Organizational Failure in the Hollow State: Lessons from the Milwaukee Voucher Experience

In this conceptual article we use the experience of the longstanding Milwaukee private school voucher program to categorize different failure types within the hollow state. Specifically, we argue that the overall performance of the hollow state is dependent on the performance of organizations operating within the hollow state, that organizational failures are inevitable in hollow state activities, and that such failures can be categorized as marketplace failures, service failures, institutional failures, or customer service failures. We conclude that policy makers must plan for the reality of organizational failures in the hollow state if such arrangements are to be effective.     

组织嵌入与功能调适:执政党基层组织研究

中国共产党的基层组织体系是独具特色的。由于组织禀赋和政治使命的要求,执政党运用基层组织嵌入社会的方式,获得强大的动员和组织力量。改革以来的社会变迁,为执政党的基层建党策略提出新的问题。在新的社会背景下提高基层党组织活力,需要培育和统筹发展多重政治功能,包括动员、组织、利益聚合与协调等。在各种利益冲突的复杂社会环境中,基层党组织应当着重发育利益协调功能。在利益协调中促进社会和谐,提升基层组织活力,为执政党谋求政治支持。     

网络社会学的关键议题

互联网的崛起,引发了人类社会在经济、政治和文化层面上的结构转型。因互联网崛起而形成的新社会经验,对社会学的经典理论概念和解释架构都提出了重大挑战。面对网络社会崛起而形成的新社会经验,社会学需要调整和拓展自身的理论视野与问题意识,确立能有效解释新时代的时代精神的关键议题。     

Public affairs in China: exploring the role of brand fairness perceptions in the case of Mercedes‐Benz

Mr Sheng Wang demonstrated his perception of Mercedes‐Benz's unfair treatment and insensitivity to Chinese buyers by having his Mercedes sports coupe towed by a water buffalo through his Chinese hometown, Wuhan. But he did not stop there. Next, he ordered workers, specifically hired for this purpose, to pound the car with sledge hammers and sticks until the exterior was completely disfigured. Journalists love the story's inherent drama, and in subsequent days, media reports showed images of the car being towed and ultimately smashed. The event created strong public awareness about both Mr Wang's dissatisfaction about the treatment he received from Mercedes‐Benz and the subsequent Mercedes‐Benz's management reactions triggered by the event. In our paper, we explore this case in more detail, highlighting the crucial role of brand fairness in managing brands in China. Although brand managers implicitly emphasize the importance of fairness in branding strategies, brand management emphasizing fairness is an underdeveloped research concept. Our paper provides an understanding of theories and concepts of brand (un)fairness and brand fairness management illustrated by what we refer to as the Mercedes‐Benz case. We identify three dimensions of Brand Fairness Management: prevention, procedures, and outcomes. This framework will assist brand managers in China in developing successful brand fairness strategies and management programs. We posit that implementing these branding practices will increase the likelihood that consumers perceive the brand in question as fair, leading to an increase in loyalty and positive word‐of‐mouth. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Full employment

The recent civic revival has been largely carried out in the register of contemporary political philosophy, with its characteristic division between liberal and communitarian visions of a transcendental moral subject. This article argues that such an approach, with its affiliations to Rousseau's pathbreaking recuperation of the classical civic tradition, tends to bypass the question of what concrete attributes have been required of citizens, and how citizens have historically acquired the attributes to function as responsible civic-minded individuals. As a result its demaraction of ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ models of historical citizenship is unworldly and unhelpful. I conclude by sketching in a tentative outline of a history of modern citizen self-discipline in the early modern period, when citizen status expanded from the city environment to the populations of the territorial states. And I suggest, following Foucault, that these techniques still form the foundations of modern citize-formation.     

Taking Cantonal Variations of Integration Policy Seriously — or How to Validate International Concepts at the Subnational Comparative Level

Abstract: Subnational varieties of immigrant integration policy, which are particularly salient in federal states, remain largely neglected by migration studies. Following Lijphart, who long demanded to verify international research at the subnational level, this study aims at capturing subnational policy variations using the example of Swiss cantons. In line with international approaches, cantonal integration policies are conceptualized and measured in terms of immigrants’ ease or difficulty of access to civic, political, socio‐structural, as well as cultural and religious rights and obligations. The transfer of an international concept to the subnational level facilitates a validation of the former, which constitutes a second neglected research field. Finally, a look at the empirical evidence allows testing the construct validity of our measurement: in line with theoretical assumptions, our data reveal a clear linguistic divide, an institutionalised “Röschtigraben”, with German speaking cantons exhibiting overall more restrictive policies than Latin cantons.     

