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In Europe, different countries developed a rich variety of sub-municipal institutions. Out of the plethora of intra- and sub-municipal decentralization forms (reaching from local outposts of city administration to “quasi-federal” structures), this book focuses on territorial sub-municipal units (SMUs) which combine multipurpose territorial responsibility with democratic legitimacy and can be seen as institutions promoting the articulation and realization of collective choices at a sub-municipal level.
Country chapters follow a common pattern that is facilitating systematic comparisons, while at the same time leaving enough space for national peculiarities and priorities chosen and highlighted by the authors, who also take advantage of the eventually existing empirical surveys and case studies.
This paper analyses the interaction of domestic political elites and external donors against the backdrop of Mozambique’s decentralisation process. The empirical research at national and local levels supports the hypothesis that informal power structures influence the dynamics of this interaction. Consequently, this contributes to an outcome of externally induced democratisation different to what was intended by external actors. The decentralisation process has been utilised by ruling domestic elites for political purposes. Donors have rather focused on the technical side and ignored this informal dimension. By analysing the diverging objectives and perceptions of external and internal actors, as well as the instrumentalisation of formal democratic structures, it becomes clear, that the ‘informal has to be seen as normal’. At a theoretical level, the analysis contributes to elite-oriented approaches of post-conflict democratisation by adding ‘the informal’ as an additional factor for the dynamics of external-internal interaction. At a policy level, external actors need to take more into account informal power structures and their ambivalence for state-building and democratisation.
Struggling over crisis
(2018)
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.” Following the premise of this quotation attributed to Winston Churchill, varying perceptions of the European crisis by academic economists and their structural homology to economists’ positions in the field of economics are examined. The dataset analysed using specific multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) comprises information on the careers of 480 German-speaking economists and on statements they made concerning crisis-related issues. It can be shown that the main structural differences in the composition and amount of scientific and academic capital held by economists as well as their age and degree of transnationalisation are linked to how they see the crisis: as a national sovereign debt crisis, as a European banking crisis, or as a crisis of European integration and institutions.
This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, we focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.
Why choice matters
(2018)
Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1) what is democracy, (2) what is a good measure of democracy, and (3) do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research.
The framing of EU policies
(2018)
This chapter discusses how framing analysis can contribute to studies of policy making in the European Union (EU). Framing analysis is understood as an analytical perspective that focuses on how policy problems are constructed and categorised. This analytical perspective allows researchers to reconstruct how shifting problem frames empower competing constituencies and create changing patterns of political participation at the supranational level. Studies that assume a longitudinal perspective on EU policy development show how the framing of EU policy is constitutive of the way in which the jurisdictional boundaries and constitutional mandates of the EU evolve over time. Reviewing the growing body of empirical studies on EU policy framing in the context of the diverse theoretical origins of framing analysis, the chapter argues that framing research which takes seriously the notion that policy-making involves both puzzling and powering allows this analytical perspective to contribute a unique perspective on EU policy making.
Since the 1980s, central governments have decentralized forestry to local governments in many countries of the Global South. More recently, REDD+ has started to impact forest policy-making in these countries by providing incentives to ensure a national-level approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Höhne et al. analyze to what extent central governments have rebuilt capacity at the national level, imposed regulations from above, and interfered in forest management by local governments for advancing REDD+. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, the chapter illustrates that while REDD+ has not initiated a large-scale recentralization in the forestry sector, it has supported the reinforcement and pooling of REDD+ related competences at the central government level.
Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM.
In the past decade, European countries have contracted out public employment service functions to activate working-age benefit clients. There has been limited discussion of how contracting out shapes the accountability of employment services or is shaped by alternative democratic, administrative, or network forms of accountability. This article examines employment service accountability in Germany, Denmark, and Great Britain. We find that market accountability instruments are additional instruments, not replacements. The findings highlight the importance of administrative and political instruments in legitimizing marketized service provision and shed light on the processes that lead to the development of a hybrid accountability model.
