Procedural Democracy and Social Structure

It is analyzed that the process of digitalization is objective, depends on globalization processes. However, this process, as well as political and market relations in general, is characterized by certain features, defects and failures of the market that require government regulation and intervention. In most countries of the modern world, one of the priority strategic tasks and national priorities is the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the development of elements of the digital society. Digital technologies, as well as related social and human activities form the digital sphere of modern society, which in the current environment determines the economic and innovative potential of the state, education and human development, determines social progress, good governance and democratic procedures. The development of the principles of the digital society stimulates the improvement of ways and methods of interaction in the framework of socio-economic relations. The use of information technology allows to expand communication processes, changes the composition and status of their participants, the principles of spatial interaction through networking, increases the decentralization of management decisions in the public and private sectors. Based on the analysis of modern theoretical models, it is possible to outline the model of digital policy. Elements of the model are the digital field, which influences the use of certain ways of interaction of digital political entities with the digital infrastructure; digital infrastructure - a number of technologies / tools for network integration; user networks - communities of citizens who master and use digital technologies / tools to achieve common goals, self-government; digital policymakers integrating these networks for policy implementation Thus, a new reality has emerged in the world, which encourages governments of all countries to pursue a system of digital economy through digital transformation by improving relevant areas of national legislation, development and implementation of large-scale government strategies, projects and programs, including full digital technology. A comprehensive study of digital politics as a new phenomenon of the political process in the modern world, which arises under the influence of global digitalization. It has been found that the digitalization of politics is a valence, unstable, incomplete process, which can be explained by the very nature of global digitalization, which is constantly self-improving and self-renewing. This also affects the principles of digital policymakers, who are constantly improving their tools through the formation of larger communities. So the balance of power in the digital world depends on the immediate integration of these communities by one or another digital political entity. Digitalization of public policy is described as a constant modification of the digital infrastructure of the political process. Categories have been established for the study of digitalization of politics in order to identify its impact on modern discourse: "digital politics", "digital political actors". Factors influencing the process of digitalization of public policy in foreign countries are identified. A model of digital policy is proposed, which allows to determine the content and principles of transformation of state policy in the digital environment, in particular: 1) the procedure for creating a new type of political actor - digital political entity; 2) creating conditions for the creation of different types of networks for policy implementation within digital policy practices, 3) methods of using digital infrastructure for policy implementation, 4) principles of producing a new type of political content that changes the structure and formats of political texts.

This chapter argues that gridlock detailed in Chapter 2 amounts to more than mere ‘legitimation problems’ – it constitutes a crisis. Building on the work of Andrew Gamble, it lays out the consequences of remaining at the minimal level of legitimacy for a prolonged period. As the concept of democracy is itself increasingly contested, disputes about democratic procedures cause competing factions to misrecognize one another as authoritarian. Attempts to save democracy from democrats with conflicting understandings of democracy crowd out substantive issues, further undermining governability. The chapter focuses especially on institutional accounts of democracy, illustrating that even when democracy is understood in minimalist senses, conflicts emerge about which institutional features are to be prioritized. It draws on examples from the United States and the United Kingdom, including lords reform in the UK, the 2020 US Presidential election, Boris Johnson’s effort to prorogue parliament, the status of central banks, and healthcare reform in the United States.

Migration flows in the Russian Federation are intensive in recent years. People go to the places where they can have better conditions for work and solutions of social problems. The purpose of this article is studying such opportunities in the strategy of regional social and economic development of 2030. The methodology of the research consists in the solution of a number of questions. The concept “life cycle of family” is debatable. The paper gives its treatment and presents the cognitive map of requirements of different stages of the life cycle. The authors give the analysis of the strategy of regional social and economic development. The empirical base of the research is the strategy of social and economic development of Volgograd region, Rostov region, Krasnodar Krai, the Republic of Kalmykia, the Republic of Adygea. The article characterizes the specifics of satisfying needs for services of health care, education, culture, sport, the possibility to receive housing, the requirement to human resources in the specified regions. It allowed to define characteristics of individuals interested in accommodation on a certain area and to offer directions of their rebranding. The article provides assessing competitiveness of the strategy of regional social and economic development for 2018–2030 in terms of the family life cycle. The following indicators are used for this purpose: climate attractiveness, unemployment rate, population share with incomes below the subsistence rate, infantile mortality on 1 thousand births, mortality on 100 thousand people of the working population, average monthly salary, share of the employed in small and average business from the total number of the population. The authors conclude that the developed strategies of socio-economic development of territories taking into account the competition between regions do not fully contribute to overcoming the negative trends of their development. In addition to working out the strategy of a particular subject of the Russian Federation, the analysis of the provisions planned by neighboring regions is necessary.

