Regime change and the convergence of democratic value orientations through socialization. Evidence from reunited Germany

Theories of socialization and political culture claim that public ideas about how a democracy should be shaped will only change slowly after regime changes. Thus, citizens’ value orientations should converge after a replacement of generations and through institutional learning. Pertaining to the development and convergence of individual conceptions of democracy or democratic value orientations, these assumptions have not yet been tested empirically. This article therefore provides an empirical test, drawing on the case of German reunification as a natural experiment. I analyse the development of democratic value orientations based on data from the sixth wave of the European Social Survey using both factor and cohort analysis. The findings provide strong support for the assumptions of socialization theories: More than 20 years after reunification, people who grew up in East Germany still show a higher affiliation to a socialist model of democracy than people socialized in the West, who instead show higher support for a liberal model. However, differences in democratic value orientations are converging for citizens less than 30 years of age across Germany, the first generation socialized entirely in a democratic political system.     

Political socialization and democratic beliefs change: a panel study of Chinese students studying in Taiwan

Does the experience of studying in Taiwan significantly enhance the degree to which Chinese students hold democratic beliefs? What are the factors that cause the change? By adopting a political socialization approach, a panel survey with Chinese students enrolled in short-term studies in Taiwan was conducted. The results indicated that 41.44% of the students showed no change in the degree to which they hold democratic beliefs, whereas the degree of democratic beliefs held reduced among 34.23% of the students and increased among 25.33% of the students. The regression model developed for this study can be used to explain 21.60% of the variance in the degree to which the students hold democratic beliefs. Six of the nine hypotheses tested are confirmed.     

Why African countries are interested in building agricultural partnerships with China: lessons from Rwanda and Uganda

Ten years ago, China and several African countries began to develop agricultural training centres, and opened the door for a cascade of optimism and pessimism on why China is interested in developing agricultural partnerships in Africa. Seldom has the appeal of such partnerships for African countries been explored, hence limiting our capacity to fully understand the dynamics of Sino–African agricultural relations. This article addresses the issue by examining why some African countries are interested in partnering with China in agricultural development. This article is based on 44 interviews that were conducted in 2015 at the Sino–African agricultural training centres in Rwanda and Uganda. I argue that Rwanda and Uganda seek to partner with China, as China can offer intermediary agricultural technologies that enable these respective countries to implement aspects of their domestic agricultural development plans. The article also provides reason to challenge the existing optimistic and pessimistic conventions about Sino–African agricultural affairs.     

Networks and labor market entry – a historical perspective

This paper discusses how recruitment practices have changed over time. Networks and contacts are more important today for labor market entry than was the case in the latter half of the twentieth century. There may be two explanations for this: the short-run explanation and the long-run explanation. The short-run explanation derives from fluctuations in unemployment. When unemployment is high, competition for every vacancy is tougher and networks become more important for the job seeker. This has been the case in Sweden since 1991, when unemployment increased to new levels not experienced since the 1930s. In the long run, there has been a change in recruitment practices due to institutional change. A clear pattern is that the importance of social networks has increased, while the significance of public institutions (i.e. the Public Employment Service) has decreased.     

The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure – Israel's Control over Palestinian Archives

The essay discusses one characteristic of colonial archives – how the ruling state plunders/loots the colonized’ archives and treasures and controls them in its colonial archives - erasing them from the public sphere by repressive means, censors and restricts their exposure and use, alters their original identity, regulates their contents and subjugates them to colonizer’s laws, rules and terminology. It focuses on two archives plundered by Israel in Beirut in 1980s: the Palestine Research Center and archive of Palestinian films. The essay continues my earlier research on Palestinian visual (and other) archives taken as booty or looted by pre-state Jewish military organizations and soldiers or civilians in the first half of the twentieth century, especially during the Nakba (the Palestinian catastrophe, 1948), and later by Israel’s military bodies. It analyzes the plunder itself while focusing on the power relations reflected toward the hybrid gazes of the colonizer and the colonized and discusses colonial features of military archives holding and controlling seized materials. While colonial museums have been largely discussed, and also archives holding colonial history, this is one of the first essays to discuss features of colonial archives holding plundered archives/material.     

