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This essay has sought to bring out salient points that can throw light both upon the vexing problems of cultural transformation and on the related phenomena of economic growth. It has employed concepts that are relatively recent in the social sciences and that when synthesized provide the elements of a theory of social change. The five main concepts are: the city as a cross-cultural type; the functional urban hierarchy; the nodular regional structure; effective social, political-administrative and economic space; economic growth as being part of a more comprehensive process leading to successively higher levels of integration of the social system.From the concept of the city as a cross-cultural type it follows that there are no fundamental distinctions between industrial and preindustrial cities, but both are sharply distinguished from communal village life. All cities have in common a way of life that is characterized by varying degrees of social heterogeneity and cultural vitality, and by inventiveness, creativity, rationality, and civic consciousness. From the fact that cities and the regions related to them may be seen as functionally differentiated and arranged in hieratic fashion it follows that the extent of urban influence will vary with (a) the stage of evolution reached by the hierarchy as a whole, and (b) the relative position of any given city within the hierarchy.Economic growth has to be seen as part of a comprehensive process of cultural transformation. From the ruthless destruction of old social forms no aspect of society will be spared. It is the influences spreading outward from cities that accomplish both the disruption of the traditional social patterns and the reintegration of society around new fundamental values. The city acts as a coordinating, space-creating force, thus achieving the integration of the social order in its spatial dimensions. Intellectuals, administrators and entrepreneurs are the city's agents in this task. With their success in organizing the life of a society, both as a pattern of activities and as a pattern in space, the traditional notion of a city as a place having definite geographic limits will tend gradually to disappear. Just as Karl Mannheim speaks of fundamental democratization as one of the tendencies of our age, so one may speak of fundamental urbanization as the end-result of modern economic growth. With this, the former distinction between town and country will beblurred and will leave a thoroughly organized, impersonal, and functionally rational society to carry on.

International audience ; Since 1992, the international community is trying to arrive at a multilateral agreement on the reduction of emissions for greenhouse gases. A collective decision mechanism was adopted in 1997: An agreement is ratified if and only if it is approved by a coalition gathering more than 55 countries. Moreover, the ratifying industrialized countries - included in the Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol - must represent a total weight corresponding to at least 55% of the total CO2 emissions of the countries of the Annex I, taking the year 1990 as a reference point. One way to study the theoretical power distribution induced by this voting procedure is to compute the Banzhaf index for each country. Firstly, the results of the computation show that the power distribution is largely heterogeneous and benefits to the United-States. Secondly, we analyze the modifications generated by the European coalition scenario in order to prove that the European strategy to act as a single block counterbalanced the US leadership. Finally, we conclude that Japan and Russia benefited from the United States withdrawal in term of a priori decisional power.

International audience ; Since 1992, the international community is trying to arrive at a multilateral agreement on the reduction of emissions for greenhouse gases. A collective decision mechanism was adopted in 1997: An agreement is ratified if and only if it is approved by a coalition gathering more than 55 countries. Moreover, the ratifying industrialized countries - included in the Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol - must represent a total weight corresponding to at least 55% of the total CO2 emissions of the countries of the Annex I, taking the year 1990 as a reference point. One way to study the theoretical power distribution induced by this voting procedure is to compute the Banzhaf index for each country. Firstly, the results of the computation show that the power distribution is largely heterogeneous and benefits to the United-States. Secondly, we analyze the modifications generated by the European coalition scenario in order to prove that the European strategy to act as a single block counterbalanced the US leadership. Finally, we conclude that Japan and Russia benefited from the United States withdrawal in term of a priori decisional power.

International audience ; Since 1992, the international community is trying to arrive at a multilateral agreement on the reduction of emissions for greenhouse gases. A collective decision mechanism was adopted in 1997: An agreement is ratified if and only if it is approved by a coalition gathering more than 55 countries. Moreover, the ratifying industrialized countries - included in the Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol - must represent a total weight corresponding to at least 55% of the total CO2 emissions of the countries of the Annex I, taking the year 1990 as a reference point. One way to study the theoretical power distribution induced by this voting procedure is to compute the Banzhaf index for each country. Firstly, the results of the computation show that the power distribution is largely heterogeneous and benefits to the United-States. Secondly, we analyze the modifications generated by the European coalition scenario in order to prove that the European strategy to act as a single block counterbalanced the US leadership. Finally, we conclude that Japan and Russia benefited from the United States withdrawal in term of a priori decisional power.