This article focuses on the marginal extremities – the limits – of Shari’a practices in Australia, through the example of a criminal case in which four Sydney-based Muslim men whipped a Muslim convert to punish him for his excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. The men claimed they acted in line with the doctrines of Shari’a practice to ‘purify’ or absolve the victim of his sins. While the case was tried before a magistrate in a lower court, it is argued in this article that its social and political significance was wider, reaching into contemporary debates around multiculturalism and immigration from non-western, non-liberal and mainly Muslim nations. Mainstream media and political narratives viewed the whipping as an example of the moral dangers of accommodating Shari’a norms, eliding the differences between peaceable Shari’a and its violent extremities, while situating the case at the limits of multicultural accommodation. This article interrogates the objectionable margins of some cultural practices through this limit case. At the same time it questions the limits or limitations of a multiculturalism that homogeneously views the practices of entire ethnic or religious groups as violent and incommensurable with dominant norms, while using these understandings as a justification for marginalising these groups.
This chapter analyses the creation of novel cross-sectoral and multi-level coordination arrangements inside the German federal bureaucracy during the recent refugee crisis. We argue that the refugee crisis can be considered as an administrative crisis that challenged organisational legitimacy. Various novel coordination actors and arenas were set up in order to enhance governance capacity. Yet, all of them have been selected from a well-known pool of administrative arrangements. As a consequence, those novel coordination arrangements did not replace but rather complement pre-existing patterns of executive coordination. Hence, the recent refugee crisis exemplifies how bureaucracies effectively adapt to changes in their surroundings via limited and temporary adjustments that coexist with existing organisational arrangements. Thus, the observed changes in coordination structures contribute to repairing organisational legitimacy by increasing governance capacity.
Work has become more precarious in recent years. Although this claim is more or less uncontested among social scientists, there are a still many questions that have not yet been conclusively answered. What exactly constitutes precariousness? How should it be operationalized and measured? How does the character of precarious employment vary across organizations, occupations, demographic groups, and countries?
The edited volume by Arne Kalleberg and Steven Vallas seeks to provide answers to these and related questions. Sociologists from around the world employed different methodologies in a broad range of economic sectors and countries to identify the origins, manifestations, and consequences of precarious work. The different contributions not only illustrate the great heterogeneity that exists within precarious employment but also point to some central features of precarious work independent of the geographical context in which it occurs. Moreover, they highlight some challenges for the study of precarious work.
First, drawing on their earlier work, Kalleberg and Vallas conceptualize precarious employment as work that is characterized by uncertainty and insecurity with regard to pay and the stability of the work arrangement; workers in precarious jobs only have limited access to social benefits and statutory protections and bear the entrepreneurial risk of the employment relationship. This broad definition not only captures various forms of nonstandard employment, such as temporary employment, part-time work, or one-person businesses, but also covers informal workers or workers who are at risk of losing their jobs. Nonetheless, this definition does not seem to be broad enough or specific enough to fit the needs of all types of research and to appropriately capture the multifaceted nature of precarious work. Kiersztyn, for example, shows the necessity to distinguish between objective and subjective insecurities when measuring precarious work. Likewise, Rogan et al. point out that the concept of “precarious employment” has little resonance in the developing world, where most of the workforce is at or near poverty and informal work is the default employment type.
Second, the book repeatedly illustrates that the increase in precarious work can be attributed to the rise of neoliberal doctrines and practices, the deinstitutionalization of organized workers, and the dismantling of the welfare state. This applies not only to the United States, where market logics have often been equated with economic freedom, but also to countries like Germany with its corporatist tradition and a strong welfare state (Brady and Biegert) as well as to emerging economies like India (Sapkal and Sundar). In the opening chapter, Pulignano, moreover, convincingly argues that the institutional determinants of precariousness should not only be sought at the national level but that the supranational context plays a major role when it comes to explain precarity.
Third, by focusing on different aspects of precariousness and employment, the book shows the need for differentiation when studying precarious work. This is nicely illustrated by the following three chapters, which draw different conclusions on the gendered nature of precarious employment. Wallace and Kwak study the rise of “bad jobs” in U.S. metropolitan areas and show that men’s work became more precarious during the Great Financial Crisis. By contrast, Banch and Hanley, who have investigated the prevalence of different forms of nonstandard work since the 1980s in the United States, show that the risk of working in precarious jobs has declined over time for men. Likewise, Witteveen shows that the employment trajectories of young men are less precarious than those of young women in the United States. These seemingly contradictory claims stem from the fact that the authors focused on different aspects of precariousness, used different methodologies and datasets, and took on slightly different populations and time frames. The work on precarious work is hence not yet done.
