Is Celebrity a New Kind of Status System?

A number of previous writings on celebrity have suggested that it is a qualitatively different phenomenon from previous kinds of status systems. Hence, theoretical arguments that have been used to explain more traditional status systems are seen as inadequate to explain and understand the behaviors that are associated with celebrities. This article argues that the differences in traditional and contemporary status systems have been exaggerated. To demonstrate this it takes a theory of status relations that was initially developed to explain the Indian caste system and shows how it can explain much of the behavior associated with celebrities and their fans.     

Two sides of a coin? New urbanism and gated communities

Abstract

Contemporary residential building trends reflect concerns about privacy, traffic, and managing difference. Despite the radically different premises behind New Urbanism and gated communities, I find on closer inspection that they both respond to similar perceived crises in our cities. New Urbanism answers urban challenges with bold efforts to recapture the strengths of older communities and to supplant unwanted suburban patterns with those believed to have greater resilience and public purpose. Gated communities reveal popular skepticism about the potential for improving urban conditions and a consequent desire to retreat to protected compounds.

In both cases, the new suburbs generally provide housing primarily for the most affluent among us and represent the ascendance of private over public interests. By examining the Canadian urban context, this article explores some ways in which New Urbanism and gated communities differ, while also highlighting the characteristics and dilemmas they share.     

Virtual Civil Society: The New Frontier of Social Capital?

Although many scholars agree that social interactions within traditional social groups build social capital, there is less consensus on the benefits of virtual interactions for political engagement. Our research examines how interpersonal social group activity and virtual activity contribute to two dimensions of social capital: citizen norms and political involvement. We rely on data collected in the 2005 Citizenship Involvement in Democracy survey conducted by the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. This survey provides unique detail on participation in both social groups and virtual interactions. Our findings suggest that social group activity and virtual interactions both foster many of the same positive aspects of social capital.     

New politics and party systems: The emergence of a new type of party?

Building upon theories of new politics, this article suggests an ideal‐typical model of New Politics parties that integrates all important aspects of a political party: organisation, ideology, membership and electorate. It is then demonstrated that for Germany, Sweden, and Austria such a model is necessary in order to distinguish between conservative or centrist ‘Green’ formations and parties that are genuine products of the ‘new politics’.     

The Remaking of China–EUrope Relations in the New Era of US–China Antagonism

Journal of Chinese Political Science - The recent years have witnessed a significant change in China–EUrope relations, with the EU’s strategic positioning of China undergoing a...     

Building ‘Community’: New Strategies of Governance in Urban China

Abstract

Under the planned economy China's urban population was largely immobile and governed through the socialist workunit (danwei). Market reforms begun in the 1980s have culminated in the last decade with a dramatic decline of the state-sector and the emergence of a more mobile, heterogeneous and economically independent urban population. In rendering the old system obsolete, these trends have led the Chinese government to rethink its strategies for urban governance. At the turn of the millennium, a new campaign to ‘build communities’ was launched throughout the nation with the objective of establishing the residential ‘community’ as the new basic unit of urban governance. This paper explores the logic behind this policy innovation and analyzes the techniques adopted to operationalize ‘community governance’.     

Who benefits from minority business set-asides? The case of New Jersey

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy—minority business set-asides—and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to minority and non-minority/non-women-owned business enterprises in 1990, as well as in periods before, during, and after the imposition of a state minority set-aside program. Using a conventional decomposition approach, the article reveals significant discriminatory gaps in the success of minority- versus non-minority-owned firms in obtaining contracts from the state of New Jersey. The analysis suggests that minority contracting success rates fell from the pre-set-aside era to the set-aside era and that discriminatory outcomes persisted. The particular remedy chosen—while justified based on evidence of prior discrimination—appears not to have reduced the original discrimination nor did it unambiguously benefit minority businesses.     

No New Vision: the Gradual Death of British Social Democracy?

This article argues that the Labour Party has no new vision for British social democracy. New Labour in Government is intellectually tired and lacks ideological vision. Gordon Brown's leadership is managerial and lacking robust ideological content. These problems exist in a period of severe recession and whereby the Conservatives under David Cameron are in the ascendancy. The argument in this article asserts that revisionism is required in the Labour Party. An ideological revisionism which reconnects the Party with an overt vision of social democratic politics; which reconnects the Labour leadership with activists and supporters; and which inspires the next generation of Labour voters.     

Weapon of Mass Distraction: New Zealand’s National Security System

The New Zealand’s National Security System (NSS) document is presented as the central framework for New Zealand’s whole of government approach to national security and crisis management. This article asserts that the NSS fails to be the central framework it purports to be and proposes the true objective of the NSS is to establish clear lines of authority within New Zealand’s national security architecture. The New Zealand government’s exercise of political authority within the security sector aligns with Weber’s theory of “charisma of office” for public acceptance. Using the legitimacy of charisma of office, the New Zealand prime minister can exert significant influence over New Zealand’s national security discourse and blur the lines of it liberal democratic institutions.     

A New Divide? The Impact of Globalisation on National Party Systems

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion concerning the impact of globalisation and European integration on the structure of ideological space in Western Europe. The empirical investigation is based on an examination of Euromanifestos data from four European countries – Germany, United Kingdom, Greece and Portugal – for a time frame of up to 30 years. The findings largely support the hypothesis of a transformation of the content of the standard cultural axis due to the emergence of conflicts over the desirability for regional and/or global integration. However, this transformation occurs in different ways and by different actors across national contexts. Whereas in the United Kingdom and Germany objections against ongoing integration processes have been mainly articulated by political parties of the conservative and populist right, in Greece and Portugal left-wing political parties emerge as the main representatives of the anti-integration camp.     

