Foundations and Their Institutional Context: Cross-Evaluating Evidence from Germany and the United States

According to the relevant literature, the relationship between government and the private foundation sector in Germany is marked by a paradigm of conflict very similar to the one that has often dominated the U.S. discussion of government/nonprofit relationships in the past. More specifically, scholars often hold that the development of foundations in Germany is largely hampered by an administrative and regulatory climate that weakens rather than strengthens the foundation community. Two main arguments are brought forth in this context: First, the expansion of the state bureaucracy into traditional activity fields of foundations crowds out the foundation sector; second, the structure of tax regulations is detrimental to a sound development of foundations. However, while these arguments figure prominently in the policy debate, they have neither empirically nor analytically been substantiated as of yet. Borrowing from organizational theory, this article critically evaluates the arguments in the light of available evidence in an effort to contribute to a better understanding of foundations in an international context.     

深化农村土地管理制度改革研究

上海要深化农村土地管理制度改革,在农村承包地流转方面:要加强引导,规范农村土地承包权流转;加强扶持,构建完整的政策制度体系;制定规则,形成机制保障。在农村集体建设用地流转方面:要真正实施国有土地与集体土地"同地、同价、同权";要正确处理集体建设用地节约、集约利用与增加农民财产性收入的关系;要制定郊区集体建设用地的各类标准,控制用地总量;要制定集体建设用地使用权流转的配套政策;要建立完善的农民社会保障体系,清除集体建设用地流转的障碍。在农村宅基地置换、退出方面:要建立农民宅基地分配、使用、置换、流转、收回政策体系;要采取限制措施,严控宅基地的新增趋势;要采取滚动发展模式,解决宅基地置换资金缺口大的问题。     

