This article examines the mass media’s role in shaping education policy debates in light of pluralist theory and Bourdieu’s social fields theory. We content analyzed the coverage of New Jersey education policy debates during 1985, when the governor moved to consolidate his power in the education field. We used quantitative framing and conflict analysis and found that the media presented educational policy debates in ways that advantaged political and economic elites and portrayed the governor as being above the political fray. On the whole, our findings conform more to Bourdieu’s social fields theory than to pluralist theory.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/657889

Staying Above the Fray: Framing and Conflict in the Coverage of Education Policy Debates

..................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. xiii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ xiii Glossary ..................................................................................................................................... xv Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Social economy and public policy in New Zealand ............................................................................. 1 Charitable purposes ........................................................................................................................ 3 Context and research significance .................................................................................................. 4 A personal perspective ................................................................................................................ 4 Comparing New Zealand with other countries ........................................................................... 6 Dual narratives for New Zealand and a dual ethos for charitable services ................................ 8 Current perspectives ................................................................................................................... 9 Research design overview ................................................................................................................. 11 Structure of the thesis ....................................................................................................................... 13 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 1: Concepts and Research Issues .................................................................................... 18 A common understanding of the voluntary sector ....................................................................... 18 Concepts of social economy and For-Social-Profit (FSP) organisations ............................................ 19 Public policy in the social economy .................................................................................................. 21 Market concepts ........................................................................................................................... 21 Social services market concepts .................................................................................................... 22 Public information market concept .............................................................................................. 24 Marketisation in the social economy ................................................................................................ 26 Marketisation internationally ....................................................................................................... 27 New Zealand’s marketisation experience ..................................................................................... 29 Market-focus in social services – operationalising the concept ................................................... 30 Sector level issues in the marketisation of social services ........................................................ 30 Organisation-level issues with marketisation of social services ............................................... 32 Social enterprise ............................................................................................................................ 36 For-social-profit advocacy concepts ............................................................................................. 37 Policy advocacy factors: Sector level......................................................................................... 37 Policy advocacy: Organisation level .......................................................................................... 41 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 2: Grounding Voluntary Organisations ............................................................................ 46 Civil society: A rationale for FSP organisations ................................................................................. 47 Civil society principles – Searching for firm ground ...................................................................... 48 Liberty and equality – and Unity ............................................................................................... 48

Policy Advocacy by Government-funded Charities in New Zealand

Participatory Democracy and Land Development: A Case Study of the South Downtown Waterfront Redevelopment in Saskatoon

The contribution of social capital or social connections with friends for accessing resources to achievement such as reaching goals in life among people is unclear. This is possible because the contribution depends on different combinations of social capital components. One possibility is combining both the structural and functional components of social capital multiplicatively generates an additional contribution because of their complementary. To clarify the contribution, a survey of 704 Chinese adults in Hong Kong provides data for analysis. Specifically, confirmatory factor analysis ensured the validity of measures for regression analysis to test the theses. Results support the complementarity view rather than the competition view, as the combination of social capital components derived from friends contributed to life achievement. Results thus imply the benefit of integrating resources from various components of social capital to advance achievement in adults. Accordingly, practices can capitalize on the complementarity of social capital components to optimize people’s life achievement.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s43545-021-00247-x.pdf

Complementary contribution of social capital accessible from friends to achievement in life

A broadly pluralist tradition of political sociology flourishes today in its neopluralist reconstructions in political science and, to a lesser extent, sociology. Since the 1970s the pluralist tradition of political analysis, which stressed the causal primacy of a plurality of collective social actors, has passed into a neopluralist phase. This transition entailed an extension of the pluralist repertoire of actors into the once-forbidden territory of Marxian class and antiestablishment social movements, as well as an enhanced recognition of the grounding and embeddedness of politically influential actors in social structures and systemic dynamics beyond those of culture. Neopluralism expands the pluralist stress on multiple bases of social action to encompass a yet fuller range of actors (class ones in particular), an increased sensitivity to structural and systemic modes of power not reducible to social action, and a more complex articulation of agency and structure. Insofar as frameworks and theories of political analysis today reflect both this ecumenical approach to the varieties of potentially important actors (for example, union movements as well as business lobbies and interest associations) and the approach's openness to the causal powers of both agency and structure (for example, macroeconomic and political institutional constraints upon as well as ground for action) today we are all neo-pluralists. Neofunctionalism is a notable complement to neopluralism, much as functionalism was an important complement to classical pluralism. Neofunctionalism is hardly the pervasive force that functionalism was during the first two decades following World War II. Nevertheless it remains a significant presence in sociology, especially political sociology, neopluralist political sociology most particularly.

Frank J. Lechner

Papers

The Handbook of Political Sociology: Neopluralism and Neofunctionalism in Political Sociology