Negotiating the State: The Development of Social Organizations in China

2000 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 124-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Saich

One notable feature of the reform programme sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been the expansion of social organizations. With greater social space created by the reforms and with the state unable or unwilling to carry the same wide range of services and functions as before, organizations with varying degrees of autonomy from the party-state structures have been set up. They have been allowed or have created an increased organizational sphere and social space in which to operate and to represent social interests, and to convey those interests into the policy-making process. They not only liaise between state and society but also fulfil vital welfare functions that would otherwise go unserved.

Author(s):  
Kevork Oskanian

Abstract This article contributes a securitisation-based, interpretive approach to state weakness. The long-dominant positivist approaches to the phenomenon have been extensively criticised for a wide range of deficiencies. Responding to Lemay-Hébert's suggestion of a ‘Durkheimian’, ideational-interpretive approach as a possible alternative, I base my conceptualisation on Migdal's view of state weakness as emerging from a ‘state-in-society's’ contested ‘strategies of survival’. I argue that several recent developments in Securitisation Theory enable it to capture this contested ‘collective knowledge’ on the state: a move away from state-centrism, the development of a contextualised ‘sociological’ version, linkages made between securitisation and legitimacy, and the acknowledgment of ‘securitisations’ as a contested Bourdieusian field. I introduce the concept of ‘securitisation gaps’ – divergences in the security discourses and practices of state and society – as a concept aimed at capturing this contested role of the state, operationalised along two logics (reactive/substitutive) – depending on whether they emerge from securitisations of the state action or inaction – and three intensities (latent, manifest, and violent), depending on the extent to which they involve challenges to state authority. The approach is briefly illustrated through the changing securitisation gaps in the Republic of Lebanon during the 2019–20 ‘October Uprising’.


Author(s):  
Надежда Мартыненко ◽  
Nadezhda Martynenko

The monograph deals with the problem of prostitution as one of the social deviations, conducted a retrospective analysis of all aspects of this phenomenon in the period of the mid XIX – early XX centuries.Investigated the origins of legalization of prostitution in Imperial Russia, shows the mechanism of regulation, the organization of police control and sanitary supervision. The ways of self-organization of society, the conditions that contributed to the development of private and public initiatives of self-help against the danger of turning to vicious fishing are revealed. The relationship of state structures, self-government bodies and public organizations in the prevention of prostitution. Describes the experience of Russian participation in the international fight against prostitution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a synthesis of the obtained characteristics provides a basis to believe that the formation of the social institution of prostitution is a logical and objective process related to the deviation inherent in the human community. As a social deviation, prostitution is of double importance to society. The positive side is expressed in the illegal provision of needs that are not adequately met by the institution of the family, serves as a" safe valve " for aggressive trends. The negative is manifested in facilitation of crime. In modern Russian society, sexual morality normalizes many things that have traditionally been recognized as deviant in sexual behavior. The topic is relevant for the present in terms of the presence and establishment of this phenomenon. Prostitution remains one of indeterminant crime related to her involvement in minors with drugs, crimes and harboring criminals, a robbery and robbery.The reality clearly shows the unsolved nature of this burning problem. The tasks facing the current generation to combat negative social phenomena cannot be solved without the close cooperation of the state and society in this direction, without the historical experience of predecessors, without continuity. The introduction of the new material into scientific circulation in the course of the research enables a wide range of specialists, public organizations to use the historical experience of creating constructive mechanisms of interaction between the state and society to reduce the spread of modern prostitution, to solve urgent problems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ling LI

AbstractThis article identifies and conceptualizes the structural features of the Party-state and proposes a “dual normative system” as a framework to interpret the constitutional reality of China. This framework has four components: (1) structural integration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or the Party) and the state; (2) reserved delegation of authority to the state; (3) bifurcation of state decision-making processes; and (4) cohabitation of the two normative systems: one of the Party and one of the state. This article demonstrates that the political reforms in China since the 1980s have not separated the power of the Party and the state, but have created an increasingly institutionalized dual normative system that is more complex compared with the previous fused system, yet more pliable to adjustments and more open to different interpretations, including to that of the “Party-state constitutionalism”, which interprets the “rule of law” as compatible with the rule of the Party.