The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method

Conclusion In summary, my three formulations of Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method as a manifesto have progressively found it to be epistemologically and pedagogically embedded in its object of scientific interest. In the first and most limited formulation, Durkheim's text was a violent and strategic preparation for his vision of sociology, that laid its grounds, but was ultimately inessential to sociological practice itself. It marked what he hoped was a historical rupture in western thought, after which true sociological reason could get underway. In my second formulation his text was the creation of a precise sociological object and moral reality. And while constituting sociology's first action, the manifesto could then be superseded as this morality began to sustain itself. Nevertheless, more than in the first formulation, it actively produced a new social fact in European culture. Finally, in the third formulation, Durkheim's manifesto is an ongoing moment of sociology itself (in the sense of a Hegelian moment, which is fully visible only in its first conflict-ridden appearance, but subsequently constitutes an essential part of the phenomenon's makeup). This manifesto is sociology's first clear attempt to understand representation as the fundamental element of social life. As such, sociological images and language are more than new social facts, they are also collective representations themselves, that reveal how the collective both imagines itself and interprets its own images. In this last formulation, sociology is deeply intertwined with the phenomena it seeks to explain, and becomes increasingly so as it proceeds historically.The implications of understanding sociology as a collective representation are manifold. But among the most important is that sociology develops by way of a dialectical relation to its object. Not surprisingly, a century after the appearance of Durkheim's manifesto, popular mass culture is permeated with reified sociological language, while cultural and mass-media studies have become a central interest of contemporary social theory. One could even speculate what Durkheim might say about late twentieth-century North American or European culture, and the place of sociological images therein. Would he, like one might imagine Freud, despair at the popular tropes and metaphors that he helped produce? Would he see only a monster of his own creation? Unlike Freud, who might be able to condemn popular psychoanalytic language as itself an indication of an immature culture looking for therapeutic fathers, Durkheim formulated the inevitability of the reification and deification of sociological language. For example, he explains that his own time was dominated by the language of the French Revolution: ...society also consecrates things, especially ideas. If a belief is unanimously shared by a people, then ... it is forbidden to touch it, that is to say, to deny it or to contest it. Now the prohibition of criticism is an interdiction like the others and proves the presence of something sacred. Even today, howsoever great may be the liberty which we accord to others, a man who should totally deny progress or ridicule the human ideal to which modern societies are attached, would produce the effect of a sacrilege. He gives Fatherland, Liberty, and Reason as examples of the sacred language inherited from the Revolution. And although he understands that these ideas are historically contingent, he nevertheless defends their value, especially the value of Reason. Evidently, Durkheim is not troubled by the knowledge that thoughts are shaped by the sacred ideas of their time.Noting the popularity of his own texts in the undergraduate classroom, Durkheim might ask how they function now. He might ask how The Rules of Sociological Method is an academic collective representation. He might also ask more generally how the word society has come to be used as a moral reality, or a social fact. How do speakers gain a moral stronghold on conversation by invoking society as the overarching totem (signifying everything from tradition and order to constraint and oppression)? Durkheim would probably conclude that in its current usage society means many things, and perhaps is even reducible to a dada utterance. Society is the punishing god and the forgiving god; it is used to authorize the judge and justify the deviant. It is, most generally, the way our culture signals its attempt to formulate itself by way of its sacred images.And yet, to avoid concluding that sociology, as it proceeds, ultimately becomes another instance of the object it studies, one must see Durkheim as providing the opportunity within his images and tropes to make them more than religion or ideology. In other words, although social reality has traditionally been represented as the Judaeo-Christian god in western cultures, that does not mean that Society will in turn become the new god of the organically solidary collective. As Durkheim provided sociology with a basic manifesto orientation (in all three of my formulations of sociology as strategic, moral, and interpretive), he also provided the opportunity for sociology continually to change its object by studying it. While normally for scientists their influence on their object constitutes a disastrous error, because the data have been contaminated by the act of observation, Durkheim makes clear that sociology inevitably has this effect (indeed it has this moral obligation and responsibility). Sociology encourages a culture where the openness of human identities and practices is generally known, and where this openness does not lead to anomic despair. This was Durkheim's promise to his time - i.e., that looking at ourselves as agents of our collective condition provides an opportunity to produce sacred objects that are sacred by the very fact that they are patently produced collectively. While all collectives produce representations of themselves, what is peculiar to the sociological culture is that it is supposed to be able to identify these as such - it is supposed to see its own totem building. This requires a certain ironic orientation grounded in an insight that the collective could be drastically otherwise, without provoking a crisis of meaning. In this way, sociology is a system of beliefs without being an ideology or religion.And, of course, within a sociological culture change does occur. Once these sociological tropes are established, they undergo interpretation and reinterpretation as they are disseminated, circulated, and used in popular discourse. As the dialogue between academic language and popular language continues through time, sociologists are required to imagine sociological interventions that keep these images dynamic rather than ideological. Hence, as sociology contributes to the sacred language used by opinion (or doxa), it is neither reducible to opinion, nor fully distinguishable from it. Sociology seeks to influence the way opinion recollects its basis (i.e., social life), and in so doing must change its own language to continue to induce para-doxa.It is possible therefore that the tropes and images introduced by Durkheim have served many rhetorical purposes and need to be reinterpreted by each new generation of sociologists as they consider the particular sociological rules of method of their own time. But what is inexhaustible about the Durkheimian legacy is his insight that sociology must look for its effects at a general discursive level, remaining cognizant that it is a part of modernity's particular collective representations. Thus formulated, the grounds of sociological thought are necessarily present even in the most specialized of contemporary research, as each topic covertly speaks about collective representational desire. Sociology also meets its own limits (even the possibility of its own death) at the very point where it becomes self-conscious as a cultural practice - i.e., its various inevitable crises as to its relevance point to its entanglement in the representational anxieties characteristic of modernity in general. It seems to me crucial that sociological practitioners acknowledge and orient to this condition so that sociology remains vital to itself and to the collective life it studies. Or in stronger, more polemical words: sociology is a significant cultural force to the extent that it understands itself already to be one.

