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This chapter examines grassroots activism in the Liberal Democrat Party. The results suggest that party activism can be explained by a combination of the individual’s psychological engagement with both politics and the party, together with their judgements about the costs and benefits of political engagement. Resources play a role in this, but it appears that incentives, and the choices associated with them, are particularly important in influencing the individual’s decision to be active.

This chapter examines the social and demographic profiles as well as the political attitudes of Liberal Democrat party members, drawing upon an earlier study of Liberal Democrat party to identify changes in their profiles during the 1990s. Comparisons are made between the social backgrounds of party members and those of Liberal Democrat voters to determine what differences, if any, exist between the two types of party supporters. Activism within the party and whether there is any evidence of a decline in participation in recent years are analyzed. The evidence suggests that while many party members are active, there has been a decline in party activism over time and a weakening of the ties between the party and its members.

Dutch society takes pride in its egalitarian character, and political and administrative officeholders are neither separated off nor placed on a pedestal. This general attitude originates in the predominantly middle‐class nature of Dutch society, in which the idea of formal incorporation of top civil servants in a separate class of administrative personnel is foreign; however, at the same time, there is a striving for unity in the national administration. The issue of tension between unity and fragmentation forces an assessment in this chapter of current developments in the higher civil service in comparison with the situation as it existed from the Second World War up to the early 1990s, with the emphasis on developments in the past two decades in which the most important event was the formation of a Senior Public Service (the Algemene Bestuursdienst, or ABD) after 1 July 1995. The first main section of the chapter (section II) examines what is meant by a ‘senior civil service’ in the Dutch context, where even the creation of the ABD does not provide a conclusive answer, since there are many senior civil servants outside it. In order to address this issue, the characteristics of the Dutch personnel management system are examined, and a brief outline given of the ABD and of the number of top civil servants working at central government level in the period 1976–1995. Section III turns to the political–administrative organization and the consultative structures at the top of the central government departments, and discusses the structure of the ABD, while section IV discusses the political affiliation (politicization) of top civil servants, and section V looks at functional mobility at the top, with special attention to the functional motives for creating the ABD. Finally, the social political structure of the civil service is reviewed, with sections on social (VI) and educational (VII) background.

The first part of this chapter discusses retrenchment, recent institutional changes, and senior civil servants in Sweden; it attributes the recent changes in the senior civil service to the budgetary crisis of the state and the emergence of a less interventionalist control regime, in which the heyday of state‐driven economic and social change has gone. The main source of uncertainty now concerns the final destination of the rapid changes in many core aspects of Swedish politics and public administration. The different sections of the chapter look at: the size and structure of the Swedish civil service; ranks of senior civil servants; systems of recruitment and promotion; party membership among senior civil servants; inter‐ministerial mobility of civil servants; status in the civil service; the social and educational backgrounds of top officials; informal contacts across ministries and between ministries and agencies; the relationship between national and sub‐national officials and those working in agencies; political party policies towards the civil service; and the social status of the senior civil service.

The Danish senior civil service has a mixture of older and newer traditions, in which history and tradition are very important. Accordingly, this chapter starts by summarizing the historical background to the Danish central public administration and the historical role of Danish civil servants. Further sections then introduce the common organizational principles governing the central public administration. The different sections discuss: ranks and numbers of senior civil servants at the top levels; methods of recruitment and promotion; inter‐ministerial mobility; pay; party membership and the senior civil service; the status in the civil service of high status ministries; the social and educational background of top officials; women at the top; interaction and formal contacts within and between ministries; and political party policies towards the senior civil service.

Formally, the higher civil service of Greece is a powerful group, but it also has a legitimate claim to relative powerlessness. Its subservient role is correlated with the perennial and problematic features of the organizational structure of the Greek public administration, which, in certain respects, is pre‐modern. Starts by distinguishing the main features of the top management level of the Greek civil service, pointing out the minor role played by Greek civil servants compared with their counterparts in other European countries. Goes on to describe the ranks of civil servants, the methods of recruitment and promotion to the Greek higher civil service, and the interdepartmental mobility of civil servants. Further sections discuss status in the civil service, the social background characteristics and social status of top officials, organizations and informal contacts across ministries, and political party policies towards the higher civil service.

This chapter is the third of four on the question of legitimacy in the EU, and deals with the political institutions of the EU and its policy processes. The first section elaborates on these aspects of legitimacy or regime support, and presents a conceptual framework. The second examines cross‐national variations and variations over time in regime support, including public satisfaction with the basic principles, decision‐making processes, and institutional arrangements of the EU. The third section analyses alternative explanations for these variations in regime support, including the role of (political) cultural legacies, social background, and policy performance‐ and leadership‐based factors. The conclusion considers the implications of this analysis for understanding the future of the EU.

