Electoral competition in Europe's new tripolar political space: Class voting for the left,centre‐right and radical right

The rise of the radical right fundamentally changes the face of electoral competition in Western Europe. Bipolar competition is becoming tripolar, as the two dominant party poles of the twentieth century – the left and the centre‐right – are challenged by a third pole of the radical right. Between 2000 and 2015, the radical right has secured more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries. This article shows how electoral competition between the three party poles plays out at the micro level of social classes. It presents a model of class voting that distinguishes between classes that are a party's preserve, classes that are contested strongholds of two parties and classes over which there is an open competition. Using seven rounds of the European Social Survey, it shows that sociocultural professionals form the party preserve of the left, and large employers and managers the preserve of the centre‐right. However, the radical right competes with the centre‐right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the left over its working‐class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the co‐existence of old and new patterns of class voting. Old patterns are structured by an economic conflict: Production workers vote for the left and small business owners for the centre‐right based on their economic attitudes. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the radical right and structured by a cultural conflict.     

当代中国工人阶级结构变化研究述评

当代中国工人阶级在改革开放新时期经受了巨大冲击和震荡。关注他们的社会命运,追踪其历史流变轨迹,探讨其未来可能的走向,构成理论研究不可或缺的问题域和内容。本文以时间为线索,分三个历史阶段,对当代中国工人阶级结构变化的理论成果进行综述,在理清其基本脉络的基础上进行总结和反思,希望以此为契机,推动相关理论研究进一步走向深入。     

Understanding UKIP: Identity,Social Change and the Left Behind

In this article we explore the structural shifts which help explain the emergence of UKIP as a major radical‐right political force in Britain. There are two distinct, but related, aspects to this story. The first is the changes to Britain's economic and social structure that have pushed to the margins a class of voters who we describe as the ‘left behind’: older, working‐class, white voters with few educational qualifications. The second is long‐term generational changes in the values that guide British society and shape the outlook of voters. These value shifts have also left older white working‐class voters behind, as a worldview which was once seen as mainstream has become regarded as parochial and intolerant by the younger, university‐educated, more socially liberal elites who define the political consensus of twenty‐first‐century Britain. We then move to consider the political changes that have further marginalised these voters, as first Labour and then the Conservatives focused their energies on recruiting and retaining support from middle‐class, moderate swing voters. Finally, we show how UKIP has developed into an effective electoral machine which looks to win and retain the loyalties of these voters. Finally, we discuss the longer‐term implications of the radical‐right revolt, which has the potential to change the nature of party competition in Britain in the 2015 election and beyond.     

‘Enoch Powell Speaks for Britain’: The Press,the Public and the Speech

This article explores popular reactions to Enoch Powell's speech in Birmingham on 20 April 1968. It describes the protests by sympathetic workers, such as the Smithfield meat porters, and the responses of the press, both nationally and in the West Midlands. It considers the speech's impact on immigrants themselves and it makes the case that Powell's real significance was as an early champion of a particular kind of anti‐Establishment populism, which has now become a very familiar feature of our political landscape.     

Class,Politics and the Progressive Dilemma

This article considers contemporary class inequalities and how they might shape a progressive politics in the UK. Drawing on findings from the BBC Class Survey, it outlines changes in the class structure, class mobility and class identities. It is argued that the class structure is increasingly polarised and fragmented, with a wealthy elite, a vulnerable precariat and fragmented middle and working classes in between. Declining upward social mobility is a source of anxiety for middle‐class and working‐class parents alike. Class identification, especially working‐class identification, has weakened over time, although class snobbery is far from dead. Class has changed and the class basis of politics is changing now too. A progressive politics is possible if the political parties of the centre‐left appeal to the majority of the electorate rather than one class, acknowledge common concerns and worries and appeal to shared hopes and dreams that straddle class boundaries.     

