Suchergebnisse

This article uses a transactions approach to examine the ability of governments to develop and sustain negotiated solutions to major economic challenges. Where actors are embedded in long-term, repeated interaction, have long time horizons, and invest in monitoring and enforcement technologies, effective political exchange is more likely. In good transactions environments, policy bargains will be more easily renegotiated and therefore more flexible and durable. To examine the expectations the author looks to the puzzle posed by events in Australia and New Zealand, 1983-1996. Facing similar macroeconomic crises and with historically similar wage bargaining institutions and levels of union density both elect Labor governments, which then make opposite choices: A negotiated solution emerged in Australia but not in New Zealand. Relying on the secondary literature and interviews with key actors, the author finds support for the transactions approach. Findings here point to ways in which to broaden the study of so-called social pacts.

The question of whether democratic institutions facilitate terrorist activities is a controversial one in current scientific studies of terrorism. Although the ''rule of law'' is an essential institutional pillar of any mature democracy, its direct effect on domestic and international terrorism remains unexplored. Conceiving democratic rule of law as the coexistence of effective and impartial judicial systems and citizens' recognition of the law as legitimate, the author presents a causal explanation in which a high-quality rule of law is considered to dampen ordinary citizens' opportunity and willingness to engage in political violence, protecting democracies from becoming victims of terrorism. Built on a cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 131 countries during the period from 1984 to 2004, the author finds that, ceteris paribus, maintaining a sound rule of law notably reduces the likelihood of any type of terrorist events. In short, the rule of law instantiated in democratic institutions provides a formidable bulwark against terrorism.

Based on a case study of a participatory photography project with a Salvadoran adult literacy program, this article explores some of the challenges and risks that arise when people use cameras to document their lives. The article examines the unanticipated problems the author and participants encountered (i.e. suspicion, timidity, and ridicule), and elucidates how historical and sociocultural factors structured learners' and community residents' responses to photography. Additionally, the article identifies how participants benefited from the project and discusses implications for the use of participatory photography. Drawing on Foucault's analysis of surveillance and power, the author argues that photography is a technology with contradictory potential for social control and surveillance, and for the recovery of marginalized groups' subjugated knowledge. Although participatory photography has many potential benefits, researchers and educators must also anticipate its unintended consequences, attend to ethical considerations, and recognize how this tool is mediated by the sociocultural setting.

This article investigates two issues unexplored in studies of the relationship between panel composition and voting on three-judge panels of the Courts of Appeals: how often will panel composition influence case outcomes, and how has the relationship between panel composition and panel voting changed over time? The author shows that while long stretches of single-party control of the presidency in the first half of the twentieth century often produced a high rate of panels with three judges from the same party, frequent turnover of White House control in the past half century has helped ensure that a majority of panels are composed of at least one judge from each party. The author also presents the first systematic longitudinal analysis of panel composition and judicial behavior, showing that the relationship between the two is a relatively recent phenomenon. These findings have important implications for understanding collegial behavior on the Courts of Appeals.

The author addresses the development and implementation of a service-learning project for an undergraduate course in which students interview immigrant women, incorporate the interviewees' experiences into an analytical paper, and present the findings at the end of the semester. Students are required to use C. Wright Mills's concepts of history and biography by situating the stories told by the women within the larger sociohistorical contexts in which they live. The article proceeds in four sections. The first section provides an overview of service learning and its benefits. This is followed by a detailed description of the service-learning project. In the third section, the author draws from a postclass survey, course evaluations, and her observations to illustrate the ways in which the project enhances student learning and enables students to deepen their understanding of the sociological imagination. The article concludes with suggestions for how the project can be applied in other courses.

The Czech Republic is widely known as 'the least religious' country in the world. However, Czechs might be considered unchurched rather than nonreligious, with various forms of modern New Age spirituality steadily gaining in popularity. The question is, therefore, what is the position of religion - both 'traditional' and 'new' - within a 'non-believing' society? The article commences with a presentation of data taken from two recent sociological surveys on religion, but the author mainly exploits ethnographical research carried out in the medium-sized Czech town of Česká Lípa to address the issue. This research examined both 'old' and 'new' church religion, 'alternative' spiritual outlets, and the religious attitudes of the general population. The author concludes that the traditional religionists of various denominations, followers of the New Age movement(s), and the 'rest' of the population can be seen as three distinctive groups within society and that mutual understanding and acceptance are practically non-existent.

Conscription has been claimed to both increase leaders' propensity to use military force abroad and constrain them from doing so. The author sheds new light on this longstanding controversy by presenting the first time-series, cross-national quantitative analysis of the impact that state military manpower systems (either conscription or volunteerism) have on the initiation of both traditional, belligerent military missions and "operations other than war" (OOTWs). Using negative binomial regression on 166 states from 1946 to 2001, the author finds that states with conscript militaries have a significantly higher propensity to use belligerent military force than states with volunteer armies. Countries that practice conscription are also more likely than countries with volunteer forces to launch a specific type of OOTW, military operations against nonstate actors such as rebels or terrorists. Neither form of military manpower system seems, however, to be significantly related to the initiation of humanitarian military operations.