Ivan Szelenyi, famous Hungarian sociologist, has worked on problems of relation between social structure and housing in socialist countries, specially in Hungary. Szelenyi has discussed housing as one of the major elements in satisfying basic human needs and, therefore, he thinks that distribution of housing has big significance for creating and maintaining social inequalities. In state socialism methods of distribution help to riches, and make difficulties to poor persons. Such distribution is not effect of some irregularity, it reflects logic of system and dominate social relations. Szelenyi, in his work, unites three approaches to this problem: historical causal, structural- functional and social-anthropological. The midpoint of his research shall be found on the side of static, structural analysis but using the observation of social mobility he has introduced the dynamic approach to urban problems as well. Besides the research of the existing problems and the modes of their derivations, he has suggested concrete measures and procedures for their resolutions.

Predicting Satisfaction with Group Work Assignments

This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theor y of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identie ed by empirical, cross-cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth centur y. Social structures are organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience, whose spatio‐temporal cone gurations constitute cultures. They are enacted, reproduced, and ultimately transformed by social actors, rooted in the social structure, yet freely engaging in cone ictive social practices, with unpredictable outcomes. A fundamental feature of social structure in the Information Age is its reliance on networks as the key feature of social morphology. While networks are old forms of social organization, they are now empowered by new information/communication technologies, so that they become able to cope at the same time with e exible decentralization, and with focused decision-making. The article examines the specie c interaction between network morphology and relationships of production/consumption, power, experience, and culture, in the historical making of the emerging social structure at the turn of the Millennium.

On 25th September 2015 the 193 Member Countries of the United Nations signed the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, which represents a global basis to build an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable world. Principles and objectives of the 2030 Agenda have been geared to the Italian context through the National Sustainable Development Strategy, approved on 22nd December 2017. Subsequently, Italian Regions formulated, or are still in the process of formulating, Regional Strategies for Sustainable Development, which are coherent with the National Strategy and with the 2030 Agenda and contribute to the achievement of their objectives and goals.According to art.34, fourth paragraph, of the Italian legislative decree 152/2006, Local Government must implement policy instruments able to pursue the objectives of the Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development. This means that regional and local plans and programs must be consistent with the Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development and, concurrently, with the National Sustainable Development Strategy. It follows that new methodological tools are needed in order to conveniently develop public policies within the framework of both the National and Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development.This contribution proposes an innovative procedure of urban planning that allows for the integration of Sardinia’s Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development in local planning practices. The illustrated methodological approach provides a new tool, which integrates the objectives of the Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development into local plans and programs and simultaneously assesses the efficiency of these strategies in the city context. In this way, social and economic issues are taken into account alongside environmental concerns in terms of objectives, actions and indicators identified in urban and regional plans and programs, as well as in terms of participation in the planning process of economic players and social organizations together with environmental authorities.

Determinants of collective behavior, as suggested by social identity or self-categorization approach and social movement research, were examined in 2 field studies. Study 1 was conducted in context of older people's movement in Germany and Study 2 in context of gay movement in United States. Both studies yielded similar results pointing to 2 independent pathways to willingness to participate in collective action; one is based on cost-benefit calculations (including normative considerations), and other is based on collective identification as an activist. Study 2 included an experimental manipulation and provided evidence for causal role of collective identification as an activist. Directions for future research on proposed dual-pathway model are suggested. Members of disadvantaged groups who do not want to passively accept their lot have to find ways to improve their situation. To do so, they can adopt a variety of strategies that can range from individual strategies of social mobility to collective strategies of social change. The former rest on belief that one's own position can be improved by moving from one social position to another as an individual (Tajfel, 1981). These individual strategies thus involve leaving a disadvantaged group physically or at least psychologically. Collective strategies, on other hand, are adopted to extent that a person believes that the only way for him to change these [disadvantageous] conditions ... is together with his group as a whole (Tajfel, 1981, p. 247). Collective strategies include not only militant forms of intergroup behavior or collective action such as revolts and strikes but also more moderate forms such as signing a petition or attending a group meeting. Although individual social mobility strategies are often pre

