Corporate Quotas and Symbolic Politics in Advanced Democracies

ABSTRACT

This article identifies trends in the adoption and implementation of quotas for corporate boards, an underresearched topic in political science. Corporate quotas—like legislative quotas—constitute the “fast track” to gender equality but appear more commonly in advanced democracies. These corporate quotas fall into three categories: laws covering all companies; laws covering state-owned companies only; and nonbinding (voluntary) measures in corporate governance codes. Despite on-paper differences, these corporate quotas are largely toothless. First generation corporate quotas, like first generation legislative quotas, operate symbolically. By raising the specter of stringent legislation in the long run, corporate quotas induce firms into voluntary compliance in the short run.     

Social Capital in Emerging Democracies

Theorists have linked the creation of social capital to the development of the kind of robust civil society that underwrites the well formed and stable democracy. This understanding raises the problem of what is social capital in specific national contexts. A critical issue is whether and to what extent a model of social capital moulded to the EuroAmerican experience is applicable to the new democracies. Three arguments are made in the context of a review of the works of Putnam and Touraine. First, the question of social capital foundationally concerns not only the production of institutions and values but the conditions of production. Analysis thus needs to grasp not only the specifically social process of its creation, distribution, and institutionalization, but the political culture and economy that serve as its foundation. Second, theories of social capital created in the context of nation-state based production-centered political economy do not capture what is going on in an increasingly globalized and circulatory political economy. And third, theories of social capital centered on the United States and Europe are only partially applicable to the emerging democracies of Africa and the postcolony generally.

Immigrant Incorporation in Western Democracies1

How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to prove both futile and misleading, I propose a radically dis‐aggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains — state, market, welfare, and culture. Because some but not all of the regulatory institutions in these domains were created with immigrant incorporation in mind, national incorporation frameworks are not fully cohesive, are constantly changing, and at best can be described as belonging to a handful of loosely connected syndromes.     

The Structure of Issue Voting in Postindustrial Democracies

Issues matter for elections. The issue environment, however, varies across political campaigns as well as across countries. How does the issue environment structure the vote? Is the issue space single‐ or multidimensional? Do issues vary in terms of salience across parties or nations? This article addresses these questions using an original dataset of mass and elite policy positions covering the United States and nine other industrialized nations. Results show that while the traditional language of politics—expressed as the left/right divide—still resonates, the issue space is not single dimensional but two dimensional. Issues associated with globalization represent a crosscutting divide, which complicates the voter's decision. Further, the salience of an issue to a party varies as a function of the party's type, size, and age. This article shows how a cross‐national approach provides perspective on how voter decision making operates in different country contexts.     

Women in Politics in Post-Transitional Democracies: the chilean case

This article looks at women's participation in formal political institutions in posttransition politics. Employing the case of post-dictatorship Chile, it outlines the barriers to women's participation in the formal political arena; discusses the various strategies that Chilean women are currently employing to overcome their exclusion; and finally, examines the challenges that political women confront in promoting 'women's interests' in political institutions. Throughout the article two main arguments are advanced. First, where women's movements do not demand institutional reforms during the transition period - a time when movements enjoy influence and parties are in flux - then the barriers to women in political institutions re-emerge. In Chile, the fact that women did not demand institutional reforms, such as quotas for women in decision-making positions, is linked tothe broader strategy of the movement tomake citizenship demands based on women's 'difference'. This strategy inhibited women from demanding power (i.e. access to institutions as individuals) because this conformed to a masculine-defined notion of politics inconsistent with women's 'different' style of practising politics. A second,related argument is that a strategy based on women's 'difference' hinders women in politics frompromoting feminist goals,especially in the climate ofsocial conservatism that characterizes post-transition Chilean politics. Despite these constraints and the many challenges Chilean women in politics confront, gains are being made, as women recognize the need for, and begin to demand, institutional reforms to expand their presence in formal politics.     

Seducing Leadership: Stories of Leadership Development

This article argues that leadership development is a process of seduction. Drawing on some stories of leadership development from my experience as participant, observer and teacher I show the ways in which certain sorts of highly valued leadership teaching contain seductive elements, including sweeping audiences off their feet and, in some contexts, forestalling critique about the content that is offered. The article also considers the extent to which seduction is a gendered performance. I conclude that, while gender and power are defining elements and constraints in how seductive pedagogical relations are constructed, there are opportunities for experimentation and display that potentially subvert gendered stereotypes. Seeing the seduction in leadership can help us understand leadership and leadership teaching better, and can open the way to doing it differently — to experimentation and innovation.     

