Kollektives Handeln im Internet. Eine akteurtheoretische Fundierung

Swarms, crowds, networks, e-movements, e-communities—the Web offers a new sphere of action for an ample variety of collective formations. However, a sociological substantiation of these different types of collective behavior or action is still missing. In order to bridge this gap, we discuss the questions, how online-based social formations can be classified in the context of actor-based social theory and to what extent their development is shaped by the technological infrastructures they are embedded in. First of all, we introduce two basic variants of social formations situated between individuals and organizations: non-organized collectives and collective behavior on the one hand and collective actors with a comparatively high strategic capability on the other. Subsequently, we explore the distinct features of online-based collective formations, which are characterized by a formerly unknown level of interdependence of influential technological infrastructures and still indispensable social dynamics of coordination and institutionalization. Conventional patterns of social dynamics in the development and stabilization of collective behavior and collective actors are now systematically intertwined with technology-induced processes of structuration.     

Can the poor fight back? A multilevel analysis of corruption,poverty and collective demand for accountability in Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of the perceptions of corruption and personal experience of bribery on the propensity for ordinary Africans to support collective action-based anti-corruption tactics. It also evaluates how poverty shapes the association between corruption and support for collective civic action against corruption. The paper bases its findings on the multilevel level regression analysis of public opinion data from 35 African countries. The results show that an increase in experience of paying bribes increases poor people’s preference for anti-corruption tactics based on collective action. Furthermore, individuals who perceive corruption to be widespread are significantly more likely to support collective action as their country’s poverty level rises. These findings strongly challenge the view recently expressed in some of the literature that high levels of corruption erode the willingness of especially poor Africans to bring corruption under control.     

Negotiating the technological capacity in Chinese engagements: Is the Tanzanian government in the driving seat?

Is the Tanzanian government in charge of development cooperation programmes with China? The literature has portrayed the Tanzanian and other state actors in Africa as passive and weakly coordinated players over the five decades of intensified cooperation with China. This paper will attempt to challenge this narrative by drawing on lessons from the negotiation efforts of individual and institutional actors in Tanzania, as they sought to improve the country's industrial and technological capacity, among other interests. Our findings revealed a gap between the capacity to attract Chinese investments and development assistance, and extraction of knowledge and technology from such engagements. President John Pombe Magufuli's anti-corruption measures signal a paradigm shift against the rent-seeking tendencies, elitism and limited utilisation of local content under the Chinese partnership projects. Nevertheless, the combination of a declining share of official Chinese engagements with the increased involvement of private actors necessitates further policy innovations in order to boost inter-firm technological spillovers.     

Venezuela after the Caracazo: Forms of Protest in a Deinstitutionalized context

Protest has become in recent years one of the most visible features of everyday life in urban Venezuela. Since the middle eighties, but in particular after the Caracazo of 1989, the Caraqueños as well as residents of other cities of the country have had to adjust themselves to the hundreds of demonstrations that are held every year. In this article I shall present the most common forms of collective action over the last ten years, relating them to the process of deinstitutionalization that has developed during the decade. I shall discuss why extra-institutional forms of collective action of a confrontational and violent nature have spread from marginal actors to organizations that in the past had at their disposal alternative channels for presenting their complaints and demands.     

Dilemmas in the making of civil society in Korean political reform

As Korea moves from a state-dominated to a civilian-driven society, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as an institutional hybrid that undertakes public functions through private initiatives. Recently NGOs have gone beyond diverse social issues to promote political reform. On 12 January 2000, Citizens' Alliance for General Elections (CAGE) — a loosely coupled coalition of NGOs formed to reform the nomination process and realize citizen political sovereignty — ousted 59 of 86 disfavored candidates from the political stage in the 16^th General Elections in 2000. The coalition gained public support and persuaded the government to revise election law and readjust electoral constituencies. NGOs such as CAGE have thus become salient political actors and credible public institutions propelling democratic transition. Yet CAGE activities were never made legal and failed to mobilize voters — the 16^th elections had the lowest voter turnout in Korean history left regional party monopoly intact, and provided no clear vision for political reform. CAGE inability to generate grassroots collective action exacerbated its own lack of focus, even as its success diminshed the role of conventional political actors. These limitations, representing instructive dilemmas in the making of civil society, suggest that NGOs need to specify their functions, increase civic engagement, and promote citizen networks and cooperation for the common good in a society.     

