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When theories of institutional change consider ideas at all, they generally assume that all changes from one institution to another are equivalent events. This paper argues that we should expect a very different causal role for ideas in institutional change depending on the direction of that change. Focal points-conspicuous points on which actors can agree-are likely to have an independent impact on the final character of institutions adopted when actors are interdependent and trying to a move to greater institutional coordination. In such cases, institutional change requires that those actors coordinate their beliefs about each other and the effect of a new set of rules. When actors are not interdependent, institutional change in the direction of less coordination is likely to resemble a power play: an actor strengthened by an exogenous shock will trigger the collapse of old institutions and recast new ones that are closer to its preferred outcome. In such cases, ideas serve only as instruments of achieving that predetermined institutional preference. The paper considers these expectations against evidence from four cases of significant change in wage bargaining institutions since 1985: Ireland and Italy, which moved to greater coordination, and Australia and Sweden, which moved to lower coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in social policy in Singapore do to some degree reflect changing sociopolitical realities and popular attitudes. Probably just as significant to these changes, though, is Singapore?s concerted effort to craft itself as a transnational hub, center for international business, and ready home-away-from-home for the skilled, moneyed cosmopolitans who drive the contemporary global political economy. Social policy, then, may drive societal attitudes as much as it follows them, with economic considerations trumping cultural and political ones in the eyes of policymakers. Shifts in the de jure and de facto treatment of gays and lesbians provide a stark demonstration of these dynamics. This paper explores first, the extent of official and unofficial discrimination against gays and lesbians in Singapore and the significance of recent policy changes. Second, I examine the roots of change: what induces the Singapore government to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward gays and lesbians, despite potential backlash and previous statements about the inappropriateness of ?Western? moral codes for comparatively socially conservative Singapore? Finally, the paper considers how far the transnational environment and forces of economic globalization are likely to go in diminishing states? sovereignty in setting social policy ? and how conversely empowering this diminution may be to marginalized groups, who may find their appeals to transnational discourses, networks, and less culturally-relative identities increasingly validated as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economists typically depict informal institutions as idiosyncratic norms, ideas, and practices that affect the functioning of formal institutions ex ante. This paper proposes, however, that in many cases informal institutions originate from pre-existing formal institutions. Specifically, formal institutions present everyday actors with a myriad of restrictions and opportunities, which may yield novel operating arrangements that are not officially sanctioned. I argue that these informal institutions represent adaptive strategies in formal institutional environments that fail to reflect the implicit demands of both political and economic actors. This is often the case in non-democratic regimes where formal institutions are imposed top-down rather than subjected to popular suffrage. Over time, these adaptive informal institutions may amass sufficient causal power to change formal institutions. The paper presents four examples of this dynamic in China’s reform-era economy. Taken together, the cases show how institutional innovations originate from existing legal restrictions on various forms of economic activity, require official collaboration for their functioning, and ultimately, end up shaping formal institutions themselves. In this sense, formal institutions appear to provide the seeds of their own reform, if not destruction. But ultimately, the causal mechanism of institutional creation and change has a relational, interactive ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional theories of civil society have claimed that victory in major wars should stimulate a rise in civic engagement following wars, while defeat should quench it. Recent research, however, reveals that civic engagement appears to rise in defeated societies as well. What are some alternative hypotheses for the evolution of civic engagement following major wars? This paper contends that as a first step towards reformulating theories on the impact of war on civil society, a fuller understanding of the broad social changes that war brings about is necessary. To this end, it reviews the large social-scientific literature on the social impact of war, focusing especially on insights from sociological, psychological, and psychiatric research. On the basis of the reviews, it argues that the process of war appears to influence the postwar evolution of civil society at least as much as outcomes. The paper concludes by identifying some promising avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The welfare state in industrialized countries is challenged by a number of developments: the globalization or internationalization of the economy, changing demographics, a transformation from industrial to post-industrial economies, as well as social and cultural changes. Although all of these variables might be important for specific changes in social policy arrangements, in this paper I will only address the effects of globalization on social policy arrangements in the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the US. The starting point of my paper is the hypothesis that the specific perception of globalization and the constructed links to social policy arrangements within the political discourse will have to be taken into account, when analyzing the effects of globalization. Furthermore, it will be argued that focussing solely on the state’s activity within the social policy realm might lead to distorted and misleading results. Finally, I discuss the different dynamics of welfare systems in the era of globalization in a broader theoretical framework. It will be argued that the concept of path dependency, which has often been used to describe recent welfare state developments, underestimates the changes that have taken place in the German, Japanese, and US-American welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greatest challenge for the social sciences is to explain change, or more specifically social, political, economic, and organizational change. The starting point must be an account of human learning, which is a fundamental prerequisite for explaining such change. The ability to learn is the main reason for the observed plasticity of human behavior and the interaction of learning individuals gives rise to change in society, polity, economy and organizations. Because learning is the main object of inquiry of cognitive science, only a dogmatic attitude would prevent social scientists interested in phenomena related to change from paying appropriate attention to its findings. The revolution of the last few decades in cognitive science has produced valuable insights regarding the processes of individual learning across different types of environments. The objective of this paper is to show that a broad