Policy choice as an electoral investment

Traditional approaches to policy choice typically simplify their analysis by ignoring the question of internal constituency politics: constituencies are modelled simply as a single “generic” voter. We explicitly take into account how differential rates of participation and support by various groups in a legislator's constituency will influence the legislator's choice of policy. Viewing the choice of policy as essentially a question of redistribution of welfare, we argue that riskaverse politicians will attempt, not to be evenhanded toward all groups in their constituency, as some scholars have suggested, nor to direct benefits chiefly to swing groups, as has also been hypothesized, but rather, first and foremost, to maintain their current electoral coalition, and in particular, their “primary constituency”.     

Transnational class formation and spatialities of power: the case of elite competition in Bolivia

In this article, I argue that the neoliberal and counter‐neoliberal transitions in Bolivia secured the power of transnational capital within the country. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia's mining elite used neoliberal strategies to undermine the interests of the country's agricultural elite and pursued a marriage of convenience with transnational capital that allowed both to enter state‐monopolized spaces of investment in mutually beneficial ways. In Bolivia's counter‐neoliberal turn, leftist social movements and political parties removed the elite from power but were dependent on transnational firms to help them use the country's natural resource wealth to fund programmes of socioeconomic change. Engaging theories of the transnational class formation, I assert that scholars need to acknowledge how different capitalist class fractions have distinct spatialities of power. In particular, it is necessary to distinguish between global elites that participate in local circuits of accumulation and local elites that participate in global circuits of accumulation.     

Textual accounts,ruling action: the intersection of knowledge and power in the routine conduct of community nursing work

This paper reflects critically on nursing knowledge-based action, its increasingly scientific and text-based manifestations, and the relevance of these practices for power and powerlessness in nursing. Smith's concept of text-mediated relations of ruling (1990. 1999) provides the analytic frame to investigate how nursing case managers articulate public health services and home support for people with disabilities to specific policies, including fiscal policy. An institutional ethnography shows how a nurse's routine text-mediated assessment and exercise of professional judgement establishes a ruling relation with a client (against her intention), as he is “written up” in organizational texts. The analysis of assessment texts spells out how a local perspective is subdued to the ruling discourse. A general argument is made on the basis of this analysis: nurses participate in ruling through the textualization of their knowledge and in the process it dominates their knowing and acting. An ideological construction of nursing knowledge results. The paper suggests what this means for the profession, nurses themselves, and their clients.     

State Government Funding of Research on Science and Technology: A Report on Michigan

Abstract

The question of this paper is: what factors explain the decisions of state governments to fund research on science and technology? The theoretical problem underlying the research question is patronage in the classical sense, that is, the support by one person or group for the activities of another person or group. Three models of explanation are proposed: “budget incrementalism,” a “rational” model, and a power model. The models are evaluated with information from a case study of a state government program in Michigan. The rational model best explains the state's selection of some proposals out of all the proposals submitted by each state university for funding. The power model best explains the overall allocation of program funds among Michigan's public universities. The budget incrementalism model helps explain the considerable stability from year to year in funding both for the entire program and for each university's share.     

Beyond the undertheorized role of organizational power as political power in theories of the state

Critics express concerns over the theoretical pluralism in theories of the state and state power. This paper explores how organizational theories can provide more focus to theories of the state and state power thereby increasing their explanatory power. After summarizing concerns raised by political sociologists over pluralism in theories of the state and state power, the analysis focuses on existing theories of the state that employ concepts from organizational theory to understand the organizational state and its relationship to society. Particular attention is given to the state as a resource extraction and distribution mechanism, the resource dependent relationships among organizational entities inside and outside the state, and the power relations between states and organizations in their environment. This focus brings greater attention to the how groups, corporations, industries, and class fractions exercise power through organizations to influence the policy formation process.     

Building alliances: Defending immigrant rights in rural Oregon

Political participation in the rural United States has often been narrowly defined within the confines of electoral politics. Increasingly, participants in rural US social movements have highlighted the shortcomings of democracy defined purely in terms of electoral politics in favour of a more participatory model of politics that focuses on the social and cultural rights of those who are often formally or informally excluded from the liberal definition of citizenship. This article highlights the process of claiming rights as cultural citizens in a political context where there are efforts through the formal political system—usually in the form of ballot referendums at the state or local level—to further limit the rights of specific constituencies such as gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals or immigrants. A second focus of this article is on the dynamics of solidarity and alliance building between different kinds of social movements acting in concert to push for cultural rights and then formal rights for each other's constituencies. The article specifically seeks to illustrate how two organizations that share quite different constituencies and agendas can effectively collaborate in regional and state-wide campaigns in the rural state of Oregon, while also honestly discussing their differences and difficulties in working together.     

