Joseph Schumpeter's "competitive theory of democracy" - often labeled democratic elitism - has struck many as an apt and insightful description of how representative democracy works, even though convinced democrats detect an elitist thrust they find disturbing. But neither Schumpeter nor subsequent defenders of democratic elitism have paid enough attention to actual behaviors of leaders and elites. Attention has been riveted on how adequately democratic elitism captures the relationship between governors and governed in its insistence that competitive elections prevent the relationship from...

Latin America and the Middle East are two of the most important regions of the South and the world, yet they have hardly been studied comparatively in social sciences. This book attempts to fill this gap in the literature through a study of civil society-state relations in Bolivia and Egypt focusing on empowered participatory institutions. Not only are these institutions important in their own right in terms of the amount of resources allocated to them, but they are an important illustration of a rising model of governance and development based on state-civil society cooperation. The study...

This book presents the results of a research on the integration of second generation migrants in Catalonia. Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews, we demonstrate the link between language and social mobility. Language is a particularly important social issue in Catalonia. A bilingual region in northeast Spain, Catalonia has been receiving foreign migration for several decades. Nowadays, some of the children of those migrants are entering the labor market. For many migrant families, providing social mobility for their children was one of their main goals. What effects does bilingualism...

That the publics of Western democracies are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their political institutions is part of the conventional wisdom in Political Science. This trend is often equated with the expectation that all forms of political attachment and participation show similar patterns of decline. Based on empirical underpinnings derived from a range of original and sophisticated comparative analyses from Europe and beyond, this collection shows that no such universal pattern of decline exists. Nor should it be expected, given the diversity of reasons that citizens have to place or...

The 'open society' has become a watchword of liberal democracy and the market system in the modern globalized world. Openness stands for individual opportunity and collective reason, as well as bottom-up empowerment and top-down transparency. It has become a cherished value, despite its vagueness and the connotation of vulnerability that surrounds it. Scandinavia has long considered itself a model of openness, citing traditions of freedom of information and inclusive policy making. This collection of essays traces the conceptual origins, development, and diverse challenges of openness in the...

Sociologist-lawyer Larry D. Barnett advances the macrosociological thesis that, in nations that are structurally complex and democratically governed, concepts and doctrines of law on society-central social activities are fashioned by society-level conditions, not by particular (or even prominent) individuals. Because a substantial body of social science research has found that law in a modern nation does not have a large, permanent effect on the frequency of such activities, the book contends that the content of law on the activities is a product, not a determinant, of the society in which...

One might be surprised, astonished or indignant seeing men and women prostrating themselves in front of other men and other women. Or one might feel it is right to bow down before God, Allah, the saints, the Holy Virgin or the gods. Kings into Gods: How Prostration Shaped Eurasian Civilizations investigates the reasons why men prostrate themselves before deities or before powerful men. Through an in-depth historical and cultural analysis, this book highlights the connection between rituality and royalty within the Eurasian civilizations. The narrative and iconic documentation gathered...

Gender Equality on a Grand Tour. Politics and Institutions - the Nordic Council, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia explores the politics around the establishment, development and transformation of gender equality institutions in the Nordic countries (on the example of Sweden), in the former communist countries east of the Baltic Sea region (the example of Lithuania) and in the northwestern part of Russia. The authors analyze the interplay between the internationalization and Europeanization of gender equality on the one hand and national and local contexts on the other. Gender Equality...

In Bourdieu in Question: New Directions in French Sociology of Art, Jeffrey A. Halley and Daglind E. Sonolet offer to English-speaking audiences an account of the very lively Francophone debates over Pierre Bourdieu’s work in the domain of the arts and culture, and present other directions and perspectives taken by major French researchers who extend or differ from his point of view, and who were marginalized by the Bourdieusian moment. Three generations of research are presented: contemporaries of Bourdieu, the next generation, and recent research. Themes include the art market and value,...

Zitkala-Ša: Letters, Speeches, and Unpublished Writings, 1898–1929, edited by Tadeusz Lewandowski, offers a fascinating, intimate portrait of the Yankton Sioux writer and activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876–1938). Gertrude Bonnin, better known by her Lakota name, Zitkala-Ša, was one of the most prominent American Indians of the early 20th century. A talented writer, orator, and musician, she devoted much of her life to the protection of Native peoples. As such, Bonnin corresponded with many other distinguished persons within the early Native rights movement, including Carlos...