Government communication is now a large growth industry in many countries. Exactly what is meant by the term, however, varies from author to author. In this paper government communication is conceived as a policy tool or instrument, that is, as a means to give effect to policy goals. Key policy-relevant aspects of the term are examined including differences between the role of government communications in the 'front-end' of the public policy and production processes related to agenda-setting, policy formulation and producer activities as opposed to the 'back-end' of policy implementation, policy evaluation, consumption and distribution. Two case studies of political and policy-related information campaigns in Canada, one dealing with Elections Canada at the federal level and the second with provincial health policy-making in British Columbia, are examined in order to discern patterns in the use of government communication tools useful as a basis for comparative inquiry into Democratic governance.

In this article the author argues the thesis on the necessity of scientific cooperation, interaction and holistic approach for appropriate explanation of the contemporary crisis. It is of great importance to define conceptual frameworks of the crisis, together with main spots in the analysis of the crisis amalgam. The key thesis is the necessity of transformation in the structure of political-economic and social organisation of contemporary states/societies. It includes transformation of completeness of interactions between structures and actions which constitute societal community through reformistic confidence in public policy. With the help of Parsons and Luhmann, the author indicates the structure of contemporary imbalance which he perceives as spillovers of the economic in all other societal subsystems. He displays the thesis of de-democratization of democracy. Finally, he demonstrates the structural character and the means of functioning of the contemporary crisis on the example of Higher education. Adapted from the source document.

Рассматривается период в истории японо-новозеландских отношений (50-60-е годы ХХ века), когда закладывались и укреплялись основы современных торгово-экономических взаимодействий между двумя странами. Исследуется процесс выработки решений политиками, деятельность государственных органов и предпринимателей, направленная на их реализацию. С помощью комплексного подхода обосновано значение этого периода для последующего развития и углубления двустороннего сотрудничества между ведущими государствами Азиатско-Тихоокеанского региона. ; The article deals with the period in the history of Japan-New Zealand relations (50-60-ies of XX century), when the foundations of modern commercial and economic interactions between the two countries were laid and strengthened. The author studies the process of political decision-making, the activities of public authorities and entrepreneurs aimed at their implementation. By means of an integrated approach the author proves the significance of this period for the subsequent development and deepening of bilateral cooperation between the leading countries of Asian-Pacific region.

This article deals with the main propositions of European and German collective labour law. The author carries out an analysis of legislation, in particular the regulations of European Community on these questions and comes to the conclusion about a close link of German and European collective labour law. The author also takes into consideration the role of European Council and decisions of European Court of Human Rights in the regulation of problems connected with the work of trade unions. It is very important in this context to be precise about multifaceted analyses of the terms «right of co-determination» and «right to form a trade union or coalition». These questions are examined with a glance on historical background of appearance, legal regulation on national and European level of these institutions. Special attention is paid on appropriateness of development, potentially ways of refinement and possibility of implementation of these institutes into Russian law.

В статье исследуются особенности правосознания Серебряного века русской культуры. Автор доказывает, что литературная теократическая утопия была интуитивной попыткой преодолеть кризис правосознания. Анализ идей А. Блока, Н. Гумилева, Ф Сологуба и их сопоставление с работами Н. Алексеева, П. Новгородцева, В. Соловьева позволяет показать, что целью и принципом существования этих утопий является закон возмездия.The paper studies the views of representatives of one of the sections of the intelligentsia in the early XX about a theocratic utopian state as a reflection of the level of legal conscience of mass in the researched era. The author proves that the literary theocratic utopia was a subconscious attempt to overcome the legal conscience crisis. The analysis of A. Block's, N. Gumilev's, F. Sologub s ideas in comparison with works by N. Alexeev, P. Novgorodtsev and V. Solovyov lets the author demonstrate that the aim and the existence principle of these utopian is the retribution law.

One of the lesser-acknowledged conclusions from analyses of the third wave of democratization relates to the importance of conservatives to democratic consolidation. Yet we know very little about the way that such interests are incorporated into the formal, institutional arena of parties and elections - especially as relates to business interests. This is true in spite of a clear, cross-regional rise in the presence of entrepreneurs themselves in politics. This article generates and evaluates a set of expectations for the political behavior of business interests. I focus my empirical attention on Mexico, where such interests are historically speaking very well organized internally, and analyze the incorporation of business-association members into the parliamentary delegation of Mexico's three major political parties. I conclude by considering where we might look for the political mobilization of business interests in the interest of establishing a research agenda for the future.(GIGA)

This article analyzes the strategy, criteria & evolution of NATO's enlargement towards the Western Balkans, a topic largely neglected in the research literature thus far. Based on an in-depth discussion of the specific design of NATO's enlargement process, particularly the criteria for accession & the socialization strategy, the author investigates the process up to the present, including the recent accession of Albania & Croatia. He presents the state of affairs for individual countries, including Serbia & Kosovo, & draws conclusions for the future. The author argues that a paradigm change from crisis management to integration has been taking place since 1999. Secondly, he maintains that the war in Georgia in 2008 has triggered a shift of priorities with regard to the Western Balkans. And thirdly, he expects NATO's enlargement strategy in the Western Balkans to slow down in the medium-term, due to the grave structural impediments faced by almost all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Adapted from the source document.