Fourth, precarious work is certainly no longer a characteristic of those with low levels of education but has increasingly become common among professional and technical workers as well. It might come in disguise and is oftentimes perceived as an opportunity, a means for career advancement, and a personal choice. These disguises and perceptions are evident in chapters by Zukin and Papadantonakis on the unpaid work performed by programmers in hackathons, the chapter by Rao on young professionals in international organizations, and to some degree also the chapter by Williams on professional female workers in the oil and gas industry.
These insights (and more that are not mentioned here) make the book relevant and interesting to read. A summary chapter to synthesize the diverse findings and potentially also outline some of the methodological challenges in the study of precarious work would have had been a nice close of the book. Furthermore, such a summation would have been the place to speculate about the consequences of recent changes in the world of work, such as the rise of the gig economy and cloud or crowd work, which add new forms of precarity to the ones that we have known thus far.
Although it has primarily been written for an academic audience, the book is a highly commendable and enjoyable read for both social scientists and practitioners such as labor activists, human resources managers, and policy makers. Moreover, the book is certainly a valuable teaching resource suitable for graduate and master’s seminars in sociology due to its broad coverage of various aspects of precariousness, geographical regions, and methodological approaches.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the moderation of parental mediation in the longitudinal association between being a bystander of cyberbullying and cyberbullying perpetration and cyberbullying victimization. Participants were 1067 7th and 8th graders between 12 and 15 years old (51% female) from six middle schools in predominantly middle-class neighborhoods in the Midwestern United States. Increases in being bystanders of cyberbullying was related positively to restrictive and instructive parental mediation. Restrictive parental mediation was related positively to Time 2 (T2) cyberbullying victimization, while instructive parental mediation was negatively related to T2 cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. Restrictive parental mediation was a moderator in the association between bystanders of cyberbullying and T2 cyberbullying victimization. Increases in restrictive parental mediation strengthened the positive relationship between these variables. In addition, instructive mediation moderated the association between bystanders of cyberbullying and T2 cyberbullying victimization such that increases in this form of parental mediation strategy weakened the association between bystanders of cyberbullying and T2 cyberbullying victimization. The current findings indicate a need for parents to be aware of how they can impact adolescents’ involvement in cyberbullying as bullies and victims. In addition, greater attention should be given to developing parental intervention programs that focus on the role of parents in helping to mitigate adolescents’ likelihood of cyberbullying involvement.
Der vorliegende Artikel analysiert aus organisationssoziologischer Perspektive, warum die polizeilichen NSU-Ermittlungen auch nach jahrelang erfolglosen Untersuchungen im Bereich der Organisierten Kriminalität eine rechtsextremistische Urheberschaft der NSU-Morde ausschlossen. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, bedient sich der Artikel einer entscheidungstheoretischen Routine- und Lernperspektive. Das mit diesem theoretischen Instrumentarium verfolgte Ziel liegt in der Analyse der Lernobstruktionen der polizeilichen Ermittlungen im NSU-Komplex. Darauf aufbauend werden empirische und analytische Anschlussperspektiven aufgezeigt.
Gipfeltreffen am Grab
(2018)
Delay
(2018)
Das Sinnbild »Diabolisches Spiel mit den Zeitmaschinen« spiegelt eine Sicht auf den Musikeffekt »Delay« und seine wechselseitige Beziehung zwischen Technik, Musikproduktion und Rezeption wider. Der durch die beabsichtigte Verzögerung eines akustischen Signals erzeugte und häufig als »Echo« beschriebene Effekt kann nicht nur als echoähnliche Verzögerung, sondern auch in anderen Weisen eingesetzt und vernommen werden. Dies zeigt die Dub-Musik, in der das Delay von der ersten Stunde bis in seine gegenwärtige Ausprägung zum Stilmerkmal wurde. Lee »Scratch« Perry ist Zeitzeuge und Exponent dieser Entwicklung. Sein Schaffen bildet den geeigneten Anlass, den Zeitgeist des Delay und seine Wahrnehmung als psychoakustischen Effekt zu erforschen. Damit führt dieses Buch von einer allgemeinen Beschreibung und Neuverortung des Delays in den prominenten Verwendungskontext der Dub-Musik und die Erkundung eines vielschichtigen Bezugskosmos aus Natur, Technik, Religion, Okkultismus und (Musik-)Kultur.