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Civil Society and the Northern Irish Peace Process

Alternative accounts of the Northern Irish peace process are analyzed. It is noted that neither Unionist nor Republican accounts accord a significant or positive role to civil society in the reaching of a political settlement. It is only in what might be called the metropolitan liberal perspective that influence is attributed to the role of civil society in achieving a settlement. Two junctures at which civil society, centered on the third sector, played a prominent role in the peace process are analyzed: the Opsahl Commission before the launch of the peace process in 1993 and the nonparty Yes campaign during the referendum on the Belfast Agreement in May 1998. The paper then goes on to discuss why the influence of civil society has declined since the referendum, and draws attention to the conflict between the top-down implications of the consociational nature of the Belfast Agreement and the bottom-up promotion of political accommodation through civil society.     

This Is What Democracy Sounds Like: Protest Performances of the Citizenship Movement in Wisconsin and Beyond

This article is a case study of an ongoing singing protest in Wisconsin, the group that calls itself Solidarity Sing Along (SSA). An offshoot of the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising, for the first 15 months of its existence SSA was an important nexus of local activists working to recall Republican state senators and the governor. After the recall's failure the group not only continued to carry on but quite effortlessly reoriented its claim making and centered its protests on the freedom to assemble and petition the government, which had been an important cause from early on. Maintaining its pro-labor orientation, SSA has become part of a broader movement for democratic citizenship rights. Situating the group in musical practices of the Wisconsin protests and social movements more generally, I show that how SSA makes and performs its music makes it a part of the citizenship movement. This case study reveals a novel form of claim making within the repertoire of contention practiced by social movements: SSA is a ‘part-time occupation’ and as such has potential to be more resilient and durable than ‘permanent’ occupations à la Occupy Wall Street.     

Comparing Protest Massacres

Why do some bouts of collective action end in bloodshed? This study evaluates a diverse collection of cases featuring opposition movements that experienced government‐led massacres. Historically, protest massacres originate to 19th century struggles associated with populational needs of obtaining public goods and political representation from governments. Unlike genocide and politicide which are likely to take place during heightened conflict, protest massacres tend to occur outside of war and civil war. Data on 76 incidents (1819–2017) capturing direct action strategies, preceding levels of mobilization, regime threat levels, and temporal characteristics of each massacre is analyzed.     

The Adoption and Use of the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index in Nonprofit Research: Does Revenue Diversification Measurement Matter?

Since its introduction by Tuckman and Chang (Nonprofit Volunt Sector Q 20(4):445–460, 1991), the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index (HHI) has been widely adopted into the nonprofit literature as a precise measure of revenue concentration. This widespread adoption has been characterized by diverse composition, with the HHI’s calculation being largely determined by the nature of the available data and the degree to which it contained disaggregated measures of revenue. Using the NCCS 990 Digitized Data, we perform an acid test on whether different HHI measures yield significantly different results. Four measures of revenue concentration—an aggregated measure based on three revenue streams, an aggregated measure separating government grants from other contributions, a more nuanced measure based on seven revenue streams, and a fully disaggregated measure based on thirteen revenue streams—are used to predict two dominant nonprofit financial health dimensions: financial volatility and financial capacity. Overall, our results show that aggregation in HHI measurement matters; aggregation often downplays relationships by influencing the significance levels and magnitudes of estimates in a non-trivial way.     

Protest avatars as memetic signifiers: political profile pictures and the construction of collective identity on social media in the 2011 protest wave

Protest avatars, digital images that act as collective symbols for protest movements, have been widely used by supporters of the 2011 protest wave, from Egypt to Spain and the United States. From photos of Egyptian martyr Khaled Said, to protest posters and multiple variations of Anonymous' mask, a great variety of images have been adopted as profile pictures by Internet users to express their support for various causes and protest movements and communicate it to all their Internet peers. In this article, I explore protest avatars as forms of identification of protest movements in a digital era. I argue that protest avatars can be described as ‘memetic signifiers’ because (a) they are marked by a vagueness and inclusivity that distinguishes them from traditional protest symbols and (b) lend themselves to be used as memes for viral diffusion on social networks. In adopting these icons, participants experience a collective fusion in an online crowd, whose gathering is manifested in the very ‘masking’ of participants behind protest avatars. These forms of collective identification, while powerful in the short term, can however prove quite volatile, with Internet users often discarding avatars with relative ease, raising the question whether they can provide durable foundational elements of contemporary social movements.     

Local Government Fiscal Burden in Nonmetropolitan America1

Rising fiscal pressure on local governments in rural areas of the United States is documented in this study. The level of fiscal burden on taxpayers to support local governments in nonmetropolitan areas is found to be higher than that in metropolitan areas between 1977 and 1987. Using a model from the urban fiscal literature, the level of fiscal burden in nonmetropolitan areas is found to be influenced by a combination of demographic, socioeconomic, intergovernmental, and historical factors. Intergovernmental revenue transfers from the state and federal government play a critical role in determining the level of fiscal burden rural taxpayers bear. These findings have implications for rural economic development and for understanding how rural areas are influenced by the larger society.     

MOTIVATIONAL FRAMING AND EFFICACY MAINTENANCE: Animal Rights Activists' Use Of Four Fortifying Strategies

While a great deal of research has documented the role of perceived efficacy in the decision to participate in collective action, less attention has been paid to these perceptions beyond the onset of protest activity. This article uses qualitative data from fieldwork with members of an animal rights group engaged in four different protest campaigns to examine activists' sense of their accomplishments in the context of ongoing activism. Despite feeling quite pessimistic about their chances for success in some of the campaigns, these activists strove to evaluate their efforts positively, using a number of "fortifying strategies" to identify and celebrate their successes—even in the face of apparent defeat. These findings suggest that perceived efficacy is necessary not only for initial participation in protest but must also be maintained for longterm activism.     

Relational riot: austerity and corruption protest in the neoliberal era

On December 16, 1993, thousands of public employees sacked and burned three government buildings (the Government House, the courthouse, and the legislature) and the private residences of nearly a dozen local politicians and officials in the Argentine city of Santiago del Estero. Drawing upon the recent ‘relational turn’ in the sociology of collective action, the article examines four different processes at the root of this contentious episode: a) escalation of protest; b) the learning of violence together with the collective definition of targets; c) brokerage efforts among protesting parties together with the emergence of new—previously passive or uncommitted—actors on the side of the protesting coalition; and d) the transformation of protesters' collective identity. An examination of these processes contributes to a better understanding of the outbreak, form, course, and meaning of the riot than one provided by collective behaviour, breakdown, and ‘disruption of the quotidian’ approaches.     

Evaluating the Move to a Linear Tax System in Germany and Other European Countries

This paper proposes a comparison of the results of tax policy analysis obtained on the basis of unitary and collective representations of the household. We first generate labour supplies consistent with the collective rationality, by use of a model calibrated on microdata as described in Vermeulen et al. [Collective Models of Household Labor Supply with Nonconvex Budget Sets and Nonparticipation: A Calibration Approach (2006)]. A unitary model is then estimated on these collective data and unitary and collective responses to a tax reform are compared. We focus on the introduction of linear taxation in Germany. The exercise is replicated for other European countries and other topical reforms. Distortions due to the use of a unitary model turn out to be important in predicting labour supply adjustments, in the design of tax revenue neutral reforms, and in predicting a reform’s welfare implications.

Government Intervention in Public Sector Industrial Relations: Lessons from the Alberta Teachers’ Association

In the public sector, Canadian governments intervene frequently in labor disputes by suspending collective bargaining and curtailing legal strikes. Previous research has focused on the contours of government intervention, such as its overall effects on collective bargaining and strikes. The discussion highlights one actor, a government, restricting the behavior of another actor, a union, using legislation and policy making. As a result, we know less about more micro-level elements and implications of the process of government intervention. I address these themes using a detailed case study of the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the strikes it coordinated in 2002.

