Narrating political opportunities: explaining strategic adaptation in the climate movement

This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures.

     

Competition-induced punishment of winners and losers: Who is the target?

We elicit punishment after competition. Our experiment creates a setting in which winners and losers are assigned in a pairwise speed-based calculation task. As in Abbink and Sadrieh’s (2009) joy-of-destruction game punishment is executed by burning parts of another participant’s endowment. We manipulate the target of punishment to investigate whether it is driven by discrimination of the direct opponent, the outgroup or by joy of destruction. Furthermore, we analyze the role that the clarity of victory or defeat plays for punishment after competition. Our findings suggest that losers face punishment from particularly dominant winners and—to a lesser degree—from particularly frustrated losers. Winners face undifferentiated punishment from all sides. Our results have implications for the prevention of destructive behavior within organizations which use competitions in order to induce effort.     

Pensioners' political parties in Israel

Involvement and participation of older persons in politics and political systems reflect the extent to which they are integrated into their society. During the last two decades, political parties of pensioners have emerged in a number of countries, including Israel, and have run candidates in national elections. If only 10% of those aged 65 and older had voted for pensioners' parties in Israel, they would have qualified for two "pensioners" seats in the Knesset (Israel's parliament). However, they suffered complete defeat, as has been the case in most other countries. This article first describes the phenomenon of pensioners' political parties in Israel, examines the circumstances around their emergence, and presents their goals. Second, it identifies and analyzes the causes for their political defeat. Third, it discusses alternatives to political parties to promote the interests of the older population. Finally, implications for further research are raised.     

Occupying Subjectivity: Being and Becoming Radical in the Twenty-First Century: Introduction

Abstract

Critical theory has long concerned itself with the exploration of radical political subjectivities, of the various ways in which social movements, revolutionary classes and everyday communities reshape themselves and their relations in order to survive, transform or defeat oppressive forces. This special issue brings together a series of articles examining different forms (and spaces) of contemporary radical subjectivities, situating them in a global context. This short editorial introduction highlights the major themes of the special issue (placing particular attention on the relationship between theory and the subject), and outlines the eight pieces that follow.     

Condorcet efficiencies under the maximal culture condition

The Condorcet winner in an election is a candidate that could defeat each other candidate in a series of pairwise majority rule elections. The Condorcet efficiency of a voting rule is the conditional probability that the voting rule will elect the Condorcet winner, given that such a winner exists. The study considers the Condorcet efficiency of basic voting rules under various assumptions about how voter preference rankings are obtained. Particular attention is given to situations in which the maximal culture condition is used as a basis for obtaining voter preferences. Received: 4 February 1998/Accepted: 13 April 1998     

Conflict ecology: Examining the strategies and rationales of lobbyists in the mining and energy industries in Australia

This article develops a new framework, conflict ecology, for predicting and critiquing specific lobbying strategies. This framework is applied in an analysis of interviews conducted with senior lobbyists from the mining and energy sector in Australia, which has proven to be especially effective in opposing and defeating new taxes and legislation intended to reduce carbon pollution. This analysis shows that an industry suffering a legitimacy gap will likely possess an intransigent or resistant worldview. Practitioners directing these campaigns see their role as ethically justified and necessary to defeat oppositional publics. This worldview gives rise to power strategies that reward allies and punish adversaries, with emotive and targeted issues communication used to apply further pressure to the legislature as part of outsider lobbying campaigns. Ultimately, this study considers the extent to which these lobbying strategies serve communitas ends proposed in the theory of the fully functioning society.     

British Jewry and the fight against the international white‐slave traffic, 1885–1914

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Jews from eastern and central Europe became involved in the white‐slave traffic, as migratory prostitution was called at the time. Jews in Britain, which was a point of trans‐shipment for the major vice markets in South America and South Africa, helped to lead an organized international movement to defeat the traffic and thereby to deny this issue to anti‐semites.     