Climate Change and Marx in the 21st Century,Part I

This paper comes in two parts. Part I begins with an examination of the relationship between Marx’s characterization of the centrality of commodity production to capitalism as a system, its destructive results on Nature, and the global scale of the climate crisis confronting the 21st century. It then moves on to critically examine three models of political economy (Hayekism, Keynesianism and State Socialism). Part II takes the argument forward by critically examining a fourth model, Green Keynesianism, currently being manufactured in response to the crisis of climate change, in order to show the inability of all four models to resolve the existential threat posed to humanity in the 21st century and beyond. We then proceed to posit, as a thought experiment, a fifth model of political economy, Green Socialism, as something now needed in the 21st century and discuss the important building blocks of the future evolution of a coherent system. The paper concludes with a brief mention of both the ends and means that need deliberation if Green Socialism is to be realized.     

Building bridges over troubled waters: Administrative change at the regional level in European,multilevel water management

The European Commission is promoting more decentralized forms of multilevel administration, without having its own administrative capacity on the ground. This article examines the role of ground-level administration in this multilevel system, by analysing why and how administrative change at sub-national levels comes about in connection with the implementation of European Union (EU) legislation. Despite their similar unitary state systems, Sweden and Norway have implemented the administrative requirements of the Water Framework Directive differently. While Sweden has delegated decision-making authority to novel regional-level bodies, triggering frictions in the hierarchical structure of government, Norway established networked, interdependent structures. Enquiring into the causes, the study finds that complementary use of instrumental, power-oriented and historical institutionalism shed light on the conditions under which European multilevel administration develops. In complex political-administrative systems, domestic legacies and time-specific events provide ‘turfs’ for Europeanization-processes shaping domestic administrative systems from within.     

Change Agents or Cogs in the Machine? Female Managers and Unofficial Gender Equality in Federal Agencies

This article combines administrative personnel data with survey data to examine whether increases in female representation among the managerial ranks of federal agencies are associated with increases in unofficial gender equality in those agencies. Specifically, female representation at multiple levels of agencies’ personnel hierarchies are measured so as to examine whether these measures are associated with increases in lower-level female and male employees’ subjective experiences of power, status, and opportunity. The results indicate that female representation among the SES has salutary effects on General Schedule (GS) level 7–12 and General Schedule level 13–15 females. Additionally, the results suggest that female representation among GS 13–15 supervisors has salutary effects on GS 7–12 females. Finally, the results suggest that top-level female representation has negative effects on GS 7–12 males. These findings speak to the ongoing theoretical debate concerning female managers’ ability and willingness to bring about equality-inducing change in their organizations. They also speak to the question of whether a representative bureaucracy has unfavorable distributional consequences for members of nonminority groups.     

Factors Driving the Promotion of Hydroelectricity: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

In the wake of the COP21 conference in Paris, the transition to a low‐carbon energy supply remains a central issue on the political agenda. The deployment of renewable energies is often challenged by multiple issues (e.g., public acceptance, landscape protection, and so forth). Political actors try to overcome such challenges with various measures; however, the policy instruments used vary greatly in their strength. This article questions what factors lead to the adoption of strong policy instruments promoting hydroelectricity. Explanatory factors are derived from Kingdon's multiple streams framework and are analyzed with fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis within the Swiss cantons. The findings show that the strength of policy promoting hydroelectricity depends on the conjunction of mainly two factors: ambitious climate targets and an already well‐established hydroelectricity sector that generates large tax revenues for the cantons. Depending on the context, the strength of left‐wing and green parties as well as the current level of exploitation play an important role with the aforementioned factors.     

Is masculinity ‘deteriorating’ in China? Changes of masculinity representation in Chinese film posters from 1951 to 2016

Abstract

This study attempts to briefly map the general changes of Chinese masculinities in media over time, and explain why these changes happened. Through visual content analysis, 471 film posters collected from 1951 to 2016 are examined and findings summarised as follows: 1) men are decreasingly depicted as manual workers or soldiers, and increasingly white-collar and urbane; 2) men are decreasingly delineated as aggressive or puissant, and increasingly gentle and civil; 3) men increasingly show their demand for sexuality; and finally, 4) the portrayals of men are more diverse. These changes demonstrate men to be ‘softer’, shifting masculinity from patriarchal control to consumerism power, from physical strength to economic superiority, and from hegemonic to a more inclusive version. However, men do not exclusively embody the economic power in modern China because women also express it. Thus, without the traditional masculine traits and new symbols of masculine power, the contemporary portrayals of men are regarded as ‘emasculated’ by some older generations.