我国社会管理体制的历史变迁与深化改革

与经济、政治体制改革相适应,我国社会管理体制改革经过了高度一元化社会管控阶段、传统管理体制逐步解体、残补模式和现代社会治理四个阶段的变迁,并在管理理念、管理目标、管理主体、管理体制机制和管理方式等方面呈现出规律性的演进特征。按照新型社会管理体制模式的要求,深化社会管理体制改革必须在凝聚社会共识、转变政府职能、发育社会组织、创新运行机制、完善社区管理等方面实现突破。     

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。     

Reviewing, Reflecting and Constructing Research on Grassroots Social Organizations in Rural China

The purpose of this paper is to review previous studies on grassroots social organizations （GSOs） in rural China and provide a new framework for future research. This article uses the method of comparative analysis to review relevant research from the perspective of different disciplines and different theories, and adopts the method of inductive reasoning to analyze and draw conclusions. Previous researches can be divided into four categories according to their disciplines, and there are three theories frequently used to explain the development of rural GSOs in China. Obviously, plenty of valuable researches have been done, but examining a certain kind of GSOs in a single discipline and analyzing the cause of the development of GSOs with an isolated theory are two issues impeding further study on rural GSOs in China. By integrating three theories, a new and comprehensive research framework of ＂interest-identity-institution＂ is presented for future research on all kinds of GSOs. To improve and enrich this frame, a lot of empirical and specific researches need to be done in the future.     

Notes on contributors

This article investigates the political impact of the introduction of state subsidies to political parties. The arguments for and against subsidising political parties are outlined. Different models of party subsidies, and their regulatory frameworks, are discussed. We find little evidence of a cross‐national impact of the introduction of party subsidies. The subsidies cannot explain the decline in party membership. Nor is there evidence to suggest that the subsidies were introduced as a response to membership decline. There is no support for the allegation that party subsidies lead to the petrification of party systems. The subsidies have not meant that other income sources have lost their significance for political parties.     

Class,Race Issues,and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the party's positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.     

Liberal Nationalism,Imagined Immigration and the Progressive Dilemma

The article critically evaluates liberal nationalist perspectives on immigration by drawing on findings from a qualitative research project undertaken in 2014 among White British interviewees in England. From one perspective the study's participants' attitudes seem to support arguments made by David Goodhart and other liberal nationalists regarding immigration, social trust and integration. However, further analysis suggests that these attitudes are to a very significant extent drawn first from partially imagined ideas surrounding immigration and second from potentially unreliable sources. These findings thus provoke the question of whether social trust and notions of a national community are actually being disrupted by immigration, or whether they are being disrupted by prejudiced nationalist and xenophobic perceptions about immigration and immigrants. The article will conclude by arguing for more nuanced research into attitudes towards immigration and in favour of a sceptical approach to nationalist frameworks for interpreting society and politics in Britain today.     

Social development,community development and participation

Unlike social development, community development could not be achieved without participation. Participation is participating in decision making, to choose a community project, plan it, implement it, manage it, monitor it and control it. People can make a contribution to the planning process at the implementation stage, only if they are presented with a well articulated and feasible framework of approaches, objectives, alternative, etc. The paper focuses on the definition of social development, community development and participation in order to elaborate them. Main question of this article is： Participation is a vehicle to achieve development that community members can be involved directly in development process. This is theoretical research that method of data collection is document method.     

Evaluation and Social Impact Measurement Amongst Small to Medium Social Enterprises: Process,Purpose and Value

In recent years, the imperative to communicate organisational impacts to a variety of stakeholders has gained increasing importance within all sectors. Despite growing external demands for evaluation and social impact measurement, there has been limited critically informed analysis about the presumed importance of these activities to organisational success and the practical challenges faced by organisations in undertaking such assessment. In this paper, we present the findings from an action research study of five Australian small to medium social enterprises’ practices and use of evaluation and social impact analysis. Our findings have implications for social enterprise operators, policy makers and social investors regarding when, why and at what level these activities contribute to organisational performance and the fulfilment of mission.     