Instrumental Civil Rights and Institutionalized Participation in China: A Case Study of Protest in Wukan Village

The current study uses the Wukan protest as a case study to assert that the Chinese farmers involved in the incident demonstrated “instrumental civil rights consciousness” in their protest. Civil rights is a means by which farmers strive for their economic rights and not an end in itself. Without real “rights consciousness,” the Wukan protests resemble “institutionalized participation” more than “rightful resistance.” The grassroots elections and self-governance that have resulted from the protest are not so much a harbinger of the emergence of bottom-up civil society as top-down initiatives by the central government. The central government has incorporated opposing powers into the existing institution to adjust state–society relations. By using bottom-up institutionalized participation, the central government has managed to strengthen its supervision over local governments, fight corruption, and stabilize its authority.     

Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere

Recent discussions of the Internet have touted "virtual community" and a capacity to enhance citizen power in democracies. The present essay (a) calls for a more rigorous understanding of community; (b) suggests that relationships forged with the aid of electronic technology may do more to foster "categorical identities" than they do dense, multiplex, and systematic networks of relationships; and (c) argues that an emphasis on community needs to be complemented by more direct attention to the social bases of discursive publics that engage people across lines of basic difference in collective identities. Previous protest movements have shown that communications media have an ambiguous mix of effects. They do facilitate popular mobilization, but they also make it easy for relatively ephemeral protest activity to outstrip organizational roots. They also encourage governments to avoid concentrating their power in specific spatial locations and thus make revolution in some ways more difficult.     