F OR MANY decades sociologists have been studying the slums in terms of social disorganization. It is my purpose to make a critical examination of some of the literature in this field and to suggest a different approach to the analysis of slum social life. Interest in the slums seems to have stemmed from two sources: (i) an urge to bring about social reforms, and (2) an effort to reach an understanding of the process of urbanization. The studies of Charles Booth' and B. Seebohm Rowntree' are representative of the reform interest. Being preoccupied with poverty and related problems, these men provided a mass of valuable data upon working class standards of living, but they had little to say about the social life of slum dwellers. The urbanization studies provide a closer approach to the analysis of social behavior in this area. The contrast between primitive or peasant society and the urban community has prompted many eminent social scientists to formulate theories upon the nature of social relations in the two environments. Henry Maine3 put the contrast in terms of status and contract, Ferdinand T6nnies4 used the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Geselischaft, and mile Durkheim5 talked of mechanical and organic solidarity. While

Identifying neighborhood typologies associated with adolescent alcohol use can inform the development of harm reduction strategies. Utilizing data from a nationally representative youth survey (n = 4267) in New Zealand, latent class analysis was used to categorize neighborhood types (defined by 10 demographic, social and environmental indicators) to investigate their association with alcohol consumption and related harm. Three neighborhood types were distinguished: (1) "high outlet density and economic deprivation" (30 % of all neighborhoods); (2) "high deprivation, social disorganization, and unsafe" (38 %); and (3) "higher income, safe, and socially organized" (32 %). Significant ethnic variation was evident between neighborhood types. There was an age-group interaction in the main effects with significant associations between neighborhood type and drinking measures and harm most apparent among younger adolescents (<16years), as described next. Compared to students residing in "higher income, safe, and socially organized" neighborhoods, the frequency of binge drinking and high typical consumption was significantly higher in students residing in "high outlet density and economic deprivation" and "high deprivation, social disorganization, and unsafe", with students residing in "high outlet density and economic deprivation" also experiencing higher levels of alcohol-related harm. The findings that neighborhoods characterized by high deprivation and alcohol outlet density and low social organization and perceptions of safety were associated with risky drinking patterns and harm, specifically among young adolescents, underscores the importance of adopting a developmental approach to the study of contextual effects on adolescents.

In an article that appeared in this journal more than a decade ago, I named seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes a pioneer-founder of public choice economics. (1) Both Hobbes and contemporary public-choice theorists are interested in finding institutional methods for overcoming free-rider problem which makes collective action often difficult and sometimes impossible to accomplish. I suggested that Hobbes's interest in decision making in large group situations colored many of his specific ideas about political and social organization. The purpose of this new article is to extend that research by tracing Hobbes's influence on David Hume and documenting that Hume also analyzed prospects for social cooperation in terms of group size. Hobbes's influence is especially apparent in book 3 of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, where basic organizing principles of commercial society are analyzed. (2) There we find that problem of enforcing rules about property, contract performance, and collective action requires government involvement and, indeed, that it is intervention of ministers and politicians that transforms rules first adopted for convenience and expediency into rules that promote both prosperity and virtue in large prospering societies. (3) It is not usual to consult Hobbes for insights about structure and content of Hume's thought. Among historians of philosophical thought it is more common to contrast Hobbes, the egoist, with Hume, a proponent of moral sense school, thereby suggesting that two philosophers had little in common. (4) I shall not overturn these categorizations but rather establish a different web of connections by concentrating my attention on problem of social and economic organization. Here Hobbes's influence on Hume is quite unmistakable. (5) I build on Paul Russell's work. In 1985 Russell established that Hobbes was one of most influences on Hume. (6) Inasmuch as some of Hume's strongest admirers seldom mention Hobbes at all, Russell's argument now opens a new chapter in Hume scholarship. Perhaps boldest of Russell's claims is that Hume consciously patterned his Treatise of Human Nature after Hobbes's Elements of Law and that an important and unique relationship exists between two masterworks. (7) Indeed parallels between two are both significant and obvious enough to raise puzzling question why other Hume scholars have missed Hobbes link so completely. (8) Russell attributes oversight to Hume himself, who was not writing at most tolerant of times in history and probably thought it prudent not to flaunt Hobbes connection too openly among his contemporaries. (9) Hume did, however, openly declare his debt to Bernard Mandeville, and by this a link to Hobbes was no doubt suspected. (l0) In discussion below I identify closeness of reasoning that exists between Hobbes's and Hume's respective accounts of (1) origin of property-rights structures, (2) strategic problems inherent in contracting and salutory role played by government in promoting contracting, and (3) positive role that collective action backed by coercive power of state can play in promoting material welfare. At outset, let me distinguish my thesis from one Milton Myers developed in his stimulating study The Soul of Modern Economic Man. (11) Myers describes late seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury intellectual thought as a reaction to extreme reductionist of human nature advanced by Hobbes. As is typical among political scientists, he treats writers of moral school as adversaries of Hobbes. Hume is mentioned only incidentally, but Smith is accused of backsliding toward Hobbes and jaundiced view of human nature. An earlier study by economist William Allen also contrasts Hobbes with Hume. Allen argues that Hobbes raised certain problems that Hume, using alternative methods of reasoning, was better able to solve. …

