Le Grand-Duché de Luxembourg : Aspects de sociologie politique

Res Publica ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Author(s):  
Michel Delvaux ◽  
Mario Hirsch

The Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg remains largely unexplored as far as social science is concerned. An excellent study in electoral sociology by Jules Gérard-Libois gives interesting insights and points out rather convincingly that Luxembourg is endowed with a political system that has a marked degree of specificity, be it from the point of view of the electoral system, electoral habits or the social structure in general.  It shows in particular that owing to the rather peculiar electoral system (ordinal proportional representation system allowing panachage), a large party diversity and a dynamic regionalism is fostered.Consequently, the systematic study of small political entities such as Luxembourg enables a considerable and genuine refinement of political analysis.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Mahmoud Mahgoub

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of using proportional representation system on the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system within the period from 1997 to 2017, in which Algeria has experienced five legislative elections regularly every five years by testing a hypothesis about adopting the proportional representation system on the basis of the closed list during the foregoing legislative elections has obviously influenced the exacerbation of the Algerian party system’s fragmentation, compared to other factors. Design/methodology/approach The essence of the theoretical framework of this study is to address the effect of the electoral system as an independent variable on the party system as a dependent variable. The starting point for that framework is to reassess the “Duverger’s law,” which appeared since the early 1950s and has influenced the foregoing relationship, and then to review the literature on a new phase that tried to provide a more accurate mechanism for determining the number of parties and their relative weight, whether in terms of electoral votes or parliamentary seats. This means that researchers began to use a measure called the effective number of parties (ENP) for Laakso and Taagepera since 1979. The study elaborates the general concepts of the electoral system and the party system. It used Laakso, Taagepera index of the “ENP” to measure the phenomenon of fragmentation party during the five legislative elections from 1997 to 2017 in Algeria. Findings The results of the study reveal that the proportional representation electoral system – beside other factors – had clear impacts on the fragmentation of the Algerian party system by all standards, whether on the level of the apparent rise in the number of the parties represented in the Algerian parliament from 10 parties in 1997 election to 36 parties in 2017 election or according to the index of Laakso and Taagepera (ENP). The average number of effective number of electoral parties in the five elections was around 7.66, and the average number of effective number of parliamentary parties in the five elections was around 4.39, which puts Algeria in an advanced degree of the fragmentation of the party system. Originality/value This study about the phenomenon of the fragmentation of the party system, which is one of the new subjects in the field of comparative politics – globally and in the Arab world. Hence, the value of this study aims to shed light on this mysterious area of science, the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system during the period from 1997 to 2017.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Saida Khedrane ◽  
Al-Sayed Abdel-Mottaleb Ghanem

The current study aims to measure the level of political trends of University’s youth in Palestine and Algeria. A questionnaire has been used for collecting data about the opinions of a sample of students at Al - Najah National University of Palestine and Kasdi Merbah University of Algeria enrolled in the academic year 2015- 2016. The study has adopted the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) for the purposes of measurement. It has concluded that the nature of the political trends of the university youth at the Palestinian University tends to the negative level more than the positive one due to the conditions of occupation and political instability in the Palestine arena. On the other hand, the nature of the political trends of the university youth in the Algerian university tends to the positive level more than the negative one. This is due to the state of political stability characterized by the political system in Algeria, as well as the political reforms that have positively affected the nature of the political trends of the university youth since President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika took power in Algeria, down to creating a higher council for youth in the new constitutional amendment of 2016.


1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8

One of the fields of sociology which is experiencing a dramatic explosion is that catch‐all area of Women's Studies. Books and articles touching on women's experiences in the labour market or in the home, the education of girls or images of femininity, the impact of the law on women or sexism in the social sciences have been proliferating in the last decade. Much of the impetus has been provided by the renascent Women's Movement, and the various academic concerns echo the diverse attacks on the status quo being made by politically active women. The one thing which holds all this material together is an explicit concern to bring women to the centre of the stage in the social sciences, instead of leaving them (as they so often have been) in the wings or with mere walk‐on parts. Taking the woman's point of view is seen as a legitimate corrective to the tendency to ignore women altogether. But is this sufficient to constitute the nucleus of a new speciality within sociology, which is what seems to be happening to ‘Women's Studies’ and ‘feminist’ social science? More seriously, should sociological discussions of women be ghettoised into special courses on women in society? As a preliminary attempt to redress the balance maybe such separate development can be justified, but if that is all that happens, the enriching potential of feminist social science may well be lost to mainstream sociology. It is not just that feminist social scientists want women to be brought in to complete the picture. It is not just that they claim that half the picture is being left unexposed. The claims are often much more ambitious than that: what much feminist writing is attempting is a demonstration of the distortion in the half image which is exposed. An injection of feminist thinking into practically any sociological speciality could lead to a profound re‐orientation of that field. More than this, a feminist approach can indicate the ways in which traditional boundaries between sociological specialities can obscure women and their special position in society. Feminist social scientists throw down the gauntlet on the way in which the field of sociology has traditionally been carved up. But if women's studies are kept in their ghetto, this challenge will be lost: to me, the explicitly critical stance which feminist research takes with respect to mainstream sociology is one of its most exciting qualities, and such research has important insights to contribute to the development of the discipline.