range of social phenomena can be accounted for in a different way when one pays the due attention to the way individuals learn. Besides, the paper shows how cognitive path dependence is linked to institutional path dependence and how institutional path dependence leads in turn to economic path dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between repression and mobilization interactively and dynamically, focusing in particular on event-driven and contextual influences on repressive practice and opposition response to those practices within liberalizing authoritarian regimes. In periods of relative stability, oppositions in highly repressive states know clearly the limits of acceptable action imposed by the state and adjust their collective action repertoires accordingly, in most cases adopting less confrontational and safer modes of action. But in periods of political change, when repressive practice is in flux, a high degree of uncertainty surrounding those limits is introduced. Usually, as part of the liberalization of authoritarian regimes, the sense among state officials concerning what constitutes acceptable force narrows, and the types of situations in which regimes intervene forcefully also narrow. Repressive practice in this sense moves from preclusion to regulation, with opposition activity coming to be screened rather than prohibited. This constriction of repressive practice itself alters public expectations about how regimes will and should respond to opposition challenge. Yet, the continued practice of repression stands in stark contrast with liberalizing goals, potentially undermining faith in regime-sponsored change and generating backlash protest. Liberalization also creates new institutional arenas?in the media and the ballot box?where repression against opposition activity can potentially generate side effects, altering voting habits, shaping public opinion, and further complicating how regimes can apply force against oppositions. In this paper, I show that continued repressive practice by a liberalizing authoritarian regime is shaped in significant ways by patterns of institutional change, by the rhythms and character of opposition activity, and by event-specific influences. Thus, as we will see through the late Soviet example, liberalizing authoritarian regimes usually take care not to repress during periods of major institutional reforms intended to remake the face of the regime (such as electoral campaigns), backlash effects have a particular influence on repressive practice when they become politicized within newly opened parliamentary arenas or publicized by independent media, and the degree to which opposition forces gain control over segments of the state substantially alters repressive practice. The data is drawn largely from an analysis of 4,839 demonstrations that took place in the Soviet Union from January 1987 (when glasnost? roughly began) through August 1991 (when the Soviet state collapsed), covering the protest acts of 16 different nationalities that engaged in a significant record of protest acts during this period and that experienced some degree of government repression in response to those acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the Farm Security Administration and the War on Poverty. Both policies were based on equality of economic opportunity and both failed. At the core of American antipoverty policy in the 20th century is a disturbing paradox: the expansive sense of economic opportunity at the heart of these policies results in policies incapable of responding to structural economic change and sustaining programs in the face of political opposition. Yet policy failure is then blamed on the poor. The paper explores various explanations for the paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I seek to offer some preliminary framework with which to think about how the preceding experience shapes the current political context. I pursue this task using the case of the Meiji Restoration as a vehicle for illustration. The Meiji Restoration, of course, was a revolution that ousted the preexisting feudal polity and established a modern sovereign state in Japan in the late nineteenth century. The story of the Meiji Restoration has been told numerous times and in countless ways, but regardless of the different emphases and nuances placed by the earlier writings, what is generally true is that any narrative of the Meiji Restoration involves the identification of the sequence of various important incidents that led to the final regime transition in 1868. The purpose of this paper is not to reconstruct this chronology, but to elucidate a set of patterns in which one incident was connected to the next. That is, I seek, in this paper, to discern a gsystem of logich that constitutes our sense of chronology itself, and thus our understanding of the historical influence on present political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an in-depth look at one of the major sources of congressional territorial policy, the House Committee on Territories. Using archival resources and historical records, the project will tie together significant areas of concern for the Committee on Territories dealing with national expansion and territorial management. By analyzing the decisions and actions of this committee, the committee membership, and the specific issues it chose to focus upon, from its creation in 1825 until the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th-century, this paper will highlight various ways in which policy decisions crafted political development in the country as a whole. Issues of representation will also be addressed since the House Committee on Territories had both voting members from states and non-voting territorial delegates assigned to it throughout its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have some formerly single-party regimes become fairly stable and dominating electoral authoritarian regimes while others have had much more difficulty competing? This paper addresses this question by investigating a case of hegemonic electoral authoritarianism in Tanzania. The paper argues that single-parties that invested in more articulate and coherent governing structures (structural articulation) and robust systems for mass mobilization (social robustness) were better able to adapt to the challenge of multiparty politics while resorting to comparatively less fraud and coercion. The paper will trace the evolution of Tanzania's ruling party - CCM and its predecessor TANU- which has been in power since 1962 and has easily won every election since 1995. It will incorporate insights from fieldwork conducted in 2010 and use process tracing evidence and inductive elimination to support the argument. The paper has implications for the literature on electoral authoritarianism by delving deeper into the role of institution building under authoritarianism and the capacity of elections to serve authoritarian rather than democratic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the observation that Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly embraced more strategic or economic orientations rather than purely principled ones, signaling the rise of social entrepreneurship in the country. While the rationales for doing so might seem economic in nature, they are also deeply intertwined with political conditions: the closed political environment compels NGOs to operate more as business if they wish to continue their work unabated. In many cases, this shift toward social entrepreneurship appears to be the result of unconscious adaptation on the part of NGO leaders. In other instances, there has been no shift in the life of an organization at all, but instead