日本地方治理中的公民社会组织参与模式——以自治会为例

公民社会组织的参与是治理体系的重要构成部分。其中地方治理强调地方分权和地方居民自治背景下的治理体系,地方居民为主体的公民组织是其重要参与者。日本的自治会作为地方社区的基层公民组织,无论从数量上还是分布规模来看都是日本最大的公民组织,是日本地方治理中的重要参与者。同时自治会又具有辅助行政功能的色彩,与市区町村的地方政府保持良好的合作、协调关系是其特色。因此自治会在参与地方治理中表现出了"行政媒介型公民参与模式"的特征。自治会一方面发动地方居民的力量参与地方治理,实现地方居民的主体性参与;另一方面通过参与协助地方政府的行政,和地方政府保持良好的合作关系进而达到影响地方政府的目的。     

How do the Youth Perceive and Experience Turkish Citizenship?

Citizenship is generally perceived as a political practice that falls within the historical domain of the nation-state. At least, this is the claim of many nation-states themselves, which disavow the possibility of citizenship outside of their own structures. Rather than concentrate on the organization of citizenship, this article, instead, concentrates on the experience of individual citizens. It explores a wide-ranging sample of Turkish youth's perceptions and practices of citizenship, focusing on three dimensions: citizenship as legal status; citizenship as identity; and citizenship as civic virtue. It argues that individuals' perceptions and experiences of citizenship can be mapped out according to these three dimensions, and, additionally, political affiliation or commitment is the key to young people's preference for any one of these dimensions. Thus the legal status aspect of citizenship was emphasized by liberal and republican young people; nationalist, Islamist and Kurdish youth were concerned for its identity aspects; and the civic virtue aspect was stressed by republican and leftist respondents. However the article also demonstrates that similarly to the experiences of young people themselves, these three aspects of citizenship are not clearly demarcated theoretical domains but are both deeply interrelated and conflicted with each other. The reasons for this lie in the practice and understanding of citizenship facilitated and propagated by the Turkish state.     

The Lebanese census of 1932 revisited. Who are the Lebanese?

The Lebanese state is analysed as a membership organization where both formal‐legal and political objectives control admission. The 1932 census played a fundamental role in the state‐building process of the Lebanese state: political representation was based on its findings, it was the basis for personal registration of the population residing on Lebanese territories, and it formed one of the cornerstones for obtaining citizenship in the Lebanese state. This article shows that the way the census figures were presented and analysed embodies issues of contest regarding the identity of the Lebanese state and who its members should be. The restrictive citizenship policy practised by the Maronite‐dominated regime until the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 is understood as a means to sustain political domination in an ethnically divided society. Lebanon provides an example of the political sensitivity of demographic figures in polities where fixed proportional representation constitutes the main principle of representative political organization.     

The Public Sphere and the Rise of South Korean Civil Society

This article examines how civil society in South Korea emerged as a social force and developed a distinctive relationship with the state. It is argued that political, institutional and cultural factors are no less important than economic relations in accounting for the distinctive nature of South Korean civil society. The article explores the dialectical relationship between the state and Korean civil society and its political and social consequences. For example, the dynamic interplay between the formal and informal structures of political power and the role of various civic organisations in political and other processes of social transformation are discussed. It is argued that the complex relationship between the state and civil society should be theorised in terms of mutual empowerment and synergy in the sense that civic organisations and groups have contended for, or negotiated, power. Hence, observers should bear in mind an alternative hypothesis that different historical conditions may well determine structural changes that have diverse outcomes in the political and cultural arenas, especially in an era of globalisation.     

The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL

This article examines the early years of the Returned Sailors’and Soldiers’Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA, later RSL). It argues that ideas of citizenship were pivotal to the world view and activism of the RSL as it sought to advance the interests and outlooks of its members. The RSL claimed that its members had served the nation and empire to such an extent that their citizenship status was enhanced, while that of those who had not served was diminished. This philosophy provided the underpinnings and justification for the RSL's campaigns for better pension rights, employment opportunities and access to land, often at the expense of those the RSL believed were of lower civic status through a lack of war service.     