2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. N. Eisenstadt

Japan constitutes a very interesting and paradoxical case from the point of view of the place of trust in the processes of institution building and institutional dynamics. This problem has, of course, been the basic thrust of Durkheim's emphasis on the importance of precontractual elements for the fulfillment of contracts seemingly dealing with purely ‘utilitarian’ considerations. But this crucial insight – and problematic – has not been systematically followed up in the social science literature. Only lately it has been again taken up – initially, perhaps paradoxically – from within various rational choice approaches which have come to recognize that continuity of patterns of social interaction and of institutional frameworks cannot be explained by purely rational-utilitarian considerations (Braithwaite and Levi, 1998; Kramer and Tyler, 1993). At the same time the more recent analyses have also pointed to some of the complexities, paradoxes; and problems of the construction of trust in social interaction and institution building.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (2/4) ◽  
pp. 58-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Ventsel

This paper attempts to integrate discourse theories, mainly the theory of hegemony by Essex School, and Tartu–Moscow School’s cultural semiotics, and sets for itself the modest task to point to the applicability of semiotic approach in political analysis. The so-called post-foundationalist view, that is common for discourse theories, is primarily characterized by the rejection of essentialist notions of ground for the social, and the inauguration of cultural and discursive characteristics (such as asymmetry and entropy; explosion; antagonism; insurmountable tension between organization and disorganization, regularity and irregularity, etc.) into the wider social scientific paradigm. Customarily, those characteristics have been attributed to contingent or peripheral events and phenomena that by nature do not belong to the social structure proper. Grounds for such ‘groundless’ contingencies are found in philosophy (Marchart), or for instance from the psychoanalytic notion of affect (Laclau). Many discourse theorists proceed here from Derrida’s position that in the process of signification there is an overabundance of meaning which renders final closure impossible (Howarth; Glynos). However, it seems that despite placing communication at the heart of their conceptions of discourse, the communicative character of constructing power relations remains undertheorized in those conceptions. This article attempts to approach the above mentioned problem by way of the concepts of communication and autocommunication(Lotman). The outcomes stemming from the latter are unavoidable,since the result of any possible research (text) itself belongs to culture or a larger discourse and opera tes as the organizing function of the latter. Hence, research practice and its results always need to be looked at as mutually affecting each other.


2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Hayden

The social science literature on ethnically divided states is huge and varied, but suggestions for constitutional solutions are strangely uniform: “loose federations” of ethnically defined ministates, with minimal central authority that must act by consensus and thus cannot act at all on issues that are contested rather than consented. In Bosnia, the political system mandated by the international High Representative suffer the same structural flaws that were used to make the former Yugoslav federation and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina unworkable. Similarly nonviable systems were proposed in 1994 to 1995 for Croatia and in 1998 to 1999 for Kosovo and recently for Cyprus and for Iraq. This article analyzes the paradox of mandating consensus-based politics in ethnically divided states, inclusion in which does not have the consent of most members of at least one group.


2014 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-88
Author(s):  
Mario Caciagli

Stability and predictability had been the norm in the German political system before the unification. The seven federal elections in the unified Germany from 1990 to 2013 did have significant consequences on the traditional continuity. After the last two governments headed by Helmut Kohl (1990-1998), the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder became Chancellor in a Red-Green coalition (1998-2005) and the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel became Chancellor, fi rst in a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats (2005-2009), than in a coalition with the Liberals (2009-2013), and after the 2013 elections in a Grand Coalition again.  These frequent changes can be explained by the mobility of the electorate: the cumulative effect of the growth of the middle class and the general social mobility have eroded traditional loyalties, as the disaffection of the youth includes changing electoral choices or tendency to no-vote. Economic and social issues too did have effect on voting behavior: because their critical social situation the electors of the East had preferred fi rst Kohl’s CDU, than Schröder’s SPD and again the CDU under Merkel’s leadership; in the West millions of left electors disappointed by Schröder’s contentious reforms of the labor market leaved the SPD in the 2009 and 2013 elections; the performance of the economy in the last years after periods of crisis, collocating Germany at the top of the European Union, has stimulated the support to Merkel. Because a new party, the PDS than Linke, which has stable roots in the East, but can’t be partner of a government; because the exclusion from the Bundestag of the liberal FDP; and, finally, because the least reform of the electoral system toward more proportionality: all that injects uncertainty into a “fluid” party and political system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-42
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Marzec

