It's the Culture, Stupid! New Labour's Progressive Consensus

For New Labour to achieve the 'progressive consensus' to which it aspires, it needs to develop a transformative, cultural politics. This would engage in a battle of hearts and minds with the electorate, seeking to shape its preferences rather than accommodating them. Much of the accumulated criticism of New Labour focuses on its failure to develop an overarching political narrative to fulfil this task. However, critics have also shown that New Labour does have a definite vision of the type of society and individual it is constructing in the face of social change. Unfortunately for progressives, this is based on an image of the acquisitive individual, culturally conservative community and a fatalistic understanding of modernisation. Entrenching a progressive consensus requires a political strategy that resonates with contemporary experiences of social change, while showing how it can be steered in more progressive directions.     

Electron democracy,populism, and generational politics: The case of the April 15, 2004 general election in South Korea

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influenced the results of the April 15, 2004 general election in South Korea. A backlash after the impeachment of President Roh Moo Hyun by a coalition of opposition parties in the National Assembly (NA) was the single most important factor that determined the election outcomes. Generational and regional differences in the parties voters supported and the “defeat movement” of citizens' organizations also had significant effects on the election processes. For the first time since the early 1960s a progressive party won a majority of the NA seats. Thirty-nine women members will serve in the 17th NA, the largest number ever, and the left-wing Democratic Labor Party became the third largest party by receiving 13 percent of the proportional representation votes. Generational and ideological shifts in the power elites seem to be evident in the election results.     

“Racial Threat”, Partisan Climate, and Direct Democracy: Contextual Effects in Three California Initiatives

Does context—racial, economic, fiscal, and political—affect whites’ votes on racially-related ballot propositions? We examine non-Hispanic whites’ voting behavior on three California ballot initiatives: Propositions 187, 209, and 227. Unlike previous analyses that lacked individual-level data and were therefore limited to ecological inference, we combine individual-level data from exit polls with county-level contextual variables in a hierarchical linear model. Racial/ethnic context affected whites’ votes only on Proposition 187, economic context had no influence on vote choice, and the effect of fiscal context was limited to Proposition 227. However, across the propositions, whites’ decisions were shaped by their political context. Thus, we do not find support for the “racial threat” hypothesis across all racially-charged issues.     

Devolution's Unfinished Business

Devolution was a response to a decline in legitimacy in the territorial politics of the UK. To differing extents and in different ways, there was a legitimacy gap in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This has largely been restored in the non-English parts of the UK but has created new problems of legitimacy in England. The West Lothian Question and territorial finance are the unfinished business of devolution. Using Beetham's classic work on The Legitimation of Power, this article argues that the situation today in England resembles that which existed before devolution in the non-English parts of the UK: there is nothing illegal in the current constitutional arrangements; but there are constitutional anomalies and inconsistencies, which may lead to a withdrawal of consent.     

村落家族与村民自治在乡村政治中的博弈

在国家行政化高度整合机制发生裂解和转换之后,村民在农村社会生活中重新借重血缘群体的力量,家族在村落成员的各个层面具有巨大的影响力。虽然村民自治是一种政府体制安排,但这种政治形态根植于多样化的制度性冲击和约束,也受到了农村经济制度状况以及由此决定的利益结构的制约和影响。因而我国乡村政治民主化进程始终伴随着村落家族与村民自治的博弈,在两者的博弈过程中,既可能产生冲突与紧张,又可能相互制衡甚至达成均衡。     

思想政治教育学科建设争鸣观综述

随着马克思主义理论一级学科的设立,思想政治教育学科获得了更大的发展机遇和建设平台。在该学科产生的20多年时间里,围绕着其学科概念、学科名称、研究对象、学科定位等问题,学术界的争议从未停止过。新时期改革开放对思想政治教育学提出了更高的要求,如何理清并把握思想政治教育学的发展脉络和争端,无疑是这一领域的重要课题之一。     

La Nouvelle Vague: Epiphanies, Encounters, Events

A recent collection of essays,Feminist Perspectives on Law and Theory,is here taken as the starting point for an analysis of the political trajectory of feminist jurisprudence. The ‘new wave’ of feminism borrows much of its inspiration from continental theory – from Derrida, Deleuze and Irigaray – and has been subject to criticism for its attention to language and its turn towards culture and aesthetics. Reviewing the materialist bases of the new wave, and particularly its concern with the immediacies of the body and events, it is argued here that it represents a return to the radicalism of feminist legal theory. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Politics of Welfare State Reform

This article presents and discusses the state of the art in political science research on welfare state reform. While scholars first aimed at explaining the emergence and growth of the welfare state, national variation in its development, and crises of welfare state regimes, more recently the focus has shifted to the persistence and reform of the major welfare state institutions. Research in this direction has typically adopted an institutionalist perspective, stressing how institutional settings affect the feasibility and direction of reforms. These studies have shed light on important aspects of the question, in particular by demonstrating the role of path dependency and veto players in reform processes, but suffer from two main problems, namely the difficulty of defining the dependent variable in an appropriate way, and the neglect of the importance of power resources.     

Afro‐Cuban Religion,Ethnobotany and Healthcare in the Context of Global Political and Economic Change

‘Globalisation’, driven by neoliberal‐based policies, can be seen to have significant impacts on ethnobotanical practices, particularly through the commercialisation of traditional knowledge and rise in identity‐based social movements. Despite its relative political and economic isolation in comparison to more ‘neoliberalised’ areas of Latin America, local‐level shifts occurring in post‐Soviet Cuba are similar to those occurring elsewhere in the region. Afro‐Cuban ritual activities have proliferated, particularly in Havana, leading to an increased dependence on the rich magico‐medicinal pharmacopoeias employed in hybridised religions such as santería and palo monte – suggesting that ‘globalisation’ may have profound, albeit indirect, implications for even the most economically marginalised countries such as Cuba.     

论江泽民的党风廉政建设思想

江泽民同志在成为党的第三代领导核心以后，对党风廉政建设高度重视，并形成了丰富而又有独到见解的党风廉政建设思想：党风廉政建设关系到党的生死存亡；党风廉政建设，首先要从源头抓起，根本在于加强党的制度建设，关键在于强化党内监督。