单边与多边之间:特朗普政府退约的国际制度逻辑

特朗普政府的退约行为引发了国际社会对于国际制度体系运转的广泛关注。退约本质上是为了协调国际制度的刚性承诺与国家的灵活性需求之间的紧张关系。长期以来,国际制度理论对退约的研究相对忽视和不足,尽管“制度困境论”“制度互动论”“制度收缩论”和“制度现实主义论”等学说提供了部分解释,但仍需要明确退约在现有国际制度研究谱系中的位置。究其原因,制度主义在研究设计中用“背叛”研究把退约排除在研究议程之外,而制度扩散长期掩盖了制度退出的影响。本质上,制度主义聚焦制度的形成和维持,是一种关注稳定大于变动的理论。为此,文章从制度要素出发,提出退约具有国际制度自身的逻辑和特征,即从制度成员身份、条约义务偏好和后果不确定性程度这三个方面对退约进行动态把握。特朗普政府的退约行为是历史延续性和当前的特殊性相结合的产物,不会给当前的国际制度体系和国际合作进程产生决定性影响。对于美国退约后的国际制度行为,中国应高度重视,从政治、法律和经济等多维度加以全面审视,而非简单地从道德层面进行谴责。同时,中国在必要时需要重新审视退约作为外交战略的可选工具,以切实维护自身的国家利益。     

Symbolic state-building in contemporary Russia

Vladimir Putin has made state-building a central goal of his presidency and recent scholarship has demonstrated that Russian formal institutions have indeed been deliberately reformed. Unlike studies that ass’ess state-building vis-à-vis a particular outcome, our research examines what kind of state Russian political elites seek to build, and focuses on symbolic state-building strategies. To capture symbolic state-building in the Putin era, we examine the Pryamaya Liniya broadcasts: annual, high-profile TV broadcasts in which citizens pose questions to the president. We find that a broad range of formal institutions appear to be central to Putin’s state-building project, a finding that runs counter to claims that governance is largely deinstitutionalized, informal and personal. We argue that symbolic state-building seeks to reconcile personalism and institutionalism, by conveying a dual image of a state in citizens’ everyday lives – emphasizing both formal institutions, while also affirming Putin as the personal guarantor of the state’s authority.     

Zwischen Kultur und Kalkül? Vertrauen und Sozialkapital im Kontext der neoinstitutionalistischen Wende

Trust and social capital work in social networks as informal institutions, favouring cooperation between the participants of such social interaction. However, the increasing use of both terms has been accompanied by vanishing conceptual and theoretical precision. In order to counterbalance this development this article tries to clarify some of the major puzzles connected with both terms. First, we embed trust and social capital within the institutionalist turn in political science. Second however, we demonstrate that trust and social capital have been modelled from at least two perspectives: sociological institutionalism and economic institutionalism. Furthermore, attempts of combining those approaches have lead to decreasing theoretical consistency. Finally, we propose that economic institutionalism is theoretically and empirically more fruitful to explain the creation and destruction of social capital.     

Strukturale Psychologie. Zum Verhältnis von Sozialraum,Habitus und Persönlichkeit

The article addresses Pierre Bourdieu’s occasional reflections on a “structural psychology” and suggests an approach to further develop this concept as part of his relational program. For this purpose, the paper first elaborates the psychoanalytical and psychological aspects of habitus-field theory. Based on data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) it then illustrates the empirical correspondence between Bourdieu’s social space and the big five personality factors as well as occupational interests on the basis of various indicators. The psychological information is transferred into empirical typologies, and the resulting classes are used for a psychologically informed reconstruction of the social space. The study and its results demonstrate the potential of a psychological interpretation of Bourdieu’s habitus concept and a socio-spatial, structural interpretation of psychological characteristics.     

Funktionssysteme ohne Praxis oder Praxisfelder ohne System?

It is difficult to conciliate sociological theory of practice and social systems theory. This paper will, firstly, show the reasons for this in some important epistemological decisions of both theories. The results of this comparison will be used to point out similarities between both practice theory (Bourdieu) and social systems theory (Luhmann) in the basically convergent definition of the sociological topic. The central thesis of the article is that the discussed theories can only be conciliated if the convergence of the apparently different definition of sociality as practice (Bourdieu) and as communication (Luhmann) is worked out. Only then it is possible to complement the insights of Bourdieu in the durable reproduction of social inequality with the basic insights of Luhmann in the functional differentiation of modern societies. The goal of this intermediation is to improve both theories, those of vertical as much as those of horizontal differentiation.     

