Search results

Transition into modernity takes very different roads, depending on the sequencing of bureaucracy and democratic regime. This is demonstrated by comparing Sweden and Greece. At an early stage of the long-term modernisation of Swedish society, due to early penetration of the internal territory and before the extension of suffrage and political modernisation, a number of state organisations were established at the interstices between state and society, creating direct relations between the state and society. The impressive Lantmäteriet, the organisation of tax authorities, the establishment of authorities for registering the population and the Tabellverket are typical illustrations of such organisational structures. Such organisations functioned as social mechanisms that elucidated society making it legible and thus strengthened the infrastructural capacity of the state. In Greece, where the state was built after political modernisation, the establishment of similar organisations proved to be more difficult. Although there is evidence that similar Swedish practices were known in Greece to be possible paths, they were not chosen. The establishment of a land registry system, for instance, was discussed in the decades prior to the 1871 land reform. On other issues, such choices could not be materialised given opposition or political counter-mobilisation to abolish the reforms after they were approved by parliament. These reform efforts were rather short-lived or countered by new reforms and exemptions, creating an ambiguous labyrinth of regulations of state–society relations and a state without the capacity to intervene in society and implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm. On the whole, the state remained a distant entity, mostly a distrusted one, and relations between the state and society were mediated by parties and by social and kinship-based networks.

Much potential has been ascribed to the emergence and possibilities of a “global civil society,” one that takes the concept of civil society and civic activism and involvement beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state, and moves it instead into a globalized and increasingly politically integrated context. In general, the concept of global civil society has been treated as a positive development, with considerable attention being paid to the emancipatory and participatory opportunities that it presents. This essay explores the other side of the equation, i.e., the marginalization of national and European-level civil society and these participatory and emancipatory benefits in Central and Eastern Europe during a process of globalization and EU integration. Drawing from the emerging literatures on global civil society, this paper compares the normative and empirical emphases of that literature with the experiences and opinions of Central and Eastern European environmental NGOs. It examines how Central and Eastern European environmental movements have moved toward becoming more interconnected both in Europe and worldwide, yet are marginalized in favor of a style of environmental policy-making emerging from Brussels that emphasizes technocracy, scientific over public knowledge, and a top-down approach to the policy-making process. As a result, many of the democratic elements of civil society found at the national level have became neglected at the European and the global levels, replacing democratic politics (at least in the form of social movements) with the emergence of supranational technocratic institutions.

In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the move from government to governance has been well documented (Stoker, 1998; Rhodes, 1996, 1997). In the global North, governance is understood as a response to complexity and a recognition that many problems cannot be solved by government alone, whereas in democracies across the North and South, there is a concern to address the democratic deficit and [re]legitimize the state. In both contexts, new governance spaces and opportunities have emerged for non-governmental actors to engage in the process. Interest in community or “third sector” participation has spread around the globe, albeit with very different expressions in different contexts, and in many cases at the insistence of international financial institutions. Deacon (2007, p. 15) describes such global trends as “the contested terrain of emerging global governance” in which he includes both international non-governmental organizations and transnational social movements. Although this shift represents new opportunities, the extent to which the spaces for participation offer a new vision of the public domain is contested (Fung & Wright, 2003; Cornwall & Coelho, 2007).

Against the danger of a lost generation of Syrian children, both Turkish state and civil society organizations (CSO) have developed strategies to bridge the education gap of Syrian children. In that context, this chapter explores the relationship between the Turkish state and civil society in education provision for non-camp Syrian refugees between 2011 and 2016. Presenting civil society as a theoretical framework in refugee education, this study aims to contribute to the debates on education in an era of mass displacement on an institutional level. The role of civil society against the state in education for Syrian refugees is put under scrutiny with an emphasis on the repercussions of the unprecedented number of non-citizen students for state-centered, secular, and monocultural visions of education. In doing so, this study uses policy documents between 2011 and 2016 circulated by Ministry of National Education and data gathered from interviews conducted with representatives of state and CSOs.

Purpose – The discourse about civil society is closely tied to the role of collective action in general, and of social movements in particular. Yet the origins of the recent emphasis on civil society are located in the 1980s – the time period during which the wave of neoliberalism began its rise and spread.

Design/methodology/approach – In order to properly situate the concept of civil society and related debates, they must be linked to efforts to delegitimate and demonize the state that also started gaining momentum during that decade.

Findings – The historical context of its emergence suggests that civil society may not be so much an analytical category for purposes of social research, but a theoretical category that is imbued with political content, both positively and negatively – both as a means to promote progressive ends, and as an expression of the context in which those ends started to face mounting resistance.

Research limitations/implications – At the very least, the concept of civil society has a tendency to distract – both by design and by default – from important questions and challenges, such as those related to the role and persistence of structures of inequality in early 21st century global civilization.

Originality/value – A promising starting point to circumnavigate the counterproductive consequences of the use and abuse of the civil society concept and debate for social research may be its explicitly dynamic conceptualization.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The economic science is again in a crisis and a new solution prolegomena to any future study in economics, finance and other social sciences has just been published by the International Institute of Social Economics in care of the MCB University Press in England. The roots of the major financial and economic problems of our time lie in an open conflict between theory and practice. In the 1930s and before the conflict was between classical theory and given realities. In the 1990s the conflict appears between the now prevailing modern, Keynesian theory and the actual realities. In addition during the twentieth century a great argument developed between the two schools of thought, argument which is not yet settled. In one sentence, the prolegomena tried and was successful to solve the conflict between theory and practice and the big doctrinal dispute of the twentieth century. It was a struggle of research and observation over half a century between 1947 and 1997.

Explores a number of the debates and justification used to support and advance non‐state governance of the Internet in the USA. Reviews public reports released leading up to the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Concludes that the scope herein is restricted to the jurisdictions and reasoning stated in the policy papers leading to the formation of the ICANN.

According to the traditional Soviet view, the Soviet economic society, based essentially on governmental and collective farm property and overall national planning, is “socialist”, and has been so since Stalin's proclamation to that effect in the 1930s. Most Western observers, Marxist and non‐Marxist, recognise these two socio‐institutional features of the Soviet politico‐economic system and ascribe substantial importance to them. Beyond this point, interpretations differ considerably. Five alternative views may be distinguished. These contending perspectives argue that Soviet economic society is: