bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Is there a Ruling Class in France?
Authors: Dogan Mattei 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe thesis of a ruling class in France, today or yesterday, is not validated by the empirical evidence. The arguments against such a thesis are the following: the overwhelming proportion of elite positions are not transmitted hereditarily; the elite circulation at the highest level is considerable; the professionalization of political careers, which is widespread, is incompatible with the concept of a ruling class; the recruitment of elites is marked by a shift from notables to a meritocracy; the elite configuration consists in multiple spheres and sector partitioning; the selective schools, based on academic competition, generate new elites at each generation; there is fault line between capitalists and the other elite categories; the number of entrepreneurs who have built themselves their company is enormous; the isolation of the cultural elite is astonishing; the subordination of the military elites is an historical fact; the periodical beheading of the ruling elites marks French history. Nonetheless, at the apex of power, a triad, composed of outstanding polictical leaders, of corporate managers and of highers State administrators — called "mandarins" — operates the wheelwork of the heterogeneous and complex French society and State
The Structure of the German Elites across Regime Changes
Authors: Scheuch Erwin 
Published: June 2005

AbstractGermany is an especially apt case to analyze the relationship between regime change and elite continuity. Its political history between 1860 and 1960 is marked by an unusual degree of turmoil. While the first level of leadership in politics, and to a lesser degree in business and administration, was affected by the various regime changes, the levels two and three much less so. The notable characteristic of Germany's social structure is the pervasiveness of corporatism, and this is especially pronounced in levels two and three of the leadership. We concentrated on the periods before 1914, the halfway revolution of 1918-1920, the Weimar Republic in its closing days, the ascent to power of the nazi leadership, the post-1945 attempts of denazification, and finally on the composition and the modus operandi of leadership groups in the 1990s. During all these changes the elites in Germany retained their segmentalized character, with the economic leaders, the bureaucrats, and politicians at the center, the politicians deriving their influence from their function as linking agents in a segmentalized structure. There are indications, however, that an establishment may be in the making.
Informal and Formal Networking among Elite Mexican Capitalists and Politicians
Authors: Camp Roderic 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis essay explores the importance of formal and informal network linkages among Mexico's leading capitalists and politicians from 1970 through 2000. It demonstrates that scholars have been misled in their conclusions about capitalist-politician connections because they have relied on shared, formal positions, rather than on numerous other means of contact. This essay also demonstrates the significant influence exerted by elite mentors, who often provide a bridge between other elites. It suggests that in most countries, a reliance on organizations as a means of measuring networking contacts has led to equally misleading conclusions. Finally, within specific leadership groups, elites share close ties with each other, ties that have impacted on policy issues and ideology.
Transformations in the British Economic Elite
Authors: Scott John 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe concept of elite must be related to the distribution of authority. Elites are social groups defined by hierarchies of authoritarian power. Such elites can be investigated in the sphere of politics and in the economic sphere. This paper clarifies the general concept of an elite and shows how this can be used to understand the formation of economic elites. This is applied to the British situation, where the restructuring of the British economic elite over the course of the twentieth century is traced. The economic elite is seen as having moved from an entrepreneurial and regional structure to a one whose intercorporate relations embed it, in an increasingly fragmented form, in a global economy.
Prime Ministers, Ministers and Civil Servants in Britain
Authors: Kavanagh Dennis , Richards David 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis paper examines a variety of recent challenges to the British political system and assesses the impact on the two key political elites in Britain - ministers and civil servants. It analyses their response to these challenges and argues that both ministers and civil servants have been adept at pursuing a public strategy of greater openness, inclusivity and flexibility, while privately remaining a homogenous elite with a tight hold on power. This appears to have continued, despite the 1997 change in government. The British political elites have been successful at ensuring the continuation of plurality without pluralism in the political system.
The Canadian Corporate Network in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Ornstein Michael 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis paper compares the network of Canadian corporate directorships to the networks of ten rich nations described by Stokman, Ziegler, and Scott. The analysis tests claims about the exceptional weakness and disorganization of the Canadian capitalist class, due to high foreign ownership and dependence on resource extraction. The Canadian network is neither unusually sparse nor fragmented; there is no pronounced cleavage between, or subordination of, non-financial corporations to financial corporations; nor do the foreign-controlled corporations constitute an alternative centre or fragment of the network. It resembles the networks of countries such as Germany and France. The findings are consistent with the managerial and class cohesion models of the network, which emphasize its unity.
Theoretical Interpretations of Elite Change in East Central Europe
Authors: Bozóki András 
Published: June 2005

