Parallel Paths A Comparison of CSR Firms and Social Enterprises

Corporate social responsibility （CSR） is the incorporation of environmental and social responsibilities into the business activity, in line with the economic responsibility that firms have traditionally focused on. The social entrepreneur is a type of entrepreneur who seeks to resolve a social or environmental problem through the application of a business model, motivated by the aim of helping others and pursuing positive social change. A key aspect of social entrepreneurship （SE） is therefore the creation of social wealth. Both concepts pursue positive social change, but unlike social entrepreneurs, the objective of a responsible firm is not to solve social issues created by others, rather to understand and limit the social and environmental impacts of their profit-generating activities. In recent decades, research on CSR has grown considerably, whereas SE has only begun to receive serious academic attention quite recently. Crucially, few studies have tried to link and differentiate the two areas. Due to the increasing interest in both concepts nowadays, the need to clarify the similarities and differences between them is greater than ever, and is the principal aim of this work.     

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 Welfare State as Rational Choice: Social Democracy in a Post-Socialist World

In this article* it is argued that rational choice analysis can help explain social democratic welfare states (SDWS). It explores the common ground between the methodological individualism of rational choice political economy and the "U-shaped curve" central to neocorporatist analysis, the idea of a curvilinear relationship between the level of corporatism in institutional arrangements and societal welfare. Central to the SDWS, it is suggested, is the reduction of information costs due to the configuration of institutional arragements in three key arenas of social action in the SDWS: the informational-cultural; the organizational-economic; and the governmental-political. These arrangements frame the choices under which rational individuals act to maintain the SDWS and the outcomes it produces. Concrete examples demonstrating the usefulness of the approach are offered in terms of explaining differences in policy choices (and therefore outcomes) between the Scandinavian countries and more laissez-faire systems such as the US. The conclusion looks at the prospects for the SDWS, asking just how the institutional arrangements central to the SDWS are being challenged by recent developments.     

Getting Out the Latino Vote: How Door-to-Door Canvassing Influences Voter Turnout in Rural Central California

Using randomized experimentation, this study of a municipal election in Central California examines the effects of face-to-face canvassing on voter turnout. This is the first randomized experiment to focus on Latino voter mobilization. Building on previous field experimentation, this study focuses on a local school board election held in Dos Palos, CA. Two kinds of appeals were made to potential voters: one emphasized ethnic solidarity; the other emphasized civic duty. Canvassing was remarkably successful; voters who were contacted were significantly more likely to vote. The mobilization effort had a particularly large effect on the turnout of Latino Democrats.     

论招收公务员、学生徇私舞弊罪

招收公务员、学生徇私舞弊罪,作为1997年刑法新增加的一个罪名,在其构成要件和司法认定上存在着诸多疑难问题。本文在阐述本罪的概念和构成要件的基础上,对其立案标准、刑事责任等进行了分析,并对认定本罪应注意的问题提出了自己的看法。     

行政区划改革:视角、路径及评价

本文认为,当前有关行政区划改革的讨论,因急于开药方,而模糊了行政区划改革背后的逻辑。为此,本文在梳理现有代表性观点的基础上,从视角、路径两个层面,剖析行政区划改革背后的逻辑。本文认为当前行政区划改革的探讨主要有两种视角,即管理幅度与管理层次、行政区与经济区关系的视角,视角不同行政区划改革路径也不同,并对相应行政区划改革方案进行了针对性评价。最后,本文指出,要更科学地探讨行政区划改革,必须把握时代特征。     

中国枢纽型社会组织发展的理性逻辑、风险题域与应对策略——基于共生理论的视角

基于共生理论来展开逻辑—风险—策略的分析框架,可以深入理解中国枢纽型社会组织的逻辑发生学。从发生秩序论、实践动力和目标指向来看,枢纽型社会组织呈现组织化—再组织化的交互逻辑、政府与社会的互塑逻辑、政府与组织资源的互依逻辑。从共生界面分析,枢纽型社会组织发展面临权力过载、目标偏移、内源性腐败、结构性失衡和社会认同偏离等或然风险。因此,我国需要构建政府—枢纽型社会组织—会员社会组织的对称性、均衡性互惠合作共生关系,以价值理性来引导枢纽型社会组织治理制度创新;推进枢纽型社会组织走向政治性与社会性的融合之路;加强腐败治理与防范,完善科学有效的监管体制机制;构建枢纽型社会组织与会员社会组织间民主平等的合作治理机制;注重扶优扶强与扶新扶弱政策之间的平衡。     

Inclusivity in Online Platforms: Recruitment Strategies for Improving Participation of Diverse Sociodemographic Groups

Governments are increasingly implementing smart and digital approaches to promoting citizen participation. However, whether online participation platforms are tools that improve inclusivity in citizen participation remains underexplored. To address this gap, this article focuses on the role of recruitment messages and their effect on participation in an online participation platform by gender and age. A field experiment with a neighborhood census sample (N = 6,066) shows that online participation dips for younger and older citizens and is equal among women and men. For the age groups between 60 and 75, differences in the control and intervention recruitment messages significantly impacted participation. These findings can help public managers tailor recruitment strategies to facilitate inclusive participation and represent a first step toward learning what types of messages are effective for whom.     