On socialist fiscal crises

Conclusion Socialist states, it was argued, must address accumulation and legitimation concerns, just as capitalist states do. They too are likely to have fiscal problems, but for somewhat different reasons than capitalist states. Because of the nationalization of ownership of most of the economy, socialist states are not faced with the problem of absorbing the costs of production and reproduction while profits are privately appropriated. However, soft budgetary constraints strain socialist state fiscal resources. Of particular concern to us, the revenue generating problem of socialist states is compounded by the very successes of their social-welfare policies: when social policies raise life expectancy and lower the fertility rate, the size of the labor force available to contribute to the country's economic base withers at the same time that the state's pension and health care costs increase.The accumulation problems of socialist states in the Third World are further compounded by their weak position within the global political economy. Third World countries in general have little control over the prices of the goods and services they trade, and global geopolitical and world-market dynamics generally work to their disadvantage. Socialist states in the Third World have had particular difficulty getting access to Western markets, and this obstacle has been only partially offset by COMECON subsidized trade and concessionary financing. Mean-while, socialist state legitimacy rests on the provisioning of the population at large, and not merely - as in most capitalist countries - the monopoly sector, with a broad range of benefits free of charge or at low cost.The Cuban experience highlights the benefits and costs of Third World socialism. The Revolutionary government has many social accomplishments to its credit. In particular, life expectancy has increased while infant mortality and the birth rate have decreased. Cuba's demographic profile resembles highly industrial Western and East European countries more than capitalist Third World countries. Policies that have served to redistribute wealth, open employment opportunities for women, and guarantee all Cubans an inexpensive basic diet have undoubtedly contributed to the demographic trends; so too have the expansion and universalization of medical care coverage. The medical care restructuring has made it easy for women to obtain abortions and, increasingly, IUDs and birth control pills, at readily affordable prices; it also has helped Cubans live healthier, longer lives. Women have been making use of the birth control options, particularly as their labor-force opportunities have improved.The state's success at reducing infant mortality partly offsets the impact of the declining fertility rate on the country's ability to reproduce itself demographically and to maintain a labor force that adequately generates revenue to finance the needs of the aging population. The universalization of health care, special food rationing for pregnant women, and the promulgation of a maternity law entitling women to absent themselves from work to tend to the medical needs of their children all suggest that the government has been willing to underwrite certain costs (although it shifted some of the costs to enterprises, under the New Management System) to minimize infant mortality.The government might further counter the fertility decline trend with a pro-natal moral campaign. Families might be made to feel that they have a patriotic duty to have children. The government might also tie family allowances for children and work benefits to family size. However, such material incentives as family allowances have been ineffective thus far in Eastern European socialist countries as well as in Western market economies, and there is reason to believe that they would be ineffective in Cuba as well. As Cuban demographer Alvarez Vazquez notes, such material incentives as dietary supplements for pregnant women and families with young children, job-related maternity benefits, and free medical care, are unlikely to induce families to have more children because the island's population by now considers such benefits basic rights, not privileges.Immigration, an alternative source of labor, is not a viable option either. The government would have to make domestic conditions more attractive to entice foreign labor to come. Currently, there appears to be little foreign desire to migrate to Cuba; otherwise, more foreigners would be entering the country legally or, if impossible, illegally. There is, of course, no reason for the government to encourage labor migration as long as the domestic supply suffices. Unemployed labor would only add to the state's social and economic problems.Alternatively, the government might encourage men to assume more household responsibilities so that child-rearing is less onerous for working women. If men would assume more household responsibilities, the state could most readily address its production and reproduction concerns simultaneously, in a manner consistent with its commitment to Marxist principles of gender equality. The Family Code could provide the basis for a moral campaign. However, thus far the Code has not been a sufficient moral force, and its enforcement - through coersion - would undoubtedly meet with male resistance and antagonize a segment of the population whose political support the regime needs.The revolution's social accomplishments are, moreover, generating unintended fiscal problems that are difficult for the state to resolve. The population is no longer reproducing itself, at the same time that the state assumes the health and retirement costs of the increasingly long-living population. The ratio of the retired to the economically active population is growing, while the government's capacity to appropriate surplus and allocate it to social expenditures is decreasing. Economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s improved productivity and made the economy more responsive to consumer demand, but they eroded the central government's revenue-generating capacity. By the latter 1980s the government seems to have been faced with a new dilemma. It tightened control over market activity, undoubtedly in part to increase its revenue base and thereby address its fiscal problems. However, the experience of the late 1960s suggests that productivity may drop again as material incentives contract, and political discontent may grow if living standards decline. When civilian groups felt that the government stressed accumulation excessively over consumption in the late 1960s, they expressed their resentment: in foot-dragging, absenteeism, refusal to work, and in emigration. While the government thus far has not been confronted with electoral opposition at the ballot box or with protests in the streets, the covert ways that civilians expressed their discontent tends to subvert state accumulation efforts.Thus, the Cuban experience suggests that the commitment of socialist states in the Third World to social welfare improves health standards and old-age security. However, it also suggests that socialism does not resolve the fiscal needs of states, even though socialist states are not constrained by significant private appropriation of profits. The base of the fiscal crisis instead shifts.The dilemma of Third World socialist states can obviously not be proven on the basis of a single case study. Certainly, the Cuban experience has been shaped by distinctive features of the prerevolutionary society that Castro inherited and by some distinctive ways that Castro has used state power. Comparisons between post and prerevolutionary Cuba, and between Cuba and contemporary trends in other Latin American countries during the same period, empirically highlight the distinctive impact of socialism. The logic of socialism, in turn, gives us reason to believe that other Third World states that attempt to undertake socialist transformations will face many of the same dilemmas as Cuba.Although facing fiscal problems, the Cuban state assumes more responsibility for social expenditures than the capitalist states in Latin America. It can not relieve itself of those responsibilities without risking its political base. Moreover, if it would relieve itself of social welfare responsibilities Cuban socialism would become an empty shell, stripped of its historical meaning.     

