How Do You Solve a Problem Like Legitimacy? Contributing to a new research agenda

Previously in this journal, Gunter Schubert's article, entitled ‘One-party rule and the question of legitimacy in contemporary China’, called for the setting up of a new research agenda to analyze the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While making a valuable contribution to the study of the CCP's legitimacy, Schubert's emphasis on the empirical measurement of this concept gives rise to a number of conceptual and theoretical issues. As a consequence, this article seeks to contribute to the research agenda by addressing these issues. In so doing, it suggests that a shift away from a narrow empirically-measured focus on legitimacy towards a broader conceptually-driven concern with legitimation would allow for a more inclusive agenda within the China studies community and lead to a more complete understanding of why the CCP remains in power.     

The Neoconservative Critiques of and Reconciliation with Capitalism

The neoconservatives have fallen out of favor among Washington policy-makers under President Obama as well as among conservatives themselves. However, neoconservatives’ impact on contemporary political discourse remains significant. This article is about the evolution of neoconservatives’ thinking about capitalism. Specifically, it is about neoconservatives’ ideological journey from right-wing critics of capitalism to one of its most ardent defenders. At the heart of their writing about capitalism are two distinct, but related cultural critiques of capitalism. In their view, capitalism creates a culture that is decadent, effeminate, and preoccupied with immediate gratification. This culture threatens the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of patriotic self-sacrifice. The Protestant ethic legitimizes capitalist accumulation and inequality, while the heroic virtues made the US a global superpower. Through supply-side economics and American empire the neoconservatives sought to recover both, the cultural foundations of capitalism located in the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of a global superpower. Neoconservative writings on capitalism are key to understanding the shift in the discourse on the economy, the welfare state, and foreign policy over the last thirty years.     

Social Policy by Other Means: Theorizing Unconventional Forms of Welfare Production

Abstract

The goal of this special issue is to highlight the importance of unconventional social policies, theorize their development in comparison with traditional welfare state accounts and outline a new research agenda. In this introduction to the special issue, the editors present the concept of social policy by other means as encompassing two kinds of unconventional social policy (from the point of view of mainstream comparative research): First, functional equivalents to formal systems of social protection and, second, non-state provision of benefits. The concept builds upon a sizeable, but fragmented literature in comparative welfare state research. While numerous examples demonstrate that social policy by other means is more pervasive in both OECD and non-OECD countries than often acknowledged, a brief survey of the top 20 articles in the field reveals that this fact is not sufficiently reflected in the academic literature. With reference to both existing studies and the contributions to this special issue, the editors go on to explore (1) the different forms of social policy by other means, (2) explanatory theories and (3) their effectiveness in terms of social outcomes. They close by outlining a research agenda.