Parenting in poverty: Perspectives of high-risk parents

Parents considered high risk by child protection services commonly are striving to raise children in poverty but are identified as requiring improved parenting skills. Parent perceptions of their own needs are typically not sought or elicited. This longitudinal study of 35 parents over 18 months garnered 115 in-depth interviews focusing on parent views regarding barriers to effective parenting. Analysis indicated that parents uniformly identified poverty as the primary barrier to their capacity to provide adequate care for their children. Themes elicited indicated that financially parents were living precariously close to margins of defeat. Parents accepted personal responsibility for their economic and parental failings, equating no income with bad parenting. Depression and despair associated with poverty were acknowledged to impair parenting and increase self-doubt about parenting capacity. Experiences with social services generally led to low expectations of parenting assistance. The need for improved aid for impoverished parents is discussed.     

Recognizing majority-rule equilibrium in spatial voting games

It is provably difficult (NP-complete) to determine whether a given point can be defeated in a majority-rule spatial voting game. Nevertheless, one can easily generate a point with the property that if any point cannot be defeated, then this point cannot be defeated. Our results suggest that majority-rule equilibrium can exist as a purely practical matter: when the number of voters and the dimension of the policy space are both large, it can be too difficult to find an alternative to defeat the status quo. It is also computationally difficult to determine the radius of the yolk or the Nakamura number of a weighted voting game.We are grateful to Norman Schofield and an anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions.The first author was supported in part by a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (ECS-8351313) and by the Office of Naval Research (N00014-85-K-0147). The third author was supported in part by a Presendential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (ECS-8451032).     

从伊拉克到阿富汗：美国反恐战略评估

奥巴马执政以来,美国反恐战争重心转移到阿富汗。与小布什不同,奥巴马反恐面临三重挑战,即振兴国内经济、结束反恐战争以及应对新兴大国群体的崛起。阿富汗战争久拖不决,奥巴马增兵重蹈前苏联覆辙,陷入泥潭而难以自拔,伊拉克战争的混乱局面继续在阿富汗延续,成为消耗美国力量的另一大困局。2010年中期选举败北之后,奥巴马的权力基础被削弱。在反恐战争第二个十年,阿富汗战争与美国经济的衰弱一道将继续加速美国在全球的衰落。     

Towards a multicultural democracy: some thoughts on the recent Indian elections

Abstract The surprising defeat of the BJP in May's elections is evidence of longterm trends in India's politics. Welcomed by the diaspora with mixed feelings, the results inspire confidence in India's progress towards a mature multicultural democracy. The elections demonstrate that India is a far more diverse and pluralistic country than previous elections might have suggested and that Indian democracy successfully mirrors the country's ideological spectrum. In place of Hindu nationalism and the religious card, one finds a unique political leadership drawn from the country's minorities and shaped by India's synthetic culture.     

POLITICAL INFLUENCE AND REGULATORY POLICY: THE 1984 DRUG LEGISLATION

This paper applies a positive theory of legislation to explain the development of the 1984 Drug Price Competition Act and the Patent Term Restoration Act. Specifically, it examines why regulatory reforms prior to 1984 were stalemated, and why the 1984 legislation was enacted. Results show that prior to 1984, members of the key congressional committees had preferences in which the proposed bills could not beat the status quo. However, changes in subcommittee membership in the House combined with a change in the majority party in the Senate created a situation in which the 1984 legislation could defeat the status quo.     

Heterogenistics and morphogenetics

Conclusion The epistemological restructuring goes much beyond the controversy between the relativists and the universalists. It makes us realize that the basic principle of biological, social and some physical processes is increase of heterogeneity and symbiotization. It requires us to see heterogeneity not as deviation from the average but as indispensable components in the system; not as source of conflict but as source of symbiosis and mutual benefit. Furthermore, it goes beyond the concept of division of labor and considers heterogeneity as interactive network which contributes to further heterogenization, symbiotization and cultural change instead of maintenance of the status quo. It sees heterogeneity not as an instrument of evolution which is assumed to have a universal direction, but as a producer of unpredetermined directions of evolution. It sees culture or elements of culture as generating new needs and goals rather than regarding them as internally satisfactory. And it prompts us to develop a science of finding symbiotic combinations among alternative ways the heterogeneous elements can select, rather than watching unsymbiotic combinations defeat themselves.     

FERAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ATLANTIS PROBLEM: THE 'HOAX' TRICK AS DISCURSIVE PATHOLOGY

This article uses a case study of a TV programme, Atlantis Uncovered, an archaeological programme debunking popular ideas of Atlantis and the ancient past, as an instance of a discursive paradox, or discursive pathology, in which defenders of traditional canons of scholarship (science and rationality) decide they must go feral, fighting fire with fire, using the illogical and irrational methods of thought they attribute to what they perceive as the enemies of reason in order to defeat them. The devices used in the archaeological programme are compared with the devices used in a more famous and influential ‘hoax’, Sokal's so-called ‘spoof’ of postmodernism published in the journal Social Text, used to discredit ‘postmodernism’ and cultural studies. The two episodes, with all their differences, suggest that whether these tactics are successful or not, they contradict the core beliefs in rationality and science of their protagonists, illustrating instead the ‘postmodern’ decline in intellectual values that they claim to deplore.     

'What Matters to Me is not What You're Talking About' - Maintaining the Social Model of Disability in 'Public and Private' Negotiations

Moving from a medical to a social model of individual disability is a political process of change with implications for understanding of and relationship to borders between individual, social life and political participation. This process has echoes in the conceptual experience of change through movement for women's liberation and gay liberation. Conceptualisation of a public/private divide has been identified in both these movements, and can also be used productively to further the use of a social model of disability. In this way, public change in status and participation can be linked to private defeat of barriers to public and political participation. This article identifies some uses of conceptualising public and private as a way of locating service provision within a social model of disability.     

Children and Watergate: Some Neglected Considerations

Abstract

Existing theories of political socialization and discussions of the impact of Watergate on children which have been based upon them have over-emphasized affective orientations and have paid comparatively little attention to political cognition. Data are presented which suggest that this has resulted in not only incomplete theories of Watergate's influence on youth but has perpetuated a limited theoretical approach to political socialization. The approach has been consistent with the continuation of educational practices which defeat their own purpose.     

What shall we do with the cyclic profile?

A Condorcet method for a single-seat preferential election is defined by the way it handles cases without a Condorcet winner. Such cases are described in terms of cyclic candidate triples. Sometimes election theory considers intricate patterns of intersecting cyclic triples. In practice, cyclic triples are rare, but they may be created as part of strategic voting against a Condorcet winner. This strategy, often called burying, is difficult to apply, but critics will detect a missed opportunity and regard it as a punishment for honest voting. A new Condorcet method, SV, lets a cyclic triple be won by the candidate with the smallest opportunity to defeat a Condorcet winner this way. A new geometric model allows visual comparison of the opportunities under various methods.     

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.     

Immigrants,blacklegs and ‘unpatriotic employers’: The London stonemasons’ strike of 1877–78

This case study gives a detailed account of this labour struggle with special emphasis on the importation and immigration of workmen from North America and the Continent as well as from England and Scotland to London during the dispute. Placed in this international perspective and in the context of German immigration to Britain, particular consideration is given to stonemasons coming from Northern and Southern Germany. While a considerable number of the workers who arrived in the British capital, in solidarity with the men on strike, refused to work for the employers and left London aided by the stonemasons’ union, a majority acted as strike‐breakers and was thus instrumental in bringing about the defeat of the local workers in their struggle for shorter hours and higher wages.     

新形势下中东热点问题与大国中东政策

中东局势依然紧张：伊拉克局势并未得到根本好转；巴以重启和谈，但和平基础非常脆弱；美国与伊朗对抗加剧；黎巴嫩局势不稳；库尔德工人党袭击土耳其；阿拉伯国家极力自保。因此，布什政府虽被迫调整了其中东政策，但拒不承认失败，欧俄等世界大国和大国集团也积极介入中东事务。