This article disputes the common view that social science explanations depend on discovery of lawlike generalizations from which descriptions of social outcomes can be derived. It distinguishes between governing and phenomenal regularities, and argues that social regularities are phenomenal rather than governing. In place of nomological deductive arguments, the article maintains that social explanations depend on the discovery of causal mechanisms underlying various social processes. The metaphysical correlate of this argument is that there are no social kinds: types of social (...) entities that share a common casual constitution giving rise to strong regularities of behavior. The article turns next to a consideration of the character of social causation and argues for a microfoundational interpretation of social causation: social causal powers are embodied in the constraints and opportunities that institutions present to individual agents. Finally, it is noted that these arguments have consequences for the credibility of social predictions: it is argued that predictions in social science are generally unreliable. (shrink)

The thesis examines political and economic transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and particularly in post-communist Ethiopia and Angola between 1989-2019 by applying the interpretative scheme of transition theory. The research question investigated how the economic liberalization of centrally planned political systems affects their political liberalization and vice versa. The main hypothesis attempted to answer whether transition theory can apply as an interpretative model in order to explain post-communist developments in the SSA context. Characteristic noteworthy country examples, which have experienced communism (...) for an extended period and are now under a hybrid developmental state form - with their impressive economic development being driven mainly by the state - are Ethiopia and Angola. Ethiopia and Angola belonged among the fastest-growing economies in the world among China, India and East Asian countries with astonishing high growth rates for extended periods. In turn, their political transition presented signs of liberalization. Yet, they seem to follow the stagnated path of developmental states and hybrid regimes. Ιn order to examine the political and socio-economic parameters of these transformations, the methodology uses also a combination of qualitative and quantitative research data through a twofold comparative approach. From the political perspective two similar political systems are compared. From the economic perspective, we compare a non-resource-rich economy such as Ethiopia with a resource-rich economy such as Angola. The degree of influence of socio-economic interventions by major external actors such as China, US and the EU to democratic consolidation, and vice versa, is examined as well as the repercussions of radical and gradual reforms. The findings of the study suggest that rapid economic transitions along with gradual political reforms in Ethiopia, Angola - and broadly in SSA - inevitably cause delays in socio-economic developments such as employment, inclusiveness and poverty alleviation. Structural external transition drivers in SSA such as debt, structural adjustment programs, subsidies, humanitarian aid and trade deficits seem to hamper its economic transitions than to facilitate its progress and non-dependency. These drivers lead to a vicious circle in most of the empirical examples of SSA. The strong hybrid developmental states of Ethiopia and Angola – despite their democratic progress - present more similarities to the developmental states of China or rest East Asia than to the Central Eastern European countries. In a certain degree, there are similarities also with cases of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which are still under Russia’s significant influence. The most context-specific parameters though, which concern Sub-Saharan Africa and diversify the states of Ethiopia and Angola from the existing interpretative scheme of transition theory are their high ethnic diversity and economic dependence from their external partners as well as their sui generis leadership. These parameters pose significant constraints to the diverse ethnic groups in their struggle for power and for their access to the natural resources. (shrink)

The study involved analyzing the causes and consequences of corruption in Vietnam. Some research findings were similar to those of other low- to middle-income countries. However, there were some differences since Vietnam was a socialist republic country. The study used regression analysis to determine the correlations between government expenditure, governance indicator and corruption as well as between corruption and the economic development in selected countries. Data gathered from various sources over 18 years, from 2000 to 2017, were used to answer (...) the research questions. The study uses the corruption perception index and the shadow economy index as proxy variables of corruption. The study’s findings were then contributed to the corruption and economic development literature and used to propose a number of recommendations to policymakers and future researchers. (shrink)

Nationalism is often singled out as the powerful force that brought about the collapse of the last great land empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We offer a different picture: nationalism was weak before 1914, with war being caused by the fears of the great powers rather than pressures from below; crucially war was less an opportunity for pre-existing nationalists to seize than a maelstrom that created new identities.

