A dependency look at the reality of constituency

A comment on "Neurophysiological dynamics of phrase-structure building during sentence processing" by Nelson et al (2017), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 114(18), E3669-E3678.Comment: Final versio

Organic Agriculture Movement at a Crossroad - a Comparative Study of Denmark and Japan

Along with apparent institutionalisation of organic agriculture that took place in the last couple of decades, the role of organic agriculture organisations as a social movement actor has increasingly being put into question. Under this circumstance, there can be observed an evidence of “division” among these organisations at being foe or ally to this trend of institutionalisation. Why have such competing trajectories existed in this social movement field? And how have different trajectories evolved throughout the time? Through a comparative study of two organisations related to organic agriculture in Denmark and Japan, it argues that a cause of the discrepancy can be found in fundamentally different formulations of the concepts of organic agriculture and the related movement, and thus different organisational fields in which the organisations have been embedded. It further attests that the process of external institutionalisation, punctuated typically by the establishment of the national organic law, has affected the internal institutionalisation of both organisations, regardless of its self-determined orientation toward pro- or anti- institutionalisation. Yet, how far or how fast the internal institutionalisation process will develop may still depend on the orientation of an organisation, when it potentially can preserve substantial autonomy from such process by refraining itself from creating business-client relationship with its own constituency and from compromising direct participation of its constituency to collective actions

Why has the crisis been bad for private pensions, but good for the flat tax? The sustainability of 'neoliberal' reforms in the new Member States. CEPS Working Document No. 356, October 2011

In this paper, we examine two questions related to the sustainability of the major, neoliberal, economic and social reforms in the new EU member states, namely the flat income tax and private pension pillars. First, we look at the relationship between the political consensus/controversy at the time major policy reforms were passed and the future sustainability of these reforms after a change of government. Second, we explore what we call a paradox of reverse sustainability, whereby the flat income tax has been more politically resilient during the global financial and economic crisis than private pensions, even though ex ante expectations and the literature would lead us to expect the opposite. The paper shows that controversy at the time the reforms were passed had no effect on subsequent sustainability, and the levels of partisanship and public support with regard to a specific reform seem less important than the political costs and benefits. We also find that despite their apparent neoliberal bent, the two policies are versatile enough to be shaped towards a variety of policy goals, allowing their introduction and retention in a variety of economic and social circumstances. In other words, even though private pensions and particularly the flat tax have powerful political connotations, they are by no means policy straitjackets. While both reforms could sustain themselves throughout the ‘good’ times before the global crisis, their fates diverged during the crisis. Neither public support nor the large constituency of savers could fully protect private pensions from a policy reversal during a period of exceptional fiscal pressure. That is because a reversal was associated with significant, short-term fiscal gains and the states where these reversals took place also took a range of other decisions that were politically extraordinarily difficult. On the other hand, we demonstrate that the introduction or potential reversal of the flat tax was not associated with significant, short-term revenue gains. It is the relatively ‘cheap’ nature of the flat tax that distinguishes it from private pensions, because it sends a highly cost-effective signal in terms of revenues lost owing to its existence

Corporate Political Strategies in Weak Institutional Environments: A Break from Conventions

There is a lack of research about the political strategies used by firms in emerging countries, mainly because the literature often assumes that Western-oriented corporate political activity (CPA) has universal application. Drawing on resource-dependency logics, we explore why and how firms orchestrate CPA in the institutionally challenging context of Nigeria. Our findings show that firms deploy four context-fitting but ethically suspect political strategies: affective, financial, pseudo-attribution and kinship strategies. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CPA in emerging countries by arguing that corporate political strategies are shaped by the reciprocity and duality of dependency relationships between firms and politicians, and also by advancing that these strategies reflect institutional weaknesses and unique industry-level opportunities. Importantly, we shed light on the muttered dark side of CPA. We develop a CPA framework and discuss the research, practical and policy implications of our findings