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This paper attempts to build bridges across quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive traditions. I engaged this task to find common ground for communication with a range of colleagues from different disciplines; to demonstrate the varieties of quality available when social science is applied well; and to use multiple methods to produce policy. In re-reading the paper, I find that the first two tasks were possible, but the third has escaped me. It is certainly possible to find bridges across social science disciplines; they are not incommensurable, as some would argue. There are also ways in which we can recognize quality in research of different traditions. Still, these traditions look at the world differently when it comes to their answer to the basic question, "what should we do next." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the "standard view" presented in history's of political philosophy to find out what they say about pre-Hobbesian "social contract." It attempts to discover what exactly is there, especially in the 16th century neo-scholastic political philosophers, which these historians and interpreters describe as "social contract." I want to know whether it makes any difference to how we understand modern social contract in particular, and philosophic and political modernity in general, whether we suppose "social contract" is essentially of the 17th and 18th centuries or whether we take account of its antecedents. It turns out that there are 16th century antecedents but which are so decisively different from social contract in Hobbes and what comes after him that it is probably misleading to call it by the same name. I attempt to state what the decisive differences are and, in doing so, recall an alternative view of the sense in which society and politics can be said to be based on consent but not to the extent of being as artificial, legalistic and rights and self-centered as afterwards becomes social contract. The paper concludes with a discussion of what differences it might make to our understanding of politics and to our place in it, and to relations between generations, whether we take the pre-modern or modern view of "contract." ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have studied struggles over reproductive rights and technologies, but have focused on women's right NOT to have children and far less so on the medical, economic and political circumstances of gestating, birthing, and raising offspring. Although pregnancy, childbirth and conditions of the neonatal period together account for one quarter of all hospital admissions in the US, this most common of all health issues has failed to stir much interest among political scientists. This sets political science apart from cognate disciplines such as anthropology, history, and sociology. My paper maps out a framework and research agenda for the comparative study of the politics of reproduction along three dimensions: comparative regulatory policy and institutional practices; socioeconomic consequences of reproductive policies; and advocacy and social movements surrounding reproduction. Relevant topics include maternal and perinatal health, breastfeeding in public and in the workplace, the accommodation of children in public spaces, nontraditional kinship formation, gendered welfare policies, and implications of variations in maternal leave policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is "liberal socialism" an oxymoron? Not quite, but I will demonstrate here that it is a much more unstable and uncommon hybrid than scholars had previously thought and that almost all liberals should reject socialism, even in its most attractive form. More specifically, I will show that three major species of liberalism--neutralist, plural-perfectionist, and deliberative-democratic--are incompatible with even a moderate form of socialism, viz., associational market socialism. My paper will also cast grave doubt on Rawls's belief that justice as fairness is consistent with liberal socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although learning is one of the most widely-acknowledged determinants shaping policy processes, the concept remains theoretically and methodologically under-developed in the policy process literature. Most notably, there is an incomplete understanding of the factors affecting "upscaling," or moving from individual-level learning to collective-level learning. As learning continues to occupy research agendas of policy process research, this paper seeks to provide insights from the diverse social science literatures that examine individual learning in collective context to better understand the nature of the learning process and learning products, and the factors that support learning. We examine the treatment of learning within two major policy process frameworks -- the advocacy coalition framework and institutional analysis and development framework -- and compare how they define learning and what insights they offer for understanding how learning translates from the individual to collective level. In understanding the translation from individual to collective level learning, we focus on the explanatory factors that can be gleaned from both frameworks to explain how and when learning is likely to upscale from individual to collective levels. We identify important complementarities between the two frameworks in examining these factors and conclude with developing a set of propositions for studying learning in policy processes. These propositions highlight how the nature of the issue of concern, characteristics of the collective actors, and characteristics of the institutions governing a collective setting will all factor into the likelihood of learning emerging in policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sees new party entry as one potential outcome of a broader game. This broader game is the puzzle which confronts democratic citizens who care about an issue that existing parties are ignoring. What is the most effective way for them to make their voices heard? The formal model introduced here takes new party entry as a strong signal of strength from political entrepreneurs, which increases the salience of the issue by forcing major parties to respond to a new electoral threat. The model also examines how under different institutional, strategic, and sociological circumstances, interest group entry may surpass party entry as the optimal signal to major parties that an issue requires attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between sense of community, political and civic participation, and the pursuit of sustainability in American cities. Using the Social Capital Benchmark Survey cities as the source of comparison, it finds that cities pursuing sustainability policies do tend to be more participatory places. