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Modern constitutional and political concepts, in a broad sense, represent an expressed codification of the elements of value that structure the relevant society or the particular group that tries to project or channel them through the existing order. The secularism vs. Islamism dichotomy is a part of such a conceptual framework. The author elaborates and compares both ultimate constitutional and political designs, specifying them through the example of Turkey and Iran, as well as to shows the basic characteristics through the prism of their political legitimacy, the organization of power, the human rights and freedoms, as well as the possibility of political activism. The thesis that the author notes develops in the direction of a warning that the extremes contained in the constitutional provisions in the vividly ideologically divided societies can be a source of a conflict and/or can generate instability or suffocation of the pluralism in the political arena.

This study addresses whether individuals who were sent down during the Cultural Revolution reveal different political attitudes from those who were socialized during the same period but were not themselves sent down. Using data from the urban sample of the 2006 General Social Survey of China, the authors find evidence that formerly sent-down youth - and particularly sent-down women - as compared to their not-sent-down peers, are today more willing to accept the class-struggle foundation of Mao's communist ideology but are, at the same time, more willing to assess the performance and structure of the communist regime critically. (China Q/GIGA)