This study investigates the influence of formal and informal institutions on firm innovation in transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEs) by explicitly differentiating between corruption and bribery as distinct informal institutions. We integrate institutional theory and legitimacy theory to explain that the failure of formal institutions creates an environment of corruption which encourages firms to use bribes to facilitate economic exchange. We test our hypotheses on the innovation performance of a sample (n = 1603) of firms in 11 (...) CEEs. The results show that weak rule of law and ineffective business regulations in CEEs propagate the perception of corruption that inhibits firm innovation. However, the use of bribery enables firms to transform this environment of corruption into innovation outcomes. The policy and managerial implications of our research for differentiating between corruption and bribery and our findings that bribery acts as the glue that binds formal and informal institutions are fully discussed. (shrink)

This paper studies the lessons of principled anti-corruption experts who dared to fulfill their duty of justice in highly corrupt societies, through the true story of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Finance Minister of Nigeria. My thesis is that when principled anti-corruption experts are epistemic trespassers, they show moral incompetence. Okonjo-Iweala shows moral incompetence in two ways: she misread the opposition to her strategies and misled other honest reformers. Both actions bungled her efforts to eradicate corruption inasmuch as they hindered the (...) possibility of finding successful anti-corruption policies. Okonjo-Iweala’s moral incompetence is, I argue, the result of her epistemic trespassing that led her to act like an expert in an environment where she was not. I conclude that, in highly corrupt societies, principled anti-corruption experts should embrace moral humility, stop thinking that they are experts, and act more like students, asking questions and not rushing to think that they understand the answers. (shrink)

This study explores the role of an informal institution—engaged Buddhism—in leadership responses to issues of bribery at the firm level in the context of Vietnam. In-depth interviews were carried out in Vietnam with 26 organizational leaders who were Buddhist practitioners. The leaders expressed a Buddhist-enacted utilitarian approach based on three context-associated mechanisms: karmic consequences, community and social well-being, and total detachment. These mechanisms manifest in leadership approaches based on the Middle Way, Skillful Means, and Emptiness. They are involved in forming (...) leaders’ perceptions about bribery issues and their enacting of contextual approaches to balance organizational means and ends in tackling ethical issues associated with bribery. The study also sheds light on moral struggles involved in the process of shaping and enacting a Buddhist-enacted utilitarian approach. (shrink)

Corrupt regulatory environment encourages firms to deploy middlemen for speedy and assured acquisition of different services from regulatory agencies. Using a World Bank dataset of 2210 Indian manufacturing firms, this article examines how firms with middlemen deal with corrupt governmental agencies for its operational efficiency. Our results demonstrate that deployment of middlemen by the firms is often accompanied by a substantial increase in operational delay, relatively trigger more consumption of senior management’s time on regulatory disentanglement, enhance the likelihood/tendency to pay (...) bribe, and likely to face more court cases as a means of restitution of legal rights. As firm-specific attributes may contaminate our preliminary results, we utilized the propensity score framework to examine relationships among variables of interests. Our study contributes to the inconspicuous part of the corruption literature by attempting to present a comprehensive but indirect assessment of the functions of middlemen that predominantly remained unattended except some scattered descriptive, case-based anecdotal presentations. (shrink)

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most (...) influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

The existing scholarship has developed six main explanations to account for the success of the Chinese Revolution, which has been anomalous for major paradigms derived from cross-national comparisons. Methodologically, we use a social geographical approach to test these existing explanations systematically by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset of Communist growth in 93 counties in the three most contested provinces during its most pivotal period of ascendence. Theoretically, we advance and test an alternative perspective, based on the groundwork of Tocqueville (...) and Fei Xiaotong, that integrates the state-centric theory, elite theory, and cultural analysis. Our perspective emphasizes the interplay between state centralization and local elite structure, which leads to intensified state extraction and local elite fracturing, thus creating favorable conditions for revolution. The quantitative analysis strongly supports the importance of the Japanese invasion but provides limited support for many other conventional explanations. The analysis largely confirms the Tocqueville-Fei perspective on state centralization, elite fracturing, cultural change, and revolution. The findings are buttressed by a detailed case study of Lianshui County. The study unveils a common structural challenge that a modernizing state faces in an agrarian status society, to recreate its political legitimacy while disrupting local elite structure. It also sheds historical light on the evolution of state-society relationship through the Chinese Revolution. (shrink)