Abstract Background In the literature one can find studies on the legitimacy of the political system or institutions (organs) of power. There are no studies on legitimacy from the point of view of social economy entities. Social perception is a factor that influences the success of social economy entities. Research aims The author set out to adapt the conceptual (semantic) apparatus to the analysis of legitimacy in relation to institutions operating in the social economy sector. Methodology The article has a theoretical character and presents the importance of the concept of legitimacy in the environment of social entrepreneurship (conceptual paper). The thesis the author will try to prove is that legitimisation of social economy entities is an essential element of the functioning of the social sector. The analysis was made on the basis of Polish conditions. Findings The analysis of planes and factors shaping the legitimacy of social economy entities seems interesting. Summarising the results of the research, it can be seen that the category of legitimacy, combined with the acceptance and legal validation of the activities of individual entities, as well as the entire social economy system, can be useful.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Antoine Savoye

*Full article is in FrenchFrench abstract: En dépit de l’ostracisme de Durkheim à leur égard, les représentants de la science sociale issue de Le Play n’ont pas ignoré son oeuvre et l’ont commentée – même si laconiquement – dans leurs périodiques, d’une part, La Réforme sociale, d’autre part, La Science sociale et ses dérivés. Les leplaysiens restés dans l’orthodoxie du maître nourrissent – de la Division du travail social aux Fondements élémentaires de la vie religieuse – les mêmes griefs à l’encontre de Durkheim. Volontiers polémiques, ils refusent sa conception du fait social qui, « supérieur et antérieur à l’individu … s’impose à lui avec une force coercitive prépondérante » (Clément, 1915). Leurs critiques perdent cependant de leur virulence après la mort de Durkheim, au fur et à mesure que la sociologie s’avère une science durable dont le projet devient irréfutable. Du côté des partisans de la science sociale renouvelée par Henri de Tourville, l’appréciation de Durkheim est différente. Plus tardive, elle porte sur l’objet de la sociologie et sur la méthode prônée par l’auteur des Règles. Aux yeux des tourvilliens, celui-ci n’emprunte pas, à tort, la « voie royale » de la science sociale : l’enquête par observation directe, et néglige l’outil de coordination des faits sociaux qu’est la nomenclature mise au point par Tourville. Dès lors, les résultats auxquels aboutit Durkheim, par exemple dans les Fondements, sont sujets à caution (Descamps, 1912). La critique des tourvilliens est d’autant plus vive qu’elle se nourrit d’un dépit : Durkheim ne fait aucun cas de leurs travaux (Périer, 1913). Le débat qu’ils auraient souhaité engager n’aura lieu que post mortem, grâce à Bouglé et ses élèves du Centre de documentation sociale (Aron, Polin) qui joueront le jeu, dans les années trente, de la confrontation entre sociologie et science sociale.English abstract: Despite the ostracism he maintained towards them, Le Play’s social science continuers did not ignore Durkheim’s work and commented on it – even if laconically – in their journals. The LePlayists loyal to the master’s orthodoxy raised the same grievances against Durkheim throughout his academic life. They refused to accept his conception of the social fact as superior and prior to the individual, imposing itself on him with a coercive force. Their criticisms, however, were less virulent after Durkheim’s death, as sociology proved a sustainable science whose project had become irrefutable. With the dissident LePlayists, the view is different. Emerging later, it dealt with the object of sociology and the method advocated by the author of the Règles. From the Tourvillians’ point of view, Durkheim’s sociology does not adopt the best path for social science (investigation by direct observation), and neglects its process of coordination of social facts (the nomenclature developed by Tourville). Consequently, Durkheim’s results are questionable. The debate the Tourvillians wanted to have with Durkheim took place post mortem, thanks to Bouglé and his students from the Centre de documentation sociale, and their engagement, in the 1930s, with Durkheimian sociology and social science.


1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Hegselmann ◽  
Werner Raub ◽  
Thomas Voss

AbstractDo individuals accept a moral point of view - if they are completely oriented towards their natural preferences and interests? The present article outlines the context of discussion concerning this question within moral philosophy and the social science. In addition it suggests a game-theoretical model with the help of which the question can be answered positively.


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