Social Movements,Political Elites and Political Opportunity Structures: The Case of the Woman Suffrage Movement from 1890-1920

Many contemporary theories of party leadership derive their concepts from organization theory and economic theories of rational choice. They stress the institutional contexts that shape leadership possibilities and the relationship between members (principals) and leaders (agents) in shaping leadership decisions. Both the macro (institutional context) and micro (principal-agent) theories assume that the main role of party leaders is to marshal majority support for legislation on which the party takes a position. Focussing on party position legislation, however, provides only a partial view of party leadership. This article expands this perspective by considering the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill, in which party leaders avoided taking a clear policy stand and pursued other interests instead. In broadening the assumptions inherent in organization theory to include behavior beyond taking party policy stands, we uncover leadership roles that are missed by those who adopt the policy-centered approach. Applying other organization theory concepts, we broaden principal-agent theories by explaining divergent leadership roles in the consideration of non-party position legislation as behavior that is typical for legislative leadership. We conclude that the nature of non-party position legislation provides party leaders a greater latitude to diverge from their expected party leadership roles and to behave according to their different strategic situations, district and state interests, philosophies, and personalities.     

Political Time in a Westminster Democracy: The Canadian Case

Stephen Skowronek’s idea of political time is tested by applying it to Canada. Skowronek identified a recurring cycle in US presidential politics, in which a coalition was forged around a distinctive set of ideas, dominated the political scene, and then crumbled, making way for a new coalition; a president’s ability to act as an agent of change depended on his place in this cycle. The concept of political time offers insights for the study of Westminster democracies, but Skowronek’s typology cannot be transplanted from the US to the Canadian context. A political orthodoxy cannot be easily identified in Canada, and prime ministers cannot be clearly labeled as affiliated with or opposed to the ideas of a given era. Some seem determined to play a corrective role, accepting much of the orthodoxy but reconstructing some elements of it. This problem of classification is amplified by the very short term of some prime ministers, by the very long term of others, and by a multiparty system, which has meant that Canadians often end up with prime ministers who are out of synch with the dominant ideas of their age. When applying Skowronek’s ideas to Canada, they emerge as overly structural and not sensitive enough to the possibility that leaders can fail to perform according to type.     

良渚文化的社会政治特征探析

浙江余杭瑶山、反山贵族墓地的考古资料显示,两处墓地属于两个不同的统治阶级集团,集团内都是由男性担当社会管理和防卫职能,由女性担当社会宗教和纺织业职能,但两个集团职能的侧重不同,前者偏重于宗教祭祀,后者偏重于社会管理和政府财富。这两个社会控制集团联合执政或轮流执政,显示出良渚文化公共权力的传递与分割似与职能有关,符合民主国家权力集团组合的特征,成为良渚文化作为商业国家的社会政治的民主特征。良渚文化民主政治的社会中坚支撑是由拥有殷实财富和中等社会地位的中等集团所构成的"中产阶级",良渚社会统治集团内部成员也是由"中产阶级"晋升而来。     

The Personal Is Not Political: The Progressive Conservative Response to Social Issues

The American religious right is often taken as the paradigmatic illustration of how conservatives responded to contestation over social issues such as same-sex rights and abortion. This article establishes that the response of Canadian conservatives – as expressed by the Progressive Conservative party – was quite different. The Progressive Conservatives held to a norm, grounded in their party's version of conservative ideology, that rendered partisan mobilization on social issues illegitimate. Rather, the party treated such topics as moral issues on which decisions, if they had to be made at all, ought to be made on grounds of personal conscience. The norm helped limit social conservative mobilization in Canada until the early 1990s, when the Reform Party replaced the Progressive Conservatives as Canada's major right-wing party.     

Negotiating Statehood in a Hybrid Political Order: The Case of Somaliland

This article investigates the negotiation of statehood in Somaliland, a non‐recognized de facto state which emerged from Somalia's conflict and state collapse. The negotiation process centres on the continuing transformation of a hybrid political order, involving ‘formal’ as well as ‘informal’ spheres, both in existing institutions (as ‘rules of the game’) and in the bodies or agents enforcing these rules. The negotiation processes considered take place at the national and local level respectively, as well as between the two. These negotiations are heterogeneous, non‐linear and ongoing. The article demonstrates how the polity's tolerance for heterogeneous negotiations and different forms of statehood allowed local political actors to establish peace in their own local settings first. Although it did not produce uniform statehood, it provided the basis for communities to explore the scope for common statehood. On the national level, hybrid elements initially allowed for a healthy adaptation of statehood to local needs, and for legitimate, productive instruments of negotiation. This responsiveness was not maintained, and current hybrid elements threaten to undermine the polity's stability.     