SummaryThis paper is motivated by growing interest in noncognitive skills and the fact that many, if not most, economic and social actions require agents to plan ahead. More specifically, we use unique data from the US, UK, and Italy to show that two major classes of social resource—personality and social capital—are significant predictors of planning capacity. We use the data to estimate frontier models that help establish three empirical facts about the ability to plan. First, planning ability depends on a rich array of social resources including networks, the freedom to participate, neighbourhood co‐operation, and trust (social capital) and personality traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Secondly, we provide evidence that some personalities are more efficient than others in using resources to help them plan. Thirdly, we develop evidence of three personality profiles, referred to as 'over‐controlled', 'resilient' and 'under‐controlled,' and highlight the fact that these three profiles benefit differently from various aspects of social resources capital. We discuss these findings and conclude that a wide range of economic policies designed to facilitate individual planning may need to allow for heterogeneities in social resources if they are to be successful.

The article analyzes the essence and main characteristics of political integrity and political order. It presents various interpretations and research positions related to the justification of the latter. The theoretical and methodological basis of the work is domestic and foreign studies of political scientists, sociologists and lawyers. The paper uses ideological (phenomenological, sociocultural, systemic, etc.), general scientific (analysis, synthesis, analogy, etc.), as well as concrete scientific (historical-political, the method of political modeling) approaches and methods. The authors argue that in the context of the interrelationship of state, legal, political integrity and order, it is necessary to use the concept of "political and legal order" as more adequate, since the latter allows to comprehensively present and investigate the institutional and normative organization of society, based on political, legal norms, ideas, values and ideals, that ensures the orderliness of relations and reflects the specifics and patterns of development of a particular socio-cultural system.

1: Introduction -- 1.1. Rational Choice -- 1.2. The Theory of Social Choice -- 1.3. Restrictions on the Set of Alternatives -- 1.4. Structural Stability of the Core -- 2: Social Choice -- 2.1. Preference Relations -- 2.2. Social Preference Functions -- 2.3. Arrowian Impossibility Theorems -- 2.4. Power and Rationality -- 2.5. Choice and Functions -- 3: Voting Rules -- 3.1. Simple Binary Preference Functions -- 3.2. Acyclic Voting Rules on Restricted Sets of Alternatives -- 3.3. Manipulation of Choice Functions on Finite Sets of Alternatives -- 3.4. Restrictions on the Preferences of Society -- 4: The Core -- 4.1. Existence of a Choice -- 4.2. Existence of a Core in Low Dimensions -- 4.3. Convex Preferences -- 4.4. Non-Convex Preference -- 4.5. The Necessity of the Dimension Constraint -- 5: Local Cycles -- 5.1. Voting Cycles in Dimension v(?)—1 -- 5.2. Implementation of Choice Functions in Dimension v(?) — 1 -- 5.3. Cycles and the Stability Dimension -- 5.4. The Stability Dimension v*( ?) -- 6: Structural Stability -- 6.1. Plott Symmetry Conditions -- 6.2. Structural Stability of the Optima Set -- 6.3. Structural Instability of the Optima Set -- 6.4. Stability of the Core and of Cycles -- 7: Classification of Voting Rules -- 7.1. The Stability and Instability Dimensions -- 7.2. Voting Rules in Low Dimensions -- 7.3. Majority Rule with an Infinite Electorate -- 8: Democratic Theory -- 8.1. Liberalism and Populism -- 8.2. Populist Democracy and Institutionalism -- 8.3. Liberal Theory and Electoral Politics -- 8.4. Preferences and Beliefs -- Glossary of Concepts -- Index of Authors -- Index of Terms and Definitions.

Steven Lukes has recently reissued his famous book on power, Power: A Radical View. He now admits that the concept of power that he used in his original (1974) book is flawed, but he still wants to defend the position that he advanced there. I argue that he is right to regard his concept of power as flawed, but that admitting this undermines his argument. I conclude that he can rescue his argument by realising that he is not, in fact, using a concept of power at all.