The Strategic Sources of Foreign Policy Substitution

While a growing body of work provides empirical support for the notion that political leaders "substitute" foreign policies depending on a variety of domestic political and economic conditions, little work examines the underlying strategic causes of substitution. This article argues that foreign states behave strategically in order to (a) avoid becoming the targets of domestically troubled executives or (b) to take advantage of the domestic trouble another state endures. Such "strategic interaction" delimits the set of foreign policies reasonably available to leaders in trouble at home, thus producing the impetus for policy substitution. This article develops a theoretical model of strategic behavior and policy substitution and reports empirical results of a multivariate probit model.     

Traditions of protest and the high‐school student movements in Spain and France in 1986–87

This article explores the social circumstances that nurture social movements in advanced capitalist societies by examining the Spanish and French high‐school student movements of 1986–87. Attention is given to the influence of unemployment, outside organisers, the political education of community leaders, and past protests that provided examples for movement participants. The article proposes that future research on European social movements focus, first, on organisational prerequisites, and, second, on the social and psychological processes by which people derive lessons from past political events.     

Political culture, alternative politics and foreign policy: The case of Israel

This article analyzes how sociopolitical dynamics within a state can help explaining foreign policy. We show that under certain conditions, the public can be involved in ways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers, and also takes active initiatives that eventually shape foreign policies. The article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society, which transformed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation, gradually led to shifts in foreign policy regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli public has adopted an approach to solving social problems by unilateral initiatives, as part of its attempts to shape foreign policy from the bottom up, due to continuous government failure to provide public services, combined with blocked influence channels. As long as Israeli politicians ignored these changes, they failed to mobilize support for policies imposed from the top down and lost their positions of power.     

Corporatism and Social Trust: Bringing Voluntary Organizations ‘Back In’

Abstract

In analyses of the sources of social trust, it has been found that voluntary organizations have no effect upon it. Such analyses have overlooked the role of civil society organizations as intermediary structures between the citizen and the state. This article explores how organizations, linked together in corporatist networks, help generate trust. Two mechanisms for this are pointed out. First, in societies with strong corporatist networks conflicts between employers and employees are perceived as less strong than in societies with weak corporatist networks. Second, as societies with strong corporatist networks also are more egalitarian, conflicts between rich and poor are also perceived as less pronounced than in societies with weak corporatist networks. This analysis provides definite indications that the perception of conflicts between workers and managers, and the perception of conflicts between rich and poor are intermediary variables between corporatism and social trust, and thus supports the hypothesis that voluntary organizations, through corporatist networks of negotiation and coordination, contribute to the growth of social trust.     

The Big Society: Back to the Future

This article contributes to the steady flow of critiques of the big society idea contained in The Political Quarterly. It focuses chiefly on two sets of parallels. The first is between the big society and the policies pursued by the Thatcher government which, despite their obvious rhetorical differences, contain many striking similarities, including their neoliberal origins, application of the ‘crowding out’ thesis and uncritically idealised notions of community. The second is between the big society and a policy with the same name pursued doggedly by the Chinese Communist Party for nearly 20 years until being abandoned as a failure. Lessons for the Prime Minister's flagship policy are drawn from the Chinese experience. The article concludes with a welcome for the rediscovery of the social by public policy and some suggestions as to how a more participative and democratic state could follow from this breakthrough.     

The Council for the Australian Federation: A New Structure of Australian Federalism