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized interests are such an essential part of the process by which policy makers in a democracy learn about the preferences and needs of citizens that barriers to entry into the political fray have potential consequences for the representation -- and, in particular, for the equal representation -- of citizen interests. Using a massive new data set that enumerates and categorizes the organized interests active in Washington politics in the quarter century between 1981 and 2006, this paper takes an empirical look at the shape of the organized interest system in contemporary national politics. While the range of politically active organizations contained in the data base is nothing short of astonishing, both the free rider problem and the resource-constraint problem have profound effects on whose voices are heard through the medium of collective representation. Longitudinal data show a great deal of continuity over the period in the kinds of organizations and a substantial increase in the number of organizations active in Washington politics. With the expansion of the pressure system, the proportion of organizations representing such traditional interests as corporations, unions, trade associations, and professional associations, while still substantial, has diminished somewhat. However, the share of organizations representing such traditionally underrepresented interests as broad publics and the economically disadvantaged continues to be very limited and has not grown. Instead, the proportion of active organizations representing state and local governments and the education and health sectors has increased markedly. In short, as the heavenly chorus has gotten bigger, neither its accent nor the mix of voices has been transformed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how teaching circles contribute to inter-disciplinary teaching and research; describes the year-long process of conducting an interdisciplinary teaching circle among members from sociology, law, political science, modern languages, and public administration; and reports the short-term and long-term activities to be implemented from the circle efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to link political science more closely with research in other sciences is illustrated by concrete issues in which governmental actions need to integrate information from such fields as epidemiology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, or sociology. To illustrate, this paper explores two complementary reasons why public policy makers need to consider how exposures to lead and other toxic chemicals change brain chemistry and human behavior. On the one hand, regulation of toxins and correction of their effects may have enormous cost-benefit advantages as responses to social problems like learning disabilities and violent crime. On the other hand, effects of environmental neurotoxins challenge traditional perspectives on health and behavior, indicating shortcomings in perceived benefits from or responses to public policy interventions. From a theoretical point of view, because behaviorists in the tradition of B. F. Skinner treat "contingencies of reinforcement" as the primary determinants of human choices, policy enforcement has traditionally focused on socio-economic incentives. In many urban settings, however, lead and other toxins interfere with brain chemistry, health, and normal behavior. Since individuals can differ in vulnerability to toxins due to genes (e.g., lactose intolerance) as well as to social factors (e.g., poverty and old housing), these findings both increase the importance of reducing environmental pollution and reveals biological obstacles to lawful behavior. Such interactions between "nature" and "nurture" are illustrated by empirical findings in four areas of relevance to political behavior and public policy: 1) Synergistic Effects of Pollution with Multiple Toxins from Mine Tailings and Superfund Sites; 2) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; 3) Asthma; and 4) Violent Crime. Recent research thus provides evidence that linking the life sciences to human behavior can benefit both our understanding of many public policy issues and indicate more effective strategies for implementing policy decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past ten years, the world has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity that seem to indicate a fundamental change in China's strategic preferences. But has it fundamentally changed? This paper seeks to answer this question by examining China's strategic culture, comparing it to that of ASEAN. It will apply the theoretical concepts concerning strategic culture and the socialization process to try to determine if China's strategic preferences toward cooperative behavior have indeed changed fundamentally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of the policy process have long studied how language and stories shape the policy process. More recently, scholars of the sociology of risk have focused on the study of policy framing in the context of risk and the "risk society". We employ these theoretical works to an analysis of the debate over election reform. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, there were strong claims made about the need for electronic voting. After all, the 2000 election debacle was occurred primarily on paper-based systems. However, over the last four years, opponents of electronic voting have been able to reframe the debate over electronic voting, creating a new "story" about elections to support their claims. This environment provided a fruitful field for fears about electronic voting and stolen elections. We present an analysis of the media coverage of electronic voting that shows how the critics of have instigated a dramatic shift in the way in which the media covers this issue. There has been a strong amplification through the media of the possible risks associated with electronic voting, with little consideration given to the other side of the equation. This shift has resulted in the media adopting an almost common view that electronic voting is problematic. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks--sets of objects connected by relationships--are important in a number of fields. The study of networks has long been central to sociology, where researchers have attempted to understand the causes and consequences of the structure of relationships in large groups of people. Using insight from previous network research, Killworth et al. (1998a,b) and McCarty et al. (2001) developed and evaluated a method for estimating the sizes of hard-to-count populations using network data collected from a simple random sample of Americans. In this paper we show how, using a multilevel overdispersed Poisson regression model, these data can also be used to estimate aspects of social structure in the population. Our work goes beyond most previous research by using variation as well as average responses to learn about social networks and leads to some interesting results. We apply our method to the McCarty et al.\ data and find that Americans vary greatly in their number of acquaintances. Further, Americans show great variation in propensity to form ties to people in some groups (e.g., males in prison, the homeless, and American Indians), but little variation for other groups (e.g., people named Michael or Nicole). We also explore other features of these data and consider ways in which survey data can be used to estimate network structure. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the possibility that the principle of basic equality might be explicated by reference to the idea that humans constitute a "single-status" community. It explores some difficulties with the idea of status in its original legal habitat, but concludes that it is a promising vehicle for expressing ideas about moral equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper focuses on how identities, emotions and reason have affected the same-sex marriage debates. I proceed as follows. Drawing on political theory and social psychology, Part I explains how identity politics in general can threaten the democratic nature of political discussion. Part II outlines the specific issues at stake in debates over same-sex marriage. Part III describes my analysis of ‘letters to the editor’ as a form of public discourse and communication. Part IV reports my findings about ‘identity talk’, emotions and reason in the same-sex marriage debate. Here, I identify two distinct lines of reasoning among the opponents of same-sex marriage, one emphasizing sexuality and the other gender. Finally, Part V summarizes the lessons emerging from my empirical