Social Alliances Research Articles

Eurípedes e Pasolini: o mundo mítico rural e o mundo objetivo da cidade: educação e passagens

Este artigo versa sobre a passagem do mundo mítico e agrícola para o mundo prático e objetivo da cidade em suas dimensões de violência e desagregação social, como se apresentam na tragédia Medeia, de Eurípedes, e no filme do mesmo nome, de Pier Paolo Pasolini. Essa passagem é representada pela aliança social dos personagens Medeia e Jasão e pela quebra dessa aliança. A educação dos personagens, o poder econômico, a perspectiva de miséria e desagregação da família conduzem os interesses e a violência das relações afetivas e sociais.

Social alliances: Business and social enterprise collaboration for social transformation

Social alliances are voluntary collaborations between business and social enterprises addressing social problems too complex to be solved by unilateral organizational action. The present study adopts a systems approach to the study of social alliances and concurrently analyzes the objectives instrumental in the formation of the cross-sector collaboration, the inputs provided by the partners and the outcomes and social transformation impact of the social alliances in a subsistence market place context. The research questions addressed by the study are “Why and with what consequences do business and social enterprises establish alliances?” The exploratory research follows the methodological tradition of using case studies in collaborations. Comparative analyses of the six social alliance cases indicate patterns regarding the adoption and prioritization of alliance- and partner-level objectives, provision of resources by partners, intended scope and social transformation impact, and measurement of results. Some of the observed patterns support prior research and are in line with the resource dependence and institutional perspectives. Despite their limited capacity for significant social change, the results highlight the potential of incremental contributions of social alliances in social transformation in subsistence market places.

Parasite stress is not so critical to the history of religions or major modern group formations

Fincher & Thornhill's (F&T's) central hypothesis is that strong in-group norms were formed in part to foster parochial social alliances so as to enable cultural groups to adaptively respond to parasite stress. Applied to ancestral hominid environments, the story fits with evolutionary theory and the fragmentary data available on early hominid social formations and their geographical distributions. Applied to modern social formations, however, the arguments and inferences from data are problematic.

Transforming Civil Society: Network Processes and Trade Politics in the Americas

Building Transnational Networks: Civil Society and the Politics of Trade in the Americas. By Marisa von Bulow. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 259 pp., $80.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-19156-2). With Building Transnational Networks, Brazilian political scientist Marisa von Bulow makes an important contribution to the rapidly growing literature on transnational activism and its relationships to broader global processes. She combines multiple methods to open up the black boxes contained in our notions of civil society (global or otherwise) and challenges conventional conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in the process. Her work highlights the ways our conventional thinking about politics—which separates national from international/global arenas—inhibits our understandings of the activities and relevance of civil society mobilizations. Moreover, she demonstrates how conventional methods that focus on case studies and campaigns have prevented us from identifying changes in transnational activism over time. von Bulow's study analyzes civil society mobilizations around free trade negotiations in the Americas from their humble origins in the 1980s through the mid-2000s. She combines analyses of interview and organizational data from leading organizations in these struggles with a network analysis based on the surveys of 123 organizations from Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States that were the most active in these mobilizations. In addition, a detailed analysis of changes in how one of the main transnational alliances, the Hemispheric Social Alliance, articulated its demands for alternatives to the neoliberal order between 1998 and 2005 provides rich empirical data on the substantive implications of …

Przemiany polityczne na Islandii w warunkach kryzysu bankowego i gospodarczego

The author begins with a brief description of the essential political institutions of Iceland, as a republic with a parliamentary cabinet form of government and the special role of the president, arguing with the point of views that Iceland should be seen as a state with a semi-presidential form of government. Describing the political situation before the banking crisis, the author underlines the strong position of the Independence Party, which according to the results of the parliamentary elections (elections in 2007), plays a leading role in the "political life" of the state. The author pays attention to the process of oligarchisation in that party and the informal systems of social-network-based links and pathological links between the worlds of politics and business. Growing since the 90s, the dominance of a few family clans, together with the deregulation and privatization of the economy, led to nepotism and lack of accountability on the part of politicians and business representatives. An expansion of the three largest Icelandic banks Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir, without any significant criticism and state control, has led to a situation where at the end of 2008 their assets were 10-fold greater than the GDP of Iceland. Loss of confidence in the interbank markets after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the U.S., caused inhibition of liquidity and consequently the collapse of these banks, eventually acquired by the state. The most spectacular was the collapse of Icesave - the Internet branch of Landsbanki operating in the UK and the Netherlands. The disintegration of the banking system led to a disintegration of the coalition government. Early elections in April 2009, won by the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement, led to the formation of a center-left government of Prime Minister, Ms J. Sigur?ardóttir. The first major action was the government's reorientation of foreign policy and submitting an application for EU membership, and the subsequent arrangement of the debts after the collapse of these banks, reform of the central bank and banking supervisors, the establishment of a parliamentary committee to investigate the banking crisis and identify those responsible, the appointment of a special Prosecutor investigating violations of law during privatization of the banking sector and the actions taken on the eve of the crisis. The article contains the constitutional and legal analysis of the first and second so-called referendum. on Icesave, conducted after the President vetoed a further act concerning Iceland's agreements with its creditors - the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. As a result, residents of Iceland have not agreed to repay debts incurred without any fault on their part and through arrogance, incompetence and greed of the financial elite and the political managers controlling the banking system. This puts into question the country's future membership in the EU. The government, despite the opposition to the proposal made by a vote of no confidence, which fell, still take the difficult decisions associated with the revitalization of the banking system and economy of Iceland and improve its international image.