AbstractElite theory enjoyed a remarkable revival in Central and Eastern Europe, and also in international social science research, during the 1990s. Many researchers coming from different schools of thought turned to the analysis of rapid political and social changes and ended up doing centered research. Since democratic transition and elite transformation seemed to be parallel processes, it was understandable that sociologists and political scientists of the region started to use elite theory. The idea of "third wave" of democratization advanced a reduced, more synthetic, "exportable" understanding of democracy in the political science literature. The main focus of social sciences shifted from structures to actors, from path dependency to institutional choices. Transitions, roundtable negotiations, institution-building, constitution-making, compromise-seeking, pactmaking, pact-breaking, strategic choices — all of these underlined the importance of elites and research on them. Elite settlements were seen as alternatives of social revolution. According to a widely shared view democratic institutions came into existence through negotiations and compromises among political elites calculating their own interests and desires. The elite settlement approach was then followed by some important contributions in transitology which described the process of regime change largely as "elite games." By offering a systematic overview of the theoretical interpretations of elite change from New Class theory to recent theorizing of elite change (conversion of capital, reproduction, circulation, political capitalism, technocratic continuity, three elites and the like), the paper also gives an account of the state of the arts in elite studies in different new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Interlocking Elites in Southeast Asia
Authors: Case William 
Published: June 2005

AbstractAnalysts make much of the diversity of Southeast Asia's political regimes. However, the region also displays a mounting preponderance of pseudoand fuller democracies, as well as a common mode of transition where fuller democratization has taken place. This analysis argues that these "intermediate" regime categories can be partly ascribed to common, though countervailing factors of colonial legacies, structural forces, some faint cultural residues, and new globalized influences. Next, it explores the conditions in which changes may take place from pseudo-democracy to more fully democratic outcomes. Analysis turns finally to the ways in which despite this weakening of leadership, elites regain enough vitality that while transitions may go forward, they have been able to collaborate in limiting the quality of the new democracies that have emerged.
Social Capital, Guanxi, and the Road to Democracy in Taiwan
Authors: Marsh Robert 
Published: June 2005

AbstractTheories from Tocqueville to Putnam have stressed the role of organizational participation, social capital, in the emergence and maintenance of democracy. Taiwan is a strategic location for testing this because in the last two decades it has made the transition from an authoritarian regime to a multi-party democracy. Data from surveys of representative samples of the population of Taiwan in 1992 and 1997 do not support the theory in its original formulation. The mean level of participation in 15 types of formal voluntary organizations was not only much lower than that in the United States and several other societies, but declined significantly between 1992 and 1997, as democracy was advancing. Instead of rejecting the causal influence of social capital on democracy in Taiwan, I explore an alternative hypothesis. Though not a "nation of joiners," people in Taiwan create social capital in culturally distinctive ways, through the guanxi social networks of a society that is more relationship-based than either individualor collectivity-based.
Running Uphill: Political Opportunity in Non-democracies
Authors: Corduneanu-Huci Cristina , Osa Maryjane 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis study analyzes twenty-four cases of occurrence/non-occurrence of mobilization in non-democratic states to determine conditions of political opportunity in high-risk authoritarian contexts. Ragin's (1987) Boolean method of qualitative comparison (QCA 3.0) is used to identify specific configurations of conditions that constitute political opportunity in non-democracies. We find that political opportunity is sensitive to conditions created by divided elites, changes in repression, media access, influential allies, and social networks. Our analysis identifies four configurations that create an opening for mobilization under authoritarian conditions. The key factors, identified by QCA in the most parsimonious model, are media access and social networks. These two factors are sufficient conditions for producing mobilization in non-democratic states.
Why Nations Arm in the Age of Globalization
Authors: Mehlkop Guido , Graeff Peter 
Published: June 2005