analysis about democratic discussion, identity politics and same-sex marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the significance of Carl Schmitt for Eric Voegelin´s political theory has frequently been raised by interpreters of Voegelin´s work (especially during the last decade - parallel with the renaissance and the growing importance of Schmitt´s work in the theoretical discourse in general). To many observers there seem to be significant parallels regarding some crucial concepts in the respective writings of the two thinkers. Some (German) scholars even tried to characterize Voegelin´s approach as being - at least in substantial parts - a "political theology" in the Schmittian sense of the term. There indeed are some conceptual similarities between Schmitt and Voegelin, and this is particularly the case regarding some of Voegelin´s early writings. But these similarities, firstly, concern Schmitt´s existential analysis of political reality and of the "state" and not, as most interpreters seem to presume, the issue of a critique of modernity and secularization, and not even primarily the relationship between politics and religion. And, secondly, besides these similarities there are, on the other hand, significant conceptual differencies, and only in the context of these differencies the significance of the parallels can be properly understood. The paper tries to show this in a first step by a very brief account of Voegelin´s and Schmitt´s respective conceptions of modern democracy. These conceptual differencies can be traced down to more fundamental differencies in the respective ideas of political theory in general. Already the early Voegelin himself explicitly points out these differencies, for instance in his reception of Carl Schmitt´s Verfassungslehre of 1928. Voegelin´s essay, written in 1931, is both, a positive evaluation of parts of Schmitts analytical work and a fundamental critique of his general approach. For Voegelin´s critique two points are decisive: 1. While Schmitt´s methodical approach towards political reality is substantially "collectivistic", Voegelin´s methodical approach, on the contrary, can be characterized as being "personalistic". And 2.: Voegelin critizises Schmitt´s theoretical position as an "immanent" position and juxtaposes it with his own "transcendent" position. Considering these decisive differencies, Voegelin´s paradigmatic figure of the "political thinker" turns out to be the exact opposite of a Schmittian "political theologian". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A functioning theoretical and methodological pluralism requires communication across epistemological divides. Often, however, how scholars think and talk about "knowledge" implies that only their side can be right. The context of the discipline, from how we train doctoral students to how we think about "theory," encourages this attitude--to the detriment of genuine pluralism. In this paper, I use the cognitive framework of Brown (1976) to analyze common knowledge metaphors (e.g., the blind men describing an elephant), comparing them to one I offer (knowledge-as-an-actress) as superior for promoting pluralism. Though no single metaphor for a concept as abstract and complex as knowledge should be endorsed, I show how the metaphor, knowledge-as-an-actress, challenges existing hierarchical understandings of knowledges and promotes communication across existing research traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations is ordered not only within types of interactions but across such types as well. This latter type of order has not, for the most part, been studied extensively; and there are numerous reasons why it is difficult to study. In this paper, I move in the direction of such a study by laying out a Simmelian sociological category about groups and interactions. I then use this vocabulary to define and theorize about deference, as a particular kind of across-type coordination. The theory is modeled using agent-based simulation methodology; and the results, though preliminary, suggest that deference to both hegemons and to peer pressure is stable, affected more by the "meta-interaction" between the two than by any long-term structural factors at work. This implies that US hegemony is likely to weaken only to the extent that other types of group interactions become more prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honesty and trust affect the functioning of the state and the market, and, conversely, the quality of formal rules and institutions has an impact on interpersonal trust. This paper organizes and critiques research on the relationship between trust and government; it stresses the mutual interaction between trust and democracy and the impact of corruption. Given this context, the concluding section discusses the transition process in post-socialist countries, highlighting the tensions between interpersonal trust and trust in public institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few decades of intellectual output on globalization and its correlates have produced several useful models of transnational politics and of what has been called "global civil society." But as research paradigms, they are too general, too poorly specified, and too narrowly operationalized to adequately trace the parameters of the new wave of transnational contention that has swept across the globe since the "Battle of Seattle" in 1999. The goal of this paper is to disaggregate these general paradigms into researchable hypotheses about the organizations and coalitions involved in transnational social movements and to identify some key mechanisms that can help us to better understand whether a new and contentious transnational society is developing. A process called "scale shift" from the national to the transnational levels of contention is specified through a number of interlocking mechanisms: diffusion, brokerage, attribution of similarity, emulation and coordinated collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strongest claim of social capital is its likely effect on public policy outcomes, which is now demonstrated by a vast literature linking levels of social trust and social bonds with such desired goods as reduced crime, better economic performance, and improved health. There is already a modest literature linking public policy outcomes with better educational performance, to which the research for this paper seeks to add. By analysing a survey of 1249 15-16 year-olds, we test whether social capital measures increase self-recorded school performance and reduce intentions to leave school. We find that trust, voluntary action and social closure appear to have a strong impact on academic performance, but do not have a great impact on dropping out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether an association exists between individuals' on-line "sense of community" and their political and social attitudes toward off-line community. Using the Social Capital Benchmark Survey (2000), we explore what "sense of community" is found through digital interaction. Our research, theoretically guided by the work of Ferdinard Tönnies, questions whether a "sense of Gemeinschaft," lost off-line to an increasingly differentiated economy, is being re-discovered on-line; or if our cyber interactions are merely the transcription of our Gesellschaft lives online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on a study concerning impact of the digital revolution on political and self representation. Topics discussed include political scientists to benefit from research from other fields including sociology, anthropology as well as ethnology, impact of this revolution upon self- and political representation and significance of medieval dialectic of the individual to analyze self representation.

