The Corporatist Regime,Welfare State Employment,and Gender Pay Inequity

Mainstream economics conceptualizes wages as determined by market forces and reflecting productivity and investments in human capital made by individuals. These views, which have become taken-for-granted explanations of what wages are, hide the underlying dynamics of the gender pay gap and place responsibility on individuals instead of gendered social structures. This article proposes viewing gender pay inequity through a sociological lens, which implies acknowledging the complex societal dynamics and roles of institutions and actors in shaping wages. The Nordic welfare states are often considered women-friendly, providing female citizens with social policies and services that have enabled their extensive participation in paid employment. Simultaneously, the Finnish welfare state has relied heavily on inexpensive labour provided by women, thus actively contributing to the formation of a secondary female-dominated labour market. The secondary status of reproductive work conducted within the public sector has been further strengthened and institutionalized by the Finnish corporatist system via collective agreements. In policy-making, the central actors defend their vested interests through non-decision-making, limiting the scope of decision-making to non-threatening issues. This article discusses the dynamics of the Finnish corporatist regime, welfare-state employment, and the impact of both on gender pay equity in Finnish society.     

Accountability mechanisms in community-driven reconstruction in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

A lack of accountability is often considered a root cause of conflict. Many post-conflict reconstruction efforts therefore aim to enhance accountability between authorities and the population through community-driven reconstruction programmes. This article examines the accountability mechanisms in the Tushiriki community-driven reconstruction programme in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The ethnographic research found little impact of formal programme accountability. Rather, accountability was shaped differently and had its own context-specific meaning. To make accountability more sustainable, stronger embeddedness in local institutions and more appropriate translations of abstract concepts into the local context are needed.     

Elite and Everyday Social Contracts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Pathways to Forging a National Social Contract?

ABSTRACT

The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the violence in Bosnia–Herzegovina, however, it also solidified antagonistic political identities leading to the creation of two social contracts: an ‘elite social contract’ involving primarily political elites of the main ethnic groups and an ‘everyday social contract’ involving ordinary citizens trying to manage a complex social and economic environment. The first social contract is hegemonic, however, alternative, non-nationalist views are slowly emerging. Grassroots groups, the surviving remnants of inter-ethnic coexistence, the integrating pull of market forces and the presence of a large diaspora all constitute resources for the creation of a resilient national social contract.     

B. F. Skinner's utopian vision: behind and beyond walden two

This paper addresses B. F. Skinner's utopian vision for enhancing social justice and human well‐being as it was introduced in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. In the first part, we address the historical, intellectual, and social context that situates the book in the utopian genre, the critiques of its premises and practices, and the fate of intentional communities patterned on the book. In the second part, we review practices in Skinner's book that advance social justice and human well‐being under the themes of health, wealth, and wisdom, and then focus on contemporary practices that are the legacy of his vision. His vision was neither the a priori truth of a particular premise about human behavior or a necessary practice (blueprint) for an intentional community but rather the use of empirical methods to discover premises and practices that work to advance the health, wealth, and wisdom of individuals and survival of the culture.     

Political attitude estimation through Facebook like: a South Korean case study

Recently numerous studies are conducted to estimate the human personality from the online social activities. This paper develops a comprehensive model for political attitude estimation leveraging the Facebook Like information of the users. We designed a Facebook Crawler that efficiently collects data overcoming the difficulties in crawling Ajax enabled Facebook pages. We show that the category level selection can reduce the data analysis complexity utilizing the sparsity of the huge like-attitude matrix. In the Korean Facebook users’ context, only 28 criteria (3% of the total) can estimate the political polarity of the user with high accuracy (AUC of 0.82).     

Meeting development goals: evidence from the Civil Society Education Fund

In recent years, the Civil Society Education Fund has supported national education civil society coalitions (NECs) in low-income countries so that they put pressure on governments and donors to implement the Education for All agenda and the Millennium Development Goal on education. This article draws on literature on global governance as well as on an extensive evaluation of the CSEF to explore the actual contribution of this initiative to the activity of NECs. The article highlights the achievements and shortcomings of the CSEF and includes a set of practical recommendations on the role of global civil society in international development processes.     

日本社会教育的概念研究

明治维新后，伴随着近代学校教育制度的诞生，日本的社会教育也应运而生。本研究不仅考证了社会教育在日本的由来，确认了社会教育乃日本明治以后出现的特有的教育形态；并从教化型、民主型、终身型等三方面厘清了日本不同历史时期学者对社会教育的多元界定；而且对日本的社会教育和社会事业、社会政策、国家教育、国民教育、家庭教育、学校教育、终身教育、终身学习、成人教育、社区教育等相关概念的区别与联系进行了辨析。在此基础上，归纳了日本社会教育概念的五个特征，即丰富多样性、暧昧模糊性、服务主体性、法律健全性、实践追求性等。     

社会管理模式检讨与“适切”原则——基于当代中国社会结构的亚稳态现状

三十多年的改革开放和社会发展使中国社会结构、社会特征发生了深刻变化,社会基本态势已从稳定态向亚稳定态转变.传统社会管理模式的粗放、被动、无序、低效、线性、一维等方法已经远不能适应社会结构的变化.基于“适切”原则的社会管理模式应在社会信仰、协商机制、基层建设、问责制度和网络舆情等方面进行全面转型和创新.     

From a follower to a trendsetter: Hungary's post-Cold War identity and the West

The article attempts to make sense of recent developments in Hungary's relationship with the EU and the US by explicating the logic behind the formation of its post-Cold War identity. The article's central theoretical argument derives from social identity theory (SIT) in social psychology which argues that social groups strive for positive distinctiveness and provides concrete hypotheses concerning the identity management strategies that groups use to enhance their relative position. Extrapolating the identity management techniques predicted by SIT to international politics, I suggest that states may enhance their relative standing by imitating more advanced states (strategy of social mobility), trying to displace the higher-ranked state (strategy of social competition), or finding a new arena in which to be superior (strategy of social creativity). The article argues that Orban's government post-2010 steps in domestic and foreign policy can be conceptualized as attempts to redefine Hungary's identity by moving away from the strategy of social mobility pursued since the end of communism towards the strategy of social creativity.     

Changing classes,changing preferences: how social class mobility affects economic preferences

Abstract

While many studies have identified an association between social class and economic preferences, we know little about the implications of changes in class location for these preferences. This article assesses how social class and intra-generational class mobility affect economic preferences drawing on longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey. In doing so, the article adopts a post-industrial perspective that considers horizontal and vertical class divisions. Even when time-invariant characteristics of individuals are kept constant (through fixed-effects estimation), it is found that both vertical and horizontal class location explain economic preferences. Thus, these estimations suggest that social class moulds preferences, even when accounting for factors that can lead to selection into classes. Moreover, people who change classes hold different economic preferences than their peers in the class of origin, but do not completely assimilate into their class of destination. This implies that growing intra-generational class mobility could undermine the class basis of political conflict.