Rational moralists: The role of fairness in democratic economic politics

In this paper, we empirically test for the influence of fairness considerations on the willingness to redistribute income in private and in democratic decisions. In contrast to standard explanations of income redistribution, our theory takes into account that prices shift decisively as we move from the sphere of private contributions to politics. At the polls, it is nearly costless to observe social norms. Therefore, we expect individuals to behave more fairly in the political sphere than in the market place. We present experimental evidence which is consistent with this hypothesis. In distributive struggles, social norms moderate the inclination of human beings to behave like ‘gangsters’.     

Paths between Positivism and Interpretivism: An Appraisal of Hay's Via Media

Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its outline for a via media , or middle way, between positivist and interpretivist social science. In this view, social science should be firmly grounded in empirical study but take seriously the notion that there is no privileged vantage point from which to generate dispassionate knowledge claims about the social world. This article asks whether this apparent via media is coherent and meaningfully captures what it means to be doing positivist and interpretivist social science without, so to speak, conceding too much ground to the other approach.     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Asia: Paradigms and Legacies, Paths and Diversities

Many Asian governments have embarked on administrative reforms of one kind or another, engaging in rhetoric that resonates with the global paradigms of "new public management" and "good governance." This article seeks to understand Asian administrative reforms against the background of international influence, policy diffusion, domestic politics, institutional dynamics, and administrative traditions and legacies. It is impossible to capture the whole range of national reform types within any neat and tidy Asian paradigm, but some common strands of national reform paths in the region can still be traced. Different problems and failures are found to be addressed by Asian reforms, reflecting diverse motives and resulting in varied outcomes. The "old" public administration regime has largely coexisted with the "new" public management approaches and tools.     

MOVING INTO GLOBAL COMPETITION: A Case Study of Alabama's Recruitment of Mercedes-Benz

Globalization is changing the game of economic development, but the emerging rules and optimal strategies remain somewhat unclear. The Mercedes case discussed in this article illustrates the rough and uncertain nature of this transition. From the perspective of the traditional strategy, the price of the jobs initially promised by Mercedes seemed high; and the ultimate cost was increased by the intense competition among the bidding states. Yet from another perspective, the incentives offered by Alabama can be viewed as “table stakes” for the new global game of economic development.     

Out of the Hands of the Parties: Women's Legislative Recruitment at Westminster

At the next general election the percentage of women elected to the smaller House of Commons risks being lower than in the current parliament, where they constitute 22 percent of all MPs. The 2008–10 Speaker's Conference identified many of the barriers faced by women and other under‐represented groups and made a series of recommendations, only some of which have been introduced. The Government favours a voluntary approach to Recommendation 24, which calls for diversity data monitoring, whilst Recommendation 25 which calls for serious consideration of legislative quotas in the absence of a significant increase in the numbers of women in 2010, appears forgotten. A second Speaker's Conference should therefore be established; the issue of women's under‐representation should be taken up above the party level—with legislative quotas introduced to address the system level failure of democratic representation at Westminster.     

The Recruitment of Women Cabinet Ministers in the Canadian Provinces

Although there have been several studies of women in legislatures in Canada, a cabinet position is a much stronger position from which to wield power in an executive-centered and party-disciplined parliamentary system. In the past decade, the increase of women's share of legislative seats, for majority parties as well as others, has led to more women being appointed to cabinet portfolios. This article utilizes data from the ten Canadian provinces over an 18-year period, from 1976 to 1994, to assess patterns of such appointments by province, party, percentage of women in the governing party, and percentage of women in the legislature. The proportion of women in the governing party far outweighs other variables in its impact on the percentage of women in the cabinet, in contrast to a previous study of West European cabinets which found that more women in the legislature was of greater importance. Although a high level of multicollinearity indicates caution in attempting to distinguish between the impact of these two variables, the differences in these studies may be due to Canadian provinces having single-party majority governments while West European cabinets are often coalitions.