Sources of social support for China’s current political order: The “thick embeddedness” of private capital holders

In recent years, scholars have puzzled over the fact that China’s increased economic privatization and marketization since the early 1990s have not triggered a simultaneous advance in political liberalization. Many have sought to explain why – despite a marked upsurge in popular unrest – sources of social support for the political order have remained sizeable. Seeking to shed light on this debate, this article investigates the nature and implications of the political embeddedness of China’s private capital holders. The embeddedness of these individuals is “thick” in the sense that it encompasses an intertwined amalgam of instrumental ties and affective links to the agents and institutions of the party-state. Thick embeddedness therefore incorporates personal links that bind private capital holders to the party-state through connections that are layered with reciprocal affective components. Such close relations work against the potential interest that private capital holders might have in leading or joining efforts to press for fundamental political liberalization. Drawing on these findings, the article places China’s economic and political development in comparative perspective, and lays out the most likely scenarios for China’s future.     

Explaining Bullying Victimization: Assessing the Generality of the Low Self-Control/Risky Lifestyle Model

ABSTRACT

The integrated low self-control/risky lifestyle theoretical framework has proven useful for explaining various types of victimization. Bullying victimization (i.e., verbal, social, or physical attacks), however, may not fit this explanation very well if youths who are bullied do not have to engage in risky behaviors to be singled out by their peers, but could instead be targeted for other reasons (e.g., physical vulnerabilities). In this context, the current paper examines the generality of the low self-control/risky lifestyle model by assessing whether it can effectively explain which youngsters are more likely to be bullied. Using a sample of 1,901 middle school students, the results indicate that, although low self-control significantly predicts whether youths will engage in risky lifestyles (e.g., displaying aggressive attitudes, committing delinquent acts, using illicit substances), participating in such behaviors does not elevate the likelihood of bullying victimization. Instead, the authors’ findings reveal that low self-control directly influences victimization. Further, physical vulnerability is significantly related to being bullied. These findings suggest that the low self-control/risky lifestyle model needs to be revised to accommodate potential age-graded consequences of self-control, and that physical limitations—not “traditional” risky lifestyles—are persistent sources of bullying victimization that should be further evaluated.     

Continuity and Change in Adolescent Victimization: Examining the Effects of Stable and Dynamic Influences

After decades of treatment as a fairly distinct topic, recent research on victimization has begun to draw on theoretical approaches previously directed at understanding criminal behavior. The current study expands this research by studying victimization and its relationship to key developmental influences with data from 3,976 adolescents. We first detail the longitudinal process that underlies continuity and change in victimization and then consider the impact of time-stable and time-varying covariates that reflect mechanisms within those explanations. Findings suggest that time-varying markers of risky lifestyle and attachment affect victimization, but also that victimization affects risky behaviors and prosocial ties.     

Targets and Tactics: Testing for a Duality within Al Qaeda’s Network

One prevailing view treats Al Qaeda as a monolithic entity with a global network of affiliates. Yet, certain affiliates appear more committed to local political and territorial goals – parochial, not global, terrorists. We construct a classification scheme to differentiate affiliates conceptually and empirically, and then track their types over time. We sort Al Qaeda’s network of affiliates using a principal components analysis of terrorist attacks from 1988 to 2012. We show that this aids in identifying latent affiliate types, and interpreting shifts in behavior. We find that despite Al Qaeda’s anti-western rhetoric, there exists a global-parochial divide in which most affiliates are parochial – with anti-Western groups pursuing local political goals even when Western targets remain. By providing an empirical strategy to identify which affiliates are more or less aligned with global terrorism, this research holds implications for the literatures on terrorism and civil war, terrorism and democracy, and the effects of counterterrorism.     

Suicide and changing values and beliefs in Ireland

This paper addresses some of the generalized theories explaining rising suicide rates in Ireland. The conclusion here is that linking suicide patterns to changing beliefs and values is problematic. Church attendance as well as adherence to traditional values remain high in this country compared to European levels, and variations in beliefs and values, especially rural/urban differences, do not fit with general explanations. Moreover, attitudes to value areas fluctuate in that justification for suicide--which showed an upward trend in the 1980s--was reversed in the 1990s, and this may have resulted from increased public focus and debate. Generalized explanations are unlikely to decipher complex phenomena such as suicidal behavior. Religious belief, if protective in relation to suicide, is unlikely to act alone. Social transformations have a differential impact depending on one's socio-economic positioning, which translates ideas of a general male vulnerability to suicide into focused areas of male distress.     

Public affairs,issues management,and political strategy: opportunities,opportunities, and more opportunities

This paper begins where Professor Windsor left off and enumerates some other areas in which academic research could be profitably pursued for both intellectual and practical gain. The tone of Professor Windsor's paper is pessimistic, and lays out in detail some of the obstacles to research; but these are not insurmountable. Some key areas that can be explored to the benefit of researchers and practitioners are in self‐regulation, the initiative process, term limits (a relatively recent phenomenon and not particularly well known outside of the USA), and in alliance building, constituency statutes, and links to stakeholder theory and action. Each of these additional areas is addressed in this presentation. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications