The differential impact of state finance on the Romanian party system

This article explores the influence that state finance has had on the Romanian party system by examining the entry and exit of parties throughout the period of 1990 – 2004 and focusing on the number of parties that gained representation in the parliament as well as the party incumbency rate. I find that state finance has had a limited influence on the party system as a whole but has been influential for specific parties. I argue that the influence of state finance partly depends on when the system was introduced. In developing party systems, the influence of state finance on individual parties is more differential.     

Choice and vulnerability in aging societies: Understanding the impact of age on user capacity

One necessary condition for realizing the benefits of choice‐based models of public service provision is that the service users in a given sector are capable of exercising choice. However, along with population aging, critics may question the level of user capacity in the growing user group consisting of older citizens with healthcare needs. For the first time in an older‐aged sample (52 to 97 years, N ~ 10,000), this study examines the link between age and user capacity (public service efficacy). Our results from the hospital sector in Denmark reveal a negative age gradient, where those of advanced age and declining health report significantly lower public service efficacy. However, when examining this age gap, much is attributable to cohort differences in educational attainment. Thus, while current generations of older service users constitute a vulnerable group under choice‐based policies, this challenge is likely to diminish in the future.     

The impact of state weakness on citizenship a case study of Kyrgyzstan

This article, using contemporary Kyrgyzstan as a case study, examines how state weakness is both reflected and reinforced at the citizens' level. Based upon field research conducted in April and May 2007, we discuss three hypotheses. First, the inability of the state to provide essential goods and services and has deterred citizens' willingness to fulfill their responsibilities such as paying taxes, respecting the laws, and serving in the army. Second, citizens have lost trust in their regime; some directly confront the state by joining demonstrations, strikes, and other protest activities. Finally, state weakness has negatively influenced the feeling of collective membership and reinforced sub-national identities. Declining loyalty is particularly evident among the citizens who have left the country in the prospect of better employment abroad.     

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

This article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has not achieved the kinds of effects associated with effective states, it has nevertheless had significant effects. These include, first, accentuating the patrimonialism which has led to state weakness in the first place; second, reductions in national sovereignty as external actors’ substantial influence on policy agendas renders the state itself subject to control and regulation by actors external to it; and, third, perpetuating the idea of the state, while undermining the possibility of creating actual states which conform to this idea.     

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.     

The impact of suicide on the family

Little research has examined the consequences of a suicide for social or family networks. Because suicide occurs within families, the focus on the aftermath of suicide within families is an important next step to determine exactly how to help survivors. In this article, we review and summarize the research on the impact of suicide on individuals within families and on family and social networks. We begin with a discussion of family changes following suicide. Next, we discuss the effects of suicide on social networks overall and responses of children and the elderly to a suicide in the family. Finally, we identify key issues that remain to be resolved in family survivor research and make recommendations for future studies.     

世界政党形势的新变化及对国际形势的影响

当前,随着经济全球化深入发展,各国国内政治与国际政治的界限日益模糊,政党政治的变化对国际形势的影响越来越直接.     

Discursive democracy and the challenge of state building in divided societies: reckoning with symbolic capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Current approaches to democratic state building place serious conceptual limits on policy options. A democratic future for Bosnia's people will require far more searching engagement with identity formation and its politicization than reform efforts have so far contemplated. Theories of discursive democracy illuminate how this might be possible. We deploy the discursive idea of symbolic capital to show how one might identify the lines along which people in Bosnia could constitute meaningful, internally legitimated political communities – or that would indicate the experiment was not worth attempting. Unless advocates of democratic state building can articulate, rather than assume, a sufficiency of common ground among the populations' multiple, overlapping and conflicting identities, they may have to revert to the default of separate political communities.     

The state of the art in state exective branch reorganization

This article is an attempt to review the state of the art in state exective reorganization in three areas: (1) the value orientations emphasized in state reorganization, (2) the forms/ structures state reorganizations take, (3) the research approaches applied to state reorganiztion. After summarizing trends and patterns in each earea, projections of future developments are made. My review and speculation are based in part on a comprehensive study of 151 state executive branch reorganizations or attempts to reorganize in 48 states from 1914-1975.     