The preponderance of research on the study of ethnocentrism has primarily attributed such attitudes to learned behavior. The research here advances the argument that both socialization and genetic inheritance contribute to the development of ethnocentric attitudes and behavior. This analysis employs the Minnesota Twins Political survey data consisting of 596 complete twin pairs. Using the classical twin design we employed structural equation modeling to model the covariance of twins in regards to additive genetic effects, shared-environment effects, and unique-environment effects (i.e., the classic ACE model). The findings reveal that genetic inheritance is significant in explaining the variance in genetic attitudes. Specifically, genetic inheritance explains 18% of the variance, with the overwhelming 82% being explained by the unique environment. The validity of these findings is further tested using DeFries-Fulker models, which allows us to control for authoritarianism, conservatism and education. The results reveal that genetic inheritance possesses the largest magnitude, when compared to other explanatory variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the legacy of the Ottoman millet system, which bases identity policies and problems in contemporary Turkey and Cyprus. The author talks about the millet system's capability to recognize diversity institutionally and create a political environment for the reproduction of diverse cultures to a certain extent. Also tackled are the reasons why the system does not provide a promising ground to satisfy the demands of certain identity groups.

The article offers information on the adoption of corporate policies and programs related to global migration in Canadian state municipal governments which includes Abbotsford, Vancouver and Brampton. It discusses several facts which includes influences of international migration on challenges faced by municipal parks, social integration of government through the promotion of healthy and stable communities and generation of the social capital.