In October 2006, state premiers and territory chief ministers gathered in Melbourne for the first meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation (CAF). This little‐heralded event marked the beginning of the first formalised structure for state and territory only collaboration since Federation. This article describes the genesis and creation of this new structural response to ongoing state concerns about the trend to an increasingly centralised pattern of Commonwealth‐state relations. It identifies the intended functions of the Council, which include: acting as a mechanism for coordinating approaches to negotiations with the Commonwealth; operating as a clearing house for policy ideas in Australia and internationally; harmonising regulatory frameworks; and developing improvements to service delivery in areas of state responsibility. Informed by interviews with key players involved with its establishment and documentary sources, this article assesses CAF's performance during its first 18 months of operation. It explores the hopes and aspirations of key CAF stakeholders, and some of the issues that have confronted the fledgling organisation. Personnel changes among the cohort of state and territory leaders, and the election of a federal Labor government in November 2007 have altered the dynamics of CAF. The article argues that CAF's emergence is an attempt by sub‐national governments to develop new capacity and leverage to address the asymmetries that characterise contemporary Australian federalism. However, there are questions about CAF's future, particularly about state and territory governments' capacity to pursue collaborative agendas given the pace and scope of Kevin Rudd's ‘new federalism’ reforms and the demands it is placing on their policy and administrative systems.     

Varieties of Social Policy by Other Means: Lessons for Comparative Welfare State Research

Abstract

Scholars can take a broader look at social policy and understand that traditional public welfare state programs are only one of the many potential sources of social protection and regulation. The contributions of this special issue invite social policy scholars to explore policy instruments that provide “social policy by other means” across a wide array of areas, including agriculture, energy, immigration, taxation, and legal regulation of private benefits and services. The article provides a concise overview of some of the key theoretical and empirical implications of social policy by other means for comparative welfare state research. In order to do this, it is divided into two main sections, which respectively discuss the nature and boundaries of social policy and the varieties of social policy by other means. This is followed by a short conclusion, which summarizes the key lessons of this special issue for comparative welfare state research.     

Recalibrating social protection: Electoral competition and the new partisan politics of the welfare state

This article investigates the new party politics of welfare states with a particular focus on electoral competition. The argument is that welfare state politics are no longer just about more or less, but involve trade-offs among ‘new’ versus ‘old’ social rights, and hence social investment versus social consumption. However, party priorities on these issues are highly dependent upon their electoral situation. As electoral competition becomes more intense, parties focus more on vote maximisation than on their traditional policy goals. For left parties, this means focusing more on social investment, which appeals to their growing constituency of progressive sociocultural professionals, and less on defending the traditional income maintenance programmes favoured by their core blue-collar voters. Centre-right parties, on the other hand, should hesitate to retrench old social rights when electoral competition intensifies because they need to prioritise their appeal to culturally conservative working-class voters over their traditional fiscally conservative policy profiles. Using a new dataset and a recently published measure of electoral competitiveness, the article shows that as electoral competition intensifies, left governments are willing to prioritise social investment by reducing pension rights generosity in order to expand programmes for new social risks, while centre-right governments by contrast avoid retrenchment of pension rights and pension expenditures. The findings demonstrate that this relationship is moderated by the presence of a credible radical right challenger, which increases the electoral risk of welfare state recalibration.     

Political theory in historical context. Reflections on Democratic Justice and the Social Contract by Albert Weale

In Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, Weale defends a contractarian theory of social justice following what he calls the ‘empirical method’, which consists in grounding ethics and politics on the observation of concrete examples of social contracts, rather than abstract speculations. In this paper, I will make three critical remarks. First, the empirical method is open to the same objections usually raised against more abstract approaches to social contract theory: by an appropriate choice of the starting point, one can justify any ethical or political position. Second, Weale’s focus on the societies that were successful in managing common pool resources appears arbitrary: other social organizations (e.g. hunters and gatherers societies) would be a more obvious choice. Finally, in following the empirical method, philosophers must be willing to import into ethics and politics the same problems of interpretation one encounters in theoretical social sciences. As an example, I will show that Weale’s position on the welfare state depends on the interpretation he gives of some practices observed in the societies he chooses as models. Different interpretations of the same practices would induce Weale to revise his positions.     

Social Policy Under One Country, Two Systems: Institutional Dynamics in China and Hong Kong since 1997

Hong Kong's 1997 reversion to Chinese sovereignty brought two hitherto distinctive social policy systems into one country. As Hong Kong is gradually assimilated into China in the coming decades, the two social policy systems will need to identify elements of convergence. In this article, we argue those elements can be found in parallel efforts to curtail the reach of the state, extend the role of the market, enhance individual responsibility, and in the development of a productivist social policy orientation in both societies. The social policy systems of the two societies remain strikingly different in many ways, reflecting their diametrically opposed starting points. But their reform trajectories appear to be pointing in similar directions.     