2020 ◽  
pp. 266-297
Author(s):  
Alexander Sokolov ◽  
Asya Palagicheva

The article considers the essence and approaches to understanding network political protest. Traditional forms of collective action are changing under the influence of information and communication technologies. The network paradigm focuses on the position of the individual in the social space, the degree of his involvement in the communication space, the ability to control and regulate the intensity of the information flow. Network structures are more flexible and adaptive, more in line with the new reality. Special and main principles of the network structure of political protest are revealed. The article also presents definitions of political mobilization and demobilization. These processes Express the rivalry of the conflicting parties-the state and society, where the support of the broad masses of the population is an important category. Based on the data of the monitoring study, the features of the development of civil protest activism and the use of mobilization technologies were identified. ICTs have a significant impact on their formation and transformation. The state, reacting to forms of real and virtual activity, formulates a counteraction strategy. It is expressed in the use of technologies for the demobilization of citizens, which are also undergoing changes in the era of digitalization


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Huwy-Min Lucia Liu

This article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party governed death in Shanghai during the first half of the People's Republic of China. It examines how officials nationalized funeral institutions, promoted cremation, and transformed what they believed to be the unproductivity of the funeral industry into productivity (by raising pigs in cemeteries, for instance). I show how each of these policies eliminated possible sources of identity that were prevalent in conceptualizing who the dead were and what their relationships with the living could be. Specifically, in addition to the construction of socialist workers, the state worked to remove cosmopolitan, associational, religious, and relational ideas of self. By modifying funerary rituals and ways of interment, the Chinese state aimed to produce individualized and undifferentiated political subjects directly tied to the party-state. The civil governance of death aimed to produce citizen-subjects at the end of life.


Author(s):  
Victor Rossiev

The present research featured the state policy that ensures the right on free legal assistance in the Kemerovo region. The author analyzed the efficiency of state and non-state systems of free legal aid in Kuzbass. He believes the state of affairs in this area can hardly be called satisfactory, due to both the lack of political will, funding, information, and public awareness. Kuzbass lawyers and other entities have no motivation to provide free legal assistance as they are discouraged by low fees and red tape. The author believes that it is the non-state system of free legal assistance that should be considered as a priority. Free legal assistance requires significant organizational costs to set up legal clinics at universities and a full-scale system of state legal bureaus. Currently, lawyers are not capable of providing primary qualified free legal assistance in all civil cases. Therefore, it would be reasonable to create conditions for consulting a wide range of citizens by other organizations involved in the system of non-state legal assistance.


1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Boyle

Whilescholarly cautions are needed as regards both simplistic dichotomies and the subtle rhetoric that converts ‘civil society’ into a new sacred depository for ‘a wide range of emancipatory aspirations’,1frequently pitted against that ‘predatory species’ we call the state,2the view from Yaoundé suggests that questions about social classes are likely to be helpful in any analysis of the complex relationship between state and society in contemporary Africa.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Dezalay ◽  
Bryant G. Garth

AbstractThe paper begins by exploring literature on the legal profession that tends to obscure questions at the heart of our research. It then turns to our approach, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, which looks beyond the category of profession as such to the social space in which professions are situated. The key from our perspective is to examine both the social interests embedded in law and lawyers and the specific interests of learned professionals themselves. This perspective leads not to criticism or praise of lawyers, but rather to an understanding of how elite lawyers participate in the construction of the state and economy. We examine relationships between three poles ‐ knowledge, state politics, and power, whether economic or social ‐ that contribute to shaping the legal profession.


Author(s):  
Jozefien De Bock

Historically, those societies that have the longest tradition in multicultural policies are settler societies. The question of how to deal with temporary migrants has only recently aroused their interest. In Europe, temporary migration programmes have a much longer history. In the period after WWII, a wide range of legal frameworks were set up to import temporary workers, who came to be known as guest workers. In the end, many of these ‘guests’ settled in Europe permanently. Their presence lay at the basis of European multicultural policies. However, when these policies were drafted, the former mobility of guest workers had been forgotten. This chapter will focus on this mobility of initially temporary workers, comparing the period of economic growth 1945-1974 with the years after the 1974 economic crisis. Further, it will look at the kind of policies that were developed towards guest workers in the era before multiculturalism. This way, it shows how their consideration as temporary residents had far-reaching consequences for the immigrants, their descendants and the receiving societies involved. The chapter will finish by suggesting a number of lessons from the past. If the mobility-gap between guest workers and present-day migrants is not as big as generally assumed, then the consequences of previous neglect should serve as a warning for future policy making.


Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Gorman

This article explores the relationship between netizens and the Chinese Communist Party by investigating examples of “flesh searches” targeting corrupt officials. Case studies link the initiative of netizens and the reaction of the Chinese state to the pattern of management of social space in contemporary China.


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