Russia’s ministry of ambivalence: the failure of civic nation-building in post-Soviet Russia

This article argues that the sources of official and societal ambivalence towards civic nationhood in today’s Russia are found in the institutional instability and personalist dynamics of hybrid regime politics in the 1990s. Successful civic nation-building should institutionalize inclusive criteria for citizenship as a basis for policymaking, which in turn should create incentives for dominant ethnicities to embrace civic nationhood. While the shifting views of Boris Yel’tsin on nationalities policy and the constant turmoil in the government’s nationalities ministry have received little scholarly attention, they illuminate the endogenous sources of regime instability in relation to civic nation-building. Russia’s experience thus challenges the traditional view of ethnic nationalism as fostering authoritarianism and civic nationalism as fostering democracy: rather, competitive authoritarianism in the 1990s confounded the regime’s own efforts toward civic nation-building and laid the groundwork for the “ethnic turn” in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.     

Civil society in Georgia: expectations versus reality

Academic analysts, political commentators and activists in Georgia are almost unanimous in their assessment that the public in Georgia is generally passive, civil society is weak, and that this may be one of the key reasons why Georgia – despite numerous democratic openings – keeps failing to consolidate its democratic institutions. In order to measure the strengths and weaknesses of Georgian civil society, the present article uses interviews with respondents from the Georgian non-governmental organization sector and academia on two areas: (a) citizen participation: to what extent is civic participation in the public sphere aimed at advancing shared interests and (b) influence on policy-making: to what extent is Georgian civil society able to foster popular influence on political and economic developments. This paper applies the concept of delegative democracy to contemporary developments in Georgia, and argues that one of the major factors which contribute to this trend in Georgia is a weak civil society and, therefore, a lack of intermediary institutions to safeguard democratic norms.     

Gender Gaps in Civic and Political Participation in Latin America

This article examines whether there is gender segmentation in civic participation in Latin America, and whether such segmentation is related to gender differences in political participation. Confirming the findings of other studies, this analysis indicates that there is gender segmentation in civic associational activities, and that men are more involved than women in political activities, except for voting. Among those involved in civic activities, however, women attend meetings more often than men or about equally in all types of activities under consideration, except for sports and recreational pursuits. This highlights the need to differentiate between type and intensity of civic participation and provides empirical evidence that Latin American women have strong community ties through a variety of organizations. The regression analysis shows that civic engagement has a positive effect on political participation but that the magnitude of that effect varies by gender depending on the activity.     

Ethos and Logos in Israeli Citizenship: Discourse Analysis of Civic Studies Textbooks

This study examines the notion of citizenship as a form of political identity in a multi-national and multi-ethnic state such as Israel. In an effort to understand the strategies by which citizenship of Palestinians and Jews in Israel is defined, this research analyses civic studies textbooks currently used in Israeli public schools. The study asks whether the notion of citizenship is drawn from universal or particularistic- ethnic principles; what the boundaries of the demos are, and how citizens' economic, social, political and civil rights are defined. It focuses on the analysis of the ethos of citizenship and the internal Logos that sustain it as a coherent discourse in civic studies textbooks. Theoretically, the study examines basic concepts of citizenship and nationhood in a multi-ethnic society such as Israel. It re-examines ethnic groups' right to self-determination against individual and collective minority rights based on universal principles. This case adds to the understanding of the complex relationship between the particularistic and the universal forms of political identity, nationalism and citizenship.     

Transnationalisierung, Organisation und Kultur

The article takes ?transnationalization“, understood as a qualitative change in structures and strategies of internationally operating organizations, as the starting point for a discussion of the relation between organization and culture, as well as of possibilities to theorize this relation. ?Classical“ concepts of this relation, it is argued, have problems to adequately grasp the phenomenon of transnationalization. It is suggested to adopt a practice-theoretical approach to culture in organizational analysis in order to achieve a better understanding of processes of transnationalization. By doing so, internationally comparative organization studies could overcome the old debate on convergence versus divergence of organizational structures and strategies.     

The impact of organisational attributes on political participation: results of a multi‐level survey from Switzerland

Abstract: The notion of civil society associations as schools of democracy has resulted in models of political participation that place an emphasis on membership in civic associations as a means of developing personal skills that are conducive to political participation. These suppositions seem well established. It is still contested, however, to what extent the particular characteristics of the associations that offer such membership have an impact on civic engagement. Expanding recent research that mainly builds on group characteristics aggregated from the characteristics of the associations’ members, we apply the Swiss part of a unique multi‐level data set, the CID‐data, which provides information about approx. 1000 activists from about 400 associations. This data allows us to measure group characteristics, such as the function of an association and its connection to the local elite, directly and thus provides us with a special opportunity for a multi‐level analysis of activists nested in organisations.     

