Search Results

This concluding chapter examines the use that is made in the book of institutionalist theory to address the question of European integration, a use that is described as not typical in the study of the European Union, which is usually approached via international relations and integration theory. Issues that result from taking this institutional approach (i.e. analysing European political integration as institutionalization rather than as international relations) are briefly discussed, before going on to see how the Europe of the last half of the twentieth century has provided social scientists with rich opportunities for evaluating how new political systems evolve and emerge. Some of the aspects examined are: the concept of institutions; the impact of institutions; feedback effects (feedback loops liking actors to organizations, to institutions, and back again); institutional coherence; institutions and society; and the demand for, and supply of, institutions.

This chapter discusses the selection of members of institutions, which themselves comprise the overall constitutional order. The traditional fodder of legal reasoning, and also of economic reasoning about law, is incentives: rules or policies that affect behavior by changing the costs and benefits of feasible actions. However, a recent wave of research in political science and economics has focused on selection, in which behaviour is regulated not through incentives but by choosing individuals with the right preferences or beliefs (right from the selector's point of view). It is shown that constitutional rules produce systemic feedback effects over time, via their indirect consequences on the selection of officeholders. Constitutional rules, that is, can change the pool of actual or potential officeholders in ways that either stabilize or destabilize the rules themselves. A systemic analysis of constitutional law must therefore take such effects into account.

Shifts the emphasis from individual behaviour in the presence of social interactions to aggregate fertility dynamics. In particular, the chapter considers the implications of using non‐linear models in empirical and theoretical models of social interactions and fertility. We show that with non‐linear models, there may be both low and high contraceptive‐use equilibria rather than just one equilibrium as in linear models. A sustained fertility decline can occur if a population experiences a transition from a low to a high contraceptive‐use equilibrium. These transitions occur at a rapid pace—consistent with the empirical findings on past and present fertility declines—and they are often irreversible once they are initiated.

This book has been devoted to an exploration of whether local government policies and programs exhibit the kinds of policy feedback effects observed in policy-centered studies of major social programs at the national level. From that process of exploration, the book also yields insights about modifications to policy-centered theory. This chapter outlines these findings and insights, situates them in ongoing efforts to fine-tune policy-centered theory, and relates them to the broad issue of local adaptations to globalization challenges.

This chapter discusses the result of a 1985 study concerning an incentive motivation model. It discusses the capacity of incentives to arouse motivation and explains the concepts adaptive control and feedback effects. It explores the influence of conditional incentive stimuli on the control of behaviour, the role of classical conditioning between neutral cues and incentives in the control of behaviour, and the role of dopamine in motivational processes.

This chapter studies radiative, mechanical, and chemical feedback in the earliest gaseous clouds, taking up the thread of discussion in the previous chapter to consider the influences placed on the formation of second-generation stars. While the feedback effects are sufficiently complex that a complete description of them is well beyond the capabilities of present-day computer simulations, the general principles that underlie them are well known. Therefore, the chapter focuses on these principles and then briefly sketches the global picture. Feedback is important in all galaxies, and many of the principles that are discussed in this chapter apply on a much wider scale than just the first stars and galaxies.

This concluding chapter analyzes the results presented in the book in relation to the development of political sociology. It argues that the papers together represent a “fourth generation” of scholarship in the field, where institutional feedback effects in general, and public policies in particular, are analyzed in a comparative perspective. Political sociology was born in the 1940s in New York City, at Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, under the intellectual leadership of Paul Lazarsfeld. The “Columbia School” and Lazarsfeld made important contributions to the development of research in the field of political sociology. In particular, Lazarsfeld pioneered the analysis of latent structures, while the Columbia School made the first rigorous and systematic attempts to analyze the social factors that influence voting and espoused a “social determinism” in the study of political behavior, for which it came under contemporary criticism. Aside from feedback effects of institutions, other concepts such as public policies and the moral economy of welfare states have improved the conceptualization of the relation between social cleavages, political orientations, and institutions.

