Coalition Politics in a Postsocialist Russian City, 1994–20001

An in‐depth case study of a Russian urban area explores the city’s difficult democratic transition by analyzing changes in the network of civic affiliations among polity members. The research develops ideal‐typical coalitional structures to understand this troubled transition. The case study uses data from membership lists of civic organizations to draw conclusions about the coalitional structure and its effects on democratic outcomes. This demonstrates that the politics of patronage and the marginalization of mediators made coordination among different parts of government difficult to achieve. The implication drawn from the case study is that the mediation of diverse factional interests through coalitions is an important condition for democratic consolidation.     

Personality and community prevention teams: Dimensions of team leader and member personality predicting team functioning

The predictors and correlates of positive functioning among community prevention teams have been examined in a number of research studies; however, the role of personality has been neglected. In this study, we examined whether team member and leader personality dimensions assessed at the time of team formation predicted local prevention team functioning 2.5–3.5 years later. Participants were 159 prevention team members in 14 communities participating in the PROSPER study of prevention program dissemination. Three aspects of personality, aggregated at the team level, were examined as predictors: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. A series of multivariate regression analyses were performed that accounted for the interdependency of five categories of team functioning. Results showed that average team member Openness was negatively, and Conscientiousness was positively linked to team functioning. The findings have implications for decisions about the level and nature of technical assistance support provided to community prevention teams.     

Power Structures and Perceptions of Power Holders in Same-sex Groups of Young Children

The nature of power relations and the perceptions of power holders are explored by analyzing dominance and leadership structures in one male group and one female group of elementary school-age children. The results indicate that power structures can be specified for male and female groups. In both instances, power is most clearly indicated by dominance and play organization ranks. These hierarchic structures are, however, perceived differently by boys and girls. Powerful boys are linked by group members, but powerful girls are not well received. The implications for sex differences in power styles in adulthood are explored.     

The Power of Demonstrations

People take to the streets for several reasons. Advancing their demands to the authorities is an obvious one. Establishing communication channels among participants and thus helping to buttress a collective identity is another, latent one. Both combined express the power of protest. In what follows, I focus on the group-integrative function of protest. First, I conceptualize the notion of ritual and import it to the field of collective action. Then, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the extraordinary level of protest in the Basque Country. Mass protest rituals performed by a radical nationalist actor allow its participants to visualize themselves in movement and thus create and reinforce enduring bonds of solidarity. Occasionally, the argument about the relevance of a ritualized physical gathering might be extended to other revolutionary movements which push and threaten to transcend the limits of the system, be it because they substantially alter its morphology, because they challenge its foundational values, or both. Owing to the generalized disapproval these groups engender in wider society, revolutionary movements are in greater need of preserving group boundaries. Protest rituals are an important, sometimes essential, way of accomplishing such a task.     

Intersectionality and coalitions in social movement research—A survey and outlook

Over the last 30 years, intersectionality has become a prominent concept, but in social movement scholarship, its adoption has yet been limited. So far, the concept is primarily employed to analyze the mobilization of women of color and other gendered mobilizations. In this article, I argue that intersectionality matters for all social movements—both as an analytic and as a political strategy. It is important to understand that all social movements and movement organizations are shaped by multiple axes of privilege and discrimination, which influence who participates in these movements and how, what demands are pursued and which are neglected, and how the issues of the movements and movement organizations are framed. My review starts out with defining and distinguishing between structural intersectionality and political intersectionality. Then, I survey a range of social movements from an intersectional perspective. This is followed by a discussion of coalitions and other strategies to achieve political intersectionality. The article concludes with an outlook on future directions for intersectional analyses in social movement scholarship.     

Opportunities for Community Organizing in the Realm of Economic Justice and Low Wage Worker Struggles

ABSTRACT

The new upsurge in labor organizing among low-wage workers provides community organizing with opportunities to engage in economic justice struggles. Low-wage workers are organizing in many sectors of the workforce that are difficult to organize. Their issues are part of the larger discourse concerning inequality in the United States. New forms of community organizing are developing in some areas that embrace economic justice issues. However, many of the national networks have yet to become involved in issues of community members in the capacities as workers. Macro social work needs to revisit its origins and forge a new tradition that incorporates the problems that inspired Jane Addams and her contemporaries, the issues of workers and immigrants.     