Advocating social marketing as ultimate weapon to fighting HIV/AIDS propagation,and related discrimination and stigmatisation

The spreading of HIV/AIDS in the African continent and related discrimination and stigmatisation towards people living with the virus have become a major issue to be addressed by communities, health organisations and governments in Africa. An effective way to successfully overcome these plagues necessitates the application of social marketing techniques and campaigns. However, when it comes to funding and supporting social marketing activities, African leaders deny the important role that the government could play in achieving the ‘HIV/AIDS free generation goal’ as well as making African societies a non‐discriminative and stigmatisation places for infected people. The present study intend to demonstrate through analysis of empirical data that social marketing is crucial in changing people's sexual behaviour and battling misconceptions that lead to discrimination and stigmatisation of infected people. In this light, African political authorities such as Congolese leaders need to understand the relevancy of this discipline in their HIV/AIDS policy.     

Alternative action organizations across different welfare and third sector regimes during hard economic times

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, the international economic and financial crisis has been affecting the living and working conditions of European citizens in different ways and scope. Yet, the pattern is of rising unemployment, social deprivation and poverty, cuts in health, education and social security budgets. These negative socio-economic conditions have led to major transformations in collective responses, which, among others, take place through Alternative Action Organisations (AAOs). The specific organizations carry out non-mainstream activities that primarily target the economic and the social well-being of citizens, including their basic needs, health and lifestyles. Using quantitative data from the LIVEWHAT project and drawing on social origins theory and resource mobilization theory, the article investigates AAOs’ main characteristics across four European countries that have been differently affected from the recent recession as well as belong to different welfare state and third sector regimes, including Germany, Greece, Sweden and Poland. The findings stress the importance of considering the particular combinations of the welfare state and third sector regimes as well as the severity of the experienced economic crisis in understating the variation in AAOs’ main features under a comparative perspective.     

Women on the Sidelines: Women's Representation on Committees in Latin American Legislatures

This article explores how new groups can be marginalized after they gain representation in the legislature. We use data from six Latin American legislatures to examine the effect of institutional and political factors on how traditionally dominant male political leaders distribute scarce political resources—committee assignments—to female newcomers. In general, we find that women tend to be isolated on women's issues and social issues committees and kept off of power and economics/foreign affairs committees as the percentage of legislators who are women increases, when party leaders or chamber presidents control committee assignments, and when the structure of the committee system provides a specific committee to deal with women's issues. Thus, to achieve full incorporation into the legislative arena, newcomers must do more than just win seats. They must change the institutions that allow the traditionally dominant group to hoard scarce political resources .     

Social Trust, Social Capital and Perceptions of Immigration

Analyses of social capital and immigration have stressed the negative impact that culturally diverse societies have for the development of social trust. Ethnic heterogeneity, according to these studies, is associated with lower levels of social trust. However, social trust has not been studied as an independent variable in order to explain attitudes towards immigration. This article argues that societies with high levels of social capital facilitate the integration of immigrants because those members with high levels of social trust will tend to have more positive attitudes towards immigration. This hypothesis is empirically tested in a cross-country multi-level empirical analysis for sixteen European countries, drawing on the 2002–3 European Social Survey. This analysis shows that, regardless of the impact of other individual-level variables and contextual variables such as levels of unemployment or percentage of foreign population, those with high social capital do exhibit more positive attitudes towards immigration than the rest of the population.     