AbstractWhat accounts for different levels of military forces between countries and over time? Payne (1989) found in cross country regressions cultural influences to be the most important determinant. In contrast to Payne, we will show that the mechanisms of why nations arm can only be fully discovered by time series analysis and – going beyond Payne's model – we will test the impact of the end of the Cold War and show that the process of globalization has a significantly negative effect on the military efforts of nations. Democracy and the membership in defence alliances or supranational organisations have no impact on the level of armament at all.
Women, Power, and the Eleventh and Twelfth Century Abbasid Court
Authors: Hanne Eric 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis paper focuses on the actions of a select number of elite women attached to the Abbasid court of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, addressing the differences not only in the actions of Abbasid and Saljùq women, but in the overall coverage by the medieval historians. Elite women of both households played key roles in the events surrounding the Abbasid bid to reenter the political arena as well as the ensuing chaos that followed. The question at the center of this work is how elite women were able to take advantage of the porous nature of the political arena. In the end, this study shows that whereas Saljùq women were successful in this endeavor, their Abbasid counterparts were all but written out of the narrative. An analysis of marriage alliances, attempts to maintain one's status, and succession crises support this contention, and reinforce the argument that we must readdress our notions of power, and strive to incorporate the lives of more women into the larger political narrative for this period.
The French Army and Muslim Women During the Algerian War (1954–62)
Authors: Seferdjeli Ryme 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis paper examines the itinerant women-only medical and social teams, created by the French army during the Algerian decolonisation war, which sought to instrumentalise and win over women through access to medical and social services. It is argued that the teams were instrumental in two significant events during the Algerian war: the public unveiling of Muslim women in May 1958 and the September 1958 referendum, in which Muslim women voted for the first time. This paper argues, however, that the teams' achievements were short lived and superficial and that the teams themselves faced severe limitations.
The Study of Women in Islam and the West: A Select Bibliography
Authors: Haddad Yvonne 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis bibliography sets out to explore the topics that Muslim women in the West reflected on and researched as they joined the institutions of higher learning and began to have an input in the creation of knowledge. It also attempts to gather the available information about the experiences of Muslim women and surveys the available literature in English on Muslim women living in the West. While Muslim women have been professionally active in many fields, the bibliography is focused primarily on the production of knowledge by professors in the humanities and the social sciences and their contribution to our understanding of the debates about the women of Islam.
The Islamic Frontier: Islam and Gender Equity in Southeast Asia
Authors: Gonsoulin Margaret 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe long-lived egalitarian cultural perspective, diversity of ethnic groups and the centrality of egalitarian kinship structures of Southeast Asia are identified as major factors allowing for the persistence of gender egalitarianism despite centuries of Islam. In order to establish a baseline, this paper first examines the development of Islam in ancient Arabia and Islam's impact on gender stratification. Then, it compares the gendered outcome of the adoption of Islam in kinship-based societies of North Africa to Indonesia. I propose that the level of congruence between the ideals of kinship and gender espoused in Islam and the actual kinship and gender lived by those who convert to Islam are important factors in determining gendered outcomes. These conclusions made about Southeast Asia are also confirmed in a South Asian setting.
Poor Kid on the Bloc: The Importance of Being Jordan
Authors: Budeiri Musa 
Published: June 2005

AbstractI want to relate to you what your King has to put up with in order to provide for the welfare of this country. On our Master's trip to Kuwait, we spent three days there, but the delegation failed to get a single piaster. (...) The Sheikh of Kuwait himself said to our Master: “When do you depart, my brother?” When our Master answered, tomorrow at ten, the Sheikh responded: “Why delay? It is better if you leave earlier.” Think of these words and this attitude ...
Historiographie chrétienne et romanesque: Le De mortibus persecutorum de Lactance (250–325 ap. J.C.)
Authors: Colot Blandine 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe DMP written by Lactantius and published after the 'Edict of Milan' (313), is an unclassifiable book. It was regarded as the first Christian historiography in latin but recent study has defended that the first was really the H.E. by Eusebius which was translated in latin at the end of the IVth century. We have analysed the romantic character of Lactantius' narration through emotional, existential features and its narrative movement. We have compared the prologues of the two books and managed to show that the DMP is surely a Christian history, authentic in many aspects, but discredited in favour of the « canonic » historiography by Eusebius which, even if it contains features of fiction too, is closer to the historic presuppositions of today's readers.
Divine Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa and Philo of Alexandria
Authors: Geljon Albert-Kees 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe notion of divine infinity is important in Gregory of Nyssa's theology; it is even argued by Ekkehard Mühlenberg that Gregory was the first to ascribe infinity to God. In this article key texts on divine infinity in Gregory, taken from Contra Eunomiun, De Vita Moysis, and In Canticum Canticorum, are discussed. It appears that Mühlenberg's interpretation has to be nuanced. Furthermore, dealing with divine infinity Gregory was able to link his thought with that of Philo of Alexandria. In the second part of this article, we discuss the question of God's infinity in Philo. Henri Guyot defends the thesis that Philo was the first to put forward the notion of divine infinity. Although Guyot's thesis can be criticised—Philo never calls God infinite—there are starting-points for this view in Philo.
Structure allégorique de Romulea 1: La comparaison Orphée-Felicianus chez Dracontius
Authors: Stoehr-Monjou Annick 
Published: June 2005