Redefining Democratic Discourse in Thailand’s Civil Society

ABSTRACT

Thailand’s civil society has contributed to the country’s democratic regression. Underlying this political position are redefined meanings of democracy. This article seeks to shed light on these intriguing positions and processes by exploring the democratic discourses that prevail in Thailand’s civil society and their implications. The article does this by using a case study of a network of development actors associated with a public and influential Community Organisation Development Institution (CODI) organisation. It is found that democratic discourses are associated with a preoccupation with the sense of collective identity, defined through civil society’s communitarian vision. This preoccupation influenced their political emphasis on promoting “collective virtues.” It is argued that these discourses limit the democratic potential of Thailand’s civil society in a number of ways. First, they facilitate the building of connections between civil society and conservative elites. Second, the discourses endow civil society with an organisational culture that puts emphasis on promoting the roles of “good people” who are mostly selected by those at the top of the civil society organisations that are hierarchical.     

After and Beyond Amoral Familism: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Social Capital Italian-style

Abstract

The economic crisis that began with the great crash of 2008 has brought about a significant increase in inequality in Italy between individuals and families as well as between different geographic areas. A higher degree of inequality has had negative effects on social capital, reducing so-called bridging and linking elements of social capital while strengthening bonding elements, with a concomitant decline in civic culture. These effects can be dangerous for democracy, in so far as they lower the citizens’ trust in institutions. Since social capital is created as well as destroyed by political and social actors, a relevant question is whether these actors have had a role in transforming social capital into trust in institutions. From an analysis of the changes that have taken place in the Italian political system, it would appear that a significant segment of the political system has destroyed more institutional social capital than it has helped to create.     

Education for whom? Engineering multiculturalism and liberal peace in post-conflict Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changing relationship between the state and its education system at the intersection of diverging visions and agendas of local and international actors in post-war Kosovo in the period 1999–2014. Specifically, it explores why and how externally driven reforms that carry the ideals of an inclusive multi-ethnic polity clashed with domestic actors’ visions of education as a locus of national resistance and independent statehood. To critically inquire into the direction of education reforms in the post-war context, the empirical part of the analysis identifies critical historical junctures through which these competing ideas and relevant actors changed and/or gained traction. Accordingly, the paper focuses mainly on the post-war period, but also considers the pre-war period in order to highlight the predominant vision of local actors on the roles of education, its intertwinement with unfolding conflicts, and its central role in processes of state formation and nation-building, in particular in a post-war context. The analysis is based on genealogical historical narrative, textual analysis of key official documents related to the education sector in Kosovo, and semi-structured interviews conducted in Pristina in November 2013 and October 2016. The analysis demonstrates that the role of education in post-war Kosovo reflects tension between multicultural ideals promoted by international actors, on the one hand, and nationalist, often exclusive concerns of local actors embedded in an unfinished and contested process of state- and nation-building, on the other hand. The paper finds that by over-emphasizing equal collective rights, extensive autonomy for the different communities and ethnic-based decentralized governance, international actors have unwillingly contributed to further education separation along ethnic lines.     

Reign-seeking and the Rise of the Unelected in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and the minimisation of rent-seeking. This idea has been rationalised in Thailand since the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution resulting in the rise of technocratic and judicial bodies designed to discipline elected politicians and political parties. However, such institutional reconfigurations have consolidated the incentive for people considering themselves to be prospective candidates to “reign” in these organisations. As evident in the 2014 coup, these unconventional political actors – academics, doctors and civil society leaders – made collective efforts to topple the elected government in exchange for gaining selection into the wide range of unelected bodies. Governance reform in Thailand has hitherto reinforced the status quo, although the article further argues that reign-seekers should be seen as contingent, rather than consistent, authoritarians.     

Analytic authoritarianism and Nigeria

Despite two decades of democratisation and some recent liberalisation in North Africa, dictatorships linger around the world. New research on comparative authoritarianism questions personal rule and studies a range of dependent variables, such as why dictators sometimes provide public goods. This ‘analytic authoritarian’ literature emphasises collective governance and explores the institutional basis of policy control. Nigeria's military regimes between 1966 and 1998 provide examples of how military factions and subnational actors can impose transaction costs on authoritarian policy processes. These alternative centres of policy control limited the ability of dictators to unilaterally advance their policy preferences on questions relating to federalism and transition plans. The article concludes by linking this analysis to Nigeria's lingering legacies of authoritarianism and the institutional basis of its 1999 transition.     

