Pitirim Sorokin’s contribution to rural sociology: Russian,European and American milestones of a scientific career

ABSTRACT

The whole of Pitirim Sorokin’s fascinating and difficult scientific life led to his fundamental works on urban–rural relationships being expressed in the terms ‘rural–urban continuum’ and ‘rurbanism’. However, only a few special studies have been devoted to different aspects of his biography and scientific interests. The legacy of Sorokin as a rural sociologist has not yet become a subject of special studies in Russian social science. This contribution considers the key stages of Sorokin’s scientific career as contributing to the development and institutionalization of rural sociology as a discipline closely connected with urban sociology.     

La cooperación internacional para el desarrollo de México Un análisis de sus acciones,institucionalización y percepciones

The Mexican Law of International Development Cooperation (lidc) was published in 2011 with the purpose of reinforcing the institutional framework and developing a State policy as an activity that is inherent to foreign policy. From an institutional perspective, this paper examines some key aspects of Mexican cooperation that were developed in 2011–2014, with an emphasis on the current status of the lidc implementation. It is argued that during Felipe Calderon's administration the utter applicability of the Mexican lidc was not politically supported, thus frustrating the expectations concerning the development of a State policy on this matter. President Enrique Peña Nieto's current administration has made some progress in this direction, but it is also far from fully complying with the lidc and this has slowed down the institutionalization process of international development cooperation.     

The fractured state in the governance of private game farming: the case of KwaZulu-Natal Province,South Africa

Conversion from livestock and/or crop farming to game farming has been a notable trend on privately owned land in South Africa over the last decades. The rapid growth of wildlife ranching is associated with an annual increase in the areas enclosed by game fences and high demand for wildlife which is being traded privately and at wildlife auctions. Key environmental, agricultural and land reform legislation has been passed since 1994 that impacts this sector, but this legislation does not provide a clear regulatory framework for the game farming industry. This article seeks to understand why game farming is thriving in a regulatory environment plagued with uncertainty. The focus is on one province, KwaZulu-Natal. It is clear that the state is not a homogeneous and monolithic entity applying itself to the regulation of the sector. There is no clear direction on the position of private game farming at the interface of environmental and agricultural regulations. The argument put forward is that the fractured state, in fact, provides space within which the game farmers are able to effectively manoeuvre and to maximise their advantages as private landowners. While game farmers may complain about strict wildlife regulation in the province, the benefits they gain from the combination of a divided state and the presence in this province of a strong, autonomous conservation body are considerable.     

Local Government and Local Governance: 1944–2011

Abstract

Since the establishment of the tri-partite system of state education after the Second World War, the once simple relationships between central government and local government and the individual school have become increasingly complex. This article considers the key governance issues for schools and colleges in England and how they have been affected by the redistribution of power between central government and local government. The principal foci are the main legislative changes and the impact they have had on the respective powers and responsibilities of central government, local government and schools and colleges. The radical developments since the formation of the coalition government in May 2010 have accelerated the shift of power to central government from local government and by the end of the first term of the coalition the local authority will have little more than a vestigial role in the provision of secondary education and a diminishing role in primary and special education. As academy status becomes the norm (as it already is for secondary schools in some authorities) central government will be dealing directly with autonomous schools and academy chains. With more schools directly employing staff and with funding levels set nationally, the pattern and nature of public education will have been irrevocably changed.     

Trends in Governance in Further Education

Abstract

The governance of further education colleges has two main phases since the passing of the Education Act 1944 – the period when further education colleges were under local authority control and the period from ‘vesting day’ on 1 April 1993 when colleges became incorporated and further education corporations were formed as charities. This review is primarily concerned with the landscape of college governance since 1 April 1993 and draws upon some of the very limited number of research studies into the practice of further education governance. The experience and contribution of the key governance players – chair of the corporation, governors, the principal, the senior staff, the clerk to the corporation – are discussed. Throughout the period since 1993, college governance has operated within a policy framework provided by government and, to a greater or lesser extent, the implementation of those policies by agencies of government. In simple terms, the pattern may seem to be creativity (in the early years), compliance (following some high profile college governance collapses), micro-management (through the Learning and Skills Council years) and now the most open, imaginative phase as the current government encourages the strong colleges to play a bigger part in local education provision. Perhaps now is the time when the experience of college governance to date is able to draw upon its considerable strengths and show what the accumulation of governance capital can achieve.     