they have operated as social entrepreneurs from their inception. To better explain how adaptations occur for NGOs generally in China, rather than just individually, the paper posits an evolutionary theory of social entrepreneurship. Finally, the paper explores the implications of this economic orientation for the expansion and protection of rights for which activists are more traditionally known: if this evolution from activist to entrepreneur is necessary for NGOs to exist in China, does it signal a gloomy future for Chinese activism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how citizens of two countries that underwent democratization during the past twenty years-Russia and Indonesia-understand "democracy." Evaluating both large-N public opinion surveys and open- and closed-ended questions from interviews with a quota sample of the population in Russia and Indonesia, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of popular conceptualizations of democracy in these two distinct societies. I find that while both Russians and Indonesians view democracy through the lens of freedom, Russians have expressed their freedom by not participating in politics, while Indonesians have increased their engagement in contentious activities. These differences may help explain Russians' general indifference to Russia's authoritarian backsliding and low levels of political participation, as well as Indonesians' unusually high levels of political activism. This paper further finds that measures of popular understandings of "democracy" depend heavily on how the question is worded and the scope of possible responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the concept that our pedagogical approach can reinforce or undermine the content that we teach. Focusing on creating an engaged citizenry through a pedagogy centered on student participation and a content that emphasizes the idea that democracy is an unfinished and ongoing project, allows students to experience the power, possibilities, and contradictions inherent in a democratic system. This approach requires risk from the professor and deliberateness both in the development of pedagogy and the structuring of content. Towards this end, the paper examines the ways in which we teach the African-American freedom struggle and more particularly the civil rights movement. However, the arguments and lessons are applicable anytime we teach the difficult literature of social movements within a democracy. Three primary issues are included in this discussion:1) pedagogy of the Civil Rights Movement; 2) pursuing real diversity in the classroom; and, 3) teaching the concepts of power and violence. All of this material is discussed within the context of the civil engagement literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamic roles played by young people in social and political transformations, both past and present. Youth are seen as crucial "engines" of social change, but seldom its primary "drivers". Focus here is on the structure of incentives that mobilize young people to participate in militant and violent socio-political networks as well as institutions that support peace-building, development, and civic engagement. Descriptive global case studies are combined with insights from an original system dynamics model (under development) - to demonstrate how youth marginalization can be linked with demographic stressors to catalyze or exacerbate conflicts usually couched in terms of class, ethnicity, and/or social anarchy. The paper then explores alternative responses from the many young people who resist conflict and attempt to build bridges across communal friction points. This comparative analysis grounds a series of broad youth policy recommendations to empower at-risk youth and create incentives for their productive civic and economic participation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are four basic 'new institutionalisms' in political science: three older ones-rational choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism-plus a fourth newer 'new institutionalism'-discursive institutionalism. Although these all focus on institutions, they otherwise differ along a wide variety of continua, with debates among them often having the characteristics of war. In this paper, I suggest that rather than continuing with the methodological wars, we should declare peace and consider the four institutionalisms' complementaries, incompatibilities, and contributions to the explanation of politics. The paper focuses in particular on the fourth 'new institutionalism,' discursive institutionalism, which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse. It argues that although this is the newest and least developed of the 'new institutionalisms,' it has the greatest potential for reconciling approaches and providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a first effort to broach a discussion of institutions and institutional change in the United States and the developing world. Facing the challenges of research on the politics of economic development in the US and local adaptations to centrally imposed development projects in Senegal, we noticed we were thinking about institutions and human agency in similar ways. In spite of the obvious differences in our subjects of study, we independently came to the idea that the very different institutions we puzzled over were complex bundles of elements that could be combined and recombined in unpredictable ways. We both called this process ?syncretism.? We also noticed that our subjects often manipulated institutional pieces in ways unexpected by conventional theories of human agency. Drawing upon structuralist anthropology, Galvan came to call this capacity ?bricolage??the ability of people to assemble available materials to solve pressing problems. Drawing upon pragmatist social theory, Berk called this capacity the ?creativity of action,? that is, the collective ability of people to reimagine parts of their world anew and experiment with means to alter it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses comparative political history to test hypotheses based on the Skocpolian conjunction theory with a data set of social revolutions in five small states, namely, Haiti (1791-1804), Bavaria (1918-19), Hungary (1918-19), Cuba (1956-9), Guinea-Bissau (1964-74). Small states are defined as those states with populations between 500,000 and 10 million where the decisive factors in domestic politics are determined by the actions of larger states around them (Azar 1973; Vital 1967). A social revolution is a fundamental and relatively rapid transformation of social, political, and economic institutions, and it is accompanied by mass-based insurrection. Further, change in the socio-political and economic institutions has to occur in a mutually reinforcing fashion (Huntington 1968: 264; Skocpol 1979: 4-5). In her early (1979) and later work (1994), Skocpol identifies five variables that interact to create the historical conjunction that causes a social revolution: state, international environment, economy, class structure, local politics. The five social revolutions will be analyzed through the use of a historical interpretive comparative method (Calvert 1990; Goodwin 2001; Ragin 1987) similar to the methodological approach used by Skocpol (1979: 36). The goal is to refine the causal, explanatory hypotheses about events (social revolutions) integral to macro-units (small states). The case-oriented strategy of the historical interpretive comparative method allows me to pay attention to the historical particularities of each case (Calvert 1990; Langley 1996), while focusing on the comparison of structural similarities and differences among all