The article presents the author's views on the issue of electoral sociology which helps people in analyzing the electoral behavior and perception of voters at the time of elections. It further discusses use of media communication strategies in the electoral campaigns. Broadcasting of election programs on two television channels including TF1 and Aljazeera on the basis of audience ratings has been discussed.

The article focuses on classical liberalism according to sociologists Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. It states that Spencer linked classical liberalism to sociology and emphasized that the role of the government should be less. It highlights that Sumner focused on the relationship between American political and economic history and explores his views on civil liberty.

The article emphasizes the importance of social facts in understanding the causes and consequences of capital mobility and highlights the impact of understanding the social context in which policymaking is situated. It explores the views about structure and agency within rationalism and constructivism. It describes the importance of the social context.

The article presents a study which examined path dependecy and other models of diffusion applicable to both public policy and management diffusion. It also considers management innovations adopted within different government agencies, as well as the applications of diffusion models in the fields of sociology, business and communication. Forms of structural and interactive diffusion models are described.

The idea of the people as conforming masses has played a role in encouraging Nietzsche and Heidegger, and in this tradition of thought Michel Foucault as well, to reach extraordinary and transformative levels of criticism and alternative perspectives on the condition of modern western society. And while these accomplishments may have come at the expense of philosophies that acknowledge and address the positive aspects of the relational dimension of the self, they have been central to a deeper and more thoroughgoing understanding of the construction of knowledge, identity, and power. I use Jerrold Seigel's argument in his book The Idea of the Self as a way to explore this point. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rousseau consigns revolution and rebellion to minor status in his text, Of the Social Contract. I want to argue, however, that in spite of this superficial subordination the theme is nevertheless quite significant because it provides a model for understanding how legitimate dependence—which is, after all, the projected goal of Rousseau's theoretical researches—might be gained by all those peoples who do not find themselves well disposed, who are impure, who have been improperly subject to others, in short, all those who do not hail from Rousseau's Corsica. So while I could not in good faith claim that revolution and rebellion occupy more than a minor place in Of the Social Contract, I do want to make a case for a reading of Rousseau's oeuvre that foregrounds them and offers criteria for reconstructing the texts around their haunting presence. Especially since I have in prior work discredited the autarkic-purist tendency that instills in Rousseau a debilitating anxiety about encounters between alien persons or peoples, it is important to reconstruct the alternative tendency in Rousseau, as it takes for granted peoples' subjection and impurity, their dispossession and especially their slavery.Refiguring Of the Social Contract around rebellion thus requires an exploration of the text through its figurations of slavery and marronnage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though interest groups organized around particular diseases have been in existence for over one hundred years, their numbers have ballooned in the last three decades. This research draws on a survey of patient groups and on interview data to explore the rapid increase in numbers and analyze the strategies that patient groups are currently using to achieve their goals. The data show that while many patient groups adopt a typical DC-based lobbying strategy, many groups do not have a Washington focus. Providing services to members and engaging with researchers in the private sector are common activities among respondents. At the same time that there appear to be multiple avenues for achieving organizational goals, there is little evidence that patient groups have broad health policy goals and, instead, focus narrowly on policies and services that directly benefit their constituents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes that the extent to which external factors influence state policy adoption depends, in part, on internal state characteristics, with external factors consisting of other states and the federal government and internal factors consisting of a particular state's political, economic, and programmatic circumstances. This insight is grounded in the study of program implementation, which suggests that policy necessarily evolves and adapts to local conditions, and in the study of institutions in sociology, which suggests that intra-organizational factors condition organizational responses to institutional pressures. The relevance of this insight for comparative state policy research is examined by applying mixed modeling techniques to data describing adoption of annual percentage reductions in Medicaid nursing facility per diem rates from 1981-1998. Results indicate that internal conditions favorable to adoption tend to magnify the effects of external influences, whereas internal conditions unfavorable to adoption tend to diminish their effects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feeling thermometers have been used in survey research since the beginnings of modern survey research as an accepted way to ascertain individual feelings in a multitude of settings. Although they continue to be utilized by survey practitioners and researchers there are several limitations to the application of feeling thermometers. First, feeling thermometers do not provide more then a three point ordinal scale (warm, neutral, cold) despite having 101 possible values. Second, it is difficult to compare one respondent's self-ranking to another respondent's self-ranking, because different respondents may be using different criteria to evaluate their feelings towards the group. Using anchoring vignettes corrects for these problems by providing respondents with 5 vignettes representing different areas of the 101 degree thermometer scale. Respondents are asked to place each vignette on the feeling thermometer and also rank themselves. The vignettes represent an ordinal relationship and anchor the respondents self placements creating nine values for the responses that are comparable across the respondents. An added value of using anchoring vignettes for feeling thermometers is socially undesirable feeling will be easier to detect. Variations of feelings across socioeconomic status and other sociological factors can be detected as well. The use of anchoring vignettes in the current study provides preliminary evidence of their effectiveness when looks at feelings toward, blacks, whites and homosexuals. The data used in this study comes from a survey developed and administered to undergraduates at two large universities, one in the Midwest and the other in the deep South. This was done in hopes of adding some variation in the types of respondents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Readers judge authors' claims on the basis of 'signaling devices' written into manuscripts. What 'devices' should authors of ethnographic and other interpretive research manuscripts be including in their methods discussions? By what criteria should reviewers and other readers of these manuscripts be judging them? Such matters are usually engaged during the research design phase, but there is reason to re-engage them at the end of a research project from the perspective of the reader of the research report.Turning a reflexive eye on my own participant-observer role as a reviewer of such manuscripts, I have attempted to identify those elements of interpretive methods that are, I posit, the sine qua non of such writing. Their absence leaves me, as a reviewer, wondering about the character of the evidence presented and how trustworthy the "truth claims" of the research are; and so my hope is that this reflection might help authors of such research write better - more cogently argued - manuscripts prior to submitting them to journals. But I also hope this discussion will be useful to editors and reviewers who may not themselves possess interpretive methodological expertise and who may, therefore, not be aware that such methods follow different evaluative criteria from those deriving from quantitative-positivist methodologies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

x ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines subsequent data sets to update sociologist Peter Hall's evaluation of the levels of social capital in Great Britain and offer additional analysis. The decline between 1990 and 1995 paralleled U.S. figures and that the levels of social trust appeared to plateau between 1995 and 1999, according to EVS data.

The article creates theoretical expectations about how time, organizational structure, alternative processes of preference formation and national socialization influence international socialization. The article, to test these expectations for the European Commission, used two surveys of top permanent Commission officials conducted in 1996 and 2002.

The article argues that the frequency of communication among citizens holding different preferences is responsible for differential levels of conflict, compromise, and accommodation within the electorate. These citizens, to the extent that communication occurs among citizens with divergent political preferences, are more likely to acquire information on one another's preferences and they are more likely to comprehend the political motivation of the other side.

The theme of the frontier as a geographic demarcation where different cultures conflictively co-exist has drawn a multidisciplinary attention since the earliest days of the European arrival to the New World. The initial clash between the Old World and America has been translated into various polarizations: the war between civilization and barbarism, the politics of oppression vs. the policy of liberation, the economic exploitation vs. the recognition of human rights, etc. These are some of the binaries that describe the vision of the frontier as a challenge to the reconciliation of conflicting values in the cultural encounters of America. My attempt in this work is to read some of the author?s fictions that pivot around the interaction between the men of the city and the men of the frontier, with the premise that his stories reflect a cultural amalgam in which the values of the frontier eventually mould the life of the city. I am aware that the processes and features of such movement are highly debatible; for some authors Borges had contradictory loyalties to both sides of the division between civilization and barbarism [Strong, 1997 in Lois Parkinson, 2002]; others tend to see this contradiction resolved in a nihilistic fashion [Rodriguez Monegal, 1978; Franco 1981; Bloom, 1994]; indeed some may highlight the ironical tone of his social portraits as a proof of his apparent apartisanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses theories of democracy and the role of politicians. Characteristics of politicians in idealist and realist models of democracy; Sociological aspects of the political profession; Relationship of professional politicians with the society according to William J. Goode.