Overcoming the past: De-communization and reconstruction of post-communist societies

In several of the central and eastern European nations, the fall of Communism has initiated a new round of political intolerance that threatens to destroy the foundations of their fragile democratic regimes. Campaigns of lustration (political “cleansing”) have imposed ideological tests for employment and political participation in the Balkan countries and in parts of the former Soviet Union. The small, poor nation of Albania has been especially seriously impacted by this atmosphere of vengeacean against ex-Communists and their families. Justified by the principles of destructive entitlement—reminiscent of ancient cultural rituals of blood retribution—journalists have been arrested, members of the opposition have been imprisoned, and University programs have been suspended. In response to Albania’s plight, and to a similar pattern of civil rights abuses in neighboring countries, social scientists have begun to analyze the powerful role played by the “past-in-the-present” in current reconstruction efforts. As Jurgen Habermas, Adam Michnik, Seymour Martins Lipset, and others have noted, a new “culture of forgiveness” may well be a necessary condition for the development of stable and authentic democratic societies in the region. Fatos Tarifa is currently at the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tirana in 1985. He is director of the New Sociological Research Center (NSRC) in Tirana, Albania, and is the author of several books and journal articles, including a 1991 bookIn Search of the Sociological Fact (published in Albanian). Jay Weinstein is a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He has travelled widely in the Third World and in Central and Eastern Europe. Author of numerous books, journal articles, and chapters, he is currently working on a volume entitledSocial and Cultural Change: Social Science for a Dynamic World (forthcoming in 1997 by Allyn & Bacon Publishers).     

The impact of formal finance on the rural economy of India

This paper explores the use of informal credit as a strategy for managing risks by market women in northern Ghana. A broad concept of the costs of risk management strategies is introduced and encompasses both a time and monetary dimension. Based on qualitative data, the analysis reveals that market women invest a considerable amount of time in maintaining complex networks of informal credit providers to ensure their access to credit once a shock occurs. Informal credit involves high transaction costs and prevents market women from growing out of poverty in the long term.     

文学作品中的不恰当描写对青少年的不良影响

文学的影响研究是文学研究的重要内容之一,任何文学对读者都会产生不同的影响,而文学作品中的色情、暴力等内容属于不良的文化,特别现代许多作品都打着法制的旗号,很容易迷惑人,这些不恰当的描写会对青少年产生较大的负面影响。青少年属于文学影响中的“易感人群”,他们的认知心理还不太成熟,文学艺术中的不恰当描写会在青少年确立正确的人生观、身心健康、人生行为等方面产生不良影响。     

The overloaded state

The conditions that produced Israel's strong state and the implications of that state are not likely to be replicated elsewhere, exactly. However, Israel's case offers some general lessons that ought to be considered by advocates of a strong bureaucratic state, as suggested by the New Public Administration of the 1968 Min-nowbrook Conference. These include: poor management of public enterprises and social services; high inflation; politicization of public sector employment; a plethora of centrally defined rules, many of which are evaded in the interests of flexible administration; lack of moderation in policy demands; and perpetuation of the state's dominance of the economy as it becomes the first resort of groups in distress.

This essay explores conditions in Israel for a movement in the academic profession of public administration whose roots and principal focus have been in the United States.

The self-proclaimed New Public Administration in the United States began with the Minnowbrook Conference in New York in September 1968. The mood of many conferees was antagonistic to the political establishment that seemed more intent on pursuing an unpopular war and maintaining law and order than in responding to demands for domestic social services. Several papers and much of the discussion stressed the need for public administrators to take upon themselves the articulation of, and response to, demands that had not found effective representation among the elective legislators and chief executive.⁽¹⁾

Here the concern is with those aspects of the Minnowbrook perspective that imply both more responsibility and more power for government bureaucrats.

Israel has what may be the most powerful bureaucracy in all of the democracies. Israel's special history and circumstances make its details unlikely to be replicated elsewhere. Nonetheless, it suggests lessons for those who would strengthen the bureaucracies of other countries.

There are positive and negative features of a powerful state. In a society that is relatively homogeneous, feels beselt by outsiders, and whose cultural and religious values shape the character of public policy, as in the Israeli case, the balance of a powerful state may be positive. Even in such a case, however, there are negative features of the strong state. Those who do not feel themselves in tune with the majority of the moment may pay a great price in the sacrifice of what they feel are their legitimate rights. In a heterogeneous country that is divided by a great plurality of world views, and where a individualistic, free-market tradition is prominent, as in the American case, the consequences of a powerful state may be severe.⁽²⁾

There may be no lessons in the Israeli case that are simple and direct. Yet the weight of the more general warnings may justify this exercise.