Democratization in Serbia: An Analysis of Rational Choice and Structuralist Explanations

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunja Apostolov-Dimitrijevic
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
The Face

This paper explains political democratization in Post-Milosevic Serbia, utilizing two different accounts of the democratization process: one rooted in the rational choice framework and the other in structuralism. While rational choice explains the decisive role of political leadership in overcoming path dependence, the structuralist explanations show the transnational linkages that encourage democratization in the face of domestic setbacks. This particular debate between the two types of explanations represents the larger debate concerning the role of internal factors and external linkages in propelling democratization in transitional societies. The paper concludes by integrating the two sets of explanations offered by each theoretical perspective, in order to develop a coherent understanding of Serbia's democratization.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v9i1.240

scholarly journals Democratization in Serbia: An Analysis of Rational Choice and Structuralist Explanations

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunja Apostolov-Dimitrijevic
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
The Face

This paper explains political democratization in Post-Milosevic Serbia, utilizing two different accounts of the democratization process: one rooted in the rational choice framework and the other in structuralism. While rational choice explains the decisive role of political leadership in overcoming path dependence, the structuralist explanations show the transnational linkages that encourage democratization in the face of domestic setbacks. This particular debate between the two types of explanations represents the larger debate concerning the role of internal factors and external linkages in propelling democratization in transitional societies. The paper concludes by integrating the two sets of explanations offered by each theoretical perspective, in order to develop a coherent understanding of Serbia's democratization.

Political Leadership Performance in a Mediatized World

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Eva Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Styles ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
The Other ◽  
Leadership Performance ◽  
The Media

Political communication is becoming increasingly mediatized. Mediatization refers both to a gradual increase in the role of the media in political communication and the spillover effects that this increase has had on the way politics takes place and is organized and relatedly, the performance of political leadership. Of particular importance for political leadership styles is the surge of drama politics, the fragmentation of political communication and the active role of citizens in political communication. Chapter 9’s typology of democratic political leadership performance lays the ground for an analysis of how paternalist, populist, engaged, and interactive political leadership styles are affected by the increased mediatization. The analysis suggests that an interactive political leadership style is more viable than the other three political leadership styles to patterns of mediatization in the age of governance.

The Institutions of ‘Strong’ Local Political Leadership in Spain

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sweeting
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Executive Authority ◽  
Formal Rules

In this paper I examine local political leadership in Spain. Spanish mayors are examples of ‘strong mayors’—that is, they have considerable executive authority and discretion in municipal affairs. Yet little detailed research exists on the formal and informal institutional bases of their position. I fill this gap by presenting empirical research on two Spanish municipalities. Using a new institutionalist theoretical perspective, I examine the rules around the appointment and removal of the mayor, the composition of the cabinet, the role of the full council, and the conventions around the role of the mayor in the municipality. Legal powers, a culture of individualised leadership, and councillor representation based on support for the party are all important for maintaining the mayor's position. Some formal rules around the mayor in the case-study municipalities are ‘latent’—that is, they exist but are not used.

The Great Complement Shift and the role of understood subjects: The case of fearful

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Gentens ◽  
Juhani Rudanko
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Diachronic Change ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Control Patterns ◽  
The One

Abstract This article reports on a corpus-based study of diachronic change and constructional competition in the system of English complementation, with a focus on variation in non-finite complements of the adjective fearful. Fearful occurs with prepositional (of -ing) subject-controlled gerunds and with to-infinitives, which can further be distinguished into subject extraposition, subject control, and tough-constructions. Recent decades show a drastic decline of the to-infinitival patterns, concomitant to the loss of one of the senses of fearful. We examine the diachronic distribution and competition of the two construction pairs that show functional overlap, i.e. tough-constructions and extraposition constructions on the one hand, and infinitival and gerundial subject-control patterns on the other. This allows us to show the import of the ‘Great Complement Shift’ in the face of constructional attrition and to investigate new principles motivating the choice for either the to-infinitival or the gerundial subject-control construction. More specifically, the study provides further evidence for the ‘Choice Principle’, which involves the (lack of) agentivity of the understood subject in the event described by the lower clause. In this way, the study adds new explanatory factors and descriptive insights to our knowledge of the broader diachronic change known as the Great Complement Shift.

Feminine Beauty, National Identity and Political Conflict in Postwar Italy, 1945–1954

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gundle
Keyword(s):  
Political Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Beauty Contests ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
The Face ◽  
Postwar Italy ◽  
First Time

After 1945 the Italian tradition of feminine beauty was redefined in a democratic context in which women, for the first time, became full citizens. Faced with a far-reaching challenge from Hollywood, traditional criteria of beauty were first strenuously defended and then modified and commercialised. Beauty contests proved to be a vital vehicle in this transition, since they acted both as a forum for the reassertion of Italian beauty and as a vehicle for the displacement of old ideas centred on the face with a new concept based on the eroticised body. This transition became bound up with the ongoing political conflict between Catholics and the left for the moral and political leadership of the country. While both, with different emphases, championed ‘natural’ at the expense of American-style ‘manufactured’ beauty, competition led them to engage with, and in some way adopt, the sexualised beauty that was the hallmark of the role of the United States in furnishing new models for the consumer society that would develop rapidly in the later 1950s.