Medieval origins of constitutional government in the West

Conclusions This survey of the political history of nonwestern countries has shown that Russia, Japan, and China never developed the levels of constitutional government found in late medieval Europe. Three of the four social origins of constitutionalism in the West, rough balance between crown and noble, contractual-feudal military organization, and lordpeasant dynamics have been largely absent from these countries. Nor has any other substantial source (such as religion or economic organization) been uncovered that compensated for these absences or which otherwise fostered constitutionalism. Consequently, the major institutes of medieval constitutionalism, rural local government, autonomous towns, estates, and the rule of law, have also been largely absent. Village government, on the other hand, which was fostered in the West by the continuance of Germanic peasant organization and by the commune movement of the medieval period, has been found to be quite ubiquitous outside Europe. Village government existed — and in vital forms — in all three nonwestern regions, but always dwarfed by the power of authoritarian organs of the surrounding state structures. Thus, village government in and of itself lacked constitutional significance unless it was able to fuse with other, stronger constitutional institutions as it did in the West.To avoid the charge that the present study is only another sentimentalization of remote, mythic past, the modern significance of medieval constitutionalism for liberal democracy must be established. Each component carried forth — and with essential continuity — one or more of the pivotal aspects of modern representative government, at least in those countries in which medieval constitutionalism was not destroyed by military-bureaucratic absolutism or by a labor-repressive commercialization of agriculture. Among those aspects of liberal democracy are citizenship rights, representative institutions, checks and balances on central authority, and the rule of law.Rural local government contained representative government, from tribal popular assemblies to gentry cliques, which persisted in one form or another. Citizenship found its expression in participatory government and in the chartered liberties of village communes and frontier settlements. Local government in itself could not act as a check on central power; it could, however, provide a scattered but collectively almost insurmountable obstacle to state penetration of the localities. Towns provided various levels of citizenship and representation, from narrow oligarchy to representation of the guilds and plebeian classes. The progressiveness of negative freedom (freedom from feudal authority) enjoyed by lower classes is easily missed by focusing too narrowly on the oligarchic nature of many municipalities. To be rid of seigneurial controls and to have access to a more rational judiciary were benefits that were not lost on the urban masses streaming in from the countryside. Royal dependence on revenue from the towns served as a de facto check on central power inasmuch as infringing the rights of one endangered and unified the others.The representative nature of the estates as well as their serving as checks and balances on the monarchy are very straightforward. The estates became the central arena of politics in successive centuries, and the struggle for citizenship rights was fought here in two senses. A main battle of liberalization was fought over the franchise, the right to vote and send representatives to the national assembly. Second, politics within the representative assembly often centered on extending freedoms and liberties by acts of legislation. The rule of law was a crown ornamenting and protecting medieval constitutionalism as well as liberal democracy. Law, that brooding omnipresence in the sky as Oliver Wendell Hohnes called it, served to guarantee citizenship rights, ensure proper consultation with the estates, and provide a normative and procedural grid in which the monarchal state had to act.It is important to note once more that medieval constitutionalism was not almost democracy, nor was it sufficient cause of liberal democracy. It did, however, provide many of the critical components including representation, citizenship, checks and balances, and the rule of law, that were absent in other parts of the world. Nor was constitutional government always accompanied by trust, cooperation, and acceptance of the political status quo. Tension, conflict, and often open hostility were more the norm as monarchs endeavored to rid themselves of meddlesome pests. But their animosities were held in check by constitutional protections and the strength of the opposition. Monarchs could only bide their time, abide by the governing rules and practices, and await the opportunity to shed what they viewed as the fetters of antiquated politics.The constitutional achievement, then, was a modest and frail one that had inherent instabilities owing to monarchal/state ambitions. It would be undermined in many countries where the commercialization of agriculture and the exigencies of modern warfare combined to bring about authoritarian relations and institutions. Elsewhere, where the impact of war and commercialization were less pronounced, medieval constitutionalism would serve as a basis for liberal democracy.     

