Deepening democracy?: Demarcation,traditional authorities,and municipal elections in South Africa

Since the end of apartheid in South Africa, municipal elections often have been overlooked. Many analysts have discussed the significance of the national elections, but few have analyzed municipal elections. I argue that local elections are important indicators of democratic consolidation and the deepening of democratic procedures in South Africa. This article examines two issues that shaped recent municipal elections: the electoral demarcation process and the role of the traditional leaders. My analysis provides important lessons for democratic consolidation and representation in South Africa. Given the evidence of higher voter turnout and greater institutionalization of the democratic practice at the local level, traditional authorities may serve as a democratizing function in local politics. Moreover, this article suggests that focus on democratic consolidation should not be limited to the national level of politics. And, finally, the results of this study support the view that consolidation should be considered a continuum.     

Barack Obama's “American” Problem: Unhyphenated Americans in the 2008 Elections*

Objectives. The largest increase of any ancestry group between the 1990 and 2000 Census in the United States were “unhyphenated Americans,” those whites who claimed an “American” or no ancestry. This article measures this group's voting habits in the 2008 elections. Methods. With individual‐level attitudinal data and county‐level voting data from the 2008 primary and 2000–2008 general elections, the analyses use quantitative methods to estimate unhyphenated Americans' voting behavior. Results. Evidence indicates a strong rejection of Obama among counties with high proportions of unhyphenated Americans in both the 2008 primary and general elections. Conclusion. While spatially concentrated in and near Appalachia, unhyphenated Americans' politics are distinctive irrespective of socioeconomic status, religion, and geography, being one of the few groups in which Barack Obama lost votes compared to previous Democratic nominees. Variation in the share of unhyphenated Americans explains more of the difference between 2008 and past elections than variation in the share of African Americans per county.     

“桑梓情谊”的现代转化：费孝通社会理论的情感维度

费孝通的社会理论在社会结构方面更受学界重视，而其中的情感维度尚未得到足够关注。本文试图在费孝通早年有关中国现代化的理论视域中，梳理他有关“桑梓情谊”与“亲属情谊”“乡土工业”“村镇地方团体”之间关系的探索和讨论，进而呈现费孝通社会理论中对于情感的重视。 在费孝通看来，中国的现代化应该以中国传统社会组织为基础来嫁接西方现代技术， 从而推动整个社会从传统向现代的有效过渡。 在此过程中，他尝试将既旧且新的“桑梓情谊”阐释为现代中国社会的情感基础。 文章认为，“桑梓情谊”表征并构造了本地的根源与大社会的流动以及地方与国家的人际关联， 是理解费孝通社会理论之情感维度的关键，对我们思考当代中国现代化建设也有一定的启示。     

The Role of Consultative Democracy under the Constitutional Framework and the Associated Rule of Law*

The logical sequence of China’s state governance is “governing party—consultative conferences—people’s congresses—the people.” The “governing party—consultative conferences” link in the chain involves political consultation through people’s consultative conferences. The “governing party—consultative conferences—people’s congresses” link involves a process of obtaining legitimacy for the Party’s views based on political consultations which are then translated into the national will by the system of people’s congresses. The “people’s congresses—the people” link involves the two-pronged logic of elections and governing the country according to law. The “governing party—the people” link is an illustration of the party’s mass line, which essentially involves social consultation. Consultative democracy usually includes the political consultation in the “governing party—consultative conferences” link and the social consultation in the “governing party—the people” link in the chain, both of which are connected through the system of people’s congresses. This logically determines the inner relations between the Party’s leadership, consultative democracy and the people’s congress form of representative democracy and shapes the institutionalization of consultative democracy. That is, in the process of democratic decision-making, a circular system consisting of “political consultation—legislative consultation—social consultation” is created to guide development of the actual system.     

我国乡镇政权角色和行为的社会学研究综述

本文按照“结构 / 制度”和“过程 / 事件”两种研究取向，梳理了社会学界对1980年以来乡镇政权的角色和行为研究的成果。前者解释了乡镇政权由于考核评分体制的压力而被动产生失范行为的原因；后者以动态的、微观的研究视角分析具体事件过程中乡镇政权的行动者其角色和策略选择。“结构 / 制度”和“过程 / 事件”研究并不矛盾，可以相互借鉴。综合上述研究，文章认为对当前农村税费改革后乡镇政权在“国家”和“农村社会”新型互动关系中的角色和行为的研究也可借鉴上述研究。     

