Shifting inequalities? Patterns of exclusion and inclusion in emerging forms of political participation

Previous research has found a steady increase in the number of people involved in emerging forms of civic engagements such as Internet campaigns, protests, political consumerism, and alternative lifestyle communities. Verba et al. (1995) have established that various forms of political participation in the United States follow a pattern of structural inequality, based on income, education, gender and civic skills. The growing popularity of emerging action repertoires forces us to re-evaluate the claims of this literature. Do these patterns of inequality persist for the emerging action repertoires across advanced industrialized democracies, or are they becoming even stronger, as Theda Skocpol (2003, 2004) argues? The results of this cross-national analysis with longitudinal comparisons suggest that gender inequalities in emerging political action repertoires have substantially declined since the 1970s, whereas other forms of inequality have persisted. However, contrary to the more pessimistic claims about a "participation paradox", there is no evidence that inequality based on socio-economic status has substantially increased since the 1970s. --

Free to Trust? Economic Freedom and Social Capital

We present new evidence on how generalized trust is formed. Unlike previous studies, we look at the explanatory power of economic institutions, we use newer data, we incorporate more countries, and we use instrumental variables to handle the causality problem. A central result is that legal structure and security of property rights (area 2 of the Economic Freedom Index) increase trust. The idea is that a market economy, building on voluntary transactions and interactions with both friends and strangers within the predictability provided by the rule of law, entails both incentives and mechanisms for trust to emerge between people.social capital; trust; economic freedom; rule of law; property rights; legal system

Shifting Inequalities? Patterns of exclusion and inclusion im emerging forms of political participation

"Previous research has found a steady increase in the number of people involved in emerging forms of civic engagements such as Internet campaigns, protests, political consumerism, and alternative lifestyle communities. Verba et al. (1995) have established that various forms of political participation in the United States follow a pattern of structural inequality, based on income, education, gender and civic skills. The growing popularity of emerging action repertoires forces us to re-evaluate the claims of this literature. Do these patterns of inequality persist for the emerging action repertoires across advanced industrialized democracies, or are they becoming even stronger, as Theda Skocpol (2003, 2004) argues? The results of this cross-national analysis with longitudinal comparisons suggest that gender inequalities in emerging political action repertoires have substantially declined since the 1970s, whereas other forms of inequality have persisted. However, contrary to the more pessimistic claims about a 'participation paradox', there is no evidence that inequality based on socio-economic status has substantially increased since the 1970s." (author's abstract

Trusting strangers - the concept of generalized trust in perspective

'Generalisiertes Vertrauen ist eine wichtige gesellschaftliche Ressource und ist als integraler Aspekt und Messinstrument des sozialen Kapitals anerkannt. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über das Konzept des generalisierten Vertrauens. Hierzu wird zunächst generalisiertes Vertrauen mit anderen Formen von Vertrauen in der interdisziplinären Literatur verglichen, wie strategisches oder rationales Vertrauen, identitätsbezogenes Vertrauen sowie moralisches Vertrauen. Diese Vertrauensmodelle unterscheiden sich in der Auffassung darüber, was Vertrauen ist, wie es entwickelt wird, und hinsichtlich der Zahl von BürgerInnen, die in das Vertrauen miteinbezogen werden. Zum zweiten werden die Erkenntnisse der Vertrauensmodelle benutzt, um den Ursprung und die Ursachen des generalisierten Vertrauens zu identifizieren. Dabei wird zwischen zwei Ansätzen unterschieden: der zivilgesellschaftliche und der institutionelle Mechanismus. Die empirische Forschung konnte die Annahmen über die Relevanz von Vereinen für die Entwicklung von generalisiertem Vertrauen nicht in der ursprünglichen Form bestätigen. Stattdessen spielen institutionelle Aspekte wie Gerechtigkeit und Unparteilichkeit eine größere Rolle für generalisiertes Vertrauen, wobei allerdings weitere Forschung das Kausalitätsproblem entflechten muss.' (Autorenreferat)'Generalized trust is an important societal resource and recognized as an integral aspect and measure of social capital. This article gives an overview of the concept of generalized trust and makes two contributions. First, generalized trust is compared to other forms and notions of trust in the interdisciplinary literature, particularly strategic or rational trust, identity-based trust as well as moral trust. These trust models differ in relation to what trust is, as to how it can be generated, and in the extent to which it expands to include various circles of people. Second, the insights of the existing trust models will be used to examine the sources and causes of generalized trust. Two important sources of generalized trust are distinguished: societal and institutional mechanisms. Empirical research suggests that the assumption of social capital theorists as to the efficacy of voluntary associations in producing generalized trust should be taken with caution at best. Selected features of political and social institutions such as fairness and impartiality are found to have profound effects on generalized trust. However, further research is needed to disentangle the problem of causality.' (author's abstract

Confusions Program [1992]

by Alan Ayckbourn Directed by Jane Bergeronhttps://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/theatre-programs-1992-1993/1004/thumbnail.jp

Local infrastructure and economic opportunities: What do Europeans think about their neighbourhood? Bertelsmann Policy Brief

In a recent eupinions survey, we set out to explore what people in Europe think about their neighbourhood, the quality of local infrastructure and of economic opportunities in their area. Overall, the results show a generally high degree of satisfaction with living conditions “on the ground”, but satisfaction levels differ for example between respondents living in rural and those living in urban areas. What stands out however is the pessimistic judgement of economic opportunities for young people

Political Consumerism and Buycott’s War on Koch Industries: Activism or slacktivism?

A white fist punches the air, grasping tightly to a fluorescent green dollar bill — the Buycott app’s icon pictorially represents the power of consumer decisions. Buycott was developed by freelance programmer Ivan Pardo and released in May 2013 in order to provide its users with, in the words of its creator, “a platform that empowers [them] to make well-informed purchasing decisions.” The app allows consumers to make politically informed purchases, using their money as their ideological voice. Theoretically, the app was created for both conservative and liberal users, plus all those users in between. However, the app boasts overwhelmingly liberal campaigns, perhaps because liberal political participants are generally younger and more likely to utilize such a technology.

Transform Learning - Registration of medical images using self organization

A network model is introduced that allows a multimodal registration of two images. It can be used for a image-model or a model-model registration. The application of the network to registering tomographic to 3D ultrasonic data is introduced. Results on artificial and real ultrasound image data sets are discussed

Women Still Greatly Underrepresented on the Top Boards of Large Companies

Executive and supervisory boards of large companies in Germany are still dominated by men - to an extraordinary degree. Only 2.5% of all executive board members in the200 largest companies (not including the financial sector) are women, and only 10% of all seats on supervisory boards are occupied by women. The situation in the financial sector is similar: in the 100 largest banks, 2.6% of all executive board members are women, and in the 62 largest insurance companies, 2.8% of executive board members are women. The percentage of women on financial sector supervisory boards is higher than their percentage in the top 200 companies: 16.8% in banks and savings banks, and 12.4% in insurance companies. In total, about three-quarters of women with a seat on a supervisory board are appointed by employee representation bodies and therefore have their seat as a result of employee codetermination practices. Aside from a few positive examples, the situation on both types of management boards has hardly changed at all in the last few years. It remains to be seen whether the plan to gradually increase the number of women in management positions, as agreed upon in the German government's 2009 Coalition Agreement, will have more success than the voluntary commitments made by Germany's top business associations in their 2001agreement with the German government. The implementation of the latter initiative private-sector companies can be considered a failure given the virtually unchanged gender composition of top management in large private-sector companies.Board diversity, Women CEOs, Gender diversity, Management