Radical Islamism,Traditional Islam and Ethno-Nationalism in the Northern Caucasus

This study examines the interplay between Islam and collective identity and their position in potential conflicts by exploring the dynamics of Islam, ethno-nationalism and civic society within different parts of the Northern Caucasus. Historical and anthropological approaches are used for a comparative analysis of Daghestan and Chechnya in the east and of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkesia in the west. The study demonstrates the importance of local context and historical background to the understanding of ethnicity, nationalism, civic identity and their interplay with Islam. The analysis highlights that the different history and socio-cultural characteristics of the different regions in question leads to different approaches to religion which contain a paradox. In Daghestan and Chechnya, Islam is well established and the authorities have to collaborate with different Islamic bodies in their struggle against ‘Wahhabism’. In Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkesia the ‘legitimate’ Islamic leaders – whether those representing the state or leaders of other Islamic movements – are powerless. While this represents the overall weak position of Islam in these areas, paradoxically it also opens options for radical Islamists to gain support, in the context of economic hardships, weakening of other sources of identification, and corruption. This process is generated and fostered by policies that limit ethno-nationalism and expand the struggle against radicalism to a struggle against religious activity in general. The Northern Caucasus has often been perceived as a major locus of radical Islam, and as a strategic rift in the ‘clash of civilizations’. This study claims that the significant rifts and conflicts are between different Islamic alternatives. Important variables crucial to this discussion highlighted by the case of the Northern Caucasus are ethnicity, nationalism, civic identity and their interplay with Islam. At the same time, this case also highlights that the potential of radicalism in Islamic societies is not the mere result of its own ‘characteristics’, but is also a product of policy towards Islamic societies by outside actors, in this case Russia.     

The Egyptian human rights movement and the 2011 Revolution: the implications of a missed opportunity

ABSTRACT

The 2011 uprising that led to the overthrow of Mubarak was perceived as an expression of the awakening of civil society in the face of authoritarian rule, leading to a re-examination of its role as an agent for democratic change. Nevertheless, the re-entrenchment of authoritarianism confirmed prior critical discussions regarding civil society limitations. This paper focuses on the role of the human rights movement during the revolution and its aftermath and reveals the activists’ reflections on its failure. The discussion refers to the limitations of human rights organizations but also exposes the possibilities created by the revolution and the impact of the ‘new civic activism’, which extricated human rights activism from the enclaves of the professional organizations. This analysis requires us to reconsider the definitions of civil society, which focus on formal organizations, and view it as a space in which various actors, including fluid and horizontal forms of activism, engage through contention and cooperation. Such an analysis drew our attention to the activists themselves and exposes the variety of actors working for reform, their various interpretations of the anti-democratic reality, and their potential to establish an anti-hegemonic narrative.     

Social Movements,Party Organization,and Populism: Insights from the Bolivian MAS

The Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) emerged in Bolivia's Chapare region in the 1990s. Born of a rural social movement of coca growers, it spread to the cities and became the country's dominant political force as its leader, Evo Morales, was elected to the presidency in 2005. This article argues that the MAS is a hybrid organization whose electoral success has been contingent on the construction of a strong rural‐urban coalition, built on the basis of different linkages between the MAS and organized popular constituencies in rural and urban areas. Whereas the MAS's rural origins gave rise to grassroots control over the leadership, its expansion to urban areas has fostered the emergence of top‐down mobilization strategies. The analysis also reveals how much popular sectors allied with the MAS have pressured the Morales government from below and held it accountable to societal demands.     

Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities

This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cities reveals that civic life is more active in cities marked by high levels of religiosity (Konya) and politicised by conflict (Diyarbakir). On the other hand, politicisation of civic life through party dominance and clientelism, as in Edirne and Trabzon, undermines trust and discourages participation.     

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.     

