Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTCurrent debates regarding the degree to which centralization or decentralization of environmental bureaucracies promotes more effective management of natural resources suggest the need for employing new methodologies to empirical analysis, in a variety of political and ecological settings. In this paper, recent state synergy scholarship is adopted to an analysis of the impact of state‐societal relations on the implementation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in the coastal redwoods region of California. This study suggests that certain state‐societal relations at the peripheries of bureaucratic state systems pose potential sources of both state autonomy and capacity. Effective utilization of such sources may be hampered, however, by policy actions that reflect national‐level political pressure, leading to management decisions that are not necessarily designed to improve either the ecological or social welfare of the region. In conclusion, the author argues that decentralization may be beneficial to bureaucratic effectiveness, however such efforts will be contingent on the ability of states to develop dense connecting networks with social actors that can contribute to policy goals.

The author reviews the transformations that have occurred in Latin America since the early 1980s: political upheavels, democratisation, structural adjustment, social and institutional changes. He analyses and illustrates the latest reforms in labour law and the difficult progress towards independence for the social partners, given the interventionist tradition of the state in industrial relations. (DSE/DÜI)

The main focus of this paper, then, emphasizes the dynamic role of the extended family. This concern is expressed from two perspectives: (I) the relationship between the extended family and industrialization and urbanization and (2) the manner in which the individual participates in the kin network. Guided by the principle of pragmatism, it is concluded that interaction with kin groups varies with both situational and individual needs. Moreover, the traditional African family structure is flexible and adaptive. It is this inbuilt flexibility of the extended family and its ability to fulfill certain instrumental and/or expressive functions that explains its persistence in an industrialized urban setting.

Three world views or paradigms-Industrial (I), De-Industrial (D), and Symbiotic (S) -are compared in their expression in 12 selected key institutions of Advanced Western Industrial Societies at four levels: at the macro level, the nation state, the market economy, the pattern of Advanced country-Lesser developed country relations, the Welfare State and representative political democracy; at the meso or intermediate level, the private corporation and the metropolitan city; at the micro level, the nuclear family and the autonomous individual; at the socio-cultural level, classical science, the pattern of technological choice, and continuous formative education. The "whole-brained"processes associated with Paradigm S are adjusted to be increasingly more suitable for our present and future turbulent society and provide the basis for a paradigm for societal transition.

The concept of societal security as developed by the Copenhagen school has three underlying weaknesses: a tendency to reify societies as independent social agents, a use of too vague a definition of 'identity', and a failure to demonstrate sufficiently that social security matters to individuals. This article shows that applying social identity theory to the societal security concept helps remedy these weaknesses and closes the theoretical gaps that the Copenhagen school has left open. It enables us to treat 'society' as an independent variable without reifying it as an independent agent. It also suggests a much sharper definition of identity, and a rationale for the Copenhagen school's claim that individuals have a psychological need to achieve societal security by protecting their group boundaries. Social identity theory thus supports the societal security concept in its central assumptions while giving it stronger theoretical foundations and greater analytical clout.