An Ideational Approach to Gendered Institutional Change: Revisiting the Institutionalization of a New Prostitution Regime in Sweden

Recent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. I argue that gradual ideational changes play an essential role in processes of gendered institutional change, and that examining the interaction between ideas and gendered institutions is of great importance for gaining a better understanding of processes of this type. This article revisits an empirical study of gendered institutional change in Swedish prostitution policy in the effort to specify two idea-based mechanisms that are conducive to gendered change, namely, consensus concerning the problem and gendering of the problem.     

双重制度逻辑与县级人大常委会的成长——一种新制度主义视角的解析

就中国县级人大常委会这个新组织而言，其运作和成长的制度环境主要是具有内在紧张关系的双重制度逻辑并存，即自上而下和自下而上的责任逻辑。因此，中国县级人大常委会的组织运作和成长是在平衡矛盾性的制度逻辑、应对制度环境约束中进行的。     

The Early Cold War and American Political Development: Reflections on Recent Research

This paper is a review essay of three books representing new research into the relationship between Cold War mobilization and postwar American political development: Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (Oxford University Press, 1994); and Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1998).     

The evolution of the European Union’s failed approach to Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

This article provides a genealogical account of European actorness in Afghanistan. It argues that European agreement towards facilitating modernisation and development in Afghanistan was initiated with aid and trade, evolving into humanitarianism in the 1990s, and reconstruction and democratisation in the 2000s. The European Union has had a positive impact on Afghanistan, focusing on humanitarianism, but its multilateral and programme level approach to reconstruction and democratisation has failed to meet the EU’s stated objectives. By promoting the flawed “Bonn Model”, the EU is proportionally culpable for failed international attempts to reconstruct Afghanistan; even though the United States has been the primary international actor. Drawing a series of broader lessons, such as tensions between Atlantic solidarity and European integration, and the limitations of the European crisis management, the article demonstrates how European policy has been shaped by crises inside Afghanistan and the larger geopolitical crises these have generated. These have contemporary importance as history suggests that as the US withdraws its commitment to Afghanistan, the EU will have a very significant role in attempting to fill a humanitarian vacuum.     

女性制度主义的发生路径、焦点议题与意义评析

女性制度主义作为女性主义政治学与新制度主义政治学相互融合的产物,在跻身新制度主义前沿领域的同时,还为制度分析增添了性别维度。发端于女性主义第二波浪潮与社会性别理论的女性制度主义研究动向,在新制度主义异军突起的理论背景和性别平等举措全面开展的现实背景下确立为重要的分析途径,日益得到众多具有制度分析取向的女性主义学者的积极推动,并在多领域与多学科的交织脉络中不断发展演进。女性制度主义将浸染社会性别特征的政治制度作为研究起点,致力于协调现实政治生活的结构性要素与能动性要素,通过阐释性别体制、制度变迁以及制度性抵制的复杂关系,对性别化的权力体系及其动力机制予以深入探讨。基于女性制度主义所涉及的学术身份认同、学理资源汲取、学派交流融汇、学科议题嬗变,可以对该分析途径的贡献、不足以及前景进行系统审视。     

Bewitched—The Tea Party Movement: Ideas,Interests and Institutions

This article considers the development of the Tea Party movement, the character of its thinking and the nature of the interests and constituencies to which it is tied. The article suggests that despite the importance of ideas and interests, and the process of interaction between them, the movement has also been shaped and energised by institutional arrangements. In particular, it argues that there are significant numbers of independent or ‘detached’ conservatives and that the institutional architecture draws them towards political engagement but at the same time imposes constraints. The political friction that this creates has contributed to the anger that has characterised the movement. While the Tea Party movement may, as such, have only an ephemeral existence, independent conservatives are likely to remain a significant and potent constituency and will, within the institutional structures that define the American political process, give rise to other movements and protests.     

ASEAN and human rights: resisting Western pressure or emulating the West?

Abstract

Observers of Southeast Asian affairs commonly assume that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are reluctant to pursue liberal agendas, and that their main concern is to resist pressure from Western powers to improve their human rights practice. This article, however, argues that such a conventional view is too simplistic. The Southeast Asian countries have voluntarily been pursuing liberal agendas, and their main concern here is to be identified as ‘Western’ countries – advanced countries with legitimate international status. They have ‘mimetically’ been adopting the norm of human rights which is championed by the advanced industrialized democracies, with the intention of securing ASEAN's identity as a legitimate institution in the community of modern states. Ultimately, they have been pursuing liberal agendas, for the same reason as cash-strapped developing countries have luxurious national airlines and newly-independent countries institute national flags. Yet it should be noted that the progress of ASEAN's liberal reform has been modest. A conventional strategy for facilitating this reform would be to put more pressure on the members of ASEAN; however, the usefulness of such a strategy is diminishing. The development of an East Asian community, the core component of which is the ASEAN–China concord, makes it difficult for the Western powers to exercise influence over the Southeast Asian countries. Hence, as an alternative strategy, this article proposes that ASEAN's external partners should ‘globalize’ the issue of its liberal reform, by openly assessing its human rights record in global settings, with the aim of boosting the concern of its members for ASEAN's international standing.     

Medieval systems of representation

Text Reviewed:

A. J. Gurjewitsch. Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen, Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1978.     

Why preferences and institutions change: A systematic process analysis of credit rating in Germany

This article argues that a within‐case analysis of the causes and patterns of the institutionalisation of rating in the German financial system offers fresh insights into change in the major socioeconomic institutions of advanced capitalism. Using the method of systematic process analysis, the article explores the expansion of credit rating in the German banking system from three perspectives: historical (power), sociological (diffusion) and behavioural institutionalism (prospect theory). It demonstrates that the proliferation of credit rating resulted from a change of preference on the part of large banks. With Germany as a least likely case for successfully implementing rating, the study's main lesson is that institutional analysis may benefit from incorporating behavioural institutionalism into the analysis of preference change because this cites economic motivations as causes of preference shifts and institutional changes.