Racialisation of Immigrants at Work: Labour Mobility and Segmentation of Peruvian Migrants in Chile

This article explores the emergent racialisation of Peruvian migrants as one element conditioning the labour segregation that characterises Peruvian insertion in Chile. We understand racialisation as a process of construction of categories in which both individual and collective actors participate, and whose expression is demonstrated by the differentiation and inequality that affects the racialised group. We tackle the articulation of racial differences among individual actors, both Chilean employers and Peruvian migrant workers, to suggest that the attribution of naturalised characteristics to migrants is related to segregation, mobility, and specific trajectories in the labour market.     

Rural Mobilisation and Agrarian Political Economy in Argentina, 2001–2020

In this article, we reconstruct the mobilisations of rural actors both from ‘below’ and from ‘above’ and their connections to Argentina's agrarian political economy between 2001 and 2020. We divide the analysis into three periods and review key protest events and the actions of movements and organisations, paying special attention to two dimensions. First, we consider how rural movements and organisations engaged with institutional politics and the state. Second, we analyse the collective identifications and claims at the basis of coalitions forged within and beyond the rural sector.     

Intentional disruptions and violence in Ukraine's Supreme Rada: political competition,order, and disorder in a post-Soviet chamber, 2006–2012

This paper focuses on diverse forms of parliamentary violence (blocking the orators' platform and the chairman's podium, destruction of equipment, and violent brawls) during 2006–2012 in the Ukrainian parliament, and analyzes them as a repertoire of habitual parliamentary actions. The paper attributes these violent incidents to two external factors. First, they must be understood in the context of the general de-pacification of relations among principal political actors in Ukraine as well as exacerbation of political and ideological tensions among those actors. Second, the emergence of more violent episodes in the Rada, breaking with a more routine modus operandi of disruptions, has its origin in the earlier, prepolitical careers of certain members of parliament and their propensity to bring into politics particular dispositions (i.e., propensity to use violence) acquired in those previous professional experiences.     

Ethnic Rights Under Threat: The Black Peasant Movement Against Armed Groups' Pressure in the Chocó, Colombia

During the past decade Colombia has been experiencing the paradox of, on the one hand, enjoying one of the most advanced constitutional frameworks for the empowerment of citizenship rights in general and ethnic rights in particular, and on the other, suffering from the drawn-out effects of endemic violence and armed conflict. In this paper, the manifestation of this paradox in a specific context, that of the black peasants' land rights movement in the Chocó region, is explored. Under the aegis of the 1991 Constitution, organisations of black peasants have been making headway in filing for and receiving substantial collective land titles on the basis of a discourse of black ethnic rights. At the same time, and not coincidentally, various armed actors such as the FARC guerrillas and paramilitary forces have made violent inroads into this region. The violence has led to internal displacement, social uprooting, and the disruption of the organisational efforts of the black peasantry. This has put the process of ethnic construction and mobilisation under severe strain. However, black peasants' organisation have been trying to use the land entitlements as a tool to mount a counterstrategy against the violence inflicted by the armed groups.     

Auflösung des Liberalisierungsdilemmas

Scholars and unionists often claim an “excessive” flexibility and unilateral manager power in the labor relations system of Central Eastern Europe, while others observe “insufficient” flexibility and etatism. Beyond mere political reasoning the article provides an explanation for these contradicting diagnoses by reconstructing the varying influence of three conflicting concepts within the institutionalization process: economic liberalism, etatism and the continental European idea of social partnership. Focusing on Poland and the Czech Republic, it is argued that the varying influence of the three concepts contributed to permissive labor relations that clearly differ from Anglo-Saxon voluntarism: The labor relations are not permissive by formal standards but by deviation. During the 1990s the weakness of actors in regulating interaction and establishing powerful sanctions created a dilemma for liberalization. On the one side strong formal regulation by the state provided little incentives for employers to bargain. On the other side, a further withdrawal of the state from regulation did only ease unilateral decision-making of management as collective bargaining is weak. The impacts of harmonization with the EU regulatory regime are ambiguous. While establishing new minimum standards and regulations in new areas it also provided an opportunity structure for actors to push for the dissolution of the liberalization dilemma without compensating employees with more bargaining strength.     

