Consumption Cleavages and Welfare Politics

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Relative Advantage ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
A Minor

The rôle of consumption cleavages in influencing political behaviour has received a great deal of attention in recent years. This paper argues that some critics have misunderstood the approach as a theory about the direct influence of social circumstances on behaviour, rather than as a theory about the way in which people's perceptions of one another's positions in relation to the means of consumption are articulated by political parties to become bases for political action. Dunleavy has argued that ideas about self-interest in state and private consumption in relation to other people are of the greatest importance in this, while Saunders suggests that the security associated with private property rights has stronger influence. Both these claims are tested with data from a recent national survey. ‘Consumption sector’ is shown to play a minor but significant rôle in influencing ideas. Part of this influence appears to lie in the social meaning of private property, as Saunders claims. Comparisons of relative advantage across sectoral cleavages, however, contribute little to the explanation of political ideas.

scholarly journals Towards sustainable property? Exploring the entanglement of ownership and sustainability

2021 ◽  
pp. 053901842110114
Author(s):  
Philipp Degens
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Emissions Trading ◽  
Private Property ◽  
German Law ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Carbon Emissions Trading ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bundle Of Rights ◽  
Do So

This article explores the relation between ownership and sustainability on a conceptual level. It specifically examines different imaginaries of sustainable property by asking how private property rights and their restrictions are conceptualized as instruments for sustainability. To do so, conflicting notions of property that underlie Western jurisprudence and political theory are contrasted. This brings us to the identification of two major traditions in property thought that build on atomist or relational conceptions of society and property, respectively. Property might be conceived as an owner’s exclusive control over an object, or as a ‘bundle of rights’ that comprises entitlements, restrictions, and obligations to various actors. Largely within the paradigm of modernization as a trajectory of sustainability, these two fundamental traditions in property theory relate to different approaches to encode sustainability into property law: i) propertization, i.e. the extension of private property forms, as in the case of carbon emissions trading schemes; ii) the acknowledgment of social and environmental obligations inherent to property, illustrated by the social obligation norm in German law.

scholarly journals Preventive Therapy: The Neoclassical Gradualist Model of Transition from Central Administration to Market Relations

2002 ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
John Marangos
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Preventive Therapy ◽  
Central Administration ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
The Social ◽  
Market Relations

The fundamental basis of the neoclassical gradualist approach to transition in Russia and Eastern Europe was to establish economic, institutional, political, and ideological structures before attempting liberalization. Without this minimum foundation, radical reforms would have inhibited the development of a competitive market capitalist system. This was because "privatization, marketization, and the introduction of competition cannot be contemplated in an economy reduced to barter" (Carrington 1992, 24). Also, implementation of the reform program required minimum standards ofliving; otherwise the social fabric of the whole society would have been at risk. The reform had to foster a social consensus that endorsed a system of secure private property rights (Murrell, 1995, 171) and had to be guided by the principles of voluntariness and free choice (Kornai, 1992b, 17).

The Contemporary Reception of St Thomas on Law and Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 611-625
Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Right

The reception of Thomistic political and legal philosophy is considered with respect to what is called ‘political liberalism’. The appeal to a hypothetical state of nature should be rejected, as it misconstrues the social nature of human beings. Aquinas’ account of the origin of political society starts from an interpretation of human nature. On this basis one can account for human rights, the importance of the right to religious liberty, the family as the basic cell of society, civil society as including subsidiary authorities, the importance of private property, and the nature and role of freedom. A key question for the continued flourishing of a free society is what practically enables persons to govern for the genuine good of others.

Spanish Imperial Vassalage and the Social Reproduction of Slavery in Colonial Cuba

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-285
Author(s):  
Karen Y. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Center Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract With the social reproduction of slavery in colonial Cuba as its center point, this essay draws on the recent historiographical acknowledgment of the way vassalage mediated the often starkly drawn social distinctions between whites and enslaved people within colonial Spanish America. Inside the region’s emergent, capitalist political economy, feudal vassalage continued to define each social sector’s rights and responsibilities vis-á-vis the Spanish Crown. The rights of enslaved vassals derived from their potential contributions to the Spanish monarchy’s imperial survival, in their capacity to populate the extensive empire with loyal Catholic subjects and potential military defenders. These concerns also justified the Spanish monarchial state’s ability to intervene between its slaveholding vassals and its enslaved vassals, by limiting private property rights over enslaved people and operating in ways that did not fully conform to capitalist profit motives. Awareness of such sovereign-vassal interdependencies challenges historians to broaden their understanding of the relationship between capitalism and slavery to include the remnants of feudal social-political forms, even into the nineteenth century.