Consumer Evaluations of Social Alliances: The Effects of Perceived Fit Between Companies and Non-Profit Organizations

Company–cause fit has been one of the major issues in the domain of corporate social responsibility. This study tries to expand the perspective from company–cause to company–non-profit organization (NPO) fit, and it gives implications to firms looking for long-term collaboration with an NPO. Specifically, it suggests three types of fit, i.e., familiarity, business, and activity fit and investigates the potential effects of these fits in social alliances between companies and the partnering NPOs on consumer attributions of the firms’ motives for the alliances. An experiment that used scenarios revealed that consumers perceive high-fitted alliances on the dimensions of the familiarity and activity fit as being more public-serving than low-matched ones. However, the consumers’ attribution of the motive is not different between the high and low business fit. The implications of the research results are discussed from an academic and practical standpoint.

Living together: The transformation of multi-religious coexistence in southern Thailand

In this article, I provide a preliminary analysis of Buddhist–Muslim coexistence in the Songkhla Lake area in southern Thailand as it unfolds on the margins of a violent conflict in the Deep South (Patani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces). I argue that in the Songkhla Lake area, social, religious, economic and political alliances are reflected in multi-religious ritual traditions that have the potential to transcend cultural difference or manage difference constructively. The article then analyses the transformation of multi-religious coexistence and concludes that the revitalisation of Theravada Buddhism and Islam results in the uneasy coexistence of old and new practices and in a dialectic of sharing and competition.

Strategic partnerships, social capital and innovation: accounting for social alliance innovation

This paper focuses on innovation in the context of business–non-governmental organization (NGO) partnerships for corporate social responsibility (CSR). While different aspects of business–NGO partnerships have been studied, the role of innovation and its potential implications for partnership outcomes have so far not been systematically explored. The paper defines innovation in simple and concrete terms and synthesizes from the literature what can be considered as critical ingredients to foster social alliance innovation. The paper posits in turn that these ingredients correspond closely to the conception of social capital and offers a consolidated framework that helps in probing around these ingredients and social capital in accounting for innovative partnership outcomes. The empirical part consists of a comparative analysis of six case studies of business–NGO collaboration in the context of CSR in the United Kingdom. The evidence presented makes it clear that strategic partnerships are more readily capable of innovation and that social capital as an umbrella concept is very promising in explaining the differential success and performance of social alliances and central to understanding the dynamics of social alliance innovation and value creation.

Higher or lower? The functional anatomy of perceived allocentric social hierarchies

The perception and judgement of social hierarchies forms an integral part of social cognition. Hierarchical judgements can be either self-referential or allocentric (pertaining to two or more external agents). In psychiatric conditions such as dissocial personality disorder and schizophrenia, the impact of hierarchies may be problematic. We sought to elucidate the brain regions involved in judging allocentric social hierarchies. Twenty-two healthy male subjects underwent three fMRI scans. During scanning, subjects answered questions concerning visually-presented target pairs of human individual's relative superiority within a specific social hierarchy or their perceived degree of social alliance (i.e., whether they were "friends or enemies"). Subjects also made judgements relating to target pairs' age, gender and fame to control for confounding factors and performed a baseline numerical task. Response times increased in line with hypothesized ascending executive load. Both social hierarchy and social alliance judgements activated left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and bilateral fusiform gyri. In addition, social alliance judgements activated right dorsal IFG and medial prefrontal cortex. When compared directly with social alliance, social hierarchy judgements activated left orbitofrontal cortex. Detecting the presence of social hierarchies and judging other's relative standing within them implicates the cognitive executive, in particular the VLPFC. Our finding informs accounts of 'normal' social cognition but our method also provides a means of probing the dissocial brain in personality disorder and schizophrenia where executive function may be dysfunctional.

