The Article 9 Association,Leftist Elites,and the Movement to Save Article 9 of Japan’s Postwar Constitution

Leftist political parties and labor unions that had stood at the forefront of the collective effort to protect Article 9 until the early 1990s have stepped back to some extent as they have shrunk and fragmented. Instead, advocacy groups whose influence is often enhanced by ‘leftist elites’ have now seemed to come more to the fore, thereby raising certain questions: What roles do the leftist elites play in those groups? How are such groups organized? Who exactly are the leftist elites? This article intends to address questions regarding the leftist elites, as well as the organization and development of these advocacy groups, in particular the Article 9 Association.     

Policy instruments at work: A meta‐analysis of their applications

This article uses a systematic review of the main literature in the field to shed light on different operationalizations of the main classifications of policy instruments. Although the literature offers a large number of instrument taxonomies, many of them act as theoretical guidelines rather than operational concepts that can help to disentangle the different features of governing actions. This article provides a review of the most frequently used policy instrument typologies and, through a meta‐analysis, it analyses how instrument typologies have been differentially adopted to explain real‐world phenomena. The results are a high degree of heterogeneity in citation frequency, the polyhedral nature of the concept of policy instruments, a divide between typologies focused on governmental resources and those focused on drivers of expected behaviour, and ‘labellism’. Thus, what emerges is the urgency of a process of convergence towards a common framework.     

Same same but different. Die Feldtheorien Fligsteins und Bourdieus und das Potenzial einer wechselseitig informierten Perspektive für die Wirtschaftssoziologie

Field theoretical approaches have become popular within economic sociology. Many even consider the notion of ?field“ a suitable alternative to the hegemonic paradigm of ?embeddedness“. This article outlines the epistemological potential of a field theoretical perspective by systematically comparing the approaches of Neil Fligstein and Pierre Bourdieu. By examining their respective contexts of emergence, their theoretical and methodological references, their research interests and their central concepts, both similarities and differences between the two approaches become visible. The resulting insights allow for a field theoretical and profoundly relational perspective on economic phenomena that might stimulate ongoing debates within economic sociology.