Sandra Grady: Improvised Adolescence: Somali Bantu Teenage Refugees in America. Madison,WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, 174pp,ISBN 978-0-299-30324-2

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Two Views about Socialism: Why Karl Marx Shunned an Academic Debate with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The object of this essay is to show that Marx, in his polemic Misere de la Philosophie against Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere , in effect, shunned an academic debate with Proudhon and resorted to a denunciation of him as a petit bourgeois , in order to establish his own position at the top of the international labour movement. However, with his furious attack on Proudhon, Marx succeeded in destroying the existing links between the different socialist trends. In the light of this catastrophic split between the driving forces of radical change, at the beginning of the capitalist industrialisation, the article pleads for a tolerant culture of discussion, within which the debate on different methods and means towards an alternative society and the end of capitalism, is possible.     

New Public Governance in the Baltic States: Flexible Administration and Rule Bending

Abstract

The New Public Governance approach advocates a more flexible and participatory public administration as means to higher efficiency and increased legitimacy. Increasing flexibility and thereby public employees’ discretion, however, may pose a risk to equality and impartiality, core values in democratic and rule-of-law societies. Using a survey among Baltic public employees, this article explores this risk. We ask whether public employees’ preferences for flexible rule application go hand in hand with acceptance of bending the rules, even if it means a breach of impartiality. We find that this is the case. We also find that contrary to what the New Public Governance approach expects, neither citizen participation nor generalized trust works as a control on rule bending. On a positive note, however, we find that control mechanisms associated with Weberian Public Administration lessen acceptance for bending the rules.