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Presents a case study concerning the attempts of a particular group of managers to implement an “empowered” system of working within their organization. Rejecting managerialist accounts of empowerment as distorted representations of social processes and social action, the paper investigates the “4Cs” of empowerment: context, construction, cascade and contest, within the processes of empowerment in an attempt to encourage a more reflective approach.

As interest in the “politics of education” continue to mount in the United States it becomes important to try to explicate the fundamental political ideology which continues to shape current developments in school finance in that country. In this article it is argued that there is an identifiable “democratic theory of school finance” and that the roots of this political theory can be found in the works of such “classical” authors as Aristotle, Thucydides, Thomas Jefferson, Alex de Tocqueville, Caleb Mills, and others. A body of current professional educational literature and some court opinions are then summarized and illustrations are provided to show that the basic political values of the “classical” authors are still very much present in the newer professional literature and in the court opinions. Finally a postscript is provided to bring the reader even closer to additional school finance literature in the United States. Students of the politics of education might be interested to learn that this was a bipartisan effort. Professors Hickrod and Hubbard are normally associated with the Democratic Party in the United States, while Professor Laymon customarily finds himself on the Republican side of the aisle. The article thus provides some evidence that there can be agreement on principles of democracy and constitutional government that transcends political party affiliation.

The purpose of this paper is to review the social capital treatment of Robert Putnam, the most influential conceptual theorist. The paper will detail how Putnam's treatment of social capital has evolved, examine the arguments of his critics and will also critique his socio‐economic analysis.

The approach taken is a literature review that investigates Putnam's social capital understanding and considers the reasons why this conceptual treatment “touched a nerve” and proved so influential and adaptable.

Putnam's social capital treatment belongs to a socio‐economic communitarian tradition that can be traced to de‐Tocqueville, which offers an alternative to both mainstream free market ideology and to leftwing socio‐economics.

The originality of this paper is to identify Putnam as a radical in a methodological sense, reinvigorating a Burkean, consensual interpretation of socio‐economics. The value of this paper is to offer a critique of Putnam's interpretation of social capital.

American sociology has long been concerned with the social conditioning of American character, particularly with regard to caring for others. This interest can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1899[1838]) in which he reflected on how democratic participation in government and voluntary associations in the 1830s shaped the American character. Tocqueville believed that participation in social institutions, and especially voluntary societies, balanced the potentially excessive individualism he observed in the United States. David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd: A Study of Changing American Character (1950) picked up similar themes in an exploration of the isolation of the individual within modern society. These concerns reached a broad audience more recently in Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton's Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985) in which the authors argued that the scale had swung in favor of individualism at the expense of commitment to the social good. Robert Wuthnow (1991) addressed these issues again in Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, in which he explored how in volunteer work, Americans attempted to reconcile compassion with individualism. These studies, primarily focusing on white, middle‐class Americans, have laid the groundwork for an exploration of the social nature of the American character within the context of caring for others.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the dual paradox of French industrial relations. On the one hand, unions are numerically weak and bitterly divided but retain a significant influence. On the other hand, the social climate remains highly conflict-prone and marked by an ideological rhetoric opposing the wealthy oppressors to the exploited masses within a relatively prosperous society.

The paper finds a historical explanation in constant features of French society.

The paper found that specific concepts of freedom and equality shaped the present organization of industrial relations.

The paper explains the structure and organization of unions and labor relations through societal elements structured historically.

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.

Here is the situation with which all of us in the free world are faced: If we are to achieve real peace with justice for this troubled world, we must stick together and work together. That calls for continuing and mounting efforts to promote understanding among free peoples.

Few readers of this journal will not be familiar with the life and ideas of Peter Drucker. He has been compared to, amongst others, Bagehot, Bastiat, Darwin, Hayek, Mendel, Mises, Newton, Schumpeter, Shaw and Tocqueville. Of many other distinctions, his first book, The End of Economic Man (May 1939), which was a political analysis centered on Hitlerism, was reviewed by Churchill.

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review of empirical studies into online platforms for political participation. The objective was to diagnose the relationship between different types of digital participatory platforms, the real possibilities of participation generated by those initiatives and the impact of such participation on the decision-making process of governmental representatives.

A systematic literature review was conducted using pre-defined terms, expressions and criteria. A total of 434 articles from 1995 to 2015 were gathered from the Web of Science database. And, 32 studies were selected from those articles for meta-synthesis, and the cases investigated were evaluated according to the e-participation ladder model (Smyth, 2001).

The results indicated that online political participation worldwide remains timid both in quantity and quality. We have witnessed the growth of a kind of “rhetorical participation” promoted by policy-makers and the rise of a “participatory despotism”, in which only the privileged partake, while the majority remains silent.

The solutions found to promote increased participation and ensure its effectiveness ranged from shaping the platform design in accordance with citizens’ capacities and interests to a need for profound political–administrative change, which includes the world’s public agencies adopting a more transparent, inclusive and collaborative approach to decision-making.

This paper proposes a systematic review, mapping the studies on online platforms for political participation, analysing the questions, methods and conclusions found by the authors and evaluating each case study with a participation ladder.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the impact of conservatism on political liberty and liberal democracy in contemporary society. It applies Weber's description of capitalism as the “most fateful” social force in modern society to analyzing conservatism in relation to political liberty and liberal democracy. The paper posits and finds that conservatism primarily (with secondary variations) negatively impacts political liberty and so modern liberal democracy. Alternatively, it argues and shows that conservatism almost invariably generates political repression and elimination or subversion of liberal democracy and society. It concludes that conservatism, especially in America, becomes from the “most fateful” to the “most fatal” social force on the account of its adverse impact on political liberty and democracy.

The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of conservatism and its essentially destructive effects on political liberties and liberal democracy in contemporary society.

The paper finds that conservatism, especially in America, becomes from the “most fateful” to the “most fatal” social force on the account of its adverse impact on political liberty and democracy.

The paper posits and finds that conservatism primarily (with secondary variations) negatively impacts political liberty and so modern liberal democracy. Alternatively, it argues and shows that conservatism almost invariably generates political repression and elimination or subversion of liberal democracy and society.