Linking Social Capital to Political Participation: Voluntary Associations and Networks of Recruitment in Sweden1

That organizational involvement has a positive impact on political action is a well‐established finding in empirical research around the world. To account for this, theorists since Tocqueville have pointed to the returns in human capital, in particular ‘civic skills’, yielded by associations. This article, by contrast, is a study of whether social capital theory can help explain the same effect. According to the logic of ‘weak ties’, organizational involvement provides bridging social capital by connecting the individual to a wider range of people. As a result, the input of requests for participation increases and this ultimately leads to more activity. Unspecified in this argument, however, is what aspect of associational memberships is most conducive to such weak ties: the sheer number of memberships, or the extent to which one's memberships provide links to people of dissimilar social origin. In an unprecedented empirical test based on survey data from Sweden in 1997, it is shown that being connected to multiple voluntary associations is what matters for political activity, not the extent to which one's memberships cut across social cleavages. Moreover, the social capital mechanism of recruitment is more important in explaining this effect than the human capital mechanism of civic skills, since the former can account for why even passive members, not just organizational activists, may become more prone to take political action.     

The Directions of Constitutional Change: Implications for the Public Sector

Constitutional change is in the air and this applies to the constitutional system, not just the documents that we call the Commonwealth and state constitutions in Australia. The causes of change are multitudinous but two warrant special mention: (a) natural or endemic change in the economy and society at large, and (b) political causes.     

Public Support for Corporate Social Responsibility in the Welfare State: Evidence from Sweden

Several scholars have claimed that we are currently witnessing a growing saliency of so‐called ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR). Yet, while there is a lot of work suggesting that public opinion might prompt firms to behave in socially responsible ways, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring the extent ordinary to which citizens actually support CSR. Moreover, the state is conventionally theorised as the main institutional device for governing markets and their social consequences, and there is a growing literature exploring the relationship between CSR and the state. On the basis of these observations, this article juxtaposes public attitudes towards CSR and state intervention in the market. Considering that attitudes might vary across groups with different structural relationships to the firm, this study also looks at the social bases of support for different attitude profiles. Using Swedish survey data collected in 2011 and latent class analysis, the empirical results demonstrate that most Swedes in favour of CSR are highly supportive of state intervention in the market. The study of social cleavages restates this pattern: social groups with fewer marketable resources are strongly over‐represented in supporting a combination of CSR and state intervention in the market. No clear social profile is found for the relatively small group of people who support CSR but not state intervention. It is concluded that voluntary CSR is unlikely to offer a serious full‐scale alternative to the welfare state: Swedes continue to think of public authorities as the ultimate institutional guarantor of social welfare.     

浅析社会变革中的文化因素

改革开放以来中国社会进入变革时期。这种变革是社会整体的变迁,包括政治结构、经济结构和文化的变迁。笔者认为从某种意义上讲,文化是社会变革能否成功的根本问题。在社会变革中,许多最复杂、最艰难的问题都反映在文化上,文化所受到的冲击非常大,其剧烈程度远远超过社会的其他领域。因此,本文试图通过分析文化对政治、经济领域改革的重要影响,强调文化在社会变革中的重要作用。     

Applicant Perceptions of State Priorities in the Illinois Small Cities CDBG Program: Implications for Local Targeting

The State of Illinois has targeted economic development as amajor priority in the Small Cities Community Development BlockGrant program, although the state still accepts applicationsfor public facilities and housing rehabilitation. This articleexamines the impact of this state priority on the applicationbehavior of small cities. We find that grant applicants perceivethat the state's economic development emphasis decreases theirability to be successful in obtaining housing rehabilitationgrants. This perception has had an impact on subsequent applicationbehavior. Cities no longer apply for grants that are most likelyto benefit directly those with low and moderate incomes.     

Stability,Crisis and Breakdown: Some Notes on the Concept of Crisis in Political Analysis*

The argument of the paper is that political science would benefit from clarification of the concept ‘crisis’. and that this clarification should be related to neighbouring concepts such as ‘stability’ and ‘breakdown’. It is suggested that the stability of a political regime is demonstrated by its ability to avoid transformation as well as breakdown at times of crisis when the continuity of the regime's identifying characteristics is threatened.     