For political realists, legitimacy is a central requirement for the desirability of political institutions. Their detractors contend that it is either descriptive, and thus devoid of critical potential, or it relies on some moralist value that realists reject. We defend a functionalist reading of realist legitimacy: descriptive legitimacy, that is, the capacity of a political institution to generate beliefs in its right to rule as opposed to commanding through coercion alone, is desirable in virtue of its functional role. First, descriptive (...) legitimacy plays an evaluative role: Institutions can fail to convince citizens that they have a right to rule and can be ranked by how well they do so. Second, descriptive legitimacy plays a normative role, because if an institution fails to convince subjects of its right to rule, this gives them a reason not to comply with its directives, even if it satisfies philosophers’ standards for possessing such right. (shrink)

Liberal democracy is often considered to be unstable, consisting of two markedly different ideals that remain in tension. Yet the thesis regarding the alleged insta...

While the importance of social and political trust has been well documented, there is a lack of scholarly consensus over where trust originates. This article tests three theoretical arguments – social-psychological, social-cultural, and political institutional – on the origin of political trust against three East Asian democracies. The empirical analysis from the AsiaBarometer survey illustrates that political institutional theory best explains the origin of political trust in East Asian cases. Citizens of these East Asian democracies have a high level of (...) political trust when they believe that their governments perform well in management of the national economy and political representation of elected officials. Meanwhile, social-psychological and social-cultural theories explain the origins of social trust, but not political trust. The evidence reveals that socially trusting people are not automatically politically trusting; social trust and political trust originate from different sources and do not transform from one to the other.Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The emergence of the ever-growing anti-corruption movement from the early ’90s onwards has proven itself to be of considerable importance in how we understand and explain global inequalities as well as in redefining corruption as a lack of transparency. This paper examines the timing and content of this international anti-corruption movement. It argues that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the deepening of an increasingly transnational capitalism, anti-corruption discourse has arisen as a new version of the ‘white man’s (...) burden’, a justification for intervention into the domestic politics of less powerful states as well as an explanation for their relative poverty. Concurrently, the anti-corruption movement has functioned to push states into increasing their autonomy with respect to local interests and fractions of capital in order to become more subservient and hospitable to transnational capital as a whole. (shrink)

What is the distinctive trait of the Latin American pattern of modernization? In contrast to western societies, where the debate on modernization has been dominated by the Weberian thematic of bureaucratiz-ation, the most salient feature of the Latin American developmental path is the chronic frailty of legal-constitutional arrangements. In Latin America, the process of modernization and social differentiation has not been followed by the legal stabilization of social complexity but is characterized by a low degree of juridification and institutional precariousness. (...) Drawing on insights from both Luhmann's and Habermas' theories, the article provides a critical theoretical framework for the study of the peculiarities of the Latin American modernizing path. (shrink)

This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...) is one that pumps blood well, and a good army is one that it is effective at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: namely making binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom and equality remain obviously important concerns, but only once the basic political function is secured. (shrink)

This article evaluates the political effectiveness of the Gramscian-style counterhegemonic strategy employed by the leading Islamist movement in Egypt. The article analyzes, historically and comparatively, the unfolding of this strategy during the period from 1982 to 2007, emphasizing how its success triggered heightened state repression, which ultimately prevented Islamists from capitalizing politically on their growing cultural power. The coercive capacity of modern states, as this article demonstrates, can preserve a regime’s political domination long after it has lost its cultural hegemony. (...) The empirical evidence derived from the Islamist experience in Egypt supports theoretical claims that go beyond the Egyptian case: namely, it exposes the limits of the narrow cultural reading of Gramsci that has become commonplace over the years. (shrink)

This essay argues that although political thinkers frequently draw on his thought, Friedrich Nietzsche has not been read as a ‘thinker of politics’ in his own regard because the Euro-American field of political thought owes its very notion of ‘politics’ to the conceptual heritage Nietzsche's project directly challenges. The first part of the essay traces the prevailing conception of politics to Aristotle, in whose view politics is the quintessentially human ( anthropos) activity of organising collective life through reason/speech ( logos). (...) The second part presents Nietzsche's project as a novel type of political naturalism, one which replaces the two Aristotelian axioms underpinning standard construals of politics, namely logocentrism and anthropocentrism. For Nietzsche, politics is not a unique, intra-species behaviour of certain bipedal primates, but the relational power dynamics present in all of nature, humans included. Nietzsche's political naturalism thereby gifts us an image of politics befitting the thoroughly entangled, volatile world we urgently have to come to terms with today. (shrink)