Inter-American Cooperation in Health Work

This article is a quick overview of the Chicano Movement (CM) with specific analyses of the five major strategies employed by its adherents to effect social change. The CM was a social movement that occurred in the United States with increased activity in the southwest and midwest during a time frame: 1950s to 1980s. Persons of Mexican ancestry residing in the U.S. were its participants and self-identified as Chicanos. The term Chicano stems from the ancient Nahuatl language of the Meshica (Meh Shee Ka) peoples, also known as the Aztecs. Shicano is a shortened version of Meshicano; later pronunciation changed to Chicano and, for some in spelling, Xicano. As a social movement, the CM had as its ultimate goals the acquisition of political power with which to change the power relations between them and the Euro-Americans, also known as the Anglos.     

Community Power Structures and Methods' Artifacts: a Reinterpretation*

Four previously published data sets are used to reconsider whether the reputational method identifies pyramidal community power structures while non-reputational methods identify non-pyramidal power structures. Further considered is whether results are methodological artifacts. The reanalysis suggests that the reputational method tends to locate pyramidal and non-pyramidal power structures. The data do not indicate methods' artifacts.     

High Stakes Casinos and Controversies

ABSTRACT

With the expansion of casino gambling across the United States, casino proposals generate huge controversy and increasingly pose challenges for community organizing. This article analyzes the impact of controversies over casino proposals in Hartford and elsewhere in Connecticut. In Connecticut, after the establishment of Fox-woods Casino of Native American lands, casino proposals were considered for Hartford and other locations. Within a unique constellation of local and statewide forces, a heated public debate ensued that was extremely divisive for the local community. As an economic development strategy for distressed communities casinos present tantalizing opportunities, but also may produce problematic results and prove destructive to community coalitions and cohesion, regardless of whether or not they are even built.     

Relations between Status and Power Structures: Toward a General Theory*

Contemporary work on the development of status and power structures is reviewed. It is shown that theorists have conceptualized the relationship between these structures in opposite ways. Some have held that the structures tend toward alignment. Specifically, they have held that persons tend to be equally high or low in both structures. Others have held that the structures tend toward non-alignment. Specifically, they have held that the range of persons statuses tends to be greater than the range of their power. An attempt is made to reconcile the different theories underlying these two conceptions by postulating that one conception is correct under certain conditions and that the other is correct under other conditions. The conditions specified involve an important but somewhat neglected aspect of the overall stratification structure, what is called the secondary stratification structure, and the importance persons assign to this structure.     

Global Governance and Universities: The Power of Ideas and Knowledge

Abstract

So as to advance understanding of global governance, one can pick up on Robert Cox's critical formulations. Best known for his insights on the interplay of material conditions, institutions, and ideas, he later developed his framework by giving greater weight to the ideational dimensions of intersubjectivity. Yet it is usually deployed with regard to the former phase of his work while the latter phase goes unnoticed or is neglected. Cox's more recent conceptualization may serve as a springboard for thinking afresh about global knowledge production and dissemination. His approach can be stretched by exploring specific spheres of authority at particular sites. Focusing on universities as one of them, this article suggests a research itinerary that maps clusters of agents and guides empirical digging into how these structures operate. A complex of actors and processes, detailed in the findings, is redesigning global knowledge governance. The connective tissue in a cross-continental web of educational restructuring is gradually spreading. Cox's theorization may be fruitfully expanded to analyze this dynamic.     

上海提升城市文化软实力的对策建议

城市是文化的载体,文化是城市的形态。从文化层面来看,文化软实力为城市发展提供了软环境,有助于提升城市竞争力,增强城市凝聚力。从理论视角来看,文化软实力体现了一个城市的价值取向和精神文明,是历史文化和人文素养长期积淀和不断塑造的结果。“十二五”期间,上海定位于国际文化大都市建设,以提升城市的综合实力为主要目标。从实践角度来看,上海城市文化软实力建设面临着如何突破改革创新,以进一步解放和发展文化生产力,以期构建智慧城市和创新城市。     

Using the Web to Teach Power Analysis

Abstract

Traditionally community organizers have used newspaper accounts of community or legislative coalition building and government records on campaign donations and business start-ups to examine the inter-relationships among interest groups, corporations, and political decision-makers. However, the prevalence of much of this data on the Internet makes some of these traditional methods obsolete. In this paper, the author describes how much of this research can be conducted on the World Wide Web.     