Making Private Property: Enclosure, Common Right and the Work of Hedges

Rural History ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS BLOMLEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Important Work ◽  
The Social

Analyses of enclosure in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England have tended to focus on the social work of representations, in particular estate maps. I depart from this emphasis, however, in my attempt to focus on the consequential and often contradictory role of material objects in producing enclosure. In particular, I emphasise the important work that hedges did, physically, symbolically and legally, in the dispossession of the commoner. Acting as an organic barbed wire, the hedge was increasingly put to work to protect the lands of the powerful. Disrupting the propertied spaces of the commoning economy, hedges were not surprisingly targeted by those who opposed privatisation. The hedge, as both a sign and material barrier, served complicated and sometimes opposing ends. It materialised private property's right to exclude, but thus came into conflict with common property's right not to be excluded. The hedge was both an edge to property and was itself property. Both the encloser and the commoner, however, had property interests in the hedge. If broken, the hedge could signal violence and riot, or the legitimate assertion of common right. The hedge served as an often formidable material barrier, yet this very materiality made it vulnerable to ‘breaking’ and ‘leveling’.

scholarly journals Gender, Class and Ideology: The Social Function of Virgin Sacrifice in Euripides' Children of Herakles

2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kawalko Roselli
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Marginal Groups ◽  
The Social

Abstract This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality (as a heroine from an aristocratic family) and marginality (as a woman and associated with other marginal social groups) of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status (both subordinate and elite) embodies the social position of other ““marginal”” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings.

scholarly journals The Social Representational Theory of Symbolic Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marc Stewart Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Symbolic Politics ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Representations Theory

<p>While there have been repeated exhortations that the study of political behaviour be accorded greater status in social psychological research, such calls have gone relatively unheeded. This thesis is intended to address to some small extent this problem. Specifically, an argument is presented to address the flaws of a little-heralded theory of political behaviour, symbolic politics theory (Sears, 1993), by re-articulating that theory within a broader theory of social behaviour, social representations theory (Moscovici, 1973; 1988). At its heart symbolic politics contends that political behaviour is based on the evocation of 'symbolic predispositions' in response to symbolic content of political objects. Following Verkuyten (1985) political symbols and symbolic predispositions are re-interpreted from the perspective of social representations theory. The result is a shift in emphasis onto the role of values, discourse, and social interaction in political preference and opinion. These concepts are investigated using data derived from a four-phase panel survey of the Wellington, New Zealand, electorates, as well as transcripts of parliamentary debates, and a laboratory experiment to provide support for the re-articulation of symbolic politics within this framework. The first two studies present qualitative and quantitative analyses of open-ended questions designed to probe the subjective meanings of ideological labels, and the concepts, ideas, and values associated with the major political parties of the time. The results indicate that the boundaries of group membership are defined by differences in representational content between groups, as well as within-group consensus. The second set of studies investigate the role of social values in political perception and preference. Firstly, political parties were differentiated by the frequency of rhetorical use by their members of the two values of freedom and equality, consistent with the predictions of Rokeach (1973). Secondly, survey respondents used a value-attribution instrument to indicate the values which they perceived parties to oppose or endorse. Again, the values associated with these parties were shown to be predictive of preference. Thirdly, respondents completed the Schwartz (1992) values inventory, which was used to produce a value profile of supporters of different parties' supporters. Weak support was found for Rokeach's (1973) two-value model of politics, with the parties differentiable on two discriminant functions defined by self-reliance values and equality values. The final study in this section presents the results of a laboratory manipulation in which groups of participants viewed different party political advertisements before rating the major parties for favourability and value attributions. This study indicates that exposure to political media may influence the values parties are seen to represent, and that this may impact positively or negatively on perceptions of the favourability of those parties. The final empirical chapter utilises a social network measure to investigate the role, if any, that one's interpersonal environment may play in political preference and representations. A clear relationship was found between the political composition of the environment and primary respondent preference and ideological self-identification. These findings are interpreted as supporting the social representational theory of symbolic politics. Qualifications and limitations of a representational theory of symbolic politics are discussed, as are the implications for such a conceptualisation of political and social behaviour.</p>

2. Approaches in comparative politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Guy Peters
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Dependent Variables

This chapter examines five main approaches in comparative politics that represent important contributions: old and new institutional analysis, interest approach, ideas approach, individual approach, and the influence of the international environment. The role of ‘interaction’ is also explored. After explaining the use of theory in comparative political analysis, the chapter considers structural functionalism, systems theory, Marxism, corporatism, institutionalism, governance, and comparative political economy. It also discusses behavioural and rational choice approaches, how political culture helps to understand political behaviour in different countries, self-interest in politics, and the implications of globalization for comparative politics. The chapter concludes by assessing the importance of looking at political processes and of defining what the ‘dependent variables’ are.

The multispatial governance of social and economic policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Bob Jessop
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics Of The Body

This chapter distinguishes Foucault’s approach from the work of Anglo-Foucauldian scholars. The latter adopted a microsocial perspective, focused on the programmes and rationalities of government that work across multiple alliances between different actors, and argued for bottom-up civil society responsibilization. Foucault was not only state-phobic but also suspicious of political action based on civil society. His theoretical interests shifted from the micro-physics of disciplinary society and its anatomo-politics of the body to the more general strategic codification of a plurality of discourses, practices, technologies of power, and institutional ensembles around a specific governmental rationality concerned with the social body (bio-power) in a consolidated capitalist society. This is reflected in the statification of government and the governmentalization of the state. This led to his analyses of sovereignty, territorial statehood, and state power and the role of civil society in this regard and to less well-substantiated claims about their articulation to the logic of capital accumulation.

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