与魔搏斗的人：易卜生作品中的个体性危机

本文把易卜生置于北欧-日耳曼的思想谱系中进行解读，认为“个体性”是理解其剧作的关键。易卜生的剧作和克尔凯郭尔的哲学思想有着互文性的关联，他们都认为严格意义上的宗教信仰的前提就是个体性。同时，在尼采看来，当时的欧洲已经进入“群氓的时代”，“个人”岌岌可危。在这个背景下，易卜生塑造的诸多人物都具有“世纪末”的特点，颓废、烦与空虚成为一种普遍的社会心态。个体性的膨胀将带来严重的社会问题，伴随着躁动不安，有时候会转变成最物质化的享乐主义，但更多时候则表现为否定和破坏，甚至是暴力和毁灭。     

New Labour, Work and the Family

New Labour has put support for the family at the core of its notion of the “strong community”. Across a range of policy areas the Labour government can be seen to be developing a direct and explicit family policy. But what kind of community is the government trying to shape by these policies? On the one hand, Labour appears to support the family as the basis of a more moral, dutiful and cohesive community. On the other hand, the government has given weight to policies that support social inclusion in the community through paid work. This paper examines whether there is a tension in Labour’s social policies between its emphasis on the importance of stable family life and the primacy given to paid work. Are critics like Ruth Levitas right when they argue that the government’s emphasis on paid work devalues, and is unsupportive of, unpaid work, especially caring for children and other family members? Alternatively, can this combination of communitarianisms—community as “stable family” and community as “paid work”—be seen to be marking out some “third way” on the family? We shall show that different aspects of the government’s family policies reflect different perspectives and policy agendas within New Labour and third‐way thinking more broadly. And while recognizing the tensions between work and the family, we shall suggest that they are often overstated and fail to give sufficient weight to the complementary aspects of Labour’s welfare reforms.     

Combatting voter ignorance: a vertical model of epistocratic voting

In light of recent political events, prominent scholars have argued that voters ignorant of the issues should be disqualified from taking part in decisions that have the potential to alter political landscapes. As convincing as this literature is in highlighting voter ignorance, it fails to differentiate between local, state, and federal elections and how levels of political knowledge are often scale-dependent. If the level of median voter ignorance is not uniform from one level of government to the next, then neither can the reforms proposed to combat it. In this article, I adapt Bell’s vertical model of democratic meritocracy to argue that the larger the election, the more complex the issues, the more explicit the epistocratic safeguards needed.     

The digital economy and the future of European welfare states

As a consequence of new technology, labour markets are changing. This article’s central aim is to discuss variations among welfare states in Europe to adjust to changing labour markets. These variations in adjustment suggest that some welfare states are more prepared than others, including their capacity to ensure their sustainable financing. In the years to come, the predicted impact of technological development on labour markets will be huge. Impacts will include stronger “dualization” and new cleavages between “insiders” and “outsiders”. Fewer industrial jobs are to be expected, and service‐sector employment faces a risk of decline due to automation. While the creation of new jobs is likely, it remains to be seen whether these will replace the number of jobs destroyed, leaving the risk that many people whose skills become obsolete will become unemployed in the short as well as the longer term. Furthermore, even if the same number of jobs are eventually created, there will be a period of transition. In the light of this, welfare states will be challenged, not only in how they can finance their activities but also in terms of the threat posed to social cohesion by emerging labour market “winners” and “losers”, with an accompanying higher risk of increasing inequality. The article offers suggestions as to how welfare states may cope with the changes related to the financing of welfare states, and how active labour market policy can be part of the response to help alleviate the expected dramatic changes. Also required is a discussion on the annual average number of hours people will work and how this might be a factor in lower future levels of unemployment.     

The new privatized market: A question of ideology or pragmatism within the Swedish addiction treatment system?

Given its traditions of universal welfarism and social democracy, Sweden had already scored unexpectedly high on New Public Management by the 1980s. Health and welfare services remain primarily tax‐funded, but the production of care is increasingly transferred to a competitive quasi‐market. To what extent can this development be understood in terms of right‐wing governments, and to what extent in terms of other, socioeconomic and pragmatic factors? We examined this question through official statistics on providers of institutional addiction care since 1976, and through the total expenditure and purchases by local‐level municipal social services of interventions for substance users in Sweden in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014. We have analyzed the distribution across public and private providers within the addiction treatment system, and whether national developments and local differences across the 290 municipalities—which bear the major treatment responsibility—can be understood in terms of local‐level political majority, population size, and local wealth. The share of purchased services has remained stable, but the treatment system shows increasing financial turnover and an increasing share of for‐profit providers among producers of purchased care, especially in outpatient treatment. While venture capital enterprises emerged as a new actor, non‐governmental organizations lost out in importance. Bourgeois government correlated with larger shares of purchasing and purchases from for‐profit providers. However, purchasing on a market dominated by for‐profit providers has also become the “new normal”, regardless of ideology, and recent years have shown a reversed effect of left‐wing municipalities purchasing more services than right‐wing governments. Pragmatic reasons also influence local‐level purchasing.     

