Consistency and change in American perceptions of China

The cold war dominated American perceptions of the People's Republic of China during the 1950s and 1960s, and opinions of China were correspondingly negative. Improved Sino-American relations, accompanied by domestic reforms in China, led to a gradual improvement in American attitudes toward China during the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s, Americans held positive perceptions of China and its relations with the United States, but continued to view the People's Republic as communist and undemocratic. This sort of inconsistency is characteristic of periods of cognitive transition: some established perceptions are slower to change than others, and this results in structural imbalance. The Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989 interrupted this transitional process and sent perceptions of China shooting back toward balanced, cold war stereotypes. The massacre set the Chinese government in a clear symbolic struggle against freedom and democracy. This rekindled latent cold war images of China and elicited disapproving rhetoric from American leaders. The result was a quick reversion to negative perceptions of China, structured by a lingering cold war schema. These processes are demonstrated through the presentation of a study that explores the cognitive structure of perceptions of China both before and after the massacre.     

Eliminatorische ethnische Säuberungen: Eine makrosoziologische Erklärung

Der vorliegende Aufsatz entwickelt eine makrosoziologische Strategie zur Erklärung eliminatiorischer ethnischer Säuberungen. In einem ersten Schritt wird gezeigt, dass Ansätze, die den Staat oder eine schwache Zivilgesellschaft als zentralen Erklärungsfaktor heranziehen, der historischen Vielfalt und Komplexität der zu erklärenden Ereignisse nicht gerecht werden. Vielmehr ist eine präzise Analyse politischer Akteure und Akteurskonstellationen erforderlich. In einem zweiten Schritt wird in der Form einer Typologie das theoretische Möglichkeitsfeld politischer Konstellationen ethnischer Gruppen abgesteckt, wobei Multikulturalismus und Genozid die Extrempole der Typologie markieren. Im dritten und umfangreichsten Teil des Aufsatzes wird schließlich in Form einer fünfstufigen weltgeschichtlichen Periodisierung eine historisch-vergleichende Strategie zur Erklärung ethnischer Säuberungsprozesse skizziert. Dabei wird deutlich, wie die Faktoren Sprache, Religion und Territorialität (Provinz) bei der politischen Formierung konkreter ethnischer Akteurskonstellationen so zusammenwirken, dass das gesamte zuvor entwickelte typisierende Möglichkeitsfeld historisch abgedeckt wird.     

A Prospective Study of Adolescents' Peer Support: Gender Differences and the Influence of Parental Relationships

This longitudinal study investigates parent and child predictors of adolescents' perceived social support from peers. Adolescents (285) and their parents filled out surveys when students were 11 and 15 years of age. Parent reports of their own social support and child reports of parental support to them, depression, and self-esteem were used as predictors of adolescents' peer social support. Path analyses revealed functional dissimilarity in the predictive model, for boys and girls. For boys and girls, the amount of spousal support parents' reported impacted the amount of parent to child support that children reported. For boys, this relationship impacted their perceptions of peer support indirectly through depression. However, for girls, parents' own supportive relationships directly impacted both their self-esteem and depression, above and beyond parent to child support, which then impacted girls' peer social support.     

New Labour's Third Way: pragmatism and governance

The article critically examines New Labour's development of the concept of the Third Way. Despite the apparent centrality of 'social democracy' to the Third Way, it is proposed that a more pragmatic approach dominates, in that outputs and not ideology are driving the new agenda of governance under New Labour. This is seen to have its roots in the new ways of working the party has embraced in local governance, where publicÐprivate partnerships have become the norm and a new ethos of public service has emerged. In contrast with the top-down approach to setting output targets favoured by Tony Blair, the Third Way offers the possibility of a more experimental, pragmatic and decentralised decision-making process—and the local governance network (with elected local councils as pivotal and legitimising actors) is presented as the ideal agent to deliver this.