instead of the central mobilizing factor being diffuse inner circle mechanisms positively influencing the decision to make a donation, the results show that more particularistic mechanisms such as information bias and control are equally important.     

Social media time,identity narratives and the construction of political biographies

ABSTRACT

The question of identity narrative is at the core of the interaction between social movements and temporalities. In this paper, we draw on long-term qualitative research amongst activists engaged in Italian social movements and argue that identity narratives are often the result of a complex mnemonic, contradictory and open-ended process that spans through a life-time of engagement with multiple collectives. We then question whether the use of social media reshape these dynamics. The analysis shows that the construction of identity narratives on social media tends to take place with knowledge of the complexity and overlaps that characterise these processes online. Nevertheless, the temporality of social media, based on immediacy, archival and predictive time, challenges the unpredictable, contradictory, and open-ended nature of political identity construction offline. The need to escape the hegemonic temporalities of social media poses new challenges to activists in their creative agency.     

Social stratification,voting behaviour,and the images of Canadian federal political parties*

Nous servant des sondages faits sur les élections nationales canadiennes de 1965 et 1968, nous développons l'analyse d'ogmundson sur l'esprit de vote des différentes classes sociales, dans l'enquête de 1965. Dans son étude, il comparait les résultats obtenus quand les orientations de classes des partis politiques étaient formulées de trois façons possibles: d'après les jugements des experts, d'après la moyenne des évaluations données par les répondants du sondage de 1965, et d'après les estimations idiosyncratiques de chaque répondant. Les deux derniers critères étaient pris des évaluations de chaque parti, selon une échelle sémantique à sept points, qui avait, comme points axiaux: “pour la classe moyenne” opposéà“pour la classe ouvrière.” Notre analyse répond à trois questions: premièrement, si les découvertes de base d'Ogmundson pour 1965 tiennent pour 1968; deuxièmernent, si les évaluations sur les partis par les répondants, d'aprés une deuxième échelle établie parles points “de gauche” opposées à“de droite,” donnent des résultats comparables, aussi bien sur les échelles que dans les sondages. Finalement, en utilisant une analyse de facteur, s'il y a, sur l'ensemble de treize échelles employées dans chaque enquête, quelque évidence d'un facteur de classe dans les évaluations données aux partis. La réponse est affirmative pour la première question et négative pour la seconde. Dans le cas de la troisième, un seul facteur fixe apparaît pour chaque parti, comme décrit par ses électeurs. La structure de ce facteur est commune à tous les partis dans les deux élections, et cela n'a pas grand chose à faire avec les orientations de classe perçues par les répondants. On explore toujours les implications théoriques de ces données. Using the 1965 and 1968 Canadian national election surveys, we extend Ogmundson's analysis of the “class” vote in the 1965 survey. He compared the results obtained when the class orientations of political parties were defined in three alternative ways: according to the judgments of experts: according to the mean ratings given by respondents in the 1965 survey; and according to each respondent's idiosyncratic ratings. The latter two criteria were taken from ratings of each party along a 7–point semantic differential-type scale which had as its end points “for the middle class” v. “for the working class.” Our analysis answers three questions: first, whether Ogrnundson's basic findings for 1965 hold also for 1968: second, whether respondents' ratings of the parties along a second scale anchored by “left-wing” v. “right-wing” yield comparable results across scales and Surveys; third, using factor analysis, whether there is any evidence for a class-based theme in the ratings given parties on the set of thirteen scales employed in each survey. The answer is affirmative to the first question and negative to the second question. In the case of the third question, a single unrotated factor emerged for each party as described by its voters. The structure of this factor was common to all parties in both elections, and it appeared to have very little to do with their perceived class orientations. Theoretical implications of these findings are explored.     

Social mobility and constitutional and political preferences in Northern Ireland

During the past thirty years Catholics in Northern Ireland have experienced unprecedented upward social mobility. Some commentators have suggested that this has led Catholics not merely to adopt the lifestyles of the middle class but also to modify their constitutional preferences, leading to a decline in nationalism. In this paper I examine the relationship between social mobility, on the one hand, and, on the other, both constitutional preferences and political (left or right wing) preferences among Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, using survey data collected in 1996. There is no evidence that Catholics' constitutional preferences are related to their mobility experiences.     

Social network analysis,structuration theory and the holism-individualism debate

Attempts at developing the theoretical side of social network analysis have not generated a satisfactory account of its methodological suppositions and implications. This paper clarifies the network conception of the relationship between human action and social structure by documenting the convergence of social netwoek analysis with structuration theory on the principle of methodological individualism. It then uses the convergence argument to suggest a new role for social network analysis in the methodological restructuring of modern social theory.