the cases at the same time. What distinguishes this comparative research project is that it considers state size as a theoretically important factor. While the case studies satisfy a strict definition of ?social revolution? or ?aborted social revolution,? relations between people and politics in small states are unique (Shou and Brundtland 1970; Vital 1971) and not mere replications of the classical revolutions. While Skocpol presents a conceptual framework for the connection between international and domestic politics, which is necessary to analyze small states, her theoretical model also enables one to argue that the structure of local politics in small states still matters. I have found that Haiti, Hungary, Bavaria, and Guinea-Bissau have not been explored by revolution theorists. On the other hand, Cuba has attracted much scholarly attention. As a group, the small states in this study vary in historical time and geo-political space, covering three continents and two major time periods: classical and modern. If one follows the logic of the Skocpolian theory consistently, then all states are autonomous, even small ones, and hence they are independent, to some degree, from domestic social structures as well as international politics. The international system can be a resource for a small state economically and militarily making it more independent from domestic social forces (Skocpol 1994). One needs to study how the international system enhances as much as it limits the autonomy of small states. The literature on small states suggests, furthermore, that there can be political advantages in terms of organizational capabilities for people in a small state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core argument of this paper is that current changes in living patterns of men and women into more equal arrangements can be regarded as a major driving force behind normative change on societal level, which eventually leads to a change of state character. The problem of changing state character has hitherto not been discussed within feminist research, but preferably within Marxist inspired institutional research. The theoretical contribution consists of a suggestion for how to handle the hitherto problematic relationship between care-convictions and women, in a way that does not tie care-convictions more to women than to men. Applying a scientific realist perspective and drawing from feminist theory from several strands such as Simone de Beauvoir and Carol Gilligan, a theoretical model is developed for how men and women engaged in attentive care of their children learn a more care-oriented attitude and behavior. Individuals are there after believed to carry these convictions into the public sphere influencing its inherent norms. The hypothesis is analyzed on societal level through two case studies in Sweden: kindergarten policy and law enforcement policy 1950 and 2000. Sweden can be regarded as a critical case in the sense that living patterns of men and women have changed very dramatically. The analysis shows that experiences of care-responsibility most likely have affected the central actors in kindergarten policy. In the case of law enforcement a normative change with similar content is uncovered on the societal level, but the mechanism of care-learning cannot be supported on the individual level (For an extended version of the argument see Stensota 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates recent social-protection reform in France and Germany, centering on two central claims. First, it takes issue with prevailing portraits of France and Germany as archetypically ‘frozen’ Continental welfare states, unable to reform their political economies despite growing economic, political, and social pressures to do so. Not only have the French and German welfare states undergone profound changes during the past decade, these developments are merely the latest instances of 60 years of ongoing transformations in their post-war political economies. Second, it argues that the dynamics of adjustment in the two countries have been shaped by evolving political relationships between the state and social partners, patterns which are not always consonant with historical policy-making paradigms. In France, where the state has long been the dominant motor of political-economic change, unions and employers’ associations have recently assumed a much more prominent role in shaping policy debates and outcomes. Likewise, in Germany, traditionally considered a paragon of consensual, corporatist, negotiated adjustment, the state has played a growing role in defining reform agendas and seeing through needed reforms. Both cases illustrate the broader theoretical point that the dynamics of reform politics cannot always be deduced from a fixed map of institutional veto points, but are rather subject to a high level of political contestation and indeterminacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements reflect the attempt of a challenging group within society to affect change and achieve goals in a variety of ways, some of which include protest, petition, violence, and pressure techniques outside traditional political channels. The social movement must not only motivate and mobilize a significant segment of society under a common cause or identity but also force or convince those in power to remedy the problem that drives the challenging group. This requires a strong understanding of political opportunity. In this paper, I explore the importance of opportunity and its relationship to common views of strategies used by social movements as discussed in the literature. Strategy reflects the attempts by a movement to circumvent established barriers in political institutions or in the social norms of the political community at large to achieve its objectives. In this context, opportunity creation is defined as strategic action taken by a social movement to reshape those norms and established power alignments by modifying institutional constraints to its own advantage. These constraints are not fixed; they are instead created and subject to constant change. I propose that social movements can effectively build opportunities for themselves by forming alliances within the existing power structure and attempting to function within the institutional constraints instead of challenging them as political outsiders. In this way, they are not dependent on the government, external alliance shifts, or a changing political climate to gain the opportunity needed to press their claims. To illustrate this general claim regarding social movements, I will employ content-analysis of cartoons, leaflets, and broadsides to examine the choices of the woman suffrage movement in America from 1850 to 1919 as it evolved from an ideologically based appeal for woman’s political participation in earlier years to a pragmatic and expediency-driven strategy to gain voting rights during the later years of the movement. The course of this social movement clearly reflects the successes and advantages that stem from a strategy of opportunity creation, including increased leverage over those in positions of social and political influence and a broader base of popular support. Finally, I draw some broader conclusions regarding the impact of opportunity creation on social movements in general and suggest that a movement need not present a challenging framework to achieve results; a policy of frame expansion can be equally if not more effective when combined with opportunity. I also note that successful opportunity structures point to the eventual death of a movement, highlighting the temporal nature of the social movement as a form of political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential that the new computing and communications technologies offer for promoting social change. These technologies do offer space for resistance, but this does not ensure a liberating result. We need to avoid technological determinism. We must explore the impact of the new technologies in various contexts and increase our body of case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last forty years has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in the populist phenomenon known as social movements as well as the launching of powerful counter-movements. Alongside this rise in movement growth, there have been vast policy changes. Understudied in the literature is a connection between these two phenomena. When do social movements decide to pressure governmental institutions for change? Under what conditions are social movements able to successful in their efforts? In this paper, it is argued that a rational, strategic interaction framework should be used to study the policy outcomes of social movement-government interaction. Hypotheses are then developed for strategic interaction variables for explaining social movement-legislative outcomes. Further, social movement life-cycle theories (resource mobilization and political process) are reconsidered from a strategic interaction framework to derive additional hypotheses of outcomes of social movement-legislative interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effectively taking the credit for some desirable outcome is an essential element of politics, and the stakes for successfully claiming credit are similarly high for social protest movements. While popular narratives of some issue areas, particularly civil rights, assign movements a critical role in social change, other movements are more poorly positioned to claim their victories. In this paper, I explore the disparities in success at claiming credit, with the intent of explaining why some challengers end up deriving credit, both in the short and long term, for their efforts, while others don’t. I begin by looking at the question of the outcomes of social movements, briefly reviewing the relevant literature, which focuses predominantly on public policy. I then move to the literature on public policy, examining the difficulties in assessing success or failure of policies. Using Deborah Stone’s (1997) insights on causal narratives, I focus on the construction of dominant stories, suggesting why certain kinds of movements may be better positioned than others to win support for their version of the story. I then identify a number of variables, including goals, political positioning, coalition politics, and constituencies, that explain why some movements have a harder time claiming credit than others. I conclude by suggesting that the positioning of institutional actors, and the degree of their identification with a social movement, is critical to the movement’s capacity to claim success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital reflects a way of conceptualizing how cultural, structural, and institutional aspects of small to large groups in a society interact and affect economic and political change. It is a core concept of a synthesizing framework that can be applied whenever collective endeavors of individuals are critical in achieving a collective goal. We identify trustworthiness, networks, and institutions as three basic forms of social capital. theories of collective action, especially its second-generation versions that incorporate heterogeneous preferences of individuals, are the key building blocks in constructing a theoretically sound social capital perspective.We think that one of the most important reasons why the concept of social capital appears to be so ambiguous is an often-unnoticed divide within the social capital camp itself. One set of social capital researchers bestows priority to a group's cultural factors (summarized in this paper as people's trustworthiness). Others maintain the mainstream neoclassical approach in which values and cultural factors are epiphenomenal to structural incentives.We take the non-reductionist view that trustworthiness - a term referring to the characteristics of individual preferences that facilitate individuals to behave cooperatively in social dilemmas even in the absence of structural and institutional incentives to do so - is not only a non-reducible but also a critical form of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns how pro- and anti-regime political youth organizations in Russia are using gender as a means of gaining attention and representation in an authoritarian political arena. I examine the ways that pro- and anti-regime political youth groups wield masculinity and femininity to attract young people to participate in their political actions (and to adopt their political perspectives). I also show how both pro-Putin, regimesponsored youth organizations (like the infamous group, Nashi) as well as liberal antiregime youth groups, wield masculinity, femininity, and homophobia in support of their own political positions, and against their political opponents. In the past two years, there have been a rash of political actions in which young Russian women disrobe (to varying degrees) to demonstrate their support of political leaders (Putin in particular). These range from a calendar featuring semi-naked pro-Kremlin female students, published for Putin's birthday in 2010, to female fans of Dmitry Medvedev doing a public strip tease in a Moscow square in summer 2011. Meanwhile, pro-Putin youth try to undermine the credibility of opposition (liberal) politicians by labeling them as gay, or as sexually "deviant" (one exhibit at Nashi's yearly summer camp, for instance, consisted of photoshopped posters of three opposition politicians, portraying them as transvestite prostitutes "selling" Russia). Attempts by the liberal opposition to use similarly homophobic tactics against Putin (imputations of homosexuality) are met with immediate resistance from the regime. For example, one artist tried to project an painting of Putin dressed as a woman onto the mayor's office building in his town, and was arrested, interrogated, beaten, and fined in response. In short, displays of masculinity by male political youth activists and political leaders, displays of femininity arrayed in support of those political leaders, and accusations of homosexuality have become highly visible tools of political action in the context of Russia's authoritarian regime. Political youth activists are making use of sex as a tool to highlight their political perspectives. Using a gender lens to shed light on politicized masculinity and politicized femininity lends insight into issues of representation and civic organizing under Russia's authoritarian regime [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that popular culture can play in political and social change. We examine two case studies-rock and roll in the 1950s and early 1960s, and rap/hip hop from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s-focusing on the reactions to these two musical innovations. We argue that the way these two musical developments were received illustrates how music can contribute to undermining cultural hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1860s, Chinese thinkers have repeatedly sought national salvation in the transformation of culture (wenhua). These arguments reached their culmination in the 1930s as intellectuals debated the possibility and direction of "cultural construction." Prompted by Chiang Kai-Shek's so-called "New Life Movement" and related projects for "National Construction," as well as cultural and educational reforms of the May Fourth period (1915-1927), these