The Determinants of Political Cleavages in Jordan,Tunisia, and Yemen: An Analysis of Political Attitudes Structure in the Arab World

This article investigates the determinants of political cleavages composing the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen following the Arab Spring. Further, it tests whether political cleavages carry predictive weight on ordinary citizens’ electoral choices in general elections. Using the Sixth Wave of the World Values Survey, discriminant analysis was conducted to generate the dimensionality, type, and structure of political attitudes in the three nations. Findings suggest that the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen is multidimensional: the Islamic‐Secular division, a conflict along economic policy visions and an emerging divisive dimension concerning political reform. Evidence indicates that political cleavages do not possess significant predictive power in determining voters’ choice at elections booths. This research also points to the significance of social transformation processes such as modernization and globalization in causing a shift in values among ordinary citizens in the Arab World. This research argues that in countries where the effects of modernization and globalization are higher, a weakening of the Islamic‐Secular division is witnessed. This research is important since it paves the way for further empirical analysis on political ideology in the Middle East. It shatters conjectures concluding that Arab polities are only divided by a single hierarchical dimension: Islamic‐Secular. It contributes to comparative research on the dimensionality of political ideology by showing that the Arab World is similar to the industrialized world in the dimensionality, nature, and structuration of political ideology.     

The modernity of nations. A tribute to Walker Connor

To fully appreciate Walker Connor's contribution to the foundation of the contemporary study of nationalism, two main factors must be taken into account. First, the context of positivist behavioural political science within which in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, he articulated his critique of the concept of nation‐building. In this context, Connor emerged as a critic of the limitations and the naivité of positivist modernization theory. His dissenting voice called for critical rethinking and revision of the central concepts of the theory of political development, some of which enjoyed almost doctrinal status. Second, despite his criticism of modernization theory, Connor retained a strong conviction that nations and national sentiment were the products of modernity; indeed, in his judgement, they formed the primary content of modernity. This too was a critical stance within the rising tide of nationalism studies since 1989–1990, when ideology and wishful thinking influenced to a considerable extent the interpretation of nationalism. Walker Connor's intellectual legacy should thus be understood as a heritage of critical thought that is informed by a noteworthy awareness of the moral responsibilities of scholarly analysis.     

FROM REVOLUTION TO MODERNIZATION: THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE REFORM ERA

Chinese historiography of modern China in the 1980s and 1990s underwent a paradigmatic transition: in place of the traditional revolutionary historiography that bases its analyses on Marxist methodologies and highlights rebellions and revolutions as the overarching themes in modern Chinese history, the emerging modernization paradigm builds its conceptual framework on borrowed modernization theory and foregrounds top‐down, incremental reforms as the main force propelling China's evolution to modernity. This article scrutinizes the origins of the new paradigm in the context of a burgeoning modernization discourse in reform‐era China. It further examines the fundamental divides between the two types of historiography in their respective constructions of master narratives and their different approaches to representing historical events in modern China. Behind the prevalence of the modernization paradigm in Chinese historiography is Chinese historians' unchanged commitment to serving present political needs by interpreting the past.     

我国城市现代化指标体系有关问题研究

城市现代化是城市发展的基本方面,是研究城市问题的基本课题。本文首先提出了城市现代化的时序性、动态性和阶段性特征,指标选择的理论基础为可持续发展原则、指标界定的综合性、指向性及层次性。之后对我国城市现代化水平测度标准、水平评价等问题进行了研究,以期对我国城市现代化指标体系的建立提供有益的参考。     

中国共产党夺取全国胜利原因的现代化思考

从现代化的角度看,中国共产党能够领导中国人民夺取全国胜利,主要有三个相互联系方面的原因：1．把对社会结构的彻底改造任务与争取国家独立和领土完整的任务有机地结合起来,从而最终实现了现代化政治领导权力的转变;2．能够按照其制定的彻底改造社会结构的纲领和路线,脚踏实地地深人到农村变革中去,从而为进一步在整体上推动中国社会转型和现代化奠定了牢固的社会基础;3．把传统(民族性)和现代性有机地融为一体,从而为中国的现代化提供坚强的精神支柱。这说明,建立新民主主义社会,进而走社会主义现代化道路,是中国人民符合世界历史和中国社会发展规律的选择,也是在理论上和实践上对马克思主义现代化理论的丰富和发展。     