Being poor can influence how one makes ethical decisions in various fields. Nepotism is one such area, emerging as kinship-based favoritism in the job market. People can be poor on at least three levels: one can live in a poor country, be poor compared to others around them, or feel poor in their given situation. We assumed that these levels can simultaneously influence nepotistic hiring decisions among Hungarian and US participants. Prior cross-cultural, non-experimental studies demonstrated that nepotism is more prevalent (...) in poorer countries such as Hungary than in richer countries such as the United States. However, contrary to our expectations, in our non-representative, preliminary study, US participants showed stronger nepotistic behavioral tendencies than Hungarians. Furthermore, people with lower socioeconomic status had less nepotistic intentions than richer people. When participants were asked to imagine themselves as a poor person, they tended to be more nepotistic than had they imagined themselves to be rich. Finally, nepotistic hiring intentions were in general stronger than non-nepotistic hiring intentions. These seemingly paradoxical results were interpreted in the light of the COVID-19 job market context and were explained by the mechanisms described by research on wealth and immoral behaviors, as well as the presence of risk aversion. (shrink)

The human history relates to the history of communication, which has also been a co-driver of human development. Communication integrates the knowledge, organization and power of a society.Today, there is an increasing debate over the importance of politicians' mutual communication, communication with voters and the media, the role of public relations in politics, and communication with the civil society. Thus, political communication and the creative use of the media remain the essential component of any individual involved in politics or even (...) of a political group.In this study, political communication in North Macedonia is presented in the context of political efforts into the integration process in European Union (EU), by observing all the stages within the process so far. From the content and the issues addressed, it is clear that policymakers face the challenges of communication (as is the case in many countries aspiring the European integration).In this paper, the premises of genuinely political communication strategy are analyzed separately, assessing them in the context of the political communication theory. It will be shown that successful communication is an important tool for convincing citizens that EU provides a better quality of life and work. (shrink)

As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its (...) sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy. (shrink)

This study is an empirical approach to answering the question: are there any universal factors that account for the origin, diffusion and persistence of corruption in human societies? The paper enquires whether the perception of corruption in politics and economics can be tackled as a form of cultural adaptation, driven by exogenous and endogenous forces. These are respectively: freedom of access and management of economic resources, and the pressures towards human grouping. Following the analytical insights of cultural theory, developed by (...) Mary Douglas and later Aaron Wildavsky, variation is introduced through the ways in which corruption is perceived through the different behavioral and cultural biases that prevail in societies. This research introduces a cross-country comparative analysis of 57 countries attempting to test quantitatively whether institutional pressure and emphasis towards social grouping are correlated with corruption perception at country levels. (shrink)

Since its inception, the theory of modernization has undergone so many transformations that it makes sense to speak of a «modernization discourse» rather than a theory and to consider the concept itself from the point of view of social epistemology in conjunction with social imagination. This paper is devoted to substantiating this approach. The concept of modernization is interesting in this regard because it contains not only hermeneutic but also prescriptive elements: by placing society in a broader historical framework of (...) past, present and future, it creates a normative horizon for self-understanding and social transformation. It allows us to imagine our society as a historical whole, to imagine a social ideal and social development as a path towards it. At the same time, it appeals to the images of the social imagination - the social imaginary, depending on the context. A separate question, therefore, is what semantic load this concept receives when it is adopted by a different socio-cultural and political context. Such research could help to understand the internal logic of political processes in a society and its destiny. The paper consists of three subsections: the first is devoted to an overview of theories of modernization and their transformation under the influence of social epistemology; the second deals with the imagination as an anthropological a priori for considering social imagination; finally, the last subsection, which also serves as a conclusion, justifies why, given the purpose of the study, it is more appropriate to consider the concept of modernization in the context of the social imagination rather than as an ideology. The concept of ideology refers to political bias, to the question of truth and a critique of power discourse. In contrast, the concept of social imagination is politically neutral and refers to a cultural background of politics. It thus circumvents Man nheim’s paradox by being conceptualized as constitutive of a political order. (shrink)