The persistence of cliques in the post‐communist state. The case of deniability in drug reimbursement policy in Poland

This article explores a key question in political sociology: Can post‐communist policy‐making be described with classical theories of the Western state or do we need a theory of the specificity of the post‐communist state? In so doing, we consider Janine Wedel's clique theory, concerned with informal social actors and processes in post‐communist transition. We conducted a case study of drug reimbursement policy in Poland, using 109 stakeholder interviews, official documents and media coverage. Drawing on ‘sensitizing concepts’ from Wedel's theory, especially the notion of ‘deniability’, we developed an explanation of why Poland's reimbursement policy combined suboptimal outcomes, procedural irregularities with limited accountability of key stakeholders. We argue that deniability was created through four main mechanisms: (1) blurred boundaries between different types of state authority allowing for the dispersion of blame for controversial policy decisions; (2) bridging different sectors by ‘institutional nomads’, who often escaped existing conflicts of interest regulations; (3) institutional nomads’ ‘flexible’ methods of influence premised on managing roles and representations; and (4) coordination of resources and influence by elite cliques monopolizing exclusive policy expertise. Overall, the greatest power over drug reimbursement was often associated with lowest accountability. We suggest, therefore, that the clique theory can be generalized from its home domain of explanation in foreign aid and privatizations to more technologically advanced policies in Poland and other post‐communist countries. This conclusion is not identical, however, with arguing the uniqueness of the post‐communist state. Rather, we show potential for using Wedel's account to analyse policy‐making in Western democracies and indicate scope for its possible integration with the classical theories of the state.     

Democracy,civil society and the media in Africa in the Nineties. a discussion of the emergence and relevance of some analytical concepts for the understanding of the situation in Africa

The article argues that the relationship between state and civil society in an African context constitute a dialiectic between a weak state and a weak civil society. The question of the seperation between state and civil society in Africa cannot be understood apart from recent changes in Eastern Europe, with the demise of communism on the one hand, and the rise of neo‐liberalism on the other. Also, the state/society problematic in Africa is linked to the inheritance from the European experience of the nineteenth century, and to the economic restructuring programmes of the 1980s and the 1990s. Civil society in Africa is seen as constituted by a variety of social movements which through their forms of communication tap in on and recreate existing and new collective identities. The article gives special attention to the case in Zimbabwe and the role of the media and civil society there.     

“A Parliament of Man Become a Parliament of Women”: Performing Femininity and the State Through Mediated Civic Ritual in Ontario, 1900–1940

This article analyses representations of bourgeois femininity in early twentieth century newspaper coverage of the ceremonial Opening of the Legislature in Ontario, Canada's largest and most populous province. Building on theories that shed light upon the complex processes of material and symbolic reproduction required to reproduce “the idea of the reality of the state,” I argue that mass mediated representations of women's bodies and fashions during this key civic ritual contributed to state formation. The article demonstrates the ways in which newspaper coverage of a particular type of gendered performance reflected and reinforced an imperialist and patriarchal provincial state‐building project.     

Nationalist competition on the internet: Uyghur diaspora versus the Chinese state media

This article explores the evolving relationship between nationalism and identity formation as it is now facilitated on the internet. Particularly, it examines the implications of nationalist competition between the Uyghur diaspora online community and Chinese state media. Since the onset of the Information Age, each party has sought to influence international perception of the Uyghur people and their traditional homeland Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) by promoting English language representations of Uyghurs and Xinjiang on the internet. Further, this study looks at the question of how each party's engagement in this online nationalist competition affects either positively or negatively its own agenda. The question is investigated through comparative textual analysis of Uyghur diaspora and Chinese state media websites and an interview with a Uyghur diaspora website administrator.     

DEBT BAILOUTS AND CONSTITUTIONS

A demand‐based theory of subnational debt bailouts is presented. It is shown that demand for bailouts among politicians with regional constituencies is affected by revenue sharing arrangements as a bailout implies a shift of taxation toward the federal tier. Automatic revenue sharing may lead to the formation of pro‐bailout coalitions formed by indebted states and states that are net recipients of the revenue sharing arrangement. The model shows that the state debt bailouts approved by the Brazilian Senate prior to the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act were consistent with politicians who maximize the proceeds accruing to their constituencies. (JEL H70, D70)     

Achieving the Optimal Vaginal State: Using Vaginal Products and Study Gels in Uganda,Zimbabwe, and South Africa

Preferences and practices related to the vaginal condition have implications for the use of vaginal HIV prevention products. The authors used qualitative methods to explore narratives relating to the vaginal state amongst women in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe who had previously participated in a biomedical HIV prevention trial. They investigated women's behaviors related to optimizing the vaginal state, experiences and perceptions of the gel's effect on the vaginal state and on penile-vaginal intercourse, women's narratives on male partner perceptions, and how preferences relating to the vaginal state may have interfered with gel use.     