Accounting. Die Macht der Zahlen im gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus

Calculative schemes (e.g. gross national product, rate of unemployment, return on investment) are tools for the control of contemporary capitalist societies as well as means for its self-perception. Politically the power of numbers draws on its institutionally secured ability to define, respectively reconstruct, relevant ends and performance-parameters for organizations as well as individuals or entire systems of action. Moreover, the calculative practices of accounting represent socially and individually hardly contestable patterns, shaping or even constituting the construction of our selfs as well as constellations of social problems, being part of the overall constructive process of the world and attaching meaning to it. This article outlines relevant aspects of accounting-research in the Anglo-Saxon context on the level of organization, profession and the individual, and points to some theoretical shortcomings particularly of the so-called post-modern strand in this field. However, an analysis of the calculative practices of accounting will contribute to a better understanding of contemporary capitalism.     

Surname narratives and the state–society boundary: Memories of Turkey's family name law of 1934

The definition of Turkish nationhood after the founding of the Republic has been evaluated and labelled very differently by various scholars. The classical view paralleled the official representation of Republican policies in describing Turkish nationhood as being based on a civic and territorial understanding of nationality. More recent and much more critical scholarship, which enjoys a near-hegemonic position in the study of Turkish nationalism today, claims that the official definition of Turkish nationhood has a clearly identifiable mono-ethnic orientation, manifest in a series of policies and institutions. This article argues that the definition of Turkish nationhood as manifest in state policies is neither territorial nor mono-ethnic, but rather ironically for the adamantly secular Turkish republic, the definition of Turkish nationhood is mono-religious and anti-ethnic, in striking continuity with the Islamic millet under the Ottoman Empire. The reason critical scholars perceive Turkish nationhood as mono-ethnic might stem from the dichotomous view of nationalisms as civic versus ethnic, a dichotomy that has recently been repudiated by some of its erstwhile proponents. Supremacy of the religious over ethnic categories in Turkey, as a historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system, might be applicable to most post-Ottoman states in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in contrast to the interplay of ethnicity and religion in Western Europe. This view of Turkish nationhood is confirmed by a dozen interviews that the author conducted with members of the political and intellectual elite of different ideological orientations in Turkey. It is then demonstrated how the new efforts at reformulating modern Turkish identity with reference to Ottoman and Islamic conceptions lead to new inclusion–exclusion dynamics with the Kurds and the Alevis, suggesting that a truly inclusive reformulation has to follow secular and territorial principles.     

The great powers and the water dispute in the Middle East: A prelude to the six day war

The definition of Turkish nationhood after the founding of the Republic has been evaluated and labelled very differently by various scholars. The classical view paralleled the official representation of Republican policies in describing Turkish nationhood as being based on a civic and territorial understanding of nationality. More recent and much more critical scholarship, which enjoys a near-hegemonic position in the study of Turkish nationalism today, claims that the official definition of Turkish nationhood has a clearly identifiable mono-ethnic orientation, manifest in a series of policies and institutions. This article argues that the definition of Turkish nationhood as manifest in state policies is neither territorial nor mono-ethnic, but rather ironically for the adamantly secular Turkish republic, the definition of Turkish nationhood is mono-religious and anti-ethnic, in striking continuity with the Islamic millet under the Ottoman Empire. The reason critical scholars perceive Turkish nationhood as mono-ethnic might stem from the dichotomous view of nationalisms as civic versus ethnic, a dichotomy that has recently been repudiated by some of its erstwhile proponents. Supremacy of the religious over ethnic categories in Turkey, as a historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system, might be applicable to most post-Ottoman states in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in contrast to the interplay of ethnicity and religion in Western Europe. This view of Turkish nationhood is confirmed by a dozen interviews that the author conducted with members of the political and intellectual elite of different ideological orientations in Turkey. It is then demonstrated how the new efforts at reformulating modern Turkish identity with reference to Ottoman and Islamic conceptions lead to new inclusion–exclusion dynamics with the Kurds and the Alevis, suggesting that a truly inclusive reformulation has to follow secular and territorial principles.     

Putting Local Associations Into their Context. Preliminary Results from a Swiss Study of Local Associations

The paper presents results from the Swiss case of the European comparative project CID (Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy). This project examines the relationship between political institutional assets and civic and political engagement in several Western and Eastern European countries. The paper seeks to investigate how civic engagement can be generated and shaped by a given institutional and political context as well as by a peculiar community size. The central hypothesis is that the context affects the character of local participation. To verify this, the papers examines two different Swiss cantons: the German speaking Canton of Bern and the French speaking Canton of Vaud. Moreover, for each canton, four local communities of different size have been selected. This research design discusses how participation is fostered by a more open political opportunity structure (the German canton), and how this combines with the size of the community.