This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...) is one that pumps blood well, and a good army is one that it is effective at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: namely making binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom and equality remain obviously important concerns, but only once the basic political function is secured. (shrink)

Frequent and open interaction between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs is necessary for venture capital investments to occur. Increasingly, these investments are made across jurisdictions. The vast majority of these cross-border investments are carried out in a syndicate of two or more VCs, indicating the effects of intra-industry networks needing further analysis. Using China as a model, we provide a novel multidimensional framework to explain cross-border investments in innovative ventures across developed and emerging economies. By analyzing a unique international dataset, we (...) examine worldwide venture capital investment flows from 2000–2012 and consider the effects of geographical, cultural, and institutional proximity as well as institutional and relational trust. We find trust to mitigate the negative effects of geographical and cultural distance, where institutional trust is more relevant for investments in emerging economies, and relational trust is more relevant for investments in developed economies. (shrink)

Three hundred years ago per capita incomes in China and Japan were about equal and fairly close to the global mean. At the end of the twentieth century Japanese per capita incomes are about as high as Western incomes and about seven times as high as Chinese incomes. How could this happen? Manchu China and Tokugawa Japan did not establish equally safe property rights for merchants and producers as the West did. But political fragmentation and feudalism within Japan provided something (...) like checks and balances against arbitrary government which China lacked. Moreover, a similar lack of respect for merchants in both countries had more favourable consequences for early commercialisation in Japan than in China. (shrink)

This paper argues for the need for a better grounded theoretical understanding of the integrity crisis facing much of sub-Saharan Africa. Many of Africa's problems are not unique or peculiar to the region. The paper locates Africa's integrity crisis in the social historical situation characterized by what we term the tribesperson in transition, a phenomenon where people find themselves caught up in tensions, conflicts and anxieties as they attempt to transit from the traditional to the modern. These conflicts, tensions and (...) anxieties create the integrity crisis we are witnessing. Problems are exacerbated by the fact that even the very states themselves are bifurcated along the lines of modern versus tribal/ethnic. Failure to develop national consensus on moral matters, a reluctance of modern states to meet their obligations to their people, and failure to incorporate moral virtues from tribal society into modern contract societies are some of the problems exacerbating the moral problem the region faces. We offer related ideas as avenues to solutions. (shrink)

This paper is organised in three interconnected parts. First, contemporary political economic approaches to understanding the structure of the global economic system are outlined and synthesised. Specifically, it is suggested that the current structural configuration of the globe is a transitional phase between the spatially-bounded configuration hypothesised by world-system theory and the configuration hypothesised by globalisation theorists. Second, the contemporary problem of environmental degradation is situated in a global structural context. Third, an outline and critique of Ulrich Beck 's theory (...) of the ' Risk Society ' is presented to illustrate the increasing inadequacy of nation-state-centric theories in explaining the dynamic linkage between global capitalism and local environmental degradation. (shrink)

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully understood as a result of situated political innovation—i.e., of the creative recombination of existing practices, through experimentation over time, by interacting political agents (...) for whom old repertoires were proving inadequate to the changing context of action. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to explain the historical emergence of a new set of populist mobilizing practices in early twentieth-century Peru. The results have implications for the study of political action and historical change. (shrink)

The conflict in Iraq has been portrayed as “ethnic” civil war, a radically different conflict from “ideological” wars such as Vietnam. We argue that such an assessment is misleading, as is its theoretical foundation, which we call the “ethnic war model.” Neither Iraq nor Vietnam conforms to the ethnic war model's predictions. The sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni militias is not simply the outcome of sectarian cleavages in Iraqi society, but to an important extent, a legacy of U.S. occupation. (...) On the other hand, although Vietnam was a society riven by ethnic cleavages, the Vietnam War also fails to conform to the ethnic war model. We show that there is no necessary overlap between ethnic conflict and ethnic war. Some ethnic conflicts evolve into ethnic wars, and others develop dynamics virtually indistinguishable from those of ideological civil wars. We suggest that the state's role is essential in transforming conflicts into either ethnic or irregular wars. We conclude with an analysis of the current situation and future prospects in Iraq. (shrink)

