Suchergebnisse

Ruparelia, Sanjay, Reddy, Sanjay, Harriss, John and Corbridge, Stuart, editors. 2011: Understanding India's New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? London and New York: Routledge. xv + 269pp. £82.97 hardback, £25.51 paperback. ISBN13: 978-0-415-59810-1 hardback. ISBN13: 978-0-415-59811-8 paperback. ISBN13: 978-0-203-82960-8 ebook.

This study suggests that the mass media serve as socializing agents by providing direct linkage to media and contents which are essential for the development of political values, and by contributing to the structuring of social contexts in which adolescents may exercise such value orientations and reinforce ties with primary socializing agents.

This paper plots the recent changes in the uses of public space in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is argued that the economic and social changes in contemporary Vietnam have paved the way for a dramatic transformation in the ways in which streets, pavements and markets are experienced and imagined by the populace. The efflorescence of individual mobility, street-trading and public crowding around certain popular events has led to the emergence of a distinct public sphere, one which is not immune from state control and censure but which is a flagrant rebuttal of the state's appeal. The immediate struggles over space herald a new discursive arena for the contest over Vietnamese national imagery as represented in cultural heritage and public space, memorials and state-controlled events which the public are rapidly deserting. The paper concludes by suggesting that the everyday cultural practices that have created a bustling streetlife in urban Vietnam will inevitably provide the vitality and spectacle for the destabilisation of state control in a struggle for meanings in public space.

This paper plots the recent changes in the uses of public space in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is argued that the economic and social changes in contemporary Vietnam have paved the way for a dramatic transformation in the ways in which streets, pavements and markets are experienced and imagined by the populace. The efflorescence of individual mobility, street-trading and public crowding around certain popular events has led to the emergence of a distinct public sphere, one which is not immune from state control and censure but which is a flagrant rebuttal of the state's appeal. The immediate struggles over space herald a new discursive arena for the contest over Vietnamese national imagery as represented in cultural heritage and public space, memorials and state-controlled events which the public are rapidly deserting. The paper concludes by suggesting that the everyday cultural practices that have created a bustling streetlife in urban Vietnam will inevitably provide the vitality and spectacle for the destabilisation of state control in a struggle for meanings in public space.

This article deals with the Arab Spring as a process of deep political change in the Arab world, previously the only major world area where authoritarianism persisted unchallenged for decades. While in various countries of the Arab world mass protests in 2011 forced rulers to resign, other authoritarian regimes have - despite political and economic pressure - so far been able to remain in power, or have even been only insignificantly affected. This paper applies central social science approaches in order to analyze recent developments in the region - a major task of theoretically oriented social sciences in the coming years. In addition to providing an overview of the existing literature on the Arab Spring, the article examines the empirical results of political diversification in the Arab world. A two-by-two matrix of political rule that differentiates according to the type of rule and the degree of stability is presented and discussed. Although the analysis draws heavily on rent theory, it also applies findings from transition theory and revolution theory to illuminate the current political dynamics in the Middle East.

The interaction between political executives and civil servants rests on a delicate balance between political responsiveness and the duty of civil servants and ministers to respect legal and other normative constraints on executive authority. In Danish central government, this balance is stressed by norms that define the correct behavior when the civil service provides ministers with political advice and assistance. Organizational factors strongly influence civil servants' behavior when they have to balance responsiveness against constraints on their role as political advisers. Moreover, civil servants working closely with ministers pay more attention to legal constraints than their peers among agency officials and specialists. Agency officials and specialists are much more prone to prioritize professional standards. We argue that this pattern can be generalized West European systems.

This thesis explores whether political connections are a relevant issue in the corporate environment in Portugal. We use a hand-collected data set of executive boards of listed firms from EuroNext Lisbon Stock Exchange to identify the companies that appointed former politicians for their top corporate positions. The analysis shows that these politically connected firms have significantly easier access to financing at better conditions, as well as significantly more aggressive hiring policies. We also confirm a decrease in Market Capitalization of political connected firms, a year after the entrance of a former politician, in accordance to Cabo (2012) who first identified this decrease in a small window event study. We explored several characteristics among the political connections to get a finer description of the links between the political and the corporate world in Portugal.

This article introduces a previously unpublished paper by Abba P. Lerner that offers one of the first examples of economic ideas interacting with issues of bureaucracy and public organization. Written in 1942, the paper is titled "Design for a Streamlined War Economy," and it argues that for the wartime US economy to achieve maximum performance, Congress should maintain a price system in lieu of bureaucratic rationing. Although "Design for a Streamlined War Economy," as well as Lerner's well-known 1944 book The Economics of Control, addresses the macroeconomy, only the 1942 paper explicitly extends Lerner's thinking into the internal organization of a bureaucratic defense establishment. This is new and noteworthy. I argue that Lerner's paper represents one of the first examples of twentieth-century economic thinking applied to bureaucracy.