Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this 'ontological turn' in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.     

Political Skills or Lying and Manipulation? The Choreography of the Northern Ireland Peace Process

The 'real war' and 'propaganda war' fought over Northern Ireland for thirty years polarised party and public opinion. The key dilemma faced by politicians during the recent peace process has been how to wind down the 'war' and win sufficient party and public support for an accommodation between unionists and nationalists which falls so far short of previous expectations. Scripts telling contrasting stories have been prepared to convince rival republican and unionist audiences to support the peace process. In addition, the pro-Agreement parties have attempted to shift opinion towards accommodation through a range of political skills and choreography. Key competing parties and governments have sometimes co-operated back stage while front stage they have on occasion 'play acted' conflict between each other. The political skills, or lying and manipulation, by which the peace process has been driven forward have been uncovered creating public distrust in the political process. Realists see such political deception as an inevitable part of politics and permissible on the grounds that the ends justify the means. Absolutists attack the 'spin, lying and manipulation' of the peace process as an assault on democracy. A third democratic realist position argues that sometimes moral leadership requires doing wrong to do right but the gap between 'truth' and 'spin' should be narrowed. A more open and honest politics would not only be more accountable and democratic but also effective in advancing the peace process.     

New public management and the Thatcher healthcare legacy: enough of the theory, what about the implementation?

Initial evaluations of Thatcherism suggest that it represented a policy formulation success but implementation failure (Marsh and Rhodes 1992), with healthcare reforms particularly unsuccessful because they did not challenge the autonomy of the medical profession (Wistow 1992a and 1992b). More extensive analyses of the implementation of new public management (NPM) within health care take this challenge more seriously. According to Ferlie et al. (1996), doctors were gainers and losers, since the rise of the management function coincided with a rise in medical involvement in management decisions. However, this article argues that the rise of the purchasing function of health authorities undermined this 'gain' to the medical profession. Further, the significance of the case study—AIDS policy in Scotland—is that profound change has occurred in a policy area in which one would least expect this to happen.     

Psychosocial Correlates of Intimacy Achievement Among Adolescent Fathers-to-Be

We investigated the relation between urban psychosocial stressors and intimacy achievement in a sample of 59 African American, Hispanic American, and White adolescent fathers-to-be. Participants received an intimacy score based on Orlofsky's Intimacy Status Rating Scale. Those with higher cumulative psychosocial stressors had lower levels of intimacy. One psychosocial risk factor, low interpersonal empathy, was significantly associated with intimacy levels. African Americans had lower levels of intimacy than Hispanic or White participants.     

Research in Context: Measuring Value Change

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's four-item measure of materialist/ postmaterialist values. They claim that because this battery does not include a question about unemployment, in periods of high unemployment respondents tend to choose postmaterialist goals. The long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe, they argue, results from rising levels of unemployment during the past two decades. Abramson and Inglehart point out that increases in inflation have a short-term impact on decreasing postmaterialism, but maintain that the positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism is spurious. As this analysis shows, Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin find a positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism by building a model that has little theoretical justification and that is not robust to changes in specification. As this analysis demonstrates, unemployment is actually linked with support for materialist goals, and the trend toward post-materialism is robust in the face of alternative time frames, models, and specifications. The weight of the evidence demonstrates that the long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe is driven by generational replacement.