The government itself, which is the only mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable [with the standing army] to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. Henry Thoreau, in “Civil Disobedience” It is easy to say — and often (...) is said — that we cannot have tolerable relations with new revolutionary regimes. The problem is that our anticommunist paranoia has made it impossible to find out. We do not know whether Mao's declared interest in a relationship with the Americans in the 1940s or Ho Chi Minh's were sincere. And the reason we don't know is that we never tried to find out. Those who reported it was a possibility were hounded out of the foreign service because of our suspicion and fear of communism. The legacy of that era brings to mind Ivan the Terrible's practice of murdering the bearer of bad news. We are more civilized than that; we have been content simply to ruin people's careers. J. William Fulbright, in The Price of Empire (1989) This poisonous thing I'm trying to describe is [a] characteristic way of dealing with criticism. It used to be enough to brand a critic as a radical or a leftist to make people turn away. Now we need only to call him a liberal. Soon “moderate” will be the M word, “conservative” will be the C word and only fascists will be in the mainstream. E. L. Doctorow, Brandeis Commencement, May 21, 1989 We have lived with violence for seven years It was not worth one single life But the patriot's fist is at her throat Her voice is in mortal danger... Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” in Dream of a Common Language (Norton, 1978). (shrink)

The sociology of revolution has produced a prodigious body of scholarship that is nonetheless deficient in one area: attention to gender in the unfolding of revolutions and in the building of new states. Feminist scholars, however, have been attentive to women's participation in revolutions, the effects of revolutions on gender systems and women's positions, and how gender shapes revolutionary processes, including patterns of mobilization, revolutionary programs, and the policies of revolutionary states. This article discusses the literature on revolutions, presents a (...) theoretical framework for the study of revolutions based on gender outcomes, and examines two cases of revolutionary transformation that conform to what I call the patriarchal model of revolution: Iran in 1979 and the 1989 revolutions in East Central Europe. (shrink)

El boom en los precios de los recursos naturales de la primera década del siglo veintiuno ha sido una bendición para todas las economías de Sudamérica. Para algunos regímenes políticos, con todo, obró como una maldición. En Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia y, en menor medida la Argentina, la bonanza de las materias primas propició la emergencia del “Rentismo Populista”, un nuevo tipo de coalición socio-política basada en la incorporación económica de los sectores informales y financiada por las ganancias extraordinarias de las (...) exportaciones de recursos naturales. Basado en una nueva estructura fiscal, el populismo rentista a su vez indujo la intensificación de los mecanismos plebiscitarios de accountability vertical y la neutralización de las restricciones propias de la accountability horizontal. Este texto explora las condiciones bajo las cuales un shock exógeno común a toda la región, la bonanza de las materias primas, se difundió a lo largo de la región con diferentes efectos coalicionales. También define los mecanismos que vinculan a la coalición del populismo rentista con la emergencia de formas hegemónicas y plebiscitarias de accountability. Con el fin de resaltar las novedades y las continuidades del populismo rentista, el texto sitúa la coalición en perspectiva histórica, inspirado en los primeros trabajos de Guillermo O’Donnell sobre la economía política de Argentina y Brasil como fuente de similitudes y contrastes. Asimismo, compara a las “hegemonías plebiscitarias” con las democracias delegativas, un concepto central en los trabajos más recientes de O’Donnell sobre regímenes políticos. (shrink)