The Interventionist Turn of UN Peacekeeping: New Western Politics of Protection or Bureaucratic Mission Creep?

During recent years, the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping system has exerted robust interventions in the domestic jurisdiction of target states for human rights purposes. The existing literature attributes the explanation mainly to the “new politics of protection” pursued by Western governments and thus validates the realist hypothesis. This article analyzes the Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti cases to demonstrate that not only government policies (the realist hypothesis) but also independent bureaucratic powers exerted by senior UN officials (the social constructivist thesis) have contributed to the emergence of interventionist policies at the UN. Moreover, “bottom-up” initiatives stemming from the virtue ethics of senior UN officials have played a much more decisive role in generating the interventionist turn than “top-down” institutional guidelines and doctrines, such as the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) principle. Instead of RtoP, UN officials draw upon broad legitimating principles of the UN, notably human security, to justify their interventionist policies.     

New Labour in Britain: New Democratic Centralism?

This article uses a case study - the introduction in 1997 of new policy machinery - to analyse competing claims about the nature of the Labour Party's organisational transformation. It aims to demonstrate that whilst the new policy process was presented as a move towards greater democracy, both its general design and its modes of operation rendered inevitable the production of a general election manifesto in 2001 (the culmination of the process) whose contents coincided very closely to the leadership's tastes. The article then seeks to account for the form Labour's transformation took, drawing on the work of Michels and Lipset and his colleagues.     

New politics for a New Germany? Transatlantic perspectives

Parties and Politics in Modern Germany. By GERARD BRAUNTHAL. Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 1996. Pp.xii + 212, appendix, biblio, index. £44.50 (cloth); £13.50 (paper). ISBN 0–81333–2382–7 and ‐2383–5.

Germany's New Politics. Edited by DAVID P. CONRADT, GERALD R. KLEINFELD, GEORGE K. ROMOSER and CHRISTIAN SOE. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995. Pp.x + 325, biblio. £25 (cloth); £11.50 (paper). ISBN 1–57181–032–3 and‐033–1.

The Federal Republic of Germany at Forty‐Five. Edited by PETER H. MERKL. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995. Pp.xiv + 500, index. £47.50. ISBN 0–333–61754–1.     

A New Progressive Coalition? The European Left in a Time of Change

This article examines changing patterns of voting for parties on the left in the UK and Europe. It shows that while combined support for social‐democratic, left and Green parties remains strong, the composition of the left's electorate has radically changed. Increasingly, left parties rely on a coalition of new middle‐class voters and traditional and new working‐class constituencies. This coalition is relatively cohesive on questions of economic redistribution, but divided on social and cultural issues. Recent instability in Labour's electoral coalition reflects broader structural trends facing left parties across Europe.     

Neighborhood change and the city of New York's ten‐year housing plan

Abstract

This article examines neighborhood changes associated with New York City's Ten‐Year Plan—the largest municipal housing program in the United States. We examine indicators of change, in the context of two possible hypotheses about the program's impact: (1) neighborhood revitalization, including improved physical and housing market conditions, as well as gentrification, and (2) the concentration of poor and welfare‐dependent households, as well as the possibility of residential segregation by race or ethnicity.

Our results present a mixed picture, with some evidence favoring both hypotheses, especially when parts of the city, particularly the South Bronx, are examined separately. Specifically, the program is associated with steep declines in the rate of boarded‐up buildings and some indications of increased home values, as well as rent burdens. However, it is also correlated with increases in maintenance deficiencies and a greater proportion of poor, single‐parent, and welfare‐dependent households, but there is little evidence of accentuated residential segregation.     

A Comparative Study of Denmark and New Zealand’s National Health Targets

This paper investigates the influence of nationally imposed health targets on current management control practices in New Zealand and Denmark. It reveals how variants of New Public Management (NPM), arising from specific historical socio-political contexts, rise to the challenge of national differences. The study finds that both nations are challenged to ensure data registration procedures produce valid and comparable performance measures. Denmark’s reliance on a single efficiency measure of health sector performance reflects a historic socio-political context that reduces the feasibility of additional measures whereas New Zealand’s context enables the government to impose a more extensive range of health targets.     

Social capital and the revitalization of New York City's distressed inner‐city housing

Abstract

This article presents evidence that social capital can be an effective component of locally sponsored low‐income housing programs. It provides a model for measuring social capital at the building level, where it may be most effective in improving housing quality and security. The study compares five programs in New York City that house the city's poorest, mostly minority residents. The surveys from 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, were analyzed to compare the success of programs in maintaining and revitalizing landlord‐abandoned buildings taken by the city in lieu of taxes.

Results of the analysis demonstrate that the positive effects of tenant ownership were largely mediated by the higher levels of social capital found in these buildings. These levels have implications for the survival and economic advancement of poor households and civic participation in poor communities. The study suggests the value of alternative homeownership programs.     

'Attitudinally Feminist'? The New Labour Women MPs and the Substantive Representation of Women

In the period since the election of 120 women MPs to the House of Commons, discussion concerning their behaviour has been much in evidence. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of whether women MPs seek to substantively represent women. It draws on qualitative interviews with more than half of the newly elected Labour women MPs. The paper demonstrates that more than two-thirds of the newly elected Labour women MPs are 'attitudinally feminist', one measure of whether women representatives will seek to 'act for' women. The article challenges, therefore, claims that women representatives have not sought feminised change in British politics.