Utilizing Hyperlink Network Analysis to Examine Climate Change Supporters and Opponents

Hyperlink network analysis, which utilizes the links between websites to map online communication structures, offers an emerging methodology for studying the networks of supporters and opponents of public policies. Reasons for the methodology's appeal include the ability to utilize web crawlers to collect large amounts of data and the ability to apply quantitative and qualitative methods to examine network interactions. While the methodology has been utilized by diverse disciplines it is relatively new to the fields of political science and public policy. Utilizing a mixed‐methods research design, this article examines the applicability of using hyperlink networks to study opposing groups in the Colorado climate and energy policy subsystem while drawing increased attention to the methodology's strengths and weaknesses. The results demonstrate the methodology's considerable potential, but highlight the need for greater adoption of a collection of best practices designed to increase the validity, reliability, and generalizability of hyperlink research.     

Experimentation,Behaviour Change and Public Policy

Citizens will need to change their behaviour in pro‐social ways if governments are to address current challenges in public policy. But how best to promote behaviour change? The argument in this article is that a decentralised rather than a top‐down approach is particularly suitable, which can encourage innovation in the public sector and involve citizens in the implementation of policies. As a method of evaluating interventions, randomised controlled trials have a unique role to play in improving the design of policies, particularly if carried out responsively and adaptively. A culture of experimentation would value curiosity, feedback and the continual testing of interventions. The article includes three examples of experimentation: young people's political attitudes, voter turnout and donations for charity. As the popularity of ‘nudge’ interventions grows—shown by the success of the UK government's Behavioural Insights Team—the practice of experimentation in the public sector could become the norm.     

Public Policy and Social Science Training in Israel: The Impact of Structural Change on the Constitution of Knowledge

Recent reforms instituted in the network of higher education in Israel have focused on two elements: adjusting the managerial structure of the universities to make it more amenable to market criteria of efficiency and reducing the proportional weight of state funding to the universities compared to that allotted to the technical and professional colleges. The main elements of this process—increasing power of managers in academic institutions, shifting universities toward entrepreneurialism, the idea of the service university, and the massification of the system of higher education—are characteristic of similar changes in higher education in the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, and Australia.This article examines the impact of organizational and structural changes on the categories of knowledge produced, and by extension on the production of knowledge itself. By examining changes in the organization of higher education in Israel and in particular in the social sciences, the article suggests that institutional and academic diversification have influenced the categorization of legitimate knowledge pertaining to society, the economy, and the political arena—the traditional terrain of the social sciences—and hence what is considered knowledge worth knowing about these subjects. Finally, the article points to certain political interests that have motivated this change, and examines their larger impact upon Israeli society.     

Labor migration,ethnic kinship,and the conundrum of citizenship in Turkey

This paper explores the ambiguous purchase that claiming Turkish ethnicity has in Bulgarian Turkish migrants' attempts to access formal and social citizenship. I suggest that despite the new Citizenship Law, which appears to eliminate ethnic privilege, the emphasis on Turkish ethnicity continues to play a significant role in the migrants' attempts at inclusion. I seek to resolve this seeming tension between, on the one hand, the continuing significance of ‘Turkishness’ in migrants' discursive claims, and, on the other hand, the failure of most of these claims to materialize in practice by addressing the question of social and economic capital. Although ethnic belonging continues to be an important facet of citizenship, social class makes a significant difference in determining who qualifies as a citizen and has access to social citizenship. I thus argue that we need to expand the current terms of the debate on the inclusiveness of citizenship in Turkey, which revolve around ‘denationalization’ and ‘postnationalism,’ to include questions of class-based exclusion.     

A Very Peculiar Revolution: Britain's Politics and Constitution, 1970–2011

Britain's constitution has changed dramatically over the past forty years in which the author has been involved in national politics: devolution, the supremacy of EU law, the greater willingness of the judiciary to intervene in political issues and new human rights legislation. However these changes have been essentially random, argues David Lipsey, lacking any binding theme. These changes continue under the new coalition government. However the even greater changes to British politics have essentially a single source: the dramatic change in social class in Britain and its impact on electoral politics—for example the rise of the media and the decline of ideology