scholarly journals Prophetic Sira and the Construction of Indonesian Islam

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
Muhammad Abdul Karim
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Complexity ◽  
Modes Of Transmission ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

Indonesian Islam has gone through a long journey in its history since the first advent up to the present day. In this course, one should note that the process of Islamization was formed under a set of historical and cultural complexity. Among those, the role of Islamic preaching is the most important. Under this canopy, the process of transmission and transformation took the first place as the main force. As the Qur’an and Sunna are the major sources for all Muslims around the world. Both had also become the main streams in Islamicization. Seerat-e-nabi, beside the Qur’an, in this case has a place of honor. It became one of the major sources of all Islamic heritages in Indonesia. The prophet Muhammad PBUH (peace be upon him) was immersed within the Indonesian Islamic traditions in various fields and spheres. It is fair to say that the story of the islamicization of the Indonesian archipelago and the face of Indonesian Islam today is culturally formed by the determination of seerat-e-nabi, besides the Qur’anic scripture. In the other words, the birth and the face of Islam really depend on how its adherents interpret and take a cultural reception on the seerat-e-nabi. This paper tries to capture the prophetic heritage in Indonesian Islam in twofold analysis; transmission and transformation. The former tries to explore how the heritage of seerat-e-nabi flowed into the scene of Indonesian moslem life through various modes of transmission up to the present day. The latter aims at how the seerat-e-nabi became the force and inspiration for the various receptions of institutional matters.    

scholarly journals Face masks as layers of meaning in times of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2095754
Author(s):  
Luca Tateo
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
The Other ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Way

The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought to the front a particular object: the face mask. I have explored the way people make-meaning of an object generally associated with the medical context that, under exceptional circumstances, can become a presence in everyday life. Understanding how people make meaning of their use is important. Using cultural psychology, I analyse preferences toward different types of face masks people would wear in public. The study involved 2 groups, 44 Norwegian university students and 60 international academics. In particular, I have focused on the role of the mask in regulating people affective experience. The mask evokes safety and fear, it mediates in the auto-dialogue between “I” and “Me” through the “Other”, and in the hetero-dialogue between “I” and the “Other” through “Me” The dialogue is characterized by a certain ambivalence, as expected. Meaning-making is indeed the way to deal with the ambivalence of human existence.

A Time to Mourn

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-272
Author(s):  
Lars Johan Danbolt
Keyword(s):  
Life Experiences ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Relative ◽  
First Year ◽  
Time Period ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Anxiety Depression ◽  
Burial Rite

This article gives brief results of a Norwegian empirical project where the main purpose has been to study the burial rite versus bereavement and the role of religiousness in relation to the disposing of the dead. The theoretical perspective is that loss of a significant close, as well as religiousness are primary life experiences which flow together in the bereaved person's grieving conduct during the burial rite. 70 bereaved persons who had lost a close relative during a certain time period have filled in questionnaires with information about the death, the funeral, religiousness and bereavement. The sample is treated statistically by means of indexes for grieving conduct during the burial week, religiousness, and grief. The sample is coherent and unambiguous, and shows that those who let the burial rite be a time to mourn experienced more benefit from the funeral service and had less anxiety, depression and intrusive experiences during the first year of bereavement. But sadness was independent of the grieving conduct during the burial rite, a result which makes sadness an aspect of mourning which qualitatively differs from the other aspects described. External conditions as urbanity and institutionalizing, as well as internal matters as the dramatical character of the loss, and personal religiousness affected the bereaved person's grieving conduct during the burial rite.

Are there limits to rationality?

1991 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Levi
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Other Hand

Sociologists have traditionally tended to overstate the role of norms in explaining human behavior. Economists, on the other hand, have tended to downplay the role of norms. Increasingly, rational choice theorists have begun to explore the interaction between normative and instrumentally rational motivations. There are at least two major points at issue in these discussions. First, how does one conceptualize norms, especially in relation to rational action? Second, how does one go about studying the variation in the reliance on norms? Jon Elster's paper offers a controversial answer to the first question. Ralph Turner's paper offers some guidance for answering the second (1). Building on both Elster and Turner, I shall bring a somewhat different perspective to bear on both these issues.

scholarly journals Er web- og tv-serien SKAM en serie om skam?

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christa Lykke Christensen
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Negative Feeling ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Web Series ◽  
Active Mechanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

In this article, I discuss whether the Norwegian teen web series drama SKAM (NRK, 2015-2017) is really about shame and to what extent the fictional characters of the series feel ashamed. The theoretical framework is based on a social psychological conceptualization of shame, supplemented by a micro-sociologically based analysis of the social meaning of face loss and shame. Shame may both entail a negative feeling and an active mechanism serving social and psychological purposes. The main characters of the series are used to analytically exemplify the role of shame and embarrassment. In conclusion, the series does thematize shame and the characters are often placed in conflicts that may give rise to shame. On the other hand, the series also suggests potential social strategies, to constructively avoid the face loss of shameful situations.

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