Building buy-in: The need for internal relationships and informal coalitions

Significant research has focused on influencing senior leadership, and this study offers new insights into building internal relationships and informal coalitions to provide strategic counsel. These strategies involve internal communications, a neglected area of research and practice. The findings are based on in-depth interviews with 30 executives representing multiple departments in four U.S. companies. A new role justifying public relations’ membership in executive decision teams is internal boundary spanning or gathering intelligence internally across business units, and requires public relations to have a seat at multiple decision tables.     

All Puerto Rico with Vieques: Mobilizing Support Through Social Skills and Field Dynamics

This article explains the success of All Puerto Rico with Vieques (TPRCV) in coordinating a broad-based coalition in support of the movement to remove the US Navy from Vieques. Considering the literatures on organizations, strategic fields and social movements, the analysis looks at how environmental conditions and the attributes of the leadership become relevant in the formation and sustainability of coalition work. The article argues that under the conditions of a vibrant political activist sector and a dynamic political field, TPRCV used accumulated social skills to take advantage of network intersection and frame adaptation. Though environmental dynamics may produce favorable conditions for coalition building, these will be limited to the capacity of the social actors to identify them, assimilate their potential and translate them into opportunities.     

Urban Political Theory and the Symmetrical Model of Community Power in Singapore

Modernity's concern within metropolitan regimes includes the revival of community power through 'growth machines' and 'urban regime' theory. This paper introduces the symmetrical model of community power for the creation of civil society in urban centres like Singapore which, apodictically, represents a 'First World' city-state in a 'Third World' region. Singapore's urban growth engines falls within a variety of state-sanction and quasi-private metropolitan urban regimes that have contributed to innovative uses of human and material resource allocation. But can the people creatively empower themselves? The model is premised on liberal democratic ideals of community empowerment, and represents a plausible alternative to paternalism in preparation for the uncertainties of modernity in the twenty-first century.     

Dangers of Decentralisation in Urban Slums: A Comparative Study of Water Supply and Drainage Service Delivery in Kolkata,India

Clientelism may lead to the underprovision of services which are deemed suitable for decentralisation. Water distribution and drainage services, managed from a lower level of municipal authority, are liable to be affected by clientelism and consequent underprovision. Water quality, maintained from a higher municipal layer, is not likely to be affected by clientelism. Capture by politically influential and dominant social and religious groups is likely to take place for important services like water supply. The article suggests that awareness, measurability, importance and resource intensiveness of service are additional factors to be considered for assessing the suitability of a sector for decentralisation.     

Conspiracy theories and social movements studies: A research agenda

It is surprising to note the scarcity of contributions in social movement literature related to so-called conspiracy theories. A considerable amount of the work on these topics has been produced in political science, history, media studies, social psychology and other disciplines. These accounts have often adopted a stigmatizing approach, looking at conspiracy theories as forms of pathologies (whether psychological, social or political). Moving from such a perspective to a constructivist one, I argue that conspiracy theories should represent an object of interest for social movement scholars: conspiracies supporters go into the streets to highlight their issues, protest against authority, propose alternative lifestyles and often claim to look for a better/different society. Applying the social movements toolkit can allow to better understand this phenomenon and apply critical perspectives in a more effective manner. On the basis of this premise, the first part of this article reviews the existing literature on conspiracy theories, also identifying the main lacunae; the second part outlines some possible research questions and lines of inquiry, moving beyond the classical theories in the field of social movement studies. The paper also introduces a number of new concepts, such as conspiracy mobilizations and conspiracy coalitions.     

基于行政权力干预的城市空间布局研究

城市空间布局是一个基于城市开发、居民迁移、社区重构的复合概念,关系到经济、交通、就业等居民生活的诸多方面。在空间产权能够私有化的国家和地区,空间布局的结果可以简化为买卖双方权衡利弊后的市场均衡,但在我国土地产权国有化的前提下,空间买卖和使用都受到来自政府的行政权力干预,使得其结果偏离正常的市场均衡。本文给出基本的市场化假设,进而讨论行政权力干预从各因素上如何对市场均衡造成影响,并说明在这种情况下空间布局的可能发展趋势。