Mediating between state and citizens: the significance of the informal politics of third-party representation in the global south

This article argues that we should take more seriously the role of intermediaries in relationships between states and citizens in the global south. More specifically it holds that the practice of mediation, the third party representation of citizens to states and vice versa, is a widespread and important political practice in this context. Largely distinct from the contentious politics and popular mobilisation of social movements, mediation is more a politics of negotiation and bargaining by representatives. Developed as an emergent analysis from multiple case studies, mediation is a broad concept that includes practices that at other times might be described as lobbying, clientelism and coercion, but that we conceptualise in terms of claiming legitimacy to speak for the poor and marginalised, and theorise in terms of a democratic deficit between formal political institutions and these groups. In addition to identifying different kinds of mediators, the article categorises mediation in terms of the orientation and nature of various mediatory practices. Lastly, the article identifies at least three explanations for mediation including the endurance of pre-democratic political relations and practices, new forms of social exclusion in post-colonial democracies and the erosion of state authority brought about by neo-liberal policies and globalisation.     

Leader Survival,Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance

Leaders face multiple threats to their political survival. In addition to surviving the threats to tenure from within the existing political systems, which is modeled using Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues' (2003) selectorate theory, leaders risk being deposed through revolutions and coups. To ameliorate the threat of revolution, leaders can either increase public goods provisions to buy off potential revolutionaries or contract the provision of those public goods, such as freedom of assembly, transparency, and free press, which enable revolutionaries to coordinate. Which response a leader chooses depends upon existing institutions and the structure of government finances. These factors also affect the likelihood and direction of institutional change. Tests of leader survival indicate that revolutionary threats increase the likelihood of deposition for nondemocratic leaders. Leaders with access to resources such as foreign aid or natural resource rents are best equipped to survive these threats and avoid the occurrence of these threats in the first place.     

Perception of societal influence among civil society leaders – an elite perspective

ABSTRACT

This article explores the perception of societal influence of civil society leaders based on a survey study conducted in 2017 among leaders of Swedish civil society organizations. Civil society leaders represent organizations that are often based on and guided by religious, political, or cultural values and that often strive to achieve some sort of social change. To exercise influence on society is thus a crucial feature of civil society leaders. Drawing on elite theories, the article seeks to explain differences in the perception of influence by looking at the following factors: (1) personal qualities and resources such as age, gender, country of birth, education, and working experiences, (2) social networks and contacts with representatives of different institutions (media, government, etc.), and (3) organizational position and resources, including relations with public authorities. The analysis shows that two out of three surveyed leaders perceive they have great influence in society concerning the issues they work with. Among the factors explaining the perception of influence, we find being a leader of an organization at the regional level, being of older age, having leading representatives of the media in one’s personal network, and stating that one has great influence over the organization one leads.     

Do local leaders know their voters? A test of guessability in India

Prominent theories of clientelism—the exchange of benefits for political support—depend on the assumption that politicians, through local agents immersed in local social networks, possess detailed information on voters’ political preferences prior to targeting. This article provides the first direct test of this assumption. It develops a behavioral measure, guessability, which gauges the ability of elected village leaders, who often function as brokers and prominent vote mobilizers, to correctly identify the partisan vote intentions of voters in their locality. It then develops a method to estimate added informational value, which compares the performance of local leaders to low-information benchmarks that capture guessability rates that can feasibly be achieved by outsiders. Original data from surveys of voters and elected village politicians across 96 village councils in Rajasthan, India indicate that while these village leaders out-perform low-information benchmarks with respect to co-partisans, they perform no better than this baseline vis-à-vis non-co-partisans.     

Governing diversity: Dutch political parties' preferences on the role of the state in civic integration policies

This article analyses political debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, so as to identify different conceptions of the role of the state in ensuring social cohesion by governing diversity. Drawing on the literature on party systems, it presents an analysis of political party positions on the role of the state in civic integration along two dimensions: economic distribution on the one hand, and sociocultural governance on the other hand. I find that while the large majority of Dutch political parties adopt authoritarian positions on the sociocultural axis in favour of state intervention to protect Dutch culture and identity, their positions diverge significantly on the classic economic Left–Right dimension. The most contentious issue in Dutch civic integration politics is whether the state, the market or individual migrants should be responsible for financing and organising courses. Thus, this article proposes an innovative model for analysing the politics of citizenship, which enables us to comprehend how citizenship policies are shaped not only by views on how identity and culture relate to social cohesion, but also by diverging perspectives on socio-economic justice.