Overcoming Old in Age-Friendliness

In this article, we explore views on an age-friendly space in the Netherlands by analysing the responses of older individuals (N = 54) in focus groups and by examining the perspectives around an age-friendly zone in the Netherlands, Parkstad Limburg. We found that a central issue in the wishes for living at a later age are adjustments to envisioned physical limitations that come with the ageing process; this includes adjustments to ensure safety, accessibility and mobility, in order to facilitate older individuals' efforts to stay engaged with the world around them. In their wishes, the older participants constructed ideal dwelling places that closely resembled a senior home, but at the same time they rejected wishing to live in a place that was identified as a senior home. We explain this paradox by the representation of such a space as being for old people, i.e. needy older individuals, which was not how the older participants wished to be identified. We conclude that the conception of age-friendly environments will have to face the difficult challenge of overcoming the association with old age, while simultaneously taking into account adjustments that signify and relate to the ageing process and that seem inescapably tied to oldness.     

The intergenerational education spillovers of pension reform in China

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998–2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization.     

A majorization comparison of apportionment methods in proportional representation

From the inception of the proportional representation movement it has been an issue whether larger parties are favored at the expense of smaller parties in one apportionment of seats as compared to another apportionment. A number of methods have been proposed and are used in countries with a proportional representation system. These apportionment methods exhibit a regularity of order, as discussed in the present paper, that captures the preferential treatment of larger versus smaller parties. This order, namely majorization, permits the comparison of seat allocations in two apportionments. For divisor methods, we show that one method is majorized by another method if and only if their signpost ratios are increasing. This criterion is satisfied for the divisor methods with power-mean rounding, and for the divisor methods with stationary rounding. Majorization places the five traditional apportionment methods in the order as they are known to favor larger parties over smaller parties: Adams, Dean, Hill, Webster, and Jefferson. Received: 5 August 2000/Accepted: 24 October 2001     

The Electoral College and Conflict in American History and Politics

The historical relationship between the electoral college and controversial U.S. presidential elections, specifically with respect to conflict, is examined. The elections of 1800, 1824, 1860, 1876, 1888, 1968, and 2000 are examined. Aside from the 2000 election, there has been essentially no conflict in American history due to the electoral college. The constitutional structure and thinking behind the form of the electoral college is given, with emphasis on the federal aspects of the structure. The current movement to abolish the electoral college in favor of direct popular vote is depicted, along with the arguments against making that change. The conclusion is that we as a nation are far better off to retain the status quo than to make the called-for change.     

Worlds come apart: Systems theory versus critical theory. Drama in the history of sociology in the twentieth century

This article places an episode in the history of sociological theory into intellectual history in the twentieth century. The perspective is chronological as well as contextual. The themes are two theoretical approaches, both embedded in both American and German history, Parsonian Systems Theory and “Frankfurt School” Critical Theory. The chronology shown spanned mainly from the 1940s to the 1960s. The context of the two theories is a period that is crucial in twentieth century history. The protagonists of the two approaches were, in the 1940s, Americans and Germans exiled in the United States. In the 1950s, both approaches were affected by McCarthyism in different ways. The 1960s, however, were the culmination. The dynamics of the two approaches led into a schism which came into the open on the occasion of the 1964 German Sociology Conference in Heidelberg celebrating Max Weber. The article shows the stages in the evolution of the schism, emulating three acts in a drama. The final split was over whether Weber or Marx should be the classic whose oeuvre was to influence sociological thinking today. My aim is to exemplify how these two authoritative approaches in sociological theory, far from escaping the vagaries and vicissitudes of their times, were embedded in twentieth-century history.     

Nichts genaues weiss man nicht!?

What do voters really know about party platforms and how do they perceive the contents? Are there any relationships between party election platforms and electoral behavior? Despite of much research on parties, there are hardly any answers to these questions. If political parties devise programmes in order to influence political attitudes or electoral behavior, it will be necessary that these programmes are read by people. But it seems to be unclear if and how people do so. This article shows clearly that voters don’t know much about party manifestoes. Still, programmes are more important for voters than many people believe. Programmes are also an important factor for electoral behavior. But there is still a lack of data to get evident results.