This chapter is the fifth of six on the question of political representation in the EU. It analyses to what extent institutional differences between the member‐states of the EU are constraining the attitudes of representatives in respect of one major aspect—whom to represent; this is done by exploring the role orientations of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and comparing them with those of members of 11 national parliaments (MNPs). The first section of the chapter presents a brief conceptualization of representational roles by looking at general conclusions from previous research, and defining 5 representational foci in two dimensions: group specificity (party voters; specific (interest) groups) and regional scope (constituency; all people in the nation concerned; all people in Europe). The next section looks at the distributions of these five foci of representation across parliamentary levels (MEPs or MNPs) over the 15 member‐states of the EU; data are from the 1996 European Parliamentarians Study, and indicate striking differences between countries. The last (and largest) section of the chapter looks for explanations for these differences in foci of representation. These include personal factors (social background; political experience), institutional settings (the regional dimension—the relationship between role orientation, competitiveness and electoral systems; the group dimension—the relationship between role orientation and the encompassiveness and inclusiveness of interest group systems; and the European focus of representation in relation to the size and experience of a member‐state).

Substantial cross‐national variations have been demonstrated in political support/institutional confidence; the aim of this chapter is to investigate why these major differences between countries exist. It identifies at least three separate schools of thought seeking to explain this phenomenon: the role of cultural values, government performance, and political institutions. Comparisons are made among a broad range of political systems, drawing on the 1981–4, 1990–1 and 1995–7 World Values Surveys, the Latinobarometer and the Eurobarometer, and various support hypotheses are advanced (support for the party in government; dependence on level of democratization; differences between presidential and parliamentary systems (executive structure); variation with party system; differences between federal and unitary state structures; and variation with electoral system) and tested. The findings indicate that institutional confidence is most likely to be highest in parliamentary democracies characterized by plurality electoral systems, two‐party or moderate multi‐party systems, and unitary states, and that these relationships are confirmed even after controlling for differences in levels of economic development and post‐material values; social background and education are also related to institutional confidence, while the influence of socioeconomic status and gender are very modest. The results replicate one of the main theoretical principles of Anderson and Guillory (1997)—that winners express more confidence in the system than losers, and they also show that majoritarian institutions tend to produce greater institutional confidence than consociational arrangements.

This chapter explores the factors that affect how people living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, gain access to social capital. It studies two measures of social capital, namely the variety of different positions to which people have access and the access to occupations in the position generator. It briefly describes the social and economic background of Mongolia and looks at the diversity and influence of social resources in the country.

This chapter examines IEO in England, focusing on the transitions from compulsory to postcompulsory academic education (A-level), and from A-level to university degree. It considers IEO in relation to both parental class and parental education, and asks whether the association between social background and transitions has changed over the past half century. The chapter notes that social background, whether operationalized through class or parental education, significantly influences the chances of making the major transitions in the English educational system. Social-background inequalities are most marked at the first transition, the transition to A-level at age 16, but are also evident at the second transition, at age 18, from A-level to university degree. The continuing importance of primary effects implies that social background continues to be successfully transmitted through performance.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine how a wide range of Scottish people perceived insanity on a day-to-day basis. This book relies on manuscript sources generated about mentally incapable people at the local level. It analyses madness and its social and cultural background, as well as its intellectual and medical milieu.

This chapter contends that social-background inequalities in educational attainment may be seen as the consequence of social-background inequalities in both educational performance and the propensity to make educational transitions conditional on educational performance. It notes that both primary and secondary effects operate to create inequalities in educational attainment, and also describes inequality in educational opportunity (IEO) and the utility of primary and secondary effects.

This chapter examines the backgrounds of activists and their families, contrasting the social worlds of youth of the left and right. It explains that not only were members of SDS and YAF from different worlds, but within YAF traditionalists and libertarians stood apart in terms of social background and upbringing.

This chapter evaluates social realism in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others, 2006). It is a near-universally praised film which claims to expose the murky dealings of the East German (GDR) secret police and its thick blanket of informers before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Iron Curtain itself. In doing so, it tells the redemptive tale of a Stasi agent, Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), who 'turns', finds a redemptive truth, and works against the corrupt ideology that employs him in order to save East German playwright Georg Dreymann (Sebastian Koch) from Stasi persecution. How realistic is the film to the social-political background it claims to depict? And if it departs from that background, what difference does it make? A film successfully engaging the code of social realism needs to build a very convincing picture of its chosen historical environment. The Lives of Others does this to the satisfaction of an overwhelming majority of its audience.

Arguments in favor of a social adversity or rotten social background defense are substantially stronger than those against. People disagree in principle whether judges should, in appropriate cases, mitigate the severity of sentences to take account of material differences in offenders’ circumstances and characteristics. Many believe that a deeply disadvantaged background is a material characteristic. Unfortunately, informal mitigation of punishments is not enough. The severity and rigidity of American sentencing laws often deny judges the necessary authority. The moral challenges presented by deeply disadvantaged offenders cannot adequately be addressed without creation of a social adversity defense.