AbstractIn all his poems, the Carthaginian Dracontius presents Orpheus only once, in a preface dedicated to his magister Felicianus (Romulea1) and allegorically constructed: as Orpheus charmed animals (vv. 1-11), Felicianus gathers Vandals and Romans (vv. 12-16). Each element of Orpheus's evocation prepares the allegorical – political, religious and cultural – reading of the second part: first, Orpheus charming wild and domestic beasts announces Felicianus who civilized the barbarian Vandals and brought a new Golden Age in Carthage. Secondly, Felicianus, as an Orpheus between Christ and David, brings evangelical Peace to heretical Arian Vandals and Catholic Romans. Finally, Felicianus taught Roman culture. Therefore, Dracontius, under Claudian's and Prudentius's influences, presents an original Orpheus, neither simply pagan, nor really christian.
Basilides's Gospel and Exegetica (Treatises)
Authors: Kelhoffer James 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThe surviving witnesses to Basilides of Alexandria (fl. 120-140 C.E.) reflect considerable variety and confusion concerning his writing(s). Attempts by scholars to present Basilides as an exegete of Christian scripture, and even as the author of a gospel, are based on precious little evidence, which scholars have at times misinterpreted. This article argues that only a limited interest in gospel materials on the part of Basilides can be demonstrated from the surviving portions of his Exegetica (Treatises). Moreover, if Basilides did indeed write a gospel, it was not a narrative or sayings gospel concerned primarily with the life or the teachings of Jesus. Finally, prior to Origen in the mid-third century C.E. the designation (or title) Exegetica did not connote an 'exegetical' commentary. Clement of Alexandria's title for Basilides's work ('Eξηγητικα, Strom. 4.81.1) instead supports the inference that this writing comprised "explanations" of Basilides's theological system.
Holocaust and theology
Authors: Houtepen Anton 
Published: June 2005

AbstractHolocaust Theology, first developed by Jewish scholars, has had a definite impact on the Christian attitude with regard to Judaism. It made Christianity aware of its Anti-Judaist thinking and acting in the past, one of the root causes of Anti-Semitism and one of the factors that led to the Holocaust in Nazi-Germany during World War II. Similar forms of industrial killing and genocide did happen, however, elsewhere in the world as well. Most important of all was the ' metamorphosis ' of the Christian concept of God: no longer did God's almighty power and benevolent will for his chosen people dominate the theological discourse, but God's compassion for those who suffer and and the Gospel of Peace and human rights. Mission to the Jews was gradually replaced by Christian-Jewish dialogue. Both in mission studies, ecumenism and intercultural theology, theologians seem to have received the fundamental truth of the early patristic saying: There is no violence in God. This makes a new alliance of theology with the humanities possible on the level of academia and enables a critical stand of theology against the political power play causing the actual clash of civilisations.
Christianity and Islam: civilizations or religions? Contemporary indonesian discussions
Authors: Steenbrink Karel 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThis article wants to look at the problem of the relation between Islam and Christianity and their definitions of civilization or religion, from the angles of the Indonesian Muslims and Christians. In the colonial past both Islam and Christianity behaved like complete communities or civilizations. Therefore religious affiliation had always social and political impact and it was and is often not possible to change religion, like people cannot change their ethnic or gender status. During the pastfifty years there has been a tendency towards a pluralist society, not taking religious identity as a major classification mark. The uncertainties after the fall of President Soeharto (May 1998) and the aftermath of increasing Muslim-Christian conflicts, challenge this development.
Religion, hybridity, and the construction of reality in postcolonial Africa
Authors: Kenzo Mabiala Justin-Robert 
Published: June 2005

AbstractThat Africans are incurably religious has been one of the pillars on which current knowledge on Africa and the Africans is built. However, the accuracy of the claim is questionable on a number of fronts. The paper suggests that the real significance of the question is that it raises the issue of cultural determinism and indeterminism. Taking our cue from the postmodern and postcolonial criticism, we argue that cultures (or religions) are not ready-made packages that are passed on from one generation to another. Rather, cultures are transmitted through processes that can be described in terms of interactivity, negotiability, indeterminacy, fragmentation, and conflict. More importantly, humans are active participants in these processes. Based on this view of culture, the paper argues that the religious identity of Africans is a matter of constructed hybridity. Our reading of Ben Okri's Famished Road further demonstrates that Africans are neither incurably religious nor incurably irreligious. Instead, they skillfully and creatively construct their identity borrowing insights from resources that are both endogenous and exogeneous to Africa and their own tribal contexts.
An ecumenical journey in romania: orthodox — protestant relationships since 1989
Authors: Vogelaar Huub 
Published: June 2005

Abstract: In the years before 1989 there existed a flowering ecumenical movement in Eastern Europe. However, as this movement mostly was initiated and later on was supported by the communist governments of the time, ecumenism became mistrusted and lost its good reputation. In the last 15 years the churches have gone their own ways, often independent from the others. But now there is change. The author of this article relates how the relationship between the Orthodox and the Protestant has developed during the last 15 years and how in recent times a new movement towards greater ecumenism has emerged in Romania.