Realpolitik Versus Principled Politics: Nitobe,Shidehara, Shirasu and the Hollowing out of the Japanese Peace Constitution

It is argued that the current debate surrounding the revision of article 9 of the Japanese peace constitution has shifted from a debate on non-violent ideals and principles rooted in the pacifism of Shidehara, spiritual father of article 9, to a more pragmatic logic of military action and Realpolitik which lacks intellectual depth, foresight and historical awareness. The article questions the inherent logic that tries to give a purpose to the military and gain international reputation by reinterpreting article 9 indiscriminately. Since 2004, the overseas dispatch of SDF forces into the Iraq combat zone has split the nation more than ever and a national consensus on what article 9 should stand for is further threatened by Government attempts to extend the application of article 9 to military activities outside Japan under the banner of collective defense. Ahead of the 2009 general election for the Lower House opposition and ruling parties have apparently agreed that time has come to review the text of article 9 for the first time after the war based on the premises of Realpolitik. Article 9 in its current wording still represents a very cherished core principle to the nation as a whole despite the military buildup and despite the tacit acceptance of the SDF and of the right to limited self-defense. The current popular mood against collective self-defense, against the overseas deployment of SDF, against the unequitable US-Japan Security Treaty and against nuclear weapons- termed “negative pacifism”- differs from the voluntarist security policies in the election platforms of the LDP and DPJ. Ordinary citizens in and outside Japan have challenged the political elite by teaming up to preach the peaceful spirit of article 9 to the world. It is asserted that the intended revision of article 9 has caused lasting changes in civic political grass-root culture.     

The BRICS and the South Atlantic: Emerging arena for South–South cooperation

Over the past decade, power dynamics within the South Atlantic region have undergone significant changes. While the area has historically been dominated by North–South ties, both in terms of material flows and with respect to political influence, more recently there has been a surge in cooperation between developing countries within this space. As trade, investment and other forms of exchange and dialogue increase among actors from within the region (notably between South America and Africa) and with states located outside the region, the BRICS countries become more relevant to the South Atlantic. Individually, they have become relevant players in the South Atlantic's economic, political and security dimensions. Collectively, as inter-BRICS flows and political coordination intensify, new configurations of cooperation emerge within the South Atlantic. These initiatives suggest that rising powers are contributing towards making the South Atlantic – long dominated by North–South ties – a space where South–South cooperation and norms predominate.     

From newspapers to social media? Changing dynamics in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Switzerland is a laggard in terms of digital campaigning. Direct democratic votes, more particularly, are centered around issues and little personalized. Combined with the specificities of voters’ information behaviour in direct democratic campaigns, these features are likely to disincentivize political actors from extensively campaigning online. Instead, we expect political actors to continue relying on traditional media. These propositions are tested on a large data base of social media posts and newspaper advertisements published before direct democratic votes held in Switzerland from 1981 to 2020 and 2010 to 2020, respectively. Counterintuitively, this research note finds a strong discontinuity in campaign communication practices. Over the past decades, and between 2010 and 2020 in particular, newspaper ads have become less central to direct democratic campaign communication. At the same time, political actors are increasingly shifting their communication to the digital sphere.     

Von einem liberalen zu einem post‐liberalen Wohlfahrtsstaat: der Wandel der gewerkschaftlichen Sozialpolitik in der Schweiz

The article reconstructs the development of the Swiss welfare state against the background of the transformation of trade unions' social policy activities. It detects a sequence of trade unions' activities in social policy which runs uniformly to the development of the welfare state. While in the liberal phase of the Swiss welfare state trade unions were sceptical of national social policy and preferred mutual insurance and collective bargaining, in its post‐liberal phase they have become proponents of national social policy legislation.     

Migration,memory and mythification: relocation of Suleymani tribes on the northern Ottoman–Iranian frontier

This article indicates that Suleymani tribes, which were relocated from Diyarbekir region en masse to the newly conquered territories of northern Ottoman-Iranian frontiers after the mid-sixteenth-century, created a shift in the administrative and ethnic structure of the region. Although the roles of tribes were mostly seen as subordinate to the power of the Kurdish emirs, this study shows that the chiefs of Suleymani tribes, more specifically Besyan and Heyderan, became the rulers of the newly captured Safavid territories and they did not recognize the authority of their own Suleymani emirs. The writer focuses on this migration and discusses that the relocated Suleymani tribes preserved the collective memory of their migration during the nineteenth-century and their perception shaped the creation of a tribal myth, Mil-and-Zil, after the Ottoman central government disinherited the Kurdish emirs during the mid-nineteenth-century. Suleymani tribes' migration, collective memory and mythification of their own identities show that tribes were not passive subjects but they were in fact at the center of the developments of the Ottoman eastern frontier.