Intermediary Bodies Research Articles

Emile Durkheim revisited: Les corps intermediaires

The article discusses the relevance of Emile Durkheim for contemporary debates about citizenship and democracy. If the concepts of social bonds and solidarity which have existed from the classical period of the welfare state until today are under revision the question is whether the thoughts of Durkheim have lost relevance too? Parsons's interpretation of Durkheim as a theorist of social order is criticized. He did not look for a functional order of the Parsonian type. More likely Durkheim was preoccupied with the paradoxes and problems of the liberal state, that is the search for a type of authority compatible with modern individual rights. Durkheim's focal interest in intermediary institutions is analysed and related to the neoliberal view of the welfare state as having too much influence over the individual. It tends to forget les corps intermédiaires as important preconditions for the construction of citizenship and modern democracies. The communitarian vision of modern intermediary bodies in the 1990s is criticized for being too local in its perspective.

Making a Necessity of Virtue: The Smaller State as Intermediary Body

This essay begins in a way that may seem self-indulgent and selfserving, but one that I hope readers will see as actually selfexamination and self-criticism, and more important, as a useful way to introduce a topic and idea whose meaning is not obvious from the title. For years I have been arguing that more attention should be paid to smaller states in international history, in particular not just their role in power politics and the so-called balance of power, but their roles and functions as intermediary bodies (a term defined later), as well. In three articles in historical and political science journals and a recent book I have particularly made the case for this in different ways.

La société civile kényane : entre résilience et résistance

Kenyan civil society : between resilience and resistance. The prospect of the general elections at the end of 1997 has multiplied demands and radicalised mobilisation in this ancient, deeply-rooted civil society. Social groups are demanding a less overbearing State presence. This sometimes leads them to join networks and micro-groups which, since they are not integrated at a higher level, content themselves with meeting their own internal needs. Moreoften, they develop intermediary bodies (unions) orseek representation through churches or NGO’s, which are entering the political market and competing with parties who are struggling to shed their traditional role and with whom the citizens identify themselves less and less.

Local commitment for sustainable rural landscape development

In Dutch rural planning, constraints concerning the accessibility and other physical characteristics of an area are no longer a major problem. More important is the policy-making process at higher levels of society and processes of economic and social restructuring, over which local people do not have adequate control. This threatens their strong sense of commitment to their direct physical and social environment. As a consequence, sustainable rural landscape development is not primarily a technical problem, or a problem of design and reconstruction of the area, but a problem of communication and participation. Development projects need a social basis and should include measures to promote the production of quality landscapes by the local population. This cannot be achieved in a strategy to reach sustainable landscape development without taking account of the individual need of people to maintain their commitment to the landscape, and without adjustment of the unbalanced distribution of human resources for future control over the area. Important steps in this strategy would be an early exchange of information about the planning process, and the establishment of intermediary bodies to narrow the gap between the level of policy making and the everyday experiences of local people.

Intermediary bodies in the 1990s: New settings, old problems?

AbstractIntermediary bodies liaise between the voluntary and statutory sectors. Frequently, they have also functioned as local development bodies. This article examines changes in the position of intermediary bodies following the growth of welfare pluralistic policies in the late 1980s, as viewed from the framework of a case study of the Council for Voluntary Service in northwest England. The author concludes that while the voluntary and statutory sectors may now be more willing to accept an intermediary role for such bodies, it remain difficult for them also to undertake development work.

Tipping the Balance

A modern society, according to autopoietic and other analyses, comprises social systems that show organizational closure and selfrreferentiality, partly explaining widely perceived regulatory failure. This article compares four possible mechanisms for governance or steering of such systems, compatible with their autopoiesis: the use of subsidy, partnership with intermediary bodies, reflexive law, and a technique of government intervention that is ancient and common but not recognized, here named collibration. Some social actors exist mainly to check and balance other actors (e.g., employers' organizations and trade unions, or buyers and sellers in a market) and are self-referential only as a pair system This pair system is then self-policing but can be steered, within limits, by tipping the balance that is being maintained-as exemplified by price-loading taxes, cooling-off periods, and sport handicapping.

