Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater: a Gramscian response to post-hegemony

This article offers a Gramscian response to the theory of post-hegemony, suggesting that its rejection of Gramsci rests on misrepresentations of his work. Through a closer engagement with this work, the article outlines the ways in which Gramscian analysis can in fact complement the insights of post-hegemony in analysing the ways in which the social order is secured and the strategies of resistance to this order. This combination of Gramscian and post-hegemonic insights, the article argues, offers a more nuanced and comprehensive insight into power, radical politics and resistance in the twenty-first century, an insight which risks being lost in post-hegemony's rejection of Gramsci and his work. The utility of this combined approach is illustrated via four short vignettes from contemporary Latin America: the emergence of the student protest movement in Chile since 2011; the Caracazo in Venezuela; the Argentine crisis in 2001; and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.     

Local Economic Development in China and the United States: Strategies and Issues

Globalization stimulates local governments in China and the United States to step up their economic development efforts. What strategies are successful and why? Does industry cluster development lead to higher per capita income? What government infrastructure and incentives stimulate and nurture businesses? This article examines local economic development in China and the United States, comparing strategies and outlining challenging issues. Kuotsai Tom Liou of the University of Central Florida finds that local governments must play the leading role in sustainable development, as a partnership approach promotes collaboration among communities, industries, and other government entities. Policy implications and theoretical issues aimed to promote further comparative studies are presented .     

Ethnic Diversity and Social Capital in Europe: Tests of Putnam's Thesis in European Countries

This article focuses on the core theory recently proposed by Putnam on the relationship between ethnic diversity and dimensions of social capital. Hypotheses are derived from this theory, but also from other theories that propose competing hypotheses on relationships between national characteristics and dimensions of social capital. Essentially, the authors propose more rigorous empirical tests of Putnam's hypotheses by including these competing hypotheses: tests of these hypotheses provide possibilities to evaluate Putnam's and these other theories in terms of general (i.e. cross‐national) tenability for the European continent. The general question is: To what extent do national‐level characteristics like ethnic diversity, next to other national characteristics, actually affect dimensions of social capital of individual citizens in European countries? The authors set out to answer this question by testing hypotheses on cross‐national data from 28 European countries. These data contain valid measurements of a number of dimensions of social capital. The individual‐level data are enriched with contextual‐ (i.e. national‐) level characteristics to be included in more advanced multilevel analyses. The main finding is that Putnam's hypothesis on ethnic diversity must be refuted in European societies. Instead, it is found that economic inequality and the national history of continuous democracy in European societies turn out to be more important for explaining cross‐national differences in social capital in Europe.     

(The) Erasure – Mass Human Rights Violation and Denial of Responsibility: The Case of Independent Slovenia

The case of the erased residents of Slovenia – when approximately 18,000 people who were mostly of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ethnicity, were erased from the permanent residence registry of the Republic of Slovenia – represents one of the most severe cases of administrative ethnic/racial discrimination and human rights violations in the post-communist East and Central Europe outside the conflict area. The erasure caused “civil death” of the people who were affected by the measure, depriving them of civil, political, social, and economic rights. In 2007, 4 years after the 2003 Constitutional Court decision, declaring the 1992 erasure an unconstitutional act of the state and requiring the legislator to adopt measures to reinstate the statuses of the erased people, the problem remains unsolved and unaddressed both systemically and individually, and the situation of erasure persists. This article presents the case and analyses of the framework that made the erasure possible in terms of the preparation of the majority of Slovenes to accept and even support the violations and politicians to renounce their political responsibility to those who have lost the right to have rights. This article is based on the insights of the research project Contemporary Citizenship: Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion (2000–2003) led by Vlasta Jalušič. The analysis of the case of erased was published in Jasminka Dedić, Vlasta Jalušič, and Jelka Zorn (eds.), The Erased: Organized Innocence and the Politics of Exclusion, translated from Slovenian by Olga Vuković and Marjana Karer (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2003), at . The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for the extensive and most helpful comments.