An exploration of the role that the social sciences can play in a time of great political contestation, drawing on Weber’s seminal reflections. Not the same topic empirically as originally proposed, but the same basic theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the distinctiveness of districts and factors that help distinguish among parties within a given country. Overview of theoretical bases for institutional, ideological and sociological variables; Movements in a party's support that are particular to a given district; Negative relation between centralized party organizations and the district-time effect; Purpose of giving candidates the incentive and opportunity to distinguish themselves from their parties.

Social capital is expected to help achieve superior outcomes over multiple issue-areas and different levels of societal aggregation, but is it the same social capital that operates in all of these different arenas? To what extent social capital is fungible across different levels and issue areas is explored here through an examination of literatures related to social capital and collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from Ostrom, Walker and Gardner’s (1994) experimental study of communication in social dilemmas, we perform a secondary analysis by coding the transcripts of player communication in the common pool resource experiments. Specifically, we further investigate their finding that communication produces positive social outcomes. We start with a review of the broader literature concerning potential explanations in order to develop a 5-category coding scheme encompassing: calculation/ information; rational appeals; normative appeals; solidarity words; and, promises/threats. We also observe some emergent aspects of group communication, including leadership, dissent, and the willingness to keep talking. We find that leadership and dissent have significant positive and negative effects, respectively, and that, of all the discursive categories only solidarity worlds produces a statistically significant effect; this effect depends, in turn, on players’ willingness to keep talking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncritical faith in intense competition assumes the status of an unquestioned paradigm in America today. But this Competition Paradigm fails in the face of data, logic, and good sense. This presentation goes beyond the hype, to exam the evidence, carefully, systematically, comprehensively, and across disciplines. Analysis begins at the biological level and works through, step by step, to the international level of global competition. Examining competition at a broader, interdisciplinary level makes it easier to discover patterns and trends across levels. Something new is discovered about the nature of competition itself, that in its most destructive forms it generates a negative self-reinforcing spiral effect that is a worrisome liability in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hobbes and Derrida are both concerned with the inevitable difficulties of creation. Hobbes’ story of the creation of a commonwealth and Derrida’s investigation of the beginnings of discourse share the premise that persons are creators, rather than discoverers, of meaning and value in the world, and that therefore justice consists of respecting the independent status of others as meaning creators. For Hobbes, this situation leads to the brutalities of the state of nature and the necessity of a commonwealth grounded in enforced discursive unity. But even though the natural condition and the social compact are violent, both Hobbes and Derrida understand that pure violence, like pure justice, is a logical impossibility. Although this recognition is not immediately apparent in Hobbes, Derrida discusses this ‘economy of violence’ at length. An examination of the state of nature and the formation of the commonwealth in the light of this play of violence and justice reveals some surprising implications for Hobbes’ system, which in turn provides an excellent story of the practicalities of Derrida’s economy of violence in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sources of state revenue have a major impact on patterns of state formation. This proposition from fiscal sociology is valid and convincing in the context of Western European history and comparisons among contemporary states in the South. To what extent can we conclude that the quality of governance in contemporary developing countries might improve if states were more dependent for their financial resources on domestic taxpayers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leo Strauss presents at least two distinct accounts of the idea that the authors in the political-philosophical canon have often masked their true teachings. A weaker, conditional account of esotericism dependent on the contingent fact of persecution is attributed to the moderns, while a stronger, unconditional account dependent on a necessary conflict between philosophy and society is attributed to the ancients. Although most interpreters agree that Strauss here sides with the ancients, this view fails to consider the possibility that Strauss’s writings on esotericism may themselves be composed esoterically. A reevaluation of Straussian hermeneutics in light of this possibility suggests that the inegalitarianism and secrecy often associated with ‘Straussianism’ may stem, not from Strauss’s true account of esotericism, but instead from an exoteric doctrine designed to seduce students into a life of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]