A Sociological Analysis of the “Strong Central,Weak Local” Pattern of Trust in Government: Based on Three Stage Tracking Data after the Wenchuan Earthquake*

Individual and community social capital have had a significant impact on the gap between trust in higher-level governments and trust in local governments. A model including data from thirty villages gathered after the Wenchuan earthquake discovered that “the size of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) greeting network,” “the size of the official network at/ above township level,” and “trust in fellow villagers” all had a considerable negative effect on the gap between trust in higher-level and local governments. Building individual and community social capital is conducive to establishing a balance between trust in different layers of government; individuals and communities who cooperate with each other have more channels for solving their economic and livelihood issues. Social capital can lead to a significant improvement in the effectiveness of resource matching and utilization involving governments and other sectors of society as well as increasing interaction with government. This can enhance trust in local governments and narrow the gap between trust in higher-level and local governments.     

Xun Zi Holds That Human Nature Is Simple and Uncarved,Not Evil

For more than two thousand years, the chapter of the Xunzi titled “Man’s Nature Is Evil” has labeled Xun Zi as a representative of the doctrine that human nature is originally evil. In fact, Xun Zi holds to a belief in human nature as originally simple and “uncarved.” The ideas of human nature in that chapter conflict with those in the other chapters including “Discourse on Ritual Principles,” “An Exhortation to Learning,” “Discourse on Nature,” “On the Correct Use of Names” and “Of Honor and Disgrace.” According to these chapters, human nature is not evil, but simple and uncarved; its good or evil is undetermined, it may become either good or evil, etc. Furthermore, we can find other evidence, such as the sayings of Xun Zi’s disciples, the Records of the Grand Historian, the doctrines of human nature in the Western Han dynasty, and so on, for the statement that Xun Zi holds that human nature is simple and uncarved.     

Terrorism‐Centric Behaviors and Adversarial Threat Awareness*

This article estimates situational awareness in a diverse collection of police officers with respect to their individual ability to identify nine key behaviors that are indicative of terrorism activity. The selected group of police officers was drawn from state, county, and municipal law enforcement organizations. The terrorist‐centric behaviors were presented to the test group in multicomponent text‐based scenarios that emulate real‐world police events and respondents were instructed to rate each scenario component on an 11‐point Likert‐type suspicion scale. With the exception of terrorist fundraising, law enforcement personnel tended to view all of the terrorist‐centric activities and behaviors as at least “somewhat suspicious.” The activities that could also be associated with “conventional” criminality such as weapons acquisition received higher ratings than those activities more exclusively related to terrorism such as recruiting. We also noted statistically significant differences based on agency type, officers’ assignment (patrol or detective), experience, gender, agency size, and education. Race had no effect.     

修身、成圣与革命：五四时期道德主义者的激进化

五四运动后“救亡”与“启蒙”、“政治”与“文化”的交织与竞逐是我们理解中国近代史的一条线索。既有研究多将恽代英呈现为一个具有道德主义色彩和儒家伦理底蕴的五四知识分子，然而顺着这一思路，我们却难以理解他为何从温和的道德结社转向革命。本文认为，恽代英精神世界中的心学底色，以及他对青年会社会服务经验的借鉴，使他形成了与共产主义者相通的道德认知；道德结社的困境则促使他走向政党运动，以群众运动实践自己的道德理想。恽代英的早期经历为我们呈现了过渡时代具有儒学底蕴的知识分子面对现代政治秩序时的道德困惑，这有助于我们理解中国共产主义革命对德性的强调以及儒家中国的现代转化。     

Research Misconduct Definitions Adopted by U.S. Research Institutions

In 2000, the U.S. federal government adopted a uniform definition of research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP), which became effective in 2001. Institutions must apply this definition of misconduct to federally-funded research to receive funding. While institutions are free to adopt definitions of misconduct that go beyond the federal standard, it is not known how many do. We analyzed misconduct policies from 183 U.S. research institutions and coded them according to thirteen different types of behavior mentioned in the misconduct definition. We also obtained data on the institution’s total research funding and public vs. private status, and the year it adopted the definition. We found that more than half (59%) of the institutions in our sample had misconduct policies that went beyond the federal standard. Other than FFP, the most common behaviors included in definitions were “other serious deviations” (45.4%), “significant or material violations of regulations” (23.0%), “misuse of confidential information” (15.8%), “misconduct related to misconduct” (14.8%), “unethical authorship other than plagiarism” (14.2%), “other deception involving data manipulation” (13.1%), and “misappropriation of property/theft” (10.4%). Significantly more definitions adopted in 2001 or later went beyond the federal standard than those adopted before 2001 (73.2% vs. 26.8%), and significantly more definitions adopted by institutions in the lower quartile of total research funding went beyond the federal standard than those adopted by institutions in the upper quartiles. Public vs. private status was not significantly associated with going beyond the federal standard.     