Hoy día se hizo muy común reclamar por el orden y un sentido de previsibilidad en la vida cotidiana, la política y la cultura. A veces, todo parece perder significación y suena con fuerza un grito de temor al escuchar que la sociedad se embarranca en el desorden y el caos. Para los sociólogos, no hay nada por qué preocuparse, sobre todo cuando se revisan una vez más los aportes teóricos del sociólogo y filósofo alemán Niklas Luhmann. Las preocupaciones teóricas (...) de Luhmann en el ensayo ¿Cómo es posible el orden social? buscan delimitar las condiciones de “posibilidad de dicho orden”, constituyéndose así en un conjunto de explicaciones que faciliten la delimitación de aquellos problemas que fueron convirtiendo a la sociología en una disciplina científica, pero al mismo tiempo en un saber que reflexiona sobre el desenvolvimiento de los sistemas de la sociedad. Estas orientaciones siguen las huellas epistemológicas marcadas por Emanuel Kant en su Crítica de la Razón pura, donde surge la pregunta en torno a cuáles son las condiciones de posibilidad del conocimiento. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of political activity of persons. The purpose of the article is to study the positions of the value-cultural approach to explaining the factors of actualization and activation of the political activity of persons. The methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, generalization and abstraction, historical, structural functionalism are used. Factors of modernization, material well-being, high education level, presence of social connections, political culture, national identities, membership in voluntary associations, and (...) civil society are singled out. Established that the basis of political culture at the level of an individual is a psychological attitude to the role of one’s own “I” in the political sphere – a political attitude. It is emphasized that high political competence forces people to value democracy as a political system that provides an opportunity to realize their political attitudes; for them, democracy and a democratic political system is a value they willing to defend. Attention is drawn to the fact that a high level of education ensures the cultivation of active political attitudes, and access to resources (high income, participation in informal associations, the presence of a network of useful acquaintances) determines the success of political activity. The author comes to the conclusion that political activity is the implementing force of expressing of the value orientations of the person; its success, to the greatest extent, depends on social, intellectual, and financial capitals. The article has theoretical significance for research and interpretation of the phenomenon of political activity of persons. The achievements of the article can be applied to empirical research design. Further research may be aimed at considering other approaches. (shrink)

We use variation in corruption convictions across judicial districts in the US to examine the relationship between political corruption and risk-taking of public firms. Firms headquartered in regions with high levels of political corruption have lower total risk and lower idiosyncratic risk on average. Further analysis shows that corruption tends to encourage firms to pursue risk-decreasing investments, lower the riskiness of their operations, and decrease asset liquidity. While managerial ownership is intended to align the interests of managers and shareholders, the (...) presence of corruption appears to encourage undiversified managers to decrease risk-taking. Our evidence is consistent with agency theory and the asset-shielding argument that political corruption discourages managers from taking risks that expose firms to expropriation by politicians, resulting in suboptimal corporate policies. (shrink)

The present article examines the historical narrative proposed by modernization theory about the recent Spanish past. Its assumptions and consequences for historical research focused on the 19th century are described in order to understand the lack of intellectual exchange among historians and sociologists in the Spanish academic world. Modernization theory has justified the political consensus that allowed the Spanish transition to democracy and its academic authority has narrowed the scope of historical research about previous democratization processes. Although the paradigm of (...) Spanish backwardness has been refuted by specialists on 19th-century Spain, sociologists, economists and historians of the 20th century still propose a teleological interpretation of the democratization process that assumes the validity of the paradigm of secular Spanish backwardness. The scientific and political authority of modernization theory has made impossible an open academic debate and consequently the work of historians that refute teleological interpretations of development has been neglected, since modernization theory provides a political interpretation of the Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War as historically determined failures in order to legitimize the present democratic monarchy and constitution. (shrink)

Corruption is defined as private individuals or enterprises who misuse public resources for private power and/or political gains. They do so through abusing public officials whose behavior deviates from the formal government rules of conduct. Ethical behavior is defined as individuals or enterprises adhering to a non-corrupt work or business practice. A review of the academic literature is conducted drawing on perspectives from the political, economic, and anthropological sciences. Insights from a Danish research program are reported on. This program identifies (...) five different actions for dealing with corruption: (1) no action; (2) withdrawals from markets; (3) decentralized decision-making process; (4) establishment of an anti-corruption code; and (5) mutual commitment through integrity pact. The following aspects of ethical behavior should be regulated through an anti-corruption code: the company vis-à-vis political parties; gifts and entertainment expenses; political campaign contributions; and policy against small-scale corruption. Directions for future research are considered including the role of international organizations and multinational companies in fighting corruption and fostering ethical behavior; the role of countries and their governments; and the management systems. (shrink)

In an effort to reduce risk and uncertainty, we hypothesize that investors avoid countries where high corruption exists. We investigate this issue by examining the relationship of levels of perceived corruption on Japanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in both industrialized and emerging economies. The analysis presented utilizes a sample of 29,546 investments in 59 countries. Results suggest that in emerging nations, where comprehensive legal and regulatory frameworks do not exist to effectively curtail fraudulent activity, corruption serves to reduce FDI. Managers (...) need to consider the level of perceived corruption in their assessment of any market prior to potential investment. (shrink)