Auf dem Weg zu einem europäischen Verwaltungsfeld? Zur Soziologie der Bürokratisierung Europas am Beispiel des Gemeinsamen Europäischen Asylsystems

The article deals with the bureaucratization of Europe. Looking beyond the policy and judicial levels, it aims to ascertain whether the European integration process also affects the “street level” of administrative practices. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and fields is used to transcend the institutionalist bias of previous research and focus more attentively on administrative practices. The analysis looks at the Common European Asylum System to illustrate that bureaucratization unfolds through the interconnection of practices between member states and the establishment of joint administrative procedures. Especially the Dublin Regulation has implemented cross-national administrative routines of record keeping, case management and responsibility sharing. These routines are highly formalized and objectified. They operate on the basis of electronic databases and software programs that standardize work processes and reduce the space of decision-making. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these developments.     

Politics and the Price of Rice in Thailand: Public Choice,Institutional Change and Rural Subsidies

Despite the Thai state’s long record of rice market interventions, historically politicians failed to leverage rice subsidies in their pursuit of political support, notwithstanding the large number of farmers in the country. Since Thaksin Shinawatra’s election in 2001, though, each government has subsidised rice producers, although at varying degrees. What explains this change? This article traces the four-decade history of rice price support programmes. It is proposed that these policies be interpreted through the dual lens of institutionalism and public choice theory, demonstrating how political institutions have shaped incentives for politicians to cater to different constituencies. During the pre-1980 period, under authoritarian regimes, Thai leaders applied rice price policies to benefit urban consumers and the government. From 1979 through 2000, following implementation of the block-vote system, rice interventions were used to appeal to voting intermediaries like rice millers, as bargaining chips among competing parties and as stopgap measures to diffuse farmer protests. Since 2001, responding to the electoral system created by the 1997 constitution, politicians have appealed directly to the voting public, seeking broad-based support via subsidies. The analysis highlights the impact that shifting institutional incentives have on politicians’ actions and thus the emergent policies.     

Der Aufstieg der Beratung zur transnationalen Regierungsform im Feld des Managements

In the twentieth century management consulting has become a transnational form of governing the firm. Seeking advice from consultancy is part of everyday corporate governance, having worked for a consultancy is a guarantee for sought after skills in once career and management concepts developed in consulting contexts are accepted as genuine management knowledge even in academic terms. This development is the outcome of a process of professionalizing management and management consulting, at the heart of which stands a discursive redefining of the firm and its governance. The discursive change of the field of management coincides with the transnationalization of the political field, a development that opens up a whole new bunch of possibilities for professional service firms such as management consultancies to engage in professionalization projects. As a result management consultancies have become decisive agents and a power of consecration in an increasingly autonomous field of management. The research is conducted by using an analytical framework that draws on Bourdieu’s heuristics on practice fields and his studies on the field of power as well as on Foucault’s concept of governmentality.     

Konsekrationsinstanzen im digitalen Wandel – Beiträge zur Erweiterung des feldanalytischen Forschungsprogramms am Beispiel populärer Musik

The article has two objectives: First, pursuant to the recent papers on a “sociology of (e)valuation,” an extension of Bourdieusian field theory will be presented, which reacts to three problems with this theory that were expressed in the critical reception: the immanent tendency to emphasize reproduction more strongly than transformation; the disregarding of technology; and the simple dualism of cultural and economic logic. To begin with, a dynamization of the research program will be undertaken, in that fault lines and transformation dynamics will be revealed that could lead to the invalidation of Pierre Bourdieu’s strict homological assumptions. Following up on that, it will be shown how technology, which was neglected by Bourdieu, can become an (external) factor that causes fundamental changes in fields. Finally, in connection with Jörn Lamla’s reflections on “cultural capitalism” and through a differentiation of the concept of the instance of consecration, a level of analysis will be specified on which the transformation dynamics under discussion can be observed. Secondly, the successful integration of technology in new forms of consecration in the field of pop music will be examined. On the basis of the reaction of classical pop-music journalism to the new value assignment instances that have arisen through digitalization, it can be shown that the challenge arising from new forms of consecration results in negotiatory processes in the field of pop music journalism in which various repositionings in the relationship of cultural and economic logics appear.     