An explanation and assessment of Asian regional institutions first requires a definition of the key dimensions of institutional design. Three are key: decision rules, commitment devices, and membership rules. Asian regional institutions display particular characteristics on these dimensions. Structural characteristics shape the configuration of regional institutions in Asia and elsewhere. Feedback effects, distinctive links between security and economic integration, and differing weights assigned to regional, global, and sub-regional institutions mark the trajectories of regional institutions. Regional institutions in Latin America and other developing regions diverge less from Asia than European institutions. Radical change in Asian regional institutions is unlikely. The likeliest route to change will be elite-based and demand-driven: a calculation that the agenda of deeper integration is necessary for continued economic growth and political survival.

This provides an overview of the historical background to the EU’s involvement with human rights and, at the same time, it fleshes out the main analytical frameworks employed in this book to explain the feedback processes. The Europeanization East analytical perspective describes how the EU, mostly the Commission, transformed candidate states’ institutions and policies during the EU accession negotiations. It is argued that the EU ‘Europeanized’ candidate countries with respect to those conditions which involved the transposition of the already existing EU set of laws and rules ߝ the acquis communautaire - at the national level. Yet, given that there is no EU acquis with respect to most human rights matters, the EU exported a human rights EU-topia (Nicolaidis and Howse 2002) to non-EU countries with regard to those human rights issues where the EU has limited internal mandate and has no EU acquis communautaire. The feedback effects triggered by this intervention are conceptualised as conducive to policy development (via policy entrepreneurship and agenda-setting) in EU internal policy sphere and to policy continuation (in line with historical institutionalism) in EU enlargement policy.

This chapter summarizes the “Environmental conflicts, migration and governance” book’s key insights and reflects on theoretical and methodological challenges tied to the study of the nexus between environmental problems, conflict dynamics, and migration. The author argues that it is not entirely clear what is the most important direction(s) of causality in the environment, conflict, migration nexus. Multiple feedback effects exist that make the interdependencies non-linear in nature, reason why the author calls upon a cybernetic approach to further study the nexus. Understanding the different relations of the variables in this nexus provides entry points for good governance. However, the chapter argues the need to examine the interplay between environmental conflicts, migration and governance more comprehensively and context-specifically.

This chapter explores several hypotheses explaining why Catholic schools generate neighborhood social capital. The chapter begins by discussing the literature (e.g., Bryk, Coleman, Campbell) on the connection between educational outcomes and social capital. The chapter then explores several possible explanations for Catholic schools’ positive neighborhood effects. These include: (1) schools in general as important neighborhood institutions; (2) Jane Jacob’s hypothesis about non-residential land uses as community institutions; (3) religious institutions in general as important urban institutions; (4) student selection effects; and (5) Catholic schools as neighborhood institutions. The chapter ultimately concludes that there are feedback effects between the social capital generated within a Catholic school, which fosters academic success, and Catholic schools’ role as a community institution.

This chapter explores an important issue within political sociology: the role of institutions and political articulation in establishing a connection between class and its attitudinal correlates. It challenges the argument that the magnitude of class conflicts will differ across countries, and instead offers an alternative hypothesis suggesting that class conflicts will be more pronounced in the social democratic welfare regime than in the liberal welfare regime. The chapter contends that a more fruitful understanding of institutional feedback effects should focus on other measures of welfare state performance, such as the profile of risk-reduction in social spending priorities or income redistribution via taxes and transfers. In support of this alternative hypothesis, it compares six Western countries—Canada, United States, Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand—in terms of social stratification and social policy, as well as attitudes to welfare policy and redistribution. The chapter demonstrates that preferences regarding welfare state and redistributive politics are more linked to social class and class identity in the social democratic regimes than in the liberal regimes.

Political sociologists study the link between social and political life, primarily by understanding variations in the relationship between social structure, political orientations, and political action, and by explaining the patterns that arise. Political sociology thus encompasses issues ranging from the orientations and action patterns of mass publics, the rise and fall of political parties, and the development and effects of political institutions. This book explores variations and mechanisms underlying the interrelationships among political institutions, social cleavages, and orientations among citizens in advanced industrial societies. It documents changes in welfare states and decision-making arrangements, along with variations of and mechanisms behind individual-level political orientations and identity formation. The chapter outlines the current main patterns of change in welfare states and decision-making structures, and presents the book's conceptual framework of analysis, including key concepts such as political articulation, moral economy, orientations, social cleavages, institutional feedback effects, and institutions.

