Voluntary organisations and local government: lessons from a Danish case study

The purpose of this article is to analyse the changing relationships between local government and voluntary organisations in the decentralised Danish welfare state within the field of social policy. Here major changes in public discourse have brought voluntary organisations more to the forefront in a welfare state model whose distinct public character might be fading. However, little attention has been devoted to potential problems resulting from intensified co-operation. The article explores these issues using evidence from a case study of the links between public authorities and seven voluntary organisations in the city of Aalborg in northern Jutland. This case study raises the question of whether voluntary organisations, as argued in public debate, can generally be regarded as the antithesis of the bureaucratically and paternalistically organised public social services. Rather, they seem to be co-actors, actively constructing new paradigms and practices in social policy, that cannot be captured in conventional dichotomous models. This suggests that the public bureaucracy versus altruistic voluntary organisation, or distinctions usually made between professional and volunteer motives, may be of limited use. The author wishes to thank Per Selle for his helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to Catharina J. Kristensen and Claus B. Olsen for their help with the English version.     

Contextualising Fred Wander’s The Seventh Well

Between East and West: The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. Robert J. Brym with the assistance of Rozalina Ryvkina, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration, edited and with an introduction by Howard Spier. London: Macmillan and New York: New York University Press, both in association with the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1994. 142 pp. Tables. Appendices. Illus. Name Index. Subject Index. £35.00 hardcover; $30.00 hardcover; $18.50 paperback.

A Jewish Ambassador at the Kremlin Court. Mordechai Altshuler, Yitshak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski (eds.), Sovetskiye evrei pishut llye Erenburgu 1943–1966 (Soviet Jews Write to llya Ehrenburg 1943–1966). Jerusalem: The Centre for Research and Documentation of East‐European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1993. 539 pp. Bibl. Name and Subject Index. Paperback.

An Encouraging Start. Yakiv Suslensky, Spravzhni heroi: pro uchast hromadian Ukrainy u riatuvaniiyevreiv vid fashystskoho henotsydu (True Heroes: The Part Played by Ukrainian Citizens in Rescuing Jews from the Fascist Genocide). Ed. I. F. Kuras et al. Foreword by Leonid Kravchuk. Kiev: Tovarystvo ‘Ukraina’, 1993. 152 pp. Photographs. (Hromadiany Ukrainy—pravednyky svitu 1 (Ukrainian Citizens—Righteous of the World, Series, no. 1)). Paperback. Printrun 25,000. ISBN 5–87168–026–7.

The ‘Rational Core’ of Nazism. Ernst Nolte, Streitpunkte. Heutige und künftige Kontroversen um den Nafionalsozialismus. Berlin/Frankfurt (Main): Propyläen, 1993. 493 pp.

Volume on Hungarian Holocaust Updated. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, revised and enlarged ed., 2 vols. New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Boulder, Co: Social Science Monographs, 1994. 1,486 pp. Illus. Chronology. Index. $310.50; £155.00 hardcover. (Distributed by Columbia University Press.)

Gray Dawn or Swan Song?. Charles Hoffman, Gray Dawn: The Jews of Eastern Europe in the Post‐Communist Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. 349pp. Index. Selected bibliography. $25.00 hardcover.     

Whither pogromshchina – historiographical synthesis or deconstruction? 1

This historiographical discussion piece on the implication of Simon Petliura and the Directory in the pogroms during the ill‐fated struggle for Ukrainian independence between 1917 and 1920 focuses on four core issues. Firstly, it suggests that those committed to the current Ukrainian nation‐building agenda face a crucial paradox: for the Directory’s endeavours to qualify as a precedent in nation building, one has to talk up its ability to influence the developments in the territory under its control. Yet to get Petliura and the Directory off the hook as far as the pogroms are concerned, one has to talk down their ability to influence those same developments. Secondly, it fundamentally questions the juxtaposition of “Ukrainian” and “Jewish” approaches on which Henry Abramson’s claim to have achieved a new synthesis between these two positions hinges. Thirdly, it demonstrates just how crucial conceptual transparency is for any useful debate on the significance of antisemitism in this context. Finally, it revisits the contention that it is a priori implausible to hold Petliura and his colleagues responsible because their attitudes towards Jews were generally positive as demonstrated not least by their commitment to Jewish autonomy rights.     

Knowledge management and the missing tradition - on the role of tradition,knowledge and competencies in industrial production

The ideas of knowledge management, competence strategy and learning organisation have been dominating debates on organisational behaviour and management recently. This article argues that most contributions to this debate are based on a quite naïve conception of knowledge and competencies. One important problem is the neglect of tradition. Through an analysis of the conventional views of knowledge and competencies and through a rehabilitation of tradition the article shows how tradition can provide us with another conception of knowledge management and related ideas. Two case studies from small Danish manufacturing companies are presented in order to show how tradition functions even in the most modem organisations.     

The ‘Failed State Index’ Offers More than Just a Simple Ranking

The role of indicators to measure trends in every area of interest is increasing. Especially in the field of politics and sociology, where modeling based on multiple indicators typically is difficult, multi-indicator systems call for attention. Multi-indicator systems are most often the first step to derive a ranking indicator. Correspondingly there is a high interest in how to transform multi-indicator systems into a one-dimensional metric scale. The scientific discipline of decision support systems provides many well-known techniques, classical examples are PROMETHEE, ELECTRE, DEA or the simple TOPSIS. The mathematical technique is pretty sophisticated, therefore the simplest variant, namely the weighted sum of indicators plays its role too, just because of its simplicity and transparency. Although the need of a derivation of a one-dimensional scale is evident, we argue that there is an interim step, between the multi-indicator system and the ranking index, provided by simple elements of partial order theory. This interim step bears useful information too and in this paper we show how and which useful additional information can be derived. We derive for example a bias-free sensitivity study, where the indicator “chronic and sustained human flight” turns out to be the most important indicator within the multi-indicator system of 12 indicators, which are the basis of the Failed State Index.     

The will to sanction: How sensitive are caseworkers to recipients’ responsibility when imposing sanctions on non-compliance in a welfare-to-work programme?

The activation trend in social policy entails that caseworkers on the frontlines of the welfare state are expected to decide ‘reasonable’ activation requirements for clients and when and how non-compliance should be sanctioned. This study investigates how caseworkers form judgements about their clients’ personal responsibility when activation requirements are violated and how their judgements about responsibility matter for the sanctions they impose. We find that caseworkers are sensitive to personal responsibility, varying the motivation for not fulfilling the activation requirement from a case where the client has less control (circumstances) to one with more control (choice) more than doubles sanctions.     

Theorizing theory: Invitation to a broader conversation about ‘theory’ in sociology

‘Theory’ is a seminal term in sociology. Sociologists tend to ask that articles, chapters and monographs are ‘theoretical’, ‘develop theory’ or ‘make a theoretical contribution’. Yet, as demonstrated in Gabriel Abend’s 2008 article ‘The Meaning of ‘Theory’, it is generally unclear what sociologists mean when they talk about theory. Abend distinguishes seven different meanings sociologists tend to impute to ‘theory’ and argues that no single definition can usefully capture these substantively different meanings. Counter to Abend, we propose and defend a minimal and versatile theory of theory, which does capture the important common denominators in sociologists' various uses of the term theory. The major strengths of our proposal are that it enables informed and synthetic discussion and fosters reflexivity about differences and similarities between different types of theory. Our minimal theory of theory thus serves as an invitation to a broader conversation about theory in sociology.