German Parliamentary Party Groups in Europeanised Policymaking: Awakening from the Sleep? Institutions and Heuristics as MPs’ Resources

As a contribution to the ‘de-parliamentarisation’ debate, this article discusses the Europeanisation of the Bundestag by focusing on parliamentary party groups and their policy experts. In the German ‘working parliament’, these units are focal points for coordinating policymaking. By adding the explanatory power of ‘belief systems’ and, more generally, of ‘heuristics’ to theories of new institutionalism, this explanatory study reveals that although new institutionalism frameworks have served as rather good guidelines for explaining why German MPs have backed off scrutinising the government and co-governing in EU policymaking, they can be further improved by explicitly integrating elements of cognitive theory. The study empirically draws on elite interviews with MPs and their staff. These interviews offer insights into heuristics which serve to diminish information overload and which help MPs to cope with trade-offs and conflicts between EU issues and programmatic positions that point back to national party affiliations.     

Parallel institutionalism and the future of representation in Nigeria

As Nigeria marked its centennial in 2014, violent sectarianism pried open a historical debate about whether ‘amalgamation’ of the country's two former regions by British authorities in 1914 was a ‘mistake’. Even before independence, however, self-interested nationalism restrained self-interested regionalism, sustaining unification. I argue that a ‘parallel institutionalism’ has ever since mediated the nation's heterogeneity through two different visions of representation. A long pause in state creation, a reduction in the Effective Number of Parties, and declining relevance of a pact that facilitated the 1999 democratic transition have revealed latent tensions in the status of multicultural institutionalism and strengthened liberal institutionalism. I then analyse how demographic, economic, and migratory trends are slowly transforming the structure of representation, placing dilemmas of parallel institutionalism at the centre of future nationhood. Additional research could explore a natural experiment between the northeast, which is facing an Islamic insurgency, and the northwest, which is not.     

Der symbolische Wert der Popmusik. Zur Genese und Struktur des popmusikalischen Feldes

Based on an interpretation of the art theory of Pierre Bourdieu, which is aimed primarily at the neglected relationship of class and field, the essay is dedicated firstly to a critique, informed by theory, of the studies of the cultural omnivore. These are based on the assumption that today the correlation between musical taste and social structure is no longer determined bywhich but rather byhow many musical genres are preferred. For this reason they are supported by the conception of an erosion of musical legitimacy hierarchies. However, with the help from Bourdieu??s field theory and from the reference to the mutual relationship of production and reception, it can be shown that such legitimacy hierarchies have by no means disappeared. An analysis of the representation of pop music in the media and in the education system indicates the simultaneous legitimation and differentiation of pop. Against this background the thesis can be formulated that people with a great deal of cultural capital still prefer the legitimate culture, namely under the condition of a changed consensus of legitimacy.     

Die symbolische Inszenierung als „kultureller Anderer“ – Zur Auslegung weltkultureller Skripte im Feld der europäischen Inklusionspolitik

This paper puts forward a sociological perspective on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) going beyond the usual focus on power and learning in governance studies. It uses a combined approach based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and John W. Meyer’s neoinstitutionalism. Seen from this angle the OMC transmits and amplifies the abstract ideas of the world polity for EU Member States. The coordination procedure gives rise to a political field in Bourdieu’s sense filled with a variety of actors that claim to be selfless and disinterested “cultural others”. Hence, the OMC can be used by these actors as an opportunity structure for symbolic enrichment. By symbolically enriching their strategies, these actors avoid triggering the automatic recourse to subsidiarity as a means to fend off European influence. Empirically, the article identifies five types of cultural others: conceptual entrepreneurs, knowledge producers, fundamental critics, detached observers and robust actors.     

Religion und Wirtschaft. Mauss, Simiand und das Durkheim’sche Programm

The text points out that, with regard to the sociology of economy, Emile Durkheim’s work encompasses two research programs. The focus of the first program lies in the critique of economic categories as well as the institutions that function according to the market system. The second program, initially developed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argues that there is a relation between religion and economy. While the former perspective is being developed by the Durkheim-follower François Simiand (and Maurice Halbwachs) the latter is enhanced by his student Marcel Mauss. In the course of the 1930s both perspectives converge in the works on the gift and on money. Finally the text formulates the hypothesis that Durkheim’s perspective can be used in order to update Max Weber’s question concerning the relation between the religious ethic and the modern economic world.     

The United States as a Plural Society: Towards a Consociational Solution?

Although the United States is not a consociational democracy, it is of considerable interest to consociational scholars. Not only is it in many respects a plural society, its political practice and thought include rudimentary elements of consociationalism’s four defining characteristics. That these institutions and practices have not developed further is unsurprising, given the generally unfavorable conditions for racial or ideological consociationalism there. Furthermore, factors such as the U.S.’s competitive political culture and its history of racial inequality present special challenges for consociational theory and practice. Meanwhile, the possibilities for addressing current ideological polarization by consociational means are limited, while ideological cleavage as such presents its own challenges. Nevertheless, several areas for reform remain possible, while changing ethno‐demographic conditions could make U.S.‐American consociationalism more likely in the next several decades. Furthermore, these considerations open up several potentially fruitful lines for further research into consociational democracy and the conditions that foster it.     