The Ethnoarchaeology of Juvenile Foragers: Shellfishing Strategies among Meriam Children

Recognizing children's contribution to the archaeological record may be crucial for our ideas about the role of children in human evolution. Despite this, analyses of children's activities and how they might shape archaeological patterns are almost entirely absent from discussions about site formation processes. This may in turn result from the assumption that children are either inconsequential in their foraging activities or that identifying children's activities archaeologically will be difficult if not impossible. This challenge drew our attention toward children's intertidal gathering among the Meriam of the Eastern Torres Strait as a possible agent of patterned and predictable variability in shell middens. We present an analysis of differences between the prey choice and field processing strategies of children and adults and explore an hypothesis for predicting their archaeological effects on faunal assemblage variability.     

The Diwaniah: A Traditional Kuwaiti Social Institution in a Political Role

A s sociologists try to uncover the reasons why Kuwait was not only able to endure the oppression of the Iraqi invasion and occupation but also to recover relatively rapidly, some social institutions in the country are being explored for their value in understanding the coping strategies available within the culture. One such traditional institution is the diwaniah. This informal institution in Kuwait served as a natural and largely unchallenged survival mechanism both during historical conflicts and turmoil as well as recently during the Iraqi invasion and occupation. As a culture-wide tradition, the diwaniah, by providing the meeting places for men to discuss important political and social issues, played several significant roles during the Iraqi invasion and occupation. In this paper, the author investigates the growth of and changes within the traditional institution of the diwaniah over the years in Kuwait, describing its structure and development, and evaluating its influence and the roles it has played in Kuwait's sociopolitical history. The study includes results of a an informal survey of the roles the diwaniah has played during the last decade in the social future of the diwaniah in Kuwait is positive and promising, because its importance and traditional influence are increasing each day. While the diwaniah is a Gulf Arab tradition, it is in Kuwait that it has maintained its strength. Kuwaitis are proud of this unique institution, they see how it helped them cope with the dangers of an occupying army, and they understand that it made possible the swift recovery after the war. Therefore, it is the wish of every Kuwaiti to preserve the diwaniah for the coming generations for the welfare of the society and the individual.     

Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts

It is often believed that industrial districts result from an entirely spontaneous process of economic development. On the basis of in-depth study of several Italian industrial districts, in this paper it is argued that the competitiveness and the dynamism of industrial districts' firms are dependent from social integration. Social integration, however, is usually the result of a conscious co-ordination among the local institutions: i.e. the 'high road' to competitiveness is not the outcome of market mechanism, but of a combination of market and concerted collective action among the representatives of the principal district categories and the local establishment.     

A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform

Amid the torrent of reform activity in urban school systems, some proposals fare better than others. The traditional technocratic presumption is that reforms are chosen for their educational merit. I suggest that, to the contrary, institutional incentives encourage urban policymakers to emphasize symbolic appeal. Data from a 1995 study of 57 urban districts are used to compare the fate of two school reforms. The more symbolically attractive reform was supported, proposed, and enacted much more widely, although neither research nor observer responses suggested its superiority.     

Importing Concepts from Biology into Political Science: The Case of Punctuated Equilibrium

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the “incrementalist” model dominated theories of policymaking. Since Baumgartner and Jones's Agendas and Instability in American Politics was published in 1993, however, the “punctuated equilibrium” model, borrowed from evolutionary biology, has supplanted the incrementalist model. But what do such alien models do to the discipline of political science, and what does the discipline do to the models, when they are thus imported? In this article, I first discuss the functions of concepts in political science, then discuss and analyze the creation and meaning of the concept of punctuated equilibrium in biology, then trace its transformation as it was initially adopted by political scientists, then analyze the manner in which its meaning developed and altered as it grew in popularity within the discipline, and finally assess its value to political science now. I will conclude with some general observations about the process of importing concepts from outside the discipline.     

近代以来德国贵族政治特权的延续及其原因

进入近代社会以后,当英、法等国的贵族及其特权在资产阶级革命中遭到沉重打击和被摧毁时,德国贵族却仍然长期把持国家政权,占据着行政、外交和军事领域的关键职位.造成德国贵族政治特权长期延续的原因主要在于:首先,它与德国政治现代化的独特道路有关,贵族阶级采取了适时而进的"防御性"政治策略.其次,德国贵族在近代历史进程中取得了突出的成就.贵族在经济上资产阶级化和资产阶级在政治上贵族化成为贵族阶级在近代社会中维持其政治统治的经济和社会基础.此外,文化观念和文化传统等文化因素在保持贵族政治特权方面也有一定作用.