中国社会保障财政支出的地区差异问题分析

如同经济发展存在地区差异一样,中国的社会保障财政支出也体现着明显的地区差异的特点,这造成了社会保障这一正式社会经济制度未能发挥其应有的调节地区间经济发展不平衡的再分配功能.依据区域经济学中地区差异的相关度量指标和方法,对分税制改革以来十年间(1995年-2005年)中国社会保障财政支出的地区差异问题,包括社会保障财政负担的地区差异、社会保障财政人均支出的地区差异、以及社会保障财政支出水平的地区差异的演变轨迹作归纳性描述,并对其与各地区之间的经济发展水平和财政能力差异之间的关系作对比分析;探讨了社会保障财政支出地区差异问题的形成原因;并提出了建立社会保障转移支付制度的政策建议.     

Social and Political Consequences of Administrative Corruption: A Study of Public Perceptions in Spain

Spain experienced an outbreak of public sector corruption—much of it related to the involvement of regional and local administrators and politicians in the country's urban development boom—that angered the public and sparked calls for government reform. Using data from a 2009 survey that followed these events, the authors examine the association between perceived corruption and the attitudes and behaviors of citizens, including satisfaction with government and democracy, social and institutional trust, and rule‐breaking behaviors. The findings suggest that perceptions of administrative as well as political corruption are associated with less satisfaction, lower levels of social and institutional trust, and a greater willingness to break rules. Although these survey results cannot prove causation, they are consistent with the notion that administrative and political corruption damages the legitimacy of government in the eyes of citizens and weakens the social fabric of democratic society.     

Corporatism in Crisis: Stability and Change of Social Partnership in Austria

While recent developments in Western Europe provide numerous examples of the instability and decay of corporatist arrangements in the face of economic crisis, Austrian social partnership still exhibits remarkable stability. The article tries to explain this stability of corporatist politics in Austria. The Austrian case is also used to demonstrate some limitations of the academic literature on the breakdown of corporatism. However, stability in the Austrian case does not mean that nothing has changed. Changes have occurred within the existing institutional framework. Two main factors in the transformation of Austrian social partnership are pointed out, namely socio-cultural and political changes. Finally, some future perspectives of Austrian corporatism are outlined.     

Rhetoric, Practice and the Dynamics of Institutional Change: Immigrant Policy in Sweden, 1964–2000

This article explains why different policy changes can occur on different institutional levels at the same time. I distinguish between the rhetorical and practical levels. Previous studies have described the different functions of rhetoric and practice: losses on one level can be compensated by gains on the other; to minimize conflicts between the two levels they are kept separate. However, no causal explanation of such decoupling has been suggested. I suggest that the reason why rhetoric and practice are decoupled is that they are evaluated in different ways: rhetoric is eva-luated in public political debates whereas practice is evaluated through government audits and different questions are asked in the two arenas. This argument is tested through a study of Swedish immigrant policies between 1964 and 2000. The main conclusion is that the rhetoric of immigrant policy has changed, whereas the practice of immigrant policy has not.     

Voters' Perceptions of Policy Convergence and the Short‐term Opportunities of Anti‐immigrant Parties: Examples from Sweden

In contrast to previous studies on the political opportunity structures of anti‐immigrant parties, this article argues that voters’ perceptions of policy convergence between mainstream alternatives affect their short‐term propensity for supporting such partisan challengers. Drawing upon leading research in the field, two hypotheses about voters’ perceptions of policy convergence, in two policy areas (economic redistribution and immigration), are presented. The main findings in the article suggest that policy convergence between mainstream parties has a more immediate impact on the electorate than commonly recognised. Using unique data from Sweden, the article shows that perceived convergence between Swedish mainstream parties in the field of immigration policy increases potential support for the anti‐immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). Yet the results are the opposite when it comes to perceptions of convergence in the field of economic‐distributive policies. In contrast to widespread assumptions, the article thus finds that policy convergence between mainstream parties only appears to create short‐term opportunities for anti‐immigrant parties if it takes place on their own policy turf. These results indicate, in other words, that the potential electorate of the SD – which is a wider group than hard‐core xenophobes – is largely driven by preferences about immigration policy, rather than the short‐term urge to protest against mainstream parties. The article, therefore, concludes that the cordon sanitaire to isolate the SD in Sweden – which is underpinned by de facto convergence between mainstream parties on immigration policy – could improve, and is unlikely to curb, the short‐term electoral opportunities of this party.     

社会结构变迁与和谐社会构建

改革开放以来,我国社会组织结构、阶级阶层结构和价值观念结构的变迁使社会的“离心”倾向明显,组织形式更加松散和复杂;社会主体利益多元化、差异化的趋势日益明显,利益结构日趋失衡,利益关系日渐紧张;公共道德与信任关系受到冲击,传统的观念认同出现危机。构建和谐社会必须从政策引导、制度保障、观念认同三个方面建立起利益结构合理、利益关系和谐的社会体系。