Accumulation of deicing salts in soils in an urban environment

Examining rates of deicing salt accumulation and leaching in urban soils is important for understanding the distribution and movement of salt in the environment. We examined autumn concentrations of deicing salts in soils in a moderately dense urban landscape in eastern New York State. The study area contrasted to the isolated, rural highways examined in previous studies. While NaCl was the most abundantly applied salt, Mg²⁺ (apparently from MgCl₂, a secondary deicing salt) was the most abundant salt cation in soils. Moderate Na⁺ levels, and equivalent concentrations at depth and in surface samples, indicate that leaching of Na⁺ is rapid in this system. Leaching may ameliorate toxicity for land plants but accelerate inputs to aquatic systems. In contrast to rural highway studies, where salt levels declined rapidly with distance to pavement, Na⁺ remained elevated at the maximum distance measured. Airborne salt dispersal and dense networks of pavement likely contribute to widespread elevated salt levels. This semi-urban setting had salt levels high enough to be toxic to terrestrial plants and soil protozoa. Even moderate levels of development can have dramatic effects on salt inputs into soils and aquatic systems.

Nevada gaming: revenues and taxes (1945-95)

In 1931, Nevada legalized casino gambling, an act which allowed its gaming industry to develop. Because many jurisdictions outside Nevada are now embracing legalized gambling as a path to a brighter economic future and because this proliferation presents Nevada with new challenges and opportunities, it is a good time to review the Nevada experience. Here, the focus is on gaming revenues and gaming tax collections during the 1945–95 period. We find that the growth rate of Nevada's gaming industry has slowed over time, with the relative importance of gaming in the Nevada economy peaking in the late 1970's. The Nevada economy has since been gradually diversifying, something which will increasingly pressure Nevadans to look for government revenue sources other than gaming if current levels of government services are to be maintained.     

Revolutionary Mexico and the world economy

Conclusion Obregón and Calles encountered intense but disunited resistance at home and abroad. They responded with land and labor reforms to coopt campesinos and urban workers, thereby undercutting popular opposition and enlisting the masses in the campaign against regionalist bosses, Porfirian oligarchs, and foreign investors. These populist alliances helped the Sonoran diarchy build more loyal and professional military and civilian bureaucracies, which in turn helped regulate local and metropolitan firms, increase and stabilize tax revenues, and develop the economy's infrastructure. Following Obregón assasination in 1928, Calles forestalled collapse by integrating many military and civilian bosses into a central party organization. Yet the state remained only partially consolidated. At the end of the Calles administration, regionalist cliques retained considerable political autonomy, and a major campesino rebellion challenged federal authority. Furthermore, dependence on foreign petroleum and mining companies limited government revenue and spending. In mid-1927, Calles inaugurated several years of conservative domestic policies and open collaboration with North Americans. But Calles did not purge all progressive elements from the state machinery. His quest for political stability led him to enroll in the official party many elites who depended on mass followings and who opposed the rightward shift of government policy. During the Great Depression, these elites formed a coalition with intellectuals, small business, and the lower classes that after electing Lázaro Cardenas president, ended Callista hegemony and undertook far-reaching reforms. Thus the Cardenistas completed what Obregón and Calles had begun: the Mexican state's transformation from the poorly centralized oligarchic structure of the Porfiriato to the highly centralized, mass-inclusionary structure of the postrevolutionary era. In the next decade, Mexico joined the ranks of the world's intermediate, semiperipheral economies thanks to import-substitution and metropolitan capital. Since then, Mexican governments have maintained political stability and spurred industrialization by steering a pragmatic course between reformism and conservatism, nationalism and collaborationism.In regard to future research, this essay suggests that we consider not only Mexico's relationship to North Atlantic powers in the 1920s but also its standing vis-à-vis the states and classes of other late-industrializing countries. One possibility is to study the interplay of metropolitan actions to control the raw materials and markets of the periphery with the politics of resistance and accommodation throughout the Caribbean basin: How did international and local conflicts affect the distribution of United States and Western European investments in the Caribbean basin? What impact did metropolitan investments have on the region's struggles over state power and pattern of economic change? How did the state-building struggles and economic changes of the 1920s influence the region's nationalist break-throughs and defeats during the Great Depression and World War II? What were the consequences of nationalist successes and failures for the subsequent paths of state making and economic development in the Caribbean basin, as well as for North Atlantic investors and governments after World War II?