Fighting rural poverty,inequality and low productivity through legal empowerment of the poor

The purpose of this essay is to introduce the work of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) to the broader academic community interested in the challenge of eradicating rural poverty and promoting the structural and institutional changes which underpin such a challenge. While rural development research in the past has included work on several components of the legal empowerment of the poor (LEP) agenda such as property and labour rights, much less attention has been given to the other two pillars of the framework – access to justice and rule of law and business rights – which together constitute the four pillars of LEP. However the real difference and value added is the power of the systemic interaction among the pillars and the empowerment approach to change. In this approach, change is initiated bottom up with legal identity, organisations, information, and voice of the poor. In other words an active citizenry, complemented by a democratic and effective state. None of this happens naturally as vested interests and skewed power and asset relationships are bound to get in the way of change to greater equity. Such change is only likely to come through iterative contestations between organisations of the poor, the middle class, and the state. This approach is not presented as a panacea but one which will hopefully complement and accelerate what is already working.     

Labour flexibility in export horticulture: a case study of northeast Brazilian grape production

This article analyses the nature and extent of labour flexibility, defined as lack of permanent and secure employment contracts, within an emerging export horticulture sector in northeast Brazil. Whilst much has been written about flexible employment systems in agriculture, it is important to show exactly why, how, and to what extent these systems are flexible, and conversely, what kinds of strategies and practices are available to workers to ameliorate their conditions within such systems. This article illustrates how a combination of processes – farms' ability to produce two harvests per annum, northern retailers' increasing demands for product quality, employers' requirements for relatively skilled labour, and workers' ability to organise and extract concessions from employers – contribute, within the conditions of the São Francisco valley, to specific labour regimes and forms of labour flexibility.     

Post-Arab Spring: changes and challenges

This paper advances the proposition that post-Arab Spring politics are a product of globalisation’s economic and social liberalisation. The global market and privatisation have fundamentally deconstructed centralised autocratic rule over state and society, while facilitating corruption and selective development, culminating in public outrage. The political order of the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab Spring synthesises globalisation’s dialectic duality, in which economic integration has contributed to the demise of national authoritarianism, inciting communalism and political fragmentation. This paper analyses emerging political trends and challenges based on a comparative analysis of Egypt and Tunisia.     

The emergence of regulatory regionalism: transnational networks and the diffusion of regulatory agencies within regions

The regulatory regionalism approach has increasingly claimed that a new mode of regional governance is emerging globally. Regional policy regimes, developed in broad social and economic territorial areas, affect the internal transformation of the state. The authors plan to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the emergence of worldwide regulatory regionalism by identifying how regulatory agencies have diffused very successfully within the regional level in recent decades. The paper aims to identify, using an original methodological design, the ways in which such diffusion of agencies occurred, as this may have theoretical relevance for the study of regulatory regionalism. The authors' hypothesis suggests that transnational political interactions in each regional cluster triggered agency diffusion, contributing to the development of the regulatory state within the countries of each region. To test this hypothesis, the authors employed a data set of regulatory agencies including the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), and most Asian and Latin American countries (+59) from 1950 to 2007, for 15 sectors related to finance, risks, utility and competition. Bayesian data analysis was used to estimate the parameters of interest.     

Paving the way for farm animal welfare in international relations: an EU–Brazil case study

As a sensitive area in international trade, animal welfare measures have encountered resistance in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Consequently, alternative avenues have been pursued to reach international trade policy convergence. To further understand the contemporary trade politics of animal welfare, an empirical investigation was conducted on the interplay between European and Brazilian actors in the context of livestock production. By drawing upon diplomatic studies and the global governance literature, this study identifies and analyses initiatives that parallel the WTO approach and through which the development and implementation of mutually acceptable farm animal welfare measures have been pursued. Research findings indicate that a constellation of international non-diplomatic actors are currently engaged in influencing the future development of farm animal welfare measures. Among the initiatives that enable the alignment of European and Brazilian animal welfare policies and practices, there are soft instruments such as knowledge sharing and private standards. The rise of new actors and the use of soft instruments have been, to a certain extent, able to mitigate the tardiness of a WTO consensus regarding the use of animal welfare measures. However, there are concerns that the use of private standards has become a shortcut to circumvent the rigours of the multilateral trading system. This concern deserves a closer look because instead of paving the way, private standards may hamper trade relations which in turn hamper progress in animal welfare matters.