Search results for "Political Sociology"
showing 10 items of 29 documents
Elections ordinaires et aménagements constitutionnels
2001
It is widely held that voting in the course of ordinary elections has no significant influence on the constitutional regime or order of a country. At least three powerful arguments are provided in support of that view. First, to claim that, at the same time as they play, players can change the rules is, to say the least, logically puzzling. A second argument refers to the motivations and possibilities of voters : voters, this argument says, are not really interested in constitutional issues and, even if they were, are particularly ill-equiped to understand their implications. The third argument rests on the observation of what obtains in practice : as a matter of fact, constitutional issues…
Subjetivación y Feminismo: Análisis de un manifiesto político
2004
The theme of this article is the the Italian feminist movement of the 1980s. That movement was characterised by political transformation and a crtitique of identity. The article takes as its point of departure the inaugural speech of the movement, the manifesto "Piu donne che uomini" (1983). The analysis that we present is inspired in the work of Michel Foucault. It aims to show to that the production of new feministic subjectivities, when fighting the symbolic dimension of masculine domination, has an intrinsically political character. In the 1980s, in the Italian context and particularly in the feminist movement, the rules of the political game set up by the events of 1968 materialized. T…
The Eternal Return of Politics
2003
Politics of Historical Signs In his text The Contest of Faculties, Immanuel Kant makes an attempt to answer the question "Is the human race continually improving?" He identifies such an attempt as belonging to a history of future times. Nevertheless, according to Kant, such a history must start from some sort of experience. He reasons that "[w]e must, therefore, search for an event which would indicate that such a cause exists and that it is causally active within the human race, irrespective of the time at which it might actually operate; and it would have to be a cause which allowed us to conclude, as an inevitable consequence of its operation, that mankind is improving." (1) By reading s…
Debating Europe: Effects of the “Eurovision Debate” on EU Attitudes of Young German Voters and the Moderating Role Played by Political Involvement
2016
In the run-up to the elections to the European Parliament in 2014, EU citizens had the unprecedented opportunity to watch televised debates between the candidates running for president of the European Commission. The most important debate was the so-called "Eurovision debate", which was broadcasted in almost all EU member states. In this study we explore the responses of a sample of 110 young German voters, who watched this debate, to the candidates' messages and whether exposure to the debate caused a shift in the respondents' attitudes towards the EU. Combining data from a quasi-experiment, real-time response data, and data from a content analysis of the debate, we find that respondents' …
Representative Bureaucracy and the Role of Expertise in Politics
2015
This is an open access journal from Cogitatio http://www.cogitatiopress.com The vast majority of existing studies on bureaucratic representation focus on bureaucracies’ permanent and internal staff. Yet, the rising sophistication of modern democracies and the technocratization of political life are gradually inducing an increased reliance on external experts to assist in the development and implementation of policy decisions. This trend, we argue, raises the need to extend studies of bureaucratic representation to such external and non-permanent experts in governmental affairs. In this article, we take a first step in this direction using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Com…
Vertical competition in a unitary state
2000
The paper is concerned with what Albert Breton, in his theory of competitive federalism has called vertical competition, that is, competition between governments situated at different levels. However its setting is government systems that are unitary rather than federal and structured around three or four levels of government rather than the two often implicitly assumed. The paper tries to show that these characteristics may offer a partial solution to what is perhaps the major problem raised by vertical competition, that is, how winners in a vertical contest get protected against retaliation by the losers when the latter can change the rules (which are not constitutionally entrenched). In …
Identity, Instrumental Self-Interest and Institutional Evaluations: Explaining Public Opinion on Common European Policies in Foreign Affairs and Defe…
2008
This paper addresses public opinion on common European policies in foreign affairs and defence. It proposes three models of support for common policies in these fields. Drawing on Eurobarometer data, the analysis shows that instrumental self-interest and territorial identities contribute considerably to explaining support for common foreign affairs and defence policies. Moreover, support for common policies is strongly driven by domain-specific evaluations of the European Union's performance. These findings suggest that popular support for common European policies in foreign affairs and defence has an experiential base. Thus, elites have an incentive to respond to public opinion when makin…
A "grande política"
2015
Resumo Este artigo oferece uma discussão sobre o legado crítico em torno da noção de grande política na obra de Nietzsche, questão que foi dominada por três posições: 1) Nietzsche é reduzido a um ironista subjetivista, não se atribuindo a ele nenhuma (ou pouca) relevância na teoria política; 2) ou bem é estigmatizado como precursor intelectual dos totalitarismos políticos; 3) ou bem pode apresentar-se como um genuíno pensador político, para além dos totalitarismos e capaz de fecundar algumas concepções democráticas da vida política. Nesse último aspecto, apesar das críticas de Nietzsche à modernidade e à democracia, é possível vê que sua obra defende a noção de uma democracia radical, dado …
Sag, wie hältst Du's mit Grün-Rot? Die grün-rote Landesregierung im Urteil der Wähler 2011 bis 2015
2016
In unserem Beitrag analysieren wir, wie die Burgerinnen und Burger den Regierungswechsel und die Ubernahme der Regierungsgeschafte durch die neue grun-rote Regierung wahrgenommen, wie sich die Regierungs- und Parteienzufriedenheit (ausgedruckt durch die hypothetische Wahlentscheidung) im Zeitverlauf entwickelt haben und was die Determinanten der Zufriedenheit sind. Unsere Analysen basieren dabei auf insgesamt sechs reprasentativen telefonischen Befragungen im Zeitraum von November 2011 bis Oktober 2015. Wir konnen zeigen, dass im Laufe der Legislaturperiode die vor der Wahl stattgefundenen Ereignisse mehr und mehr an Bedeutung fur die Bewertung der Regierungsleistung verlieren. Die Landesre…
Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU
2018
This chapter starts with reflections on the difficulties of studying the EU. The author then presents some of the research that develops a political sociology perspective to European integration and political power. Key concepts include structural differentiation and stratification. Scholars explore European integration as a process of structural differentiation and stratification, which provides politicians and civil servants new power resources. In this transnational political ‘market’, old resources tied to the nation-state, resources like legislative experience and national political visibility, are exchanged into newer resources tied to the EU. In other words, something old such as a n…