Leadership in Social Work Education and the Social Change Model of Leadership

Leadership is a topic of international debate in both social work education and practice. Questions remain, however, regarding what specific models of leadership should be emphasized and how leadership content should be infused within the social work curriculum. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the infusion of leadership within social work education. Specifically, this paper shares the design and development of a graduate-level social work course in program evaluation that infused education around the social change model of leadership (SCM) and then explores qualitatively how 39 graduate students interpreted and applied this model of leadership through an experiential community-based evaluation project. Findings of this study suggest that students utilized the values identified in the SCM in a range of ways to understand and interpret their leadership experience both in their collaborative groups and in their partnerships with community-based organizations. Community organizations also reported benefiting from the experience in partnership with the students. Implications are discussed in relation to the potential value and impact of this model for social work education.     

Charismatic Leadership

This case study deals with the difficulties that may be encountered in the transition from a charismatic leader/founder to a more professionally focused executive director in a human service organization. Resistance to change and obstacles confronting such an organizational change are explored.     

Co-creative Leadership: An Integrated Approach towards Transformational Leadership

The classical understanding of team leadership is extremely difficult to sustain in times when complexity and dynamics have risen to such high levels that very few individuals can assimilate them. The success of team leadership requires the ``participation of those already implicated'' in the development and implementation of a solution – and therefore in the leadership process. How can this be achieved practically? It requires a leadership approach that allows each relevant perspective to be included, in a practical way, in the development of a common position, which can then be implemented collectively. Co-creative leadership creates this possibility – a transformational leadership approach that allows an organisation as a whole to adapt to its environment.     

Leadership in Social Movements*

Two types of leadership styles in social movements are constructed on the basis of closed or open access to the source of legitimacy. Several predictions about structural consequences of the open or closed access are then made. The types are applied to four cases: the Nazis, the Manson Family, the Millerites and Women's Liberation. The hypotheses are confirmed.     

Effective Ministerial Leadership

Ministers of local congregations are in positions somewhat similar to the chief executives of other local nonprofit organizations, except that ministers are also expected to respond to the specifically religious needs of their congregants. In this article we assess how especially effective ministers in one denomination differ from less effective ministers in both general leadership skills and specifically religious leadership skills. The especially effective ministers were identified by applying three selection methods, resulting in an unusually careful selection of a sample of especially effective leaders. The results show that the especially effective are more skillful managers, problem solvers, planners, delegators, change agents, shepherds, inspirers, multitaskers, students, and servants and demonstrate themselves to be persons of integrity.     

Female Leadership in French Voluntary Associations

Drawing on a recent national survey, this article focuses on the female representation on executive committees in French voluntary associations. To begin with, we observe that this representation is very unequal according to the different officer positions. It is especially low among presidents while it is markedly higher among secretaries. Then, we study the relationship between the associations’ attributes and the likelihood of women being appointed as executive committee members. Our investigation bears out some findings from previous studies on nonprofit female leadership. For instance, we show that the proportion of female officers is higher in organizations whose activities pertain to social service, health, and humanitarian sectors. It is lower in the oldest associations and it decreases as their geographical area of activity increases and as their budget becomes larger. But we also emphasize new results. First, the probabilities that women hold president, treasurer and secretary positions are highly correlated to each other. Second, the likelihood that associations have female presidents is higher in associations with few volunteers. We consider possible explanations for the latter result.     

Leadership in Collaborative Community Health Partnerships

This article examines key leadership issues in community health partnerships. We assert that leadership in a partnership is differentiated from that in a traditional, hierarchical organization in that participation is voluntary and egalitarian and often entails cooperation by organizations with different cultures and agendas. Partnership leaders, accordingly, often lack formal control over members and their actions. Using qualitative analysis of 115 site‐visit interviews of participants in four partnerships in the Community Care Networks demonstration program, we identify and discuss five themes of collaborative leadership: systems thinking, vision‐based leadership, collateral leadership, power sharing, and process‐based leadership. We then discuss the multiple challenges that collaborative leadership faces in a community health partnership.     

Effective Leadership Styles in Family Therapy

Leadership studies in group work have found that leadership style is an important factor in influencing the success of a group. It is vital that family therapists also consider this area and examine their leadership behaviour and its effectiveness in helping the family they see. In this paper a model is presented which links leadership style with the types of families coming for treatment, and to changes in their functioning over time.     

Prospects for Civics Education in Transitional Democracies: Results of an impact study in Romanian classrooms

An impact study was conducted in the 1994/5 and 1995/6 school years with a single cohort of Romanian students (n = 109) who used an experimental civics text in the 7th and then the 8th Forms. The text emphasized critical thinking, dialogue and participatory methods of instruction. The results appear to confirm the results of others that have shown a clear link between instructional methodology and the development of participatory attitudes, or ‘civic behavior’ in students. This relationship is evident even at such an early time in the post-totalitarian period. The study also shows that students in this age group generally become more aware of the role and rule of law, expanding their notions of citizenship beyond that of civility and good manners. This may well be a reflection both of the emphasis of the Romanian civic culture texts, as well as the emerging ability of students to grasp abstract concepts related to the state and governance.