Intermediary Bodies and Universities: Autonomy in Turkey

This paper describes conditions in Turkey's higher education system prior to the 1981 Reform Law, and discusses developments that have taken place between 1982–1995. The Higher Education Council was established as the supreme intermediary body vested with powers and responsibilities for the nationwide governance of higher education. The Council is fully autonomous and, in its structures and powers, resembles a state board of trustees for a multi-campus system. Since 1981, the Turkish higher education system has been transformed from a degenerated version of the old model to a system with many affinities to the Anglo-American model. Furthermore, the number of universities has doubled, closer cooperation and coordination among institutions has been established, and the number of faculty members and students has increased considerably. In addition, several projects have been implemented to raise the quality of higher education and to encourage scientific research and publications.

Buffer Institutions in Public Higher Education in the Context of Institutional Autonomy and Governmental Control: A Comparative View of the United States and Germany

The conflict between institutional autonomy and government control in higher education exists in all highly industrialized Western societies. In all of them, intermediary bodies between higher education and governments play an important role in policy making. Thus, the United States and Germany may be compared as two societies of the same basic type. But there are also basic differences in higher education/government relations in the two countries. Boards of trustees, multicampus systems and state boards of higher education do not exist in Germany, but there are functional equivalents. On the federal level, different intermediary bodies in the two countries have similar functions in solving similar problems in different ways and with different outcomes. The role of governments in higher education is traditionally stronger in Germany, whereas in the United States, in the processes of intermediation between higher education and the state, the non-governmental element carries greater weight.

The politics of language: Republican values and Breton identity

Among other things, the revolutionary period in France is notorious for two practices: the development of a civil religion and a project of linguistic standardization. The substitution of republican for religious symbols, the creation of public space for republican worship, the hostility towards intermediary bodies, all of this sought to ground a more direct relationship between the citizen and the republic. At the same time, the new order sought to consolidate its control of the church. An oath of loyalty to the republic was required from priests, as part of a plan to make priests functionaries of the state. The protest evoked, and its association with counterrevolution, however, produced equivocation on the part of regimes until the Concordat, which acknowledged the place of Catholicism in French society, without providing official recognition as the state religion, and which sought to monitor the activity of the clergy.

The 19th-Century International System: Changes in the Structure

Conventional accounts of the 19th-century international system describe it as a conservative restoration of the 18th-century system and account for the general stability of the 19th century primarily on the basis of the actors' peaceful dispositions. They fail to recognize or explain the profound structural changes in 19th-century politics. Problems that could not be successfully dealt with in the 18th century were solved or managed by 19th-century statesmen by means of three new systemic arrangements: a system of intertwined guarantees and duties for the great powers; arrangements for shielding European politics from extra-European quarrels; and a network of intermediary bodies, separating and linking the great powers, to serve as buffers and spheres of influence.

Rapport de Michel Aurillac, Maître des requêtes au Conseil d’État, Préfet de la région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Préfet des Bouches-du-Rhône

M. Aurillac It is not so much the forms of administration which are new but rather the way in which they are used, i.e. on a regional level. When the 1972 Law came into force, this was greeted by a certain amount of suspicion on the part of the Regional Council vis-a-vis the State administrative machinery and the development of polymorphous structures entrusted with a wide range of functions, e.g. State enterprises, associations, semi-public companies. No one will deny their efficiency but their use involves grave dangers which demonstrate the limits of para-administration, e.g. hostility between these organisations and government departments and the surrender of power by elected assemblies to intermediary bodies which threaten to usurp their authority.

RECENT STUDIES ON SNAKE VENOM.

Contributions from various workers during the past year have revealed important facts concerning the action of snake venom, and incidentally some gain has been made in our knowledge of the chemistry of "immunity reactions." The important studies made are reported by Flexner and Noguchi in two articles,¹Calmette,²Keys,³and recently Keys and Sachs.⁴The work of Flexner and Noguchi⁵has furnished, among others, the following important observations: Venom contains only intermediary bodies or amboceptors (no complement), and alone would not be of great toxicity; the normal serum of susceptible animals contains the substances (complements) which, by a conjoint action with the intermediary bodies of the venom, cause the toxic phenomena; the loss of bactericidal power of the blood of animals poisoned with venom (previously noted by Welch and Ewing) is due to fixation of the animal's complements by the venom; the serum of snakes contains very little complement for