Technology Spillovers in the Multinational Outsourcing System and Technological Innovation in Recipient Countries

Unlike technology spillovers from FDI or international trade, which operate through a single channel, technology spillovers from multinational outsourcing operate through the combined effect of multiple channels including import spillovers, export spillovers and pure knowledge spillovers. On the basis of the knowledge production function approach, this paper constructs an international R&D spillover regression equation to test the effect of different technology spillover channels on technological innovation in China’s manufacturing industry. Research shows that import spillovers are the only channel to have a significant effect, and this varies from industry to industry. Its significance is low in high- tech industry and medium-high in mid-tech and low-tech industries. Empirical findings indicate that China’s local enterprises are unlikely to achieve technological innovation via “learning from importing” or “learning from communication.”     

The Academic History of Literature and Art as a “ Disease of Interpretation”: On the Paradoxical Nature of Interdisciplinary Boundaries

This article represents an academic response to Professor Zhang Jiang’s article “On Imposed Interpretation” published in Russian in the journal October (no. 1, 2015). It argues that the problems observed by Zhang arise from the reality of Western literary criticism over the past decades, and are associated with the contention between philosophy and philology that had its orgins in the West’s Platonic heritage. In outlining the complex symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines in Western literary history, this article finds that two theoretical motive forces catalyzed the process: the “philologization of philosophy” and the “philosophization of philology.” The writer argues that based on a full understanding of the paradoxical relationship between philosophy and philology, which are distinct from and yet attracted to each other, contemporary literary criticism can adopt the principles of “practical conservatism” and “cutting back of methodologies” as a means of healing the ever worsening “disease of intepreretation” in literary history.     

A Qualitative Study of Non-Affiliated,Non-Scientist Institutional Review Board Members

In addition to outlining criteria for the approval of human subjects research, federal regulations provide guidance regarding local institutional review board (IRB) membership. IRBs are mandated to include “at least one member whose primary concerns are in nonscientific areas” and “at least one member who is not otherwise affiliated with the institution.” Often a single individual serves both of these roles simultaneously. Although there have been calls for increased representation of lay community members on IRBs, little is known regarding their experiences or their perceptions of human subject protections and the IRB process. Using an ethnographic interview approach, this study seeks to gain a perspective from non-affiliated, non-scientist (NA/NS) IRB members about the process in which they participate. Findings suggest a need for clarification regarding whom NA/NS IRB members represent. They also suggest that NA/NS IRB members’ experiences could be improved by an increased show of respect from the IRB chair, other members, and staff; efforts to make participation more convenient for these volunteer members; and training tailored specifically to NA/NS members. Further research on this important and understudied topic is needed to determine best practice and policy recommendations.     

A Study of the Development of Alcohol Use Disorder in Muslim Immigrant Workers in Korea

Abstract

This study examines the process by which Muslim immigrant workers, prohibited by their religion from drinking, develop alcohol use disorder when working in Korea. Participants were seven male immigrant workers who have lived in Korea for 6–10?years and all experienced a change in immigrant status, shifting from registered to unregistered. Utilizing grounded theory devised by Strauss and Corbin, 87 concepts, 24 subcategories, and 10 categories were derived as a result. By converting these categories into a paradigm model, participants moved through stages of “self-monitoring,” “confusion,” “self-despair,” and “daily collapse” as they developed alcohol use disorder, and began to take on an existence as drifters, not settling into life in Korea. Their “learning experiences of drinking to survive turning into experiences of causing social death” is considered a core category. The study’s results suggest that a rehabilitation program for immigrant workers needs to be developed wherein the program not only enables them to reflect on their current existence but also allows them to develop specific coping skills. Future research should be broadened to consider social support mechanisms and viewpoints of other people, including female immigrant workers, and local community members in close contact with Muslim immigrant workers.     

Russian Society Before and After 2012

The Russian elections of 2012 mark a turning point by showing that electoral corruption was an open demonstration of indifference to public opinion, a demonstration of power, and a refusal to “play by the rules.” The new political system that is developing is becoming institutionalized.