Political Opportunity and Nested Institutions

Scholars use the concept of 'political opportunity structure' to explain how the political context affects the differential development and influence of ostensibly similar movements. Although the concept promises to become an important analytical tool for comparative studies, to date it is underspecified and undertheorized. It also faces new challenges in this era of increased transnational activism and more extensive scholarly recognition of activist ties across borders. In this paper I argue that assessing opportunity by looking exclusively at national political structures neglects the important role that international factors, such as alliances and transnational movements, play in constraining both states and their challengers. I begin by reviewing the literature on opportunity and drawing a synthesis between it and the literature on domestic influences of international politics. I argue that political institutions are nested in a larger international context, and that the tightness or looseness of that nesting affects the range of possible alliances and policy options available within states. I examine this framework by looking at New Zealand's decision in 1984 to prohibit port visits by nuclear-powered ships or ships that might be carrying nuclear weapons. I conclude by calling for more research that recognizes the interplay of national opportunities and international structures.     

Welfare states and inequality: Institutional designs and distributive outcome

Comparative studies on inequality have suffered from severe methodological problems, which mean that issues related to the causes of cross-national variation in inequality remain unresolved. In comparative welfare state research, the preoccupation with expenditure data has also meant that the welfare state itself has remained a black box. By examining new comparative data on social policy institutions and income inequality among different population groups, this study provides a more precise empirical basis for evaluating different, and divergent, theories on the welfare state and equality. Three cases will be used as illustrations: family policy and child poverty, unemployment benefits and poverty among working aged, and old-age pensions and poverty among the elderly. The results suggest that the key for understanding the effect of the welfare state lies in the institutional design—in the level and distribution of social rights. The importance of the welfare state for social stratification deserves to be given more attention by sociological research in the future.     

Reflexivity: The role of embedded social position and entrepreneurial social skill in processes of field level change

We examine the micro-foundations of field-level organizational change by analyzing the role of social skill and social position in individuals. Our core argument is that differences in an individual's social skill and in their social position produce different degrees of reflexivity or awareness of existing social arrangements. We demonstrate how the interaction of social skill and social position produce distinct types or categories of reflexivity, each of which contributes to institutional stability or change.     

Party to inequality: Right party power and income inequality in affluent Western democracies

Much social science suggests that income inequality is a product of economic and demographic factors and recent work highlights the influence of Leftist politics in affluent Western democracies. But, prior research has neglected rightist politics. We examine the impact of cumulative right party power on three measures of income inequality in an unbalanced panel of 16 affluent Western democracies from 1969 to 2000. We find that cumulative right party power significantly increases inequality with effects comparable to other established causes. Left party power has less influence than the right on the Gini coefficient and the 90/50 ratio but a larger influence on the 90/10 ratio. Union density is insignificant after controlling for right party power. Right party power partly channels through and partly combines with government expenditures to affect inequality. Temporal interactions show that right parties became more influential after 1989 while left parties became less effective. Supplementary analyses suggest that a component of right party power's effects occurs through labor market inequality prior to taxes and transfers. Sensitivity analyses reveal that the results are robust to a wide variety of alternative specifications and operationalizations and do not depend on the inclusion of the U.S. in the sample. Our results inform debates about the sources of inequality and related sociological theories regarding class, politics, the state and the economy.     

新疆区级行政事业单位资金及资产内部控制的实证分析

文章以问卷调查的形式,运用实证分析的方法对我区区级行政事业单位资金及资产内部控制的业务招待费、会议费、差旅费、固定资产等五个业务循环中,各项控制活动与具体控制目标的相关程度进行了考察。并依据研究结果,对存在的问题及产生问题的原因进行了分析和探讨,并就如何改善和加强我区区级行政事业单位资金及资产内部控制提出了具体的对策性建议。     

20世纪90年代以来国内高校德育研究现状述评

20世纪90年代以来，国内高校德育研究非常活跃，为了全面了解高校德育研究现状，依据所检索和查阅到的资料，对此期间我国高校德育的研究现状和成果进行了分析和述评。     

从制度论、危机论到发展论——论西方政党创生理论的变化

政党在创生、起源时的差异在很大程度上影响了该国政党组织的演变和政党制度的建立,制度论、危机论、发展论等几种重要的西方政党起源理论都是从不同的角度对政党产生的动力和制度基础做出了合理的分析,同样具有理论上的自洽性和概念上的明晰性,可以作为我们分析的理论工具,本文对这几种理论进行一个较为详细的述评.     

The Social Construction of the Profession of Probation Counsellor: An Analysis of the Instrumental and Institutional Framework

The purpose of this article is to develop an interpretative model regarding the institutional and instrumental frameworks of the social construction of the profession of probation counsellor in N.E. Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The research was conducted after a major penal reform in both countries, which significantly changed the function of the probation system, which is very new. The research was conducted through individual and group interviews with the probation counsellors and other people involved in applying non-custodial punishments. The data analysis starts from the Grounded Theory method. The most important results have targeted the modifications of the regulatory frameworks of probation, a fact which leads to a series of problems related especially to the inadequacies between the different normative frameworks applied, the case overloads and the partial inadequacy of the models of practice based on the experience of other states (especially the U.K. and Norway) to the Romanian and Moldavian reality. The research highlights a mixed model of probation with elements of restorative justice, which interferes with the retributive model, and with the model of justice centred on human rights.     

Discourses of Mobility: Institutions,Everyday Lives and Embodiment

This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature on the politics of mobility, revealing the ways in which the governing of mobility intersects with everyday mobile lives. We suggest that dominant and enduring institutional discourses of mobility, which are pervaded by a privileging of individualised automobility, can be conceptualised around a framework of morality, modernity and freedom. By examining everyday discourses of mobility in this context we highlight the ways in which these discourses reflect and resist normative sets of knowledge and practices. It is argued that by emphasising the everyday and mundane in an analysis of discourses of mobility, and acknowledging their situatedness in prevailing normative discourses, we are then able to focus on how movement is a social and cultural practice in constant negotiation and (re)production.     

Ethics in Operations Research and Management Sciences: A never-ending effort to combine rigor and passion

From practice to theory, we introduce a state-of-the-art stream of papers that promotes an inclusive and complementary consideration of both analytical methods and ethical values in Operations Research and Management Sciences (OR/MS). We suggest a perspective according to which the consideration of ethics in OR/MS constitutes an enrichment of our discipline as well as a contribution to a more sustainable future in general.