debates also echo China's 1898 reform movement in explicitly articulating the whole of Chinese culture as a target of deliberate political remaking. Key intellectuals such as Chen Xujing and Hu Shi urged "totalistic Westernization" to counter influential calls by Wang Xinming and others for "cultural construction on a Chinese base." The paper does not arbitrate between these views, so much as examine the methods by which these Chinese thinkers hope to borrow from alien cultural forms. How does culture come to be seen by both camps as an object of transformation and site of salvation? What kinds of interpretive methods render culture tractable to borrowing, imitation, and construction? The answer to these questions, I argue, lies not only in a historical reconstruction of their work but also in exploring the theoretical credibility of their cultural view. That is, the optimistic reliance on culture to secure total social renewal is grounded at least in part on a compelling and novel assumption about culture as a product of our deliberate present choices, rather than an effluence of our past heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of electoral reform is a growing area of research, but to date Oceania, with the exception of New Zealand, has received little comparative attention. Using evidence from Fiji, Nauru, Tonga and Papua New Guinea, as well as Australia and New Zealand, this paper sets out: to understand the process of electoral reform at national and regional levels; to examine the variation in the process; and to consider whether theories of electoral reform derived from elsewhere apply to the Oceanic experience. The main findings are that electoral reform is a highly complex process, influenced by diffusion, democratic values and parties' self-interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most difficult issues in public management revolve around making strategic choices for the future in an era of rapid social, cultural and technological change. In previous work we drew a contrast between new public management (NPM) approaches, which predominated in the period 1980-2002, and digital era governance (DEG) which grew fast in the 2000s. Since that time the rapid development of societal and technological uses of online processes has been matched by the seismic impact of the 2008 credit crunch and financial crisis, now mapping out as austerity regimes in many OECD countries. In this paper we review the current fortunes of NPM, which has not revived despite the pressure on public spending. By contrast, the first wave of digital-era governance changes have flourished and the importance of key DEG themes has increased - specifically reintegrating government services, pushing towards holistic delivery to clients and responding to the digitalization wave in public services. We also argue for the emergence of an influential 'second wave' of digital-era changes inside government, responding to the advent of the social web, cloud computing, apps development and many other recent phenomena moving advanced industrial societies further towards an online civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers early development of a theory of how a society's identity system affects its ability to change its perception of an adversary following a conflict. The author first presents separately researched findings regarding the ability of established theoretical schools to explain variation in inter-state reconciliation outcomes, thus providing a basis to assess the relative usefulness of a new identity theory. Second, the author develops a formal model that captures the core aspects of his identity theory, and describes the results of experimentation with that model. Finally, the author assesses the relevance of his experimentation findings for the broader reconciliation literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some newly empowered courts more likely than others to engage in progressive judicial activism? This paper addresses this question through an analysis of the origins and subsequent activism of the Colombian Constitutional Court towards rights in general, and the right to health in particular. My research suggests that ideational variables are the most effective in explaining this outcome. On the one hand, I argue that the Constitutional Court's behavior reflects the dominance within it of a particular set of ideas about the judicial role. On the other, I provide evidence that programmatic beliefs about the relationship between rule of law and market-driven economic growth led power holders to create the Court and to appoint judges of this orientation. The emergence of progressive judicial activism in Colombia, my analysis suggests, was the unexpected outcome of purposeful political choices made by proponents of neoliberal economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the connection between the external policy environment and organization-level consequences by focusing on how incremental gains and losses--those outcomes that stop short of total victory or ultimate defeat--affect social movement organizations. This focus reverses the typical causal arrow found in much of the social movement literature that attempts to use organization-level factors to account for policy outcomes, and interrogates instead how outcomes affect organizations. Given that for most movements, a win or a loss on an individual point of policy is usually the result of a single battle in a larger war, and that interactions between movements and policy makers are protracted and iterative, it becomes important to understand how small-scale outcomes might cumulatively affect an organization's ability to engage in future contentious activity by making it harder or easier to access resources or by affecting its level of public support.Drawing on a dataset of 65 anti-death penalty organizations and their activities between 1996-2006, I find that incremental outcomes have different effects on organizational attributes. For overall resource levels, group characteristics are by themselves strong predictors of the overall availability of funds and donations, though resource endowments are also sensitive to changes in the overall level of public support for the death penalty and changes in the general political environment. Policy changes, whether formal or informal, matter less for this particular variable. On the other hand, incremental outcomes matter a great deal when explaining the proportion of organizational support and funding that comes from members of the general public. As informal gains are made against capital punishment, public support for ADP groups tends to increase. But formal, statutory outcomes, like judicial decisions, display a curvilinear relationship to public support that is convex in shape rather than the expected concave function--a highly counter-intuitive finding. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how EU institutions may serve as political opportunity structures for transnational public interest activism in Europe. In particular, I focus on the mobilization around the issue of women's rights. Further, I examine what effects this transnational political and legal action has on the permanence and inclusion of public interests in EU policy processes. I ask how mobilization can serve as a catalyst for institutional change (by influencing legislative action and litigation) and how this impacts the rules and procedures that are political opportunities for inclusion and action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the countries of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua), civil war and economic crisis in the 1980s have been followed by a new outwardly oriented development model, the emergence of social groups associated with that model, and new democratic political regimes. Political elites, operating within party organizations, attempt to connect to shifting social groups and negotiate the incorporation of emerging, declining, and marginalized groups. As they do so, party systems have settled into a range of patterns of polarization, fragmentation, and competition around issues of liberal citizenship and economic development. The political terrains produced by these patterns shape the obstacles facing states as they attempt to mobilize resources to sustain their administrations, promote development, and meet social needs. This paper compares the process by which incremental advances have been made in each country, even as it highlights the overall insufficiency of state capacity in the region. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of representative democracy is the process and formula by which citizens are grouped together and given the opportunity to select leaders to act on their behalf. Underneath artificial political lines like wards or districts, however, exists a social environment that is always changing and often not in accordance with political boundaries. One dramatic social change in the United States is population growth. American legislatures, by and large, have not been adjusted to account for large population growth during the last half of the 20th century. This paper argues that increases in constituency size - the number of constituents represented by each lawmaker in a legislative chamber - affects the constituent-legislator relationship. Specifically, constituency size has a negative relationship with positive attitudes about state government. Evidence using two national surveys merged with state contextual data and using hierarchical linear modeling supports the argument that large constituency sizes lead to less favorable attitudes toward state government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Latin America has moved to the left during the last decade, why have the governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay chosen a path of moderate, gradual change, whereas their counterparts in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have proceeded with considerable economic and political radicalism? Comparative analysis and case studies of Brazil and especially Bolivia find that economic performance and party institutions do not provide a satisfactory explanation for this striking difference in political approach. Instead, natural resource rents and commodity booms (and busts) play a crucial role. The unearned windfalls produced by bonanzas inspire risk-acceptance among political leaders and common citizens, which can prompt ideological radicalism and political confrontation. By developing this argument and basing it on a novel, cognitive-psychological micro-foundation, the paper seeks to contribute to theories of the rentier state and the "resource curse." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does TV viewing affect political attitudes and activism? Most research that addresses this question has been conducted in the setting of a media system - the United States - in which commercial broadcasting has been dominant for a long time. Findings from this research have often pointed to negative relationships between TV viewing and political attitudes and activism. In media systems with a better balance between public and commercial broadcasting, these relationships are specified by the type of channel people tend to view. Exposure to commercial channels would be negatively associated with political attitudes, in contrast with exposure to public channels (Holtz-Bacha and Norris 2001; Hooghe 2002; Aarts and Semetko 2003).In this paper, we present an analysis of survey panel data of television exposure and political attitudes with a four-year interval (1998-2002) from the Netherlands. We show that exposure to television programs is structured according to a clear public-commercial divide. This structure of television exposure is quite stable over the time period studied. Focusing on the exposure to TV news programs in particular, we find that the percentage of intensive viewers of both public and commercial news almost doubled over the four year period. Respondents who used to focus more or less exclusively on public TV news programs, now tend to watch commercial TV news as well. Finally, we show that the type of news audience group people belong to (no intensive news viewer at all; intensive viewer of public news; intensive viewer of commercial news; intensive viewer of both public and commercial news) is related to indicators of political communication and political attitudes such as interest, internal efficacy, cynicism and trust. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a model of social movement emergence and political change that is not critically dependent on either active elite support or limited rationality. Social movements involve, rather, strategic interactions among movement actors as they are impacted by exogenous shocks---such as those experienced during a financial crisis---and moderated by the social relationship effects that exist in participating groups. We introduce two separate mechanisms involved in driving social change: Social movement emergence premised on inter-group formation under a political entrepreneur, and intra-group dynamics based on a system of endogenous contract enforcement. Our framework is also flexible enough to incorporate multiple contracting mechanisms, informational imperfections, as well as potential interactions with elites.We then consider the historical validity of the model with case studies of Indonesia during the crisis and conflict in the Congo. These studies suggest that features that we highlight in our model, such as strategic interaction among movement actors, the importance of exogenous shocks, as well as the existence of political entrepreneurs, were both necessary and important in the genesis and perpetuation of these social movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I begin this paper by examining two contemporary approaches towards change in international politics, the static realist model and the gradualist constructivist model, and offer a short account of dramatic changes in the rules constituting chess. I then examine an alternative model of radical structural change, based on the punctuated equilibrium model. This model has been employed by social scientists, political scientists and several IR scholars whose work I examine in greater detail. I conclude by applying the punctuated equilibrium model to the resolution of entrenched disputes and derive three hypothesis to be tested in future research. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An appraisal of important questions raised by, and defects in, Louis Hartz’s Liberal Tradition in America, with special emphasis on consensus history and on the kind of sense Hartz’s liberal Lockeanism makes of the relationship between material conditions and beliefs. The author examines the import of changes in the U.S. economy for the Hartz thesis and considers how cultural and religious cleavages call key tenets of Hartz’s secular thesis into question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature in the social sciences deals with the way in which advanced democracies respond to structural economic (and social) change. We focus on processes of institutional change, and we start from the assumption that any new, or reformed, institutional set-up must be coherent. The requirement of coherence is the reason for one important aspect of the process of reform: there is competition between epistemic communities that propose different solutions to policy problems in different policy areas. This competition turns experts into ideological advocates, as experts in one area attempt to influence policies in other areas. We demonstrate the relevance of our argument through an analysis of Swedish economic and social policymaking in the post-war period. Our argument has two important implications: studying periods of transition and change is potentially more important than studying periods of equilibrium and stability, and soft variables–ideas, knowledge and norms–have effects on hard variables, such as economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how changes in technology and social practices have led to policy problems and political controversies in 2003. Developments in the historical context of the changes; Potential for states to abuse mainframes and databases of information on their citizens; Protection of privacy of the people.