On School‐to‐Work Transition,Career Development Theories,and Cultural Validity

The authors respond to Duane Brown's (2000) claims about the deficiencies of person‐environment, social learning, developmental, and social cognitive theories as templates for studying and promoting the work transition of racial/ethnic minority students. They (a) suggest that the degree to which theories are generalizable across cultures and subcultures is an empirical question, not a matter to be decided by fiat; (b) counsel against the assumption that cultures exert uniform effects on the career behavior of their members; (c) consider certain mischaracterizations of the career theories; and (d) entertain the possibility that work transition may be studied from the perspective of both generic and culture‐specific career theories.     

Education and State Formation Reconsidered: Chinese School Identity in Postwar Singapore

Abstract After WWII, Singapore launched decolonization and the state elites were under strong compulsion to blend the Chinese and other racial communities into a national whole. Chinese schools, equipping students with worldview and cultural-linguistic abilities very different from those at other schools, hindered the completion of this task. The state elites sought to resolve this problem by replacing Chinese schools, but this policy antagonized the Chinese and undermined the legitimacy of the ruling regime. To pacify the Chinese, they switched to uphold Chinese schools as an integral and distinct category in the education system. This strategy, nevertheless, kept Chinese schools culturally compartmentalized and sacrificed the objective of promoting interracial integration. To rectify this situation, the ruling authorities sought to blunt the cultural distinctiveness of Chinese schools by strengthening Chinese teaching in English schools. However, this policy was not very successful, because the Malays – the adversary of the Chinese – resented it. This study demonstrates that state formation is a complicated project containing conflicting tasks, it reminds us state hegemonic strategies always bring about contradictory results and the connection between education and state formation is always dialectical.     

Graffiti

Progress is a term subject to considerable popular appeal, postmodernist criticism, feminist ambivalence, and development debate. In this article, I mark the traces of 'progress' as desires expressed by women working on Zimbabwe's commercial farms and in clothing and food processing factories for what they do not have. The backdrop of the discussion is the historical record concerning women workers in Zimbabwe and representations of 'women' that appear in some of Zimbabwe's contemporary imaginative literatures. The research shows that 'progress' emerges in the factual and fictional accounts of 'women' workers of Zimbabwe as aspirations for altered gender meanings and identity.     

Die Esser-Luhmann-Kontroverse als unbefriedigender Streit um die Grundlagen der Soziologie

The controversy about the foundations of Sociology between Hartmut Esser und exponents of the sociologic systems theory hasn't yet been satisfactorily settled. A basic reason for this point is that there is no systematic analysis from a distant comparative point of view, of what in the conceptions of Esser and Luhmann is meant by ?social“ as their central topic. The consequence is a debate in which both their social theories are discussed in a limited and superficial way. To avoid this kind of limitations and to come to a fruitful dispute, the theories have to be discussed comparatively starting with Esser's ?Model of Sociological Explanation“ and with Luhmann's concept of ?social system“. Starting with such a systematic comparison, not only deficits of the controversy can be detected, but essential problems and errors of the approaches become visible too. From such a starting point something else can be developed: that the controversial positions of their conceptualizing, of what they understand to be the central topic of Sociology, is much less different than is supposed to be. The proposed method can also be used to validate Esser's claim to have integrated in his conception the various theories of Sociology.     

Utopia,Realism and the Search for Politics

If politics is action oriented towards some supposedly desirable future state, how can it survive the apparently radical unpredictability of what is to come? The contemporary challenge is a severe one for all modes of political thinking with a utopian thrust, of which the various strands of the French Left are exemplary. Yet the most natural response-to relate utopia solely to dreams, sharply split from practical politics-is also a deeply problematic one. A comparison of contemporary French thinking with the theories of the 'Third Way' developed by, among others, Tony Blair and Anthony Giddens shows how the problem applies well beyond the traditional limits of the Left. No doubt globalization, technology, individualization, and other trends, are powerful policy challenges, but what is ultimately at stake is the very nature of politics. To build something new on the ruins of Max Weber's famous contrast between the ethics of conviction and of responsibility-such, perhaps, is the question for our times.     