From banking standards to data privacy, regulation has entered the lexicon of international affairs. Unlike trade or currencies, however, there are few formal treaty-based international organizations resolving disputes or setting the rules for the world. Instead, global regulation is frequently shaped by informal networks of regulators or at times by the extraterritorial extension of domestic law by large markets. Drawing on work from historical institutionalism, this chapter argues that the global politics of regulation is in important respects the product of domestic and international institutions interacting over time and across space. In developing three mechanisms—relative sequencing, cross-national layering, and transnational feedbacks—the chapter argues that historical institutionalism helps address lacunae in extant approaches to global regulation.

This chapter reviews the literature on the impact of culture on branding practices. Specifically, this chapter focuses on three main aspects of culture and branding: (a) the impact of culture on the nature of brand representations in consumers’ minds; (b) how culture influences the way consumers evaluate brand extensions and the corresponding feedback effect from extension success or failure; and(c) how brand practices may in turn exert an influence on culture and that brands may be viewed as symbols of culture.

This chapter introduces a conceptual framework with which to analyze official narratives of dark pasts, fleshes out the argument introduced in the previous chapter, and discusses the nature of change in states’ narratives. The conceptual framework consists of eight steps, ranging from silencing and denial to acknowledgment and on to commemoration, each of which captures a possible element of an official narrative. The core argument is that international pressures increase the likelihood of change in official narratives of dark pasts, while domestic considerations determine the content of such change. In particular, decisions about whether and how to respond to international pressures are contingent on four types of domestic considerations: material concerns, legitimacy and identity concerns, electoral-political concerns, and domestic contestation. Finally, the nature of change in states’ narratives is characterized by feedback effects and layering, and is typically incremental, multifaceted, and multivalent.

This conclusion re-evaluates the book’s theoretical framework in light of the findings of the empirical chapters, and considers what the chapters mean collectively for research and policy in three areas. First, the conclusion highlights patterns of dynamic contestation which exist through norm contestations at the domestic level opened up by implementation processes. These can include feedback to the international level. It also removes a clear endpoint for the norm introduction process, suggesting instead that contestation can be an iterative process. Second, it points to the importance of material and ideational structures for constraining, enabling, and shaping what norms do in practice. Finally, it argues that implementation processes are affected by the form of norm—whether treaty-based, principle, or policy—and that complex norms, difficult norms with a range of prescriptions, are more likely to be introduced first as less formal principle norms.

Using a gauge-invariant formulation of Green’s function, the electric-field dependent kinetic equations are derived in Born and RPA (dynamically screened) approximation. The feedback and Debye–Onsager relaxation effects are discussed and explicitly calculated for two- and three-dimensional systems. It is found that only the asymmetrically screened result in accordance with the asymmetric cummulant expansion of chapter 11 can describe the correct relaxation effect. The conductivity with electron-electron interaction is presented and the adiabatic as well as isothermal approximations introduced. All expressions are calculated for an example of a quasi two-dimensional electron gas.

This chapter reviews the history and historiography of the Armenian Genocide, and outlines the trajectory of Turkey’s narrative of the “Armenian question” since its initial formulation in the wake of the genocide. Over time, Turkey has experienced sustained international pressures to acknowledge the organized and intentional nature of this violence. Since the early 1990s, domestic contestation from within Turkish society has also challenged the legitimacy of the state’s narrative. While Turkish officials have resisted acknowledging the genocidal nature of this violence, elements of Turkey’s narrative have changed. Specifically, the narrative has changed three times since 1950, each time after international pressures had heightened scrutiny of the state’s position. Crucially, however, when and how officials responded to accumulated pressures were shaped by concerns about threats to territorial integrity and national identity, and feedback effects from institutionalized power bases within Turkey.