代表人民利益与"新的社会阶层"

本文阐述了“新社会阶层”的政治属性 ,明确指出“新社会阶层”应成为巩固共产党执政地位的重要社会基础 ,对“新社会阶层”的利益要求及与其他社会阶层之间的利益矛盾作了分析 ,提出协调社会各阶层矛盾的措施与方法。作者认为 ,代表最广大人民根本利益必须对“新社会阶层”问题作出科学的判断与回答     

Values,norms and policies

Norms are defined as specific but tacit standards of what is socially and individually acceptable; values as explicit but general statements of principle, of which the content is continually changing through changing norms, changing circumstances, changing policies and the accompanying ethical debate. The relation of norms, values and policies is shown by an historical example. The inherent conflict within both norms and values is discussed and the role of the policymaker is defined, both as an artist in conceiving and devising one among many possible but always partial realizations of contemporary norms and values, and as a partially conscious agent in reshaping the norms and values of his time. The psychological implications of this are briefly indicated.     

Efficiency criteria for nudges and norms

Public Choice - This article outlines benefit-cost criteria for nudges and behavioral norms for a wide range of policy situations. The principal benefits from well-designed policies usually derive...     

Lived reality and the multiplicity of norms: a critical tribute to George Canguilhem

Canguilhem considered the lived reality of a disease that makes a person visit a doctor with clinical complaints as more important than the deviance that may be detected in the laboratory. He also insisted that doing medicine is a technique mobilized to improve life rather than an assemblage of neutral scientific facts. But these two ways of insisting on lived reality have different consequences. In line with the second, I present various ways in which clinical normality and laboratory normality are handled in current day medical practice. I consider where that leaves the first approach of setting standards. The multiplicity of normalities detected raises the question of how the various medical normalitiesrelate. For if they hang together coherently, medicine, by normalizing, might actively help to order the society of which it forms a part. But what if the various medical normalities contradict each other and inform different orders?     

Social movements and party systems: The French socialist party and new social movements

This article examines the apparent difficulty of various French ‘new social movements’ of the 1970s and 1980s to coalesce in the form of a ‘green’ or ‘new politics’ party. In addition to the nature of the French electoral system and dominant policy‐making apparatus, this article focuses upon relations between the Socialist Party and feminist and ecology movements. The major argument is that the Socialists, in their bid for hegemony among the left throughout the 1970s and 1980s, effectively undercut post‐material value‐oriented support for a ‘new politics’ party.     

Decentralization and access to social services in Colombia

Decentralization is meant to improve access to public services, but relatively few studies examine this question empirically. We explore the effects of decentralization on access to health and education in Colombia using an original database covering over 95 % of Colombian municipalities. We show that decentralization improved enrollment rates in public schools and access of the poor to public health services. In both sectors, improving access was driven by the financial contributions of local governments. Small increases in own-shares of spending led to surprisingly large increases in the access of the poor in both sectors. Our theoretical model implies that where local information dominates productive efficiency, elected local governments will provide services better tailored to local needs. Decentralizing such services should increase their use by the public. Together, theory and empirics imply that decentralization made the Colombian state more accountable. It provided local officials with the information and incentives they need to allocate resources in a manner responsive to voters’ needs and improve the impact of public expenditures.     

The Complexity of Tolerance and Intolerance Judgments: A Response to Gibson

In a recent paper, we posited that tolerance and intolerance judgments are characterized by two forms of variance. First, the distinction between tolerance and intolerance is dichotomous in that individuals are or are not willing to extend the full rights of citizenship to all others without exception. Second, among those not so willing, variance exists in the breadth and depth of their intolerance. James Gibson challenges our view, arguing that we have advanced a fundamental shift in how tolerance is conceptualized, and that this shift is not warranted empirically because very few Americans are tolerant under our definition. In this response, we first outline the rationale for why our view does not constitute a significant shift in the conceptualization of tolerance, but rather is merely an effort to pull the empirical treatment of tolerance into alignment with the concept’s common definition. Second, we explain that Gibson’s finding that few Americans are tolerant gains noteworthy meaning and significance from the view of tolerance we present. Lastly, we demonstrate that new insight on the antecedents of tolerance and intolerance emerges when analyses attend to the two-part structure of tolerance judgments highlighted in our research.     

Women and classes: Gender and the class base of new social movements in the Netherlands

Abstract. According to conventional methods of stratification, the occupational position of the male determines the class position of all members of his family. Mann and other authors suggest that the assumptions underlying this method no longer hold. This note seeks to test both the conventional method and an approach which includes the positions occupied by women, by studying the class base of the support for so-called New Social Movements (NSMs). The data are taken from a Dutch survey held in four rounds in the year 1987. The results show that the inclusion of the class position of women themselves is an improvement, in comparison with the conventional stratification method. The position of women not only has an effect on their own levels of support for NSMs, but also influences that of their spouse.