影响个人捐赠决策的感知特性及其维度结构——基于中国的实证经验

为了吸引个人捐助,非营利组织必需采取有针对性的营销手段来增加这一捐赠群体对该组织及其公益事业的良好感知,以满足他们的利他或利己需求,这说明影响个人捐赠行为决策的感知特性将值得探索。为此,本研究在中国文化传统背景下,运用探索性与验证性方法对影响个人捐赠行为决策的感知特性及维度结构进行了实证研究。结果表明:(1)在中国背景下,影响个人捐赠行为决策的感知特性有两个层面,即对非营利组织的感知与对公益事项的感知;(2)非营利组织感知层面,主要是个人捐赠者对运作绩效、品牌资产的感知,后者由品牌个性、形象及意识三个维度构成,而公益事项感知层面的结构分为5个维度,分别是公益事项效用、重要性、可参与性、可接近性及与价值观一致性。     

政府绩效视角下的行政管理体制改革战略反思——基于地方政府公务员的感知调查

改革开放以来,我国行政管理体制改革一直坚持以组织结构调整为主的模式.对于这一模式的影响,尤其对地方政府的影响,一直缺少科学层面的检验和理论层面的反思.本文选取政府绩效作为标杆,利用地方政府公务员的问卷调查数据,探索政府部门间关系和部门管理制度建设影响部门绩效的路径和程度,使用结构方程模型实证检验了行政管理体制改革战略在地方层面的有效性.结果表明,部门间关系作为政府结构的核心特征对于政府绩效并没有直接的影响作用,其影响作用是通过部门制度建设和部门文化间接发挥的;部门制度建设对政府绩效的整体影响要大于部门间关系.因此,在今后的改革中应该给予管理制度层面的改革更多的重视,通过局部的、具体制度的改革为整体的、基本制度的变革创造条件.同时,还应在改革过程中维护政府组织文化的凝聚力和激励性.     

Pregnant silence: (en)gendering Ireland's asylum space

In the wake of a new ruling on non-EU immigration into Ireland, Lentin makes a theoretical intervention by positing the gendering of Ireland's new migratory spaces via the bodies of asylum-seeking mothers. Employing David Theo Goldberg's concept of the ‘racial state’ and the two traditions of thinking about racial states, naturalism and historicism, she examines the gendered character of racial subjection and the rule of racial subjects in relation to the position of migrant mothers as the reproducers of future generations of Irish citizens. Second, Lentin explores the role of social research in investigating migrant populations. Social researchers and their subjects may have a role in interrupting the order of Irish late modernity, which keeps constructing new classificatory schemata--such as ‘nationals’ versus ‘non-nationals’--that are about the insistence on epistemological order in the face of disorder. She argues that migrant mothers and their ‘Irish-born’ children act to subvert traditional understandings of citizenship and ‘the nation’, dragging Irish modernity kicking and screaming into the chaos of the postmodern. Similarly, reflexive social research may give researchers an opportunity to destabilize ordered sociological narratives about the Other.     

Retired EU migrants,healthcare rights and European social citizenship

Drawing on a set of 210 qualitative interviews conducted in six European countries, this paper investigates the citizenship status and experiences of retired EU migrants at both national and European levels. The paper focuses upon the experiences of two types of respondents: 'Retired Migrants' (retired nationals of one EU country who moved on retirement and reside in another EU host state) and 'Returnees', that is, those migrants who have chosen to return to their country of origin after a period of residence abroad. In particular, this paper will attempt to explore three issues: (a) The extent to which retired migrants have access to, and make use of, the public healthcare systems of the countries in which they reside. (b) Retired migrants' perceptions and experiences of those systems. (c)Whether or not a lack of access to and/or the quality of public healthcare is an important determinant of return migration decisions, i.e. moves back to the country of origin. By focusing on healthcare the paper combines an analysis of the formal welfare rights available to EU citizens who migrate on retirement (both in terms of their EU rights and their status in the receiving and exporting countries) with qualitative evidence that documents the substantive reality of such rights.