Werbung und Unternehmensberatung als „:Treuhänder“: expressiver Werte?

This paper discusses the contribution of Parsons’s theory of professions that focuses on the specific modern relationship between value commitment and rationality to the analysis of the field of advertising and (management) consulting occupations, both being considered to be a new type of professions (named economic communicators of culture). However, there are some differences between the classical professions and these new occupational groups. One main difference is the significance of expressivity: advertisers are concerned with expressive functions of consumerism while consultants are implementing values of self-realization and individualism in the work sphere. Therefore, we refer to both, Parsons’s category of expressive culture and to his theory of symbolic media of interchange where he developed the idea that value-commitments are no longer anchored (internalized) in personality structures and institutionalized in occupational roles, but “circulating”. This idea stresses the role of reputation as a source of professional influence and recognition. The connection of these three elements of Parsons’s theory (professions, expressive culture, symbolic media) will contribute to a better understanding of the significance of these new occupational groups, the economic communicators of culture.     

Glaubwürdigkeit als religiöses Vermögen

On the basis of quantitative data from household surveys in three Bosnian-Herzegovinian cities, I construct a revised model of the religious field according to Weber’s, Yinger’s and especially Bourdieu’s theories of religion, in order to analyze various religious organizations sociotopologically according to the criteria of credibility (Glaubwürdigkeit) and complexity (Organisiertheit). The purpose of the model is to determine religious power structures within a given regional context—especially in post-conflict situations, transitional states, and under conditions of precarious governance in general—taxonomically, and to provide grounds for in-depth qualitative research.     

Die drei Welten der sozialen Ungleichheit: Belohnungen,Prestige und Citizenship

Talcott Parsons’s contribution to an analysis of social inequality seems to have had a strange destiny: it was either neglected as if Parsons had not contributed to the problem at all; or it was rejected as an allegedly useless kind of functional analysis of social stratification of modern societies. However, I argue, there is no single theory of functional stratification. Rather, there are at least three versions that have to be seen as separate approaches: First, the theory of rewards as it was developed by Parsons and, more important, by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore; second, the theory of moral respect, that Parsons presented in two different versions; third, the theory of a balance of equality and inequality in modern societies that Parsons developed following T.H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship. The article presents a historic and systematic analysis of these three strands of Parsons’s contribution to the debate on social inequality. While the theory of functional stratification failed as a whole, I show that Parsons nevertheless anticipated crucial aspects of recent sociological debates, like the importance of the vagueness and fluidity of social stratification, or the crucial significance of education being the most important resource for a realization of individual life chances in modern societies.     

Labour Unrest in Vietnam and China: Insurgency or Contained Contention?

This article reviews three recent books on labour politics in Vietnam and China: Angie Tran’s Ties That Bind: Cultural Identity, Class and Law in Vietnam’s Labor Resistance; Jeffrey Becker’s Social Ties, Resources and Migrant Labor Contention in Contemporary China: From Peasants to Protesters, and Eli Friedman’s Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Post-Socialist China. These three books capture the changing patterns of labour unrest and labour institutions in Vietnam and China, which are accounted for by the social foundation of resistance as well as the political economy of capitalist development. Their main contribution to the existing literature is that they draw out the new dynamics and new venues within the state that can both enable and constrain labour resistance and struggle in these countries. However, this article also argues that these works have not adequately theorised the nature of change within the state and the role of the law in labour resistance. It therefore suggests that bringing in the law to socio-political institutions is essential to a research agenda that explores continuity and change in labour politics in Vietnam and China as transitional economies.     

Multialignment and Indian Foreign Policy under Narendra Modi

This article examines India’s emerging approach to foreign policy: multialignment. It argues that since the mid-2000s India has developed multialignment as a means of achieving what it perceives as its core interests and ideals in international relations. Characterised by an emphasis on engagement in regional multilateral institutions, the use of strategic partnerships, and what is termed ‘normative hedging’, multialignment is being utilised to boost India’s economic development and national security, as well as to project influence and promote its values. The article traces the emergence of this strategy during the governments of Manmohan Singh and its implementation and extension by the new government of Narendra Modi. It analyses the key arguments that have been presented in its favour and the ways in which it was been put into practice. It concludes with a brief assessment of multialignment as a strategy, as well as the prospect that it will deliver the dividends expected by India’s foreign policy elite.