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine State of the Union addresses to gauge the impact of social change in the United States. Our study uses two theories of social change as a framework for this examination: Inglehart’s theory of value change (1971, 1977, 1997), and Hunter’s notion of a culture war (1991, 1994). Utilizing a prioritization index of policy issues in State of the Union addresses, we found that there is remarkable consistency in the policy areas that are given high priority (foreign policy/defense policy, economic policy, governmental affairs, and social welfare policy) and low priority (labor issues, agriculture, resources, and civil rights/civil liberties) over time. We find little support for Inglehart’s theory that hypothesizes economic issues in postindustrial society will become comparatively less important as postmaterial, or quality of life issues, increase in importance. We do, however, find evidence that the culture war has impacted the rhetoric of presidents in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Reagan, Bush, and Clinton incorporate more religious references in their addresses than previous presidents. Reagan’s messages also contained policy provisions that specifically had religious content or appeal. In addition, Reagan and Clinton both are unique in their proclivity to integrate various formulations of ?American values? in their rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysts working from a variety of perspectives have stressed the importance of focusing on how social development occurs over time, and how the temporal relationships among variables can have profound effects on their interactions. Discussions of path dependence, timing and sequence, long-term processes, and issues related to institutional development have proliferated. Issues of duration ? the length of time over which particular changes in a variable or variables of interest are produced ? appear repeatedly in this literature, but this feature of social processes has so far received little direct attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many aspects of the Progressive Era have been analyzed within the field of American political development: the rise of new institutions, the development of economic corporatization, and the transformation of the American state, to name a few. Left unexamined, however has been the critical role marriage played as a form of public policy at the time. Marriage was central to debates and policy, particularly in relation to immigration. During this time of rapid economic, social and political transformation, marriage became a site of political contestation of policy initiative and the cultural and discursive definition of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen action is shaped and citizen desires are cultivated by a variety of social and political forces -- including formal political institutions and their endeavors. If institutions play this role, then making change on the institutional level is a way to alter the context in which desires are formed and pursued and decisions made, a way to make and sustain social change. But when we attend to the point this it is not merely citizen actions that are shaped through institutions, but citizen desires, the project of designing political institutions to structure normative action has a dark side, raising a specter of "legislating desires" that might well make democratic theorists uneasy. The specter of legislating desires is familiar to us since Plato at least, and it takes specific form in contemporary political thought in the work of Foucault. Thus I turn to both of these theorists in this essay, to challenge and probe my own desire (which I share with other democrats) to "radically reform" formal political institutions. Is the violence required for achieving Plato’s just city a caution that fashioning citizen-selves cannot be an institutional project? Is this why Socrates insists on working only with individuals? Similarly, with respect to Foucault, is self-fashioning only a practice of freedom if it is the work of the self (and not institutions) on the self? Or is it possible that there are democratic approaches to institutions that can avoid Platonic dangers and also sustain and cultivate freedom? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restorative justice, a normative theory and reform movement emphasizing dialogue and reconciliation between victim, offender, and community, has become part of the practice of criminal justice in the United States. This essay argues that restorative justice has a participatory core that distinguishes it as a normative theory of criminal justice. Advocates of restorative justice expect social change, especially the growth of non-punitive attitudes, to emerge from a public and de-professionalized context of adjudication. The role of lay participation in achieving social change, though prominent in restorative justice critiques of mainstream criminal justice norms and practices, has not been clearly articulated in practical terms. Significant ambiguities remain regarding the degree of lay participation, scope of authority, and the focus of restorative justice forums. The essay concludes that to have an effect on public attitudes towards crime and crime control policy, lay participation in restorative justice forums must be more widespread and more contentious than currently conceived. Barriers to more restorative criminal justice policy include limited public knowledge in this domain, lack of a sense of civic responsibility for improving criminal justice policy, and a traditional strain of punitiveness towards offenders. The first two barriers might be crossed by more widespread public deliberation in restorative justice forums, but the last will be much more difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 13th, 2001 Jerry Falwell made a guest appearance on Pat Robertson's 700 Club by remote satellite and commented on the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Together, the two ministers expressed the outlines of a "politics of desert" that links American tolerance of lesbians and gays, feminists, atheists, and others with God's punishment on the polity. Although Falwell and Robertson were widely denounced for their comments, little analysis followed in the media of the theological and political content of the Christian right's politics of desert or of the multiple modes of address that Christian right leaders use to deliver political messages to followers and to the general US public. This essay addresses these themes and, more specifically, links the Falwell-Robertson comments to recent Christian right political activism against lesbians and gay men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]