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Parent–Child Relations,Conduct Problems and Cigarette Use in Adolescence: Examining the Role of Genetic and Environmental Factors on Patterns of Behavior

This study investigated genetic and environmental influences on the associations between mother–child relationship quality (warmth and hostility) and adolescent conduct problems and cigarette use. Participants included 601 mothers and adolescent twin pairs (aged 12–17 years). Mothers and adolescents provided separate reports of mother-to-child warmth and hostility. A combined measure of mother and adolescent reported conduct problems was used while adolescents provided reports of their cigarette use. Analyses were conducted using bivariate genetic analyses of correlated factors models and regression analyses of monozygotic twin differences. Genetic influences were found for most ratings of the parent–child relationship, with evidence of gender and/or rater-specificity for some measures. The relationship between mother–child hostility with adolescent conduct problems and cigarette use was influenced by genetic and environmental effects. Evidence was found for shared environment effects on the relationship between mother–child warmth and conduct problems. Examining monozygotic twin differences provided further support for non-shared environmental influence on the relationship between mothers’ expressions of hostility and low warmth and adolescent adjustment. Findings are discussed in relation to the interplay between genetic and environmental effects underlying links between parent–child relations and adolescent behavior problems.

The effects of rules on local political decision-making processes: How can rules facilitate participation?

It is often claimed that participation empowers local actors and that an inclusive decision-making process is crucial for rural development. We aim to investigate how formal and informal rules are set in local decision-making processes and how those rules may impact the actual level of participation by local actors. In a comparative case study, the rules-in-use for the planning of community projects in Thailand are examined. For our analysis, we use the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, which allows for more precise analysis of the impact of the rules. Fifty-three villages are served by four selected Tambon Administrative Organisations (TAO) which are either known for success in achieving participation or ranked as problematic in implementing the decentralization and local participation goals of the Thai government. The study is based on 60 semi-structured interviews with TAO staff, a survey of village leaders in 50 villages and a household survey of 104 villagers. We scrutinize seven types of rules and show some particular differences in terms of the impact from the rules-in-use. In the TAOs ranked as less participatory, the attendance rate in the meetings is found to be lower (boundary rule), villagers are informed about a meeting with a shorter notice (information rule) and more villagers mention that elites interfere in the project selection process (aggregation rule). A high level of fuzziness appeared in the position and authority rules. Further, we obtained information on the particular deontic logic, showing generally a high share of de facto may-statements in the implementation of the rules. We conclude that if the policy goal is enhancing participation, rule-setting offers good scope for intervention. From a practical perspective, information on administrative procedures has to be made more accessible and public administrators should receive procedural training.     

Policy advice as policy work: a conceptual framework for multi-level analysis

This article argues that policy advice can be understood as a special kind of “policy work” that depends upon a diverse set of factors operating at different levels. The basic aim of the article is to disentangle this multi-level and multifaceted phenomenon into a conceptual framework that can be used for empirical analysis and theory building. In that framework, policy advice is conceptualized as a never-ending interaction among various actors in a specific institutional context, through which routines and norms are both reproduced and abolished. First, it is explained why policy advice is most fruitfully understood as a special kind of policy work, and then how it relates to other policy work activities. Second, problems with single-level approaches are discussed and the need for a multi-level approach is explained. Third, a multi-level conceptual framework is formulated and described. Fourth, some possible applications of the framework are illustrated with examples from current empirical research. The article concludes with implications for research and theory building.     

Back to the future,forward to the past: Croatian politics of memory in the European Parliament

This paper discusses the way in which a post-conflict European Union (EU) member immediately after accession both shapes and adapts to EU memory politics as a part of its Europeanization process. I will analyze how the country responds to the top-down pressures of Europeanization in the domestic politics of memory by making proactive attempts at exporting its own politics of memory (discourses, policies, and practices) to the EU level. Drawing evidence from Croatian EU accession, I will consider how Croatian members of the European Parliament “upload” domestic memory politics to the EU level, particularly to the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of elite interviews, discourses, parliamentary duties, agenda-setting, and decision-making of Croatian MEPs from 2013 to 2016, I argue that the parliament serves both as a locus for confirmation of European identity through promotion of countries’ EU memory credentials and as a new forum for affirmation of national identity. The preservation of the “Homeland War” narrative (1991–1995) and of the “sacredness” of Vukovar as a European lieu de mémoire clearly influences the decision-making of Croatian MEPs, motivating inter-group support for policy building and remembrance practices that bridge domestic political differences.     

Self-organisation and Development: A Comparative Approach to Post-communist Transformations from the Perspective of Social Systems Theory

The article addresses post-communist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe through the conceptual apparatus of Luhmann’s social systems theory, which sees increasing functional differentiation in terms of subsystems’ autonomous autopoietic self-organisation as the key aspect of these transformations. By applying fuzzy-set analysis, it is demonstrated that a radical break with the former communist regime is sufficient for the self-organisation of the political subsystem, and necessary for the market reforms that are sufficient for the self-organisation of the economic subsystem. Moreover, the self-organisation of both functional subsystems has clearly contributed to development in terms of an increase in the Human Development Index after 1990.