The government itself, which is the only mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable [with the standing army] to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. Henry Thoreau, in “Civil Disobedience”It is easy to say — and often is (...) said — that we cannot have tolerable relations with new revolutionary regimes. The problem is that our anticommunist paranoia has made it impossible to find out. We do not know whether Mao's declared interest in a relationship with the Americans in the 1940s or Ho Chi Minh's were sincere. And the reason we don't know is that we never tried to find out. Those who reported it was a possibility were hounded out of the foreign service because of our suspicion and fear of communism. The legacy of that era brings to mind Ivan the Terrible's practice of murdering the bearer of bad news. We are more civilized than that; we have been content simply to ruin people's careers. J. William Fulbright, in The Price of Empire (1989) This poisonous thing I'm trying to describe is [a] characteristic way of dealing with criticism. It used to be enough to brand a critic as a radical or a leftist to make people turn away. Now we need only to call him a liberal. Soon “moderate” will be the M word, “conservative” will be the C word and only fascists will be in the mainstream. E. L. Doctorow, Brandeis Commencement, May 21, 1989We have lived with violence for seven yearsIt was not worth one single lifeBut the patriot's fist is at her throatHer voice is in mortal danger...Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” in Dream of a Common Language (Norton, 1978). (shrink)

Whether to a `liberal' or a `people's' democracy, the evolution of modern political systems has been consistently theorized as a `transition'. Elaborated within Marxism as the `transition to communism' and later recycled by modernization theory and comparative politics, this concept has been tightly connected to the development of macro-societal analysis. This paper argues that any attempt at writing its history should be sensitive to the deep-seated ambivalence of this concept, which has alternatively lent itself to either teleological or non-teleological interpretations. (...) But far from matching the ready-made division between Marxist and non-Marxist political sociology, this ambivalence has always been internal to these different social scientific traditions. As a result, the same conceptual issues and tensions can be identified within the Marxist and, later, Soviet doctrine on the one hand, and Western social sciences on the other hand, from the sociology of development of the 1950s to comparative democratization in the 1980s. (shrink)

This study explores the micro-determinants of corruption tolerance among 1414 university students in Guatemala, a country grappling with significant corruption issues. By examining the attitudes of economics majors compared to students in other disciplines through ordered logistic regression analysis, we offer new insights into factors influencing corruption tolerance in a developing country setting. This approach, by focusing on a developing country, fills a research gap in the literature on the differences between economics students and their peers from other programs. We (...) find that economics students exhibit a greater tolerance for corruption. This result aligns with theories and research that suggest that economists show a profit-maximizing mindset, and distinctive values and fairness perceptions. Furthermore, our analysis reveals significant effects of gender and age on corruption tolerance, with women and older students reporting lower tolerance to corrupt practices. The study also uncovers the higher tolerance towards private versus public corruption. These findings provide valuable guidance for developing policies and educational initiatives to reduce corruption tolerance among future professionals in similar socio-economic environments. (shrink)

In Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this (...) practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision‐making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics. (shrink)

Political parties do not merely reflect social divisions, they actively construct them. While this point has been alluded to in the literature, surprisingly little attempt has been made to systematically elaborate the relationship between parties and the social, which tend to be treated as separate domains contained by the disciplinary division of labor between political science and sociology. This article demonstrates the constructive role of parties in forging critical social blocs in three separate cases, India, Turkey, and the United States, (...) offering a critique of the dominant approach to party politics that tends to underplay the autonomous role of parties in explaining the preferences, social cleavages, or epochal socioeconomic transformations of a given community Our thesis, drawing on the work of Gramsci, Althusser, and Laclau, is that parties perform crucial articulating functions in the creation and reproduction of social cleavages. Our comparative analysis of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States, Islamic and secularist parties in Turkey, and the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress parties in India will demonstrate how "political articulation" has naturalized class, ethnic, religious, and racial formations as a basis of social division and hegemony. Our conclusion is that the process of articulation must be brought to the center of political sociology, simultaneously encompassing the study of social movements and structural change, which have constituted the orienting poles of the discipline. (shrink)