Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Constructing the Political Spectacle

Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives.

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the concept of social capital and to distinguish its different forms, focusing on their potential effects on health. According to many scholars, social capital comprises social networks, norms of reciprocity or social support and social trust. In this article the core element, the social network, has been further distinguished by the direction of ties and levels of formality, strength and diversity. In the past few years there has been increased interest in social capital in the health field and a great deal of research has suggested that social capital is generally positively related to health. However, little research has been conducted into how different forms of social capital or social networks influence health. What is the difference, for instance, between bonding and bridging social capital in terms of health outcomes? It is important to distinguish the different forms because they imply different resources, support and obligations. More research needs to be conducted into the different forms of social capital and their effects on health. A special focus should be placed on the health impacts of cross-cutting - or bridging and linking - forms of social capital.

The Importance of Different Forms of Social Capital for Health

Public trust in tourism institutions.

This article investigates the determinants of social capital by analyzing an original survey of post-Soviet Central Asia It tests hypotheses derived from two related questions: whether networks, norms, and trust are empirically related and the extent to which four factors—culture, regime type, perceptions of government responsiveness, and development interventions—predict levels of social capital The results show that trust and norms diverge from networking Interaction is higher under less repressive regimes and is further increased by development interventions; trust and norms are higher under conditions of greater repression Culture does not affect any indicators of social capital, but perceptions of responsiveness correlate with higher levels of trust As such, disaggregating social capital is a promising new direction for research Scholars should investigate why the components of social capital sometimes correlate but at other times diverge, and they should consider the possibility of distinct causal mechanisms in their development

/pdf/the-origins-of-social-capital-evidence-from-a-survey-of-post-211o1rbsoa.pdf

The Origins of Social Capital Evidence From a Survey of Post-Soviet Central Asia

attempts to test Putnam's theory explicitly in the analysis of post-socialist politiesmost notably former East Germany-attention has been directed more towards his equilibrium thesis of 'virtuous' and 'vicious' circles. While stressing Putnam's neglect of factors such as institutional design and third-party enforcement,4 the focus in current analyses has been less on the issue of social capital as such and the micro-sociological underpinnings of non-communitarian social capital. The latter is the topic of this article. Therefore, rather than asking ourselves 'what is the importance of social capital to successful democratisation', the proper question to pose in our case should be 'exactly what is it in the nature of social capital in post-socialist societies that makes people less inclined to invest trust in formal democratic institutions?' Putnam's own reply is that 'sanctions that support norms of reciprocity against threat of opportunism are less likely to be imposed upwards and less likely to be acceded to, if imposed' in the kind of particularistic and vertical networks from which negative social capital breeds.5 Contrary to Putnam's argument, though, we hold that lack of trust in formal institutions is not due primarily to difficulties in implementing sanctions in social networks. Although Putnam was right in focusing on the exchange relations that constitute the backbone of these networks, the important point is actually that communitarian and non-communitarian social capital draw on two different modes of reducing social transaction costs. It is this difference rather than the problem of sanctions that accounts for the difficulties of transforming non-communitarian social

Putnam's Social Capital Theory Goes East: A Case Study of Western Ukraine and L'viv

Using Sweden as an example, we propose the hypothesis that local candidate lists rest on a different rationale compared to national party lists, more specifically a rationality that has developed as a result of an altered relationship between the local and national levels and is expressed in terms of localism. The emergence of new local lists is most likely an effect of the challenges to the welfare state posed in the past 40 years. However, although local lists are essentially a recent phenomenon, our examples suggest that their existence can also be explained in terms of historical patterns of dissent from and resistance to state intervention at the local level.

Local candidate lists Historical artefacts or a novel phenomenon? A research note

Only rarely have the non-secular roots of modern political individualism been subject to study. In this article I forward the hypothesis that modern political individualism, as expressed by 19th-century liberalism, was a result of individualistic, low Church and nonconformist revivals to the same extent that it was a product of secular rationalism. The hypothesis is probed in a comparative case study of rural liberalism in two north European regions, Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) and Varmland (Sweden). I address three key requirements of the hypothesis: that the nonconformist revival movements in 18th and 19th-century northern Europe promoted an individualistic outlook among their followers; that individuality rooted in religious awakenings was congenial to liberal ideology; and that traits of non-secular individualism were incorporated with everyday liberal political discourse and practice.

Liberalism and Revivalism. A Comparative Case Study of Liberal Ideology, Individualism, and Revivalism in Schleswig-Holstein and Värmland, ca. 1860–1920

Histories Meet Histories : A Pilot Study of Migration and Civil Society in Swedish Medium-Sized Cities, Small Towns, and Villages

Histories Meet Histories: A Pilot Study of Migration and Civil Society in Swedish Medium-Sized Cities, Small Towns, and Villages

Jesse Kauffman's study ties in with a recent trend in the extensive research on the First World War. Its theme is the German occupations, specifically the policies adopted and implemented in the Im...

Martin Åberg

Papers

Putnam's Social Capital Theory Goes East: A Case Study of Western Ukraine and L'viv

Local candidate lists Historical artefacts or a novel phenomenon? A research note

Liberalism and Revivalism. A Comparative Case Study of Liberal Ideology, Individualism, and Revivalism in Schleswig-Holstein and Värmland, ca. 1860–1920

Histories Meet Histories: A Pilot Study of Migration and Civil Society in Swedish Medium-Sized Cities, Small Towns, and Villages

Elusive alliance : The German occupation of Poland in World War I