Electoral democracy, revolutionary politics and political violence: the emergence of Fascism in Italy, 1920-21

This study examines the determination of the Italian Fascists' extra‐parliamentary, para‐military, violent strategy. What were the effects of the socialists' political strategy, relying on electoral democracy, on the creation and strategy of the Fascist Action Squads? A comparison among Italy's 69 provinces, based on quantitative and qualitative historical evidence reveals a distinct pattern in the Fascists' violence. They attacked mainly provinces where the Socialists enjoyed the greatest electoral support. This pattern was a product of two historical processes: (a) the threat of the Socialist party to the landlords' economic and political hegemony, and (b) the landlords' tradition of militant anti‐worker organization which culminated in their alliance with the Fascists. The Fascists' struggle for, and takeover of, political power was not an immanent historical necessity. It was first and foremost an anti‐socialist reaction. It was shaped both ‘from below’, by the political power and radicalism of the PSI and the para‐military capacity of the Fascist Squads; and ‘from above’, by the active support the Fascists received from the landlords and the state. Supported by organized landlords and blessed with the authorities' benevolence, the Squads were able to destroy – physically and politically – the legitimately constituted provincial governments of the Socialists. The alliance with the landlords determined the Squads' almost exclusive attacks on Socialist provincial strongholds that constituted the greatest threat to the landlords' interests, while provinces dominated by the ruling Liberal party were excluded from the Squads' path of ‘punitive expeditions’.     

Social order,cultural capital and citizenship*

The question of whether education should be seen as an instrument of social order is an old topic in the social sciences. There exist several theories concerning this question. Two of these rival theories are dealt with in this paper. On the basis of each, historical data have been looked at anew and empirical research has been carried out into the prevailing conditions in the Netherlands. On the basis of the first theory, which was inspired by Bourdieu and which concerns economic, cultural (including educational) and social capital, data on the Dutch history between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries have been reanalysed with respect to the attitude of the diverse sections of the dominant class towards culture in general and the university in particular. Dutch history can be regarded as a national variant of the universal tensions between ‘culture’and ‘knowledge’and between ‘culture’and ‘economics’in human societies. On the basis of Bourdieu's theory it is assumed that under the prevailing social conditions elementary schools will differ in ‘educational status’in the schools market. Empirical investigation confirms this hypothesis. The ‘educational status’of elementary schools mediates (reproduces) almost all of the influence of the childrens’social background on their school career, and reinforces this influence. On the basis of the second theory, which is based on the work of Meyer, Boli and Ramirez, data on the Dutch history in the Enlightenment period have been reanalysed with respect to the rise of mass education. These historical data give substantial evidence to the theory that the construction of the nation-state is of decisive importance for the rise of mass education. Our empirical investigation, however, does not confirm the hypothesis that in the actual situation elementary schools differ in ‘comprehensiveness’. Neither schools nor parents are oriented towards integration. Rather, the contrasts seem to be getting sharper in the 1980s and the schools as well as the social classes seem to be distancing themselves further from each other. Various sections of the dominant class are busy strengthening their position of power in education. In short, the use of schools to constitute citizens does not lessen the pressure towards differentiation. Thus, the theory of Boli and Ramirez explains the rise of mass education, but cannot explain its social class bound form, a fact that can be explained very well by Bourdieu's theory. Therefore the theories of both Bourdieu and Boli and Ramirez should be regarded not as rivalizing, but as complementary.     

Mapping Strategic Engagements: WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND THE STATE

Abstract

Given that all women's movements share a unique relationship to the State – their exclusion from political power, often legally and occasionally constitutionally underpinned, has this exclusion shaped women's movements' strategies, which have had as their general goal women's political inclusion? Some similarities are evident across types of women's movements and across nations. In this article, I discuss the ‘strategic dilemmas’ that women's movements are likely to face, and I attempt to identify the range of strategic responses employed by feminist movements. I begin with a definitional distinction between women's movements and feminist movements, followed by a discussion of women's relationship to the State. I identify similarities across feminist movements in four strategic dimensions: (1) movement autonomy vs state involvement; (2) insider vs outsider positioning; (3) separatist vs coalitional stances; and (4) discursive and influence-seeking politics. These strategic dimensions shape different opportunities for women's movements across different state configurations, offering openings for some types of women's movements that may be unrecognized or unexploited by others. The article concludes with speculations concerning women's movements' strategic action in the context of state reconfiguration.