可贵的尝试——原中央博物院建筑缘起与历史评价

章通过对原中央博物院建筑策划、方案设计竞赛、施工建造等历史过程的详细描述与分析,指出该作品是徐敬直等第一代中国建筑师尝试将“民族性”与“现代化”相结合的一次可贵的尝试,并取得了成功。正是这种不懈的探索使得他们在专业上走向初步的成熟,原中央博物院(现南京博物院)建筑更成为经典之作。     

浙江农民的流动交易方式与其经济现代化——以浙江省义乌市后乐村为个案

通常的现代化命题对中国农村现代化的定位是外生现代化类型,因此外来模式和制度的引进、外部资金和技术的输入是至关重要的。但是后乐村的经济发展实践却展示了另外一种图景:后乐村的经济现代化是在流动交易的不断转换中实现的,流动的交易方式与后乐村的经济现代化之间存在紧密的逻辑关系。这种关系表明,流动的交易方式是一种现代化的内生因素,后乐村的经济发展是流动的交易方式作为一种特殊的文化资本进行双重再生产的结果。     

Legislation and Liberalization: The Debate About Corporal Punishment in Schools in Postwar West Germany, 1945--1975

Between 1945 and 1975 West Germany became modernized and liberalized.School education was one of the key fields in which this processwas played out. Methods of school discipline, corporal punishmentin particular, were the subject of heated public debates, reflectingthe broader political and moral issues of West German postwarreconstruction. The article examines the debate and its conclusionin the 1970s by focusing on Hesse, the only Land that bannedcorporal punishment in schools completely in 1946, and Bavariaand North Rhine-Westphalia, which both allowed it under restrictions.Proponents of corporal punishment pointed to the problems withdeviant youth in the postwar years and declared the use of thistype of sanction to be a right given to teachers by customarylaw. Opponents, however, put forward pedagogical, psychological,political, and moral arguments and called for a clear breakwith authoritarian methods of the past as necessary for rebuildingdemocracy. The pace and character of change, however, was determinedin the field of law. While a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 supportedthe opponents' position, a 1957 ruling by another Chamber ofthe same court reaffirmed the traditional customary-law viewof a teacher's right to wield the cane. Customary law couldonly be superseded by written law, but when most Land governmentsfinally abolished corporal punishment in schools in the early1970s, they did so, following Hesse's example, by administrativedecree only. While teachers who violated the ban therefore werenot automatically subject to criminal proceedings, courts remainedreluctant to uphold the ban. The abolition of corporal punishmentin schools, which also came at the price of an increase in bureaucraticregulations about school discipline and school life, can thusbe seen as reflecting the ambivalence of modernization and liberalizationafter 1945.     

Georgii Mirskii and Soviet Theories of Authoritarian Modernization

This article examines Soviet thinking about authoritarian modernization through the life and thought of Georgii Mirskii, a noted expert on Arab politics. Mirskii was a regular adviser and speechwriter for the Soviet Central Committee, and was also followed by the KGB for his criticism of Stalin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mirskii looked to the example of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to develop a theory of military-led modernization. This article examines how Mirskii's faith in the ability of Third World militaries to function as modernizing forces changed over time. The course of military politics in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, when military coups proliferated, bringing to power violent and self-interested regimes, disabused Mirskii of any faith in military modernization. Examining Mirskii's thought not only sheds light on the ideas that motivated Khrushchev-era Soviet foreign and development policy, it also provides an illuminating comparison for better-studied theories of authoritarian modernization in the United States.     

The transformation of the Italian party system

Abstract

This article analyses the political and social changes that occurred in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s in ways that bring economic and sociological models together in a historical perspective. It argues that the rise of the new Right following the disintegration of the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party was the result not only of the changed international situation (which was none the less important) but of the changes that had been taking place within the Italian political parties and the growing importance of neo‐patrimonial tendencies over the previous fifteen years. Increasingly open forms of corruption (on the part of the political classes rather than the industrial bourgeoisie, even though they too were to some extent accomplices) are interpreted as a sign of the crisis and disintegration of the political system that had taken shape in the postwar period. Hence the nexus of anguish and politics for both the upper classes and the rest of Italian society that has become one of the most important features of the situation in Italy today.