Studien zum Bildungserfolg in Deutschland weisen auf verschiedene Ungleichheitsdimensionen hin. So wurde wiederholt ein enger Zusammenhang zwischen der sozialen Herkunft und dem schulischen Bildungserfolg dokumentiert. Des Weiteren stellen auch Geschlechterunterschiede im Bildungserfolg einen vielfach berichteten und sowohl wissenschaftlich als auch gesellschaftlich diskutierten Befund dar. Der großen Anzahl an Studien, die sich jeweils einer dieser Ungleichheitsdimensionen widmen, steht jedoch ein Forschungsbedarf bezüglich des systematischen Wissens über die Wechselwirkung von Geschlecht und sozialer Herkunft im Bildungserfolg gegenüber. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat die vorliegende Arbeit zum Ziel, das Zusammenspiel von Geschlecht und sozialer Herkunft zu untersuchen, wobei sie von zwei übergeordneten Fragestellungen geleitet wird, die im Rahmen von vier Teilstudien untersucht werden.Erstens wurde das Zusammenspiel von Geschlecht und sozioökonomischem Status (SES) in unterschiedlichen Facetten des Bildungserfolges sowie in den Berufsaspirationen analysiert (Teilstudien 1-3). Zweitens wurde untersucht, inwiefern die elterlichen Geschlechterrollenvorstellungen mit den Schulleistungen ihres Kindes assoziiert sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde ebenso der Zusammenhang zwischen den elterlichen Geschlechterrollenvorstellungen und Merkmalen des familiären Hintergrundes analysiert (Teilstudie 4). Zusammenfassend betrachtet weisen die Ergebnisse der Teilstudien auf eine Wechselwirkung von Geschlechtszugehörigkeit und sozialer Herkunft im Bildungserfolg sowie in den beruflichen Aspirationen hin, auch wenn die entsprechenden Effekte eher klein ausfallen. Entgegen der gesellschaftlichen Konnotation von Mathematik als „Jungenfach“ stellen die Befunde damit beispielsweise einen Hinweis darauf dar, dass die vielfach zitierten Geschlechterunterschiede in den mathematischen Kompetenzen nicht als „naturgegeben“ sondern beeinflussbar verstanden werden können. Damit untermauern die Ergebnisse die unter anderem im Rahmen verschiedener Theorien herausgestellte Bedeutsamkeit des Sozialisationskontextes für die Entwicklung der Fähigkeiten und Ziele von Jungen und Mädchen sowie die im internationalen Vergleich gezeigte Variabilität von Geschlechterunterschieden in Schulleistungen.
Embodied narration
(2018)
Do liminal embodied experiences such as illness, death and dying affect literary form? In recent years, the concept of embodiment has been theorized from various perspectives. Gender studies have been concerned with the cultural implications of embodiment, arguing to move away from viewing the body as a prediscursive phenomenon to regarding it as an acculturated body. Age studies have extended this view to the embodied experience of ageing, while drawing attention to the ways in which the ageing body, through its materiality and plasticity, restricts the possibilities of (de)constructing subjectivity. These current debates on embodiment find a strong counterpart in literary representation. The contributions to this anthology investigate how and to what extend physical borderline experiences affect literary form.
Hazards and accessibility
(2018)
The assessment of natural hazards and risk has traditionally been built upon the estimation of threat maps, which are used to depict potential danger posed by a particular hazard throughout a given area. But when a hazard event strikes, infrastructure is a significant factor that can determine if the situation becomes a disaster. The vulnerability of the population in a region does not only depend on the area’s local threat, but also on the geographical accessibility of
the area. This makes threat maps by themselves insufficient for supporting real-time decision-making, especially for those tasks that involve the use of the road network, such as management of relief operations, aid distribution, or planning of evacuation routes, among others. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a multidisciplinary approach divided in two parts. First, data fusion of satellite-based threat data and open infrastructure data from OpenStreetMap, introducing a threat-based routing service. Second, the visualization of this data through cartographic generalization and schematization. This emphasizes critical areas along roads in a simple way and allows users to visually evaluate the impact natural hazards may have on infrastructure. We develop and illustrate this methodology with a case study of landslide threat for an area in Colombia.