This study investigates, using an experimental study, the consequences of negative and positive media messages on young Muslims by gaining insight into who, and under which circumstances, engages in certain collective or individual identity-management strategies. Based on Social Identity Theory (SIT) and previous literature, we expect that negative and more positive media messages moderate the relationship between the degree of identification with the religious group and the application of identity-management strategies. Factor analyses illustrate the presence of at least three types of strategies: collective-fight strategies (meaning one is willing to fight for the group), collective flight-strategies (that entail no change of the status quo) and individual strategies (strategies that solely benefit the individual). Contributions are made empirically and theoretically. Empirically, we measure and group all proposed identity-management strategies based on our findings among the same research population. Theoretically, we hypothesise about how both negative and positive media messages condition the role of religious saliency for Muslims’ identity-management strategies. Results from a survey-embedded experiment among Dutch Moroccan and Turkish Muslims show that high identifiers are more likely to apply fight strategies, and less likely to apply individual strategies (in line with SIT). Regardless of tone, exposure to messages mentioning Muslims make the application of fight strategies more likely among high identifiers. Meanwhile lower identifiers feel a reduced need for change when exposed to more positive messages. These insights in the (mutual) role of religious identification and media messages shed new light on how media messages can bring about group distances, intergroup conflicts and intragroup cohesion and provide a stepping-stone for future research to further insight in the systemic and long-term implications thereof.

Designing strategy of social and economic development of the municipal body implies the analysis of the effective norm-creative base, quantitative estimation of feelings and needs of the population in order to develop efficient methods of goal-setting in its implementation. The article provides findings of the sociological survey within the frames of the project of designing the Strategy of social and economic development of the municipal body 'Namskiy Ulus' for the period 2019-2021 and up to 2030. This Strategy includes shaping the mission, priorities, strategic goals and lines in the social and economic development of the municipal body, key investment projects, resource sources necessary to achieve the system of strategic goals and objectives of the long-term social and economic development. It was underlined that the principle task of the Strategy is to integrate bodies of self-government, state power of the Saha Republic (Yakutiya) in order to create comfortable conditions for cooperation between state and society aimed at implementation of strategic goals of social and economic development of the municipal body 'Namskiy Ulus'. The authors investigated issues of the budget process in the municipal body 'Namskiy Ulus'.

The young of several species of carnivores are often cared for by individuals that are not their parents. Tending to infants other than one’s own is termed alloparental behavior and may involve either “helpers” with no young of their own, or adults with their own offspring who also tend to those of other parents. We review the incidence of alloparental behavior among Carnivora, and consider the evidence for the evolution of such behavior in terms of the processes of kin selection, reciprocity and mutualism. In particular, we emphasize the view that the social organizations of carnivores are adapted inter- and intraspecifically to ecological circumstances. These social adaptations involve different individual strategies (such as helping or dispersing), and the development of complex social relationships. Although the functional significance of different reproductive strategies has received some thought, the developmental processes involved have been neglected. We suggest that studies of the processes that direct an animal towards a given reproductive (or social) role would be fruitful, and that they might most usefully be approached in terms of the effects of ecological circumstances on social organization, and on the development of individuals and their social relationships.

Clever agents in adaptive learning