Social Alliance and Employee Voluntary Activities: A Resource-Based Perspective

The corporate social responsibility literature devotes relatively little attention to the strategic role played by employee voluntary activities (EVAs) in social alliances. Using the resource-based perspective of the organization to frame the data collection and the analyses, this article investigates: (1) the role of EVAs in the development of corporate and non-profit organizations (NPOs) competitive assets and (2) the management approaches to how both parties can develop their own resources by combining them with the shared resources with the purpose of enhancing its competitive advantage in its own sector. The database is composed of 70 specifically designed interviews with managers of UK-based firms and NPOs. The analyses suggest, among other things, that the majority of corporate and non-profit managers find that EVAs generate substantial tangible and intangible benefits for their respective organisations, creating genuine synergies. We also find evidence of a general preference for the management approaches of such programmes in both types of organisation.

Oil, Coalitions, and Regime Durability: the Origins and Persistence of Popular Rentierism in Kuwait

While the canonical literature on oil wealth suggests that hydrocarbon windfalls encourage repressive despotism, Kuwait provides a case of an oil-rich autocracy governing instead through popular rentierism—that is, through a broad coalition of social forces, one that furnishes enduring loyalty from below while constraining abuses of state power from above. This paper provides a theoretically guided explanation for this exceptional outcome. I argue that the Kuwaiti regime’s coalitional bargains originated in the pre-oil era, when domestic opposition and geopolitical constrictions compelled it to forge new social alliances at the dawn of modern statehood. This inclusionary strategy mediated the subsequent effect of oil rents, which the regime used to institutionalize its mass base with costly material and symbolic side payments. Such popular incorporation bound large constituent classes to the regime’s survival, precluding the need for widespread repression. After 50 years, these coalitional bargains have also proven remarkably resilient, as social actors have continued to endorse the autocratic leadership despite economic crisis and wartime defeat.

How Does the Director’s Social Network Matter? Evidence from Structure Estimation

In this paper, I evaluate the impact of board interlock networks (i.e. boards are connected by interlocked directors – individuals who are officers and/or directors at two or more firms) on directorship market outcomes and firm values by estimating a dynamic structural model. The model features endogenous network formation and network learning and predicts that, under certain restrictions, the structure of board interlock networks can fully reveal previously unidentified objectives (e.g. whether the board is the firm value maximizers or social alliance to the CEO). The model’s parameters are estimated by applying Bayesian Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo methods to longitudinal interlock network data of U.S. public traded firms over ten years (1996-2006). I find that social network connections are important in determining who gets which directorship. Specifically, the possibility of obtaining board seat increases by 30-150 times if the director has a tie to the hiring board, while other variables (e.g. director’s demographic characteristics, the performance of his current firm, his professional title, his compensation, how often the director attends a board meeting, etc.) have negligible effects. I also find that boards discount the value of directors with a large number of outside directorships, indicating a desire for effective monitors. Finally, I find that interlock connections decrease firms’ values pre-Sarbances-Oxley Act (SOX) and increase post-SOX. Overall, this model provides the first study in the dynamic relationship between board interlock network, director appointment and firm value.

An Analysis of Cause-Related Marketing Implementation Strategies Through Social Alliance: Partnership Conditions and Strategic Objectives

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an effective marketing tool for promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and the bulk of campaigns are designed and delivered through collaborative ‘social’ alliances with non-profit organisations (NPOs). The authors seek to uncover some of the factors that explain how firms and NPOs choose their potential partners in the development of their CRM strategy. The rationales for the observed patterns are investigated through semi-structured interviews conducted with managers employed by the UK-based firms and NPOs. The authors find that each party has specific preferences when choosing the particular CRM implementation strategies in different situations, as well as different initial positions when negotiating the formation of the social alliance. This article contributes to our understanding of the CRM implementation strategies and both the company’s and the NPO’s behaviours toward each of the strategies.

Civil Society and Trade Negotiations: Constructing a New Field of Action in the Americas*

This article analyses the process by which different civil society actors in the Americas have constructed a new field of collective action over the past twenty years. It focuses on attempts to establish new organisations on a domestic and transnational level, and thus helps provide a greater understanding of the dilemmas involved in the creation of new organisations which cross national borders. In particular, it analyses the case of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, an alliance of organisations and movements created in the mid-1990s. It argues that it is not possible to think of civil society coalitions in terms of a strict division between domestic and international levels. In addition, a view focussing exclusively on the role of states and international organisations is inadequate for understanding the increasingly complex dynamics of building up coalitions and forming preferences.

El movimiento por la vivienda digna en España o el porqué del fracaso de una protesta con amplia base social

Antes de la irrupcion de la crisis economica internacional de 2008 las encuestas de opinion mostraban que los espanoles consideraban la problematica de la vivienda como una de sus maximas prioridades. En 2003, y como resultado de esta preocupacion, surgio un movimiento social que se centraba en el dificil acceso a la misma. El movimiento adquirio un renovado impacto social y un mayor impetu con la creacion de una nueva organizacion tres anos mas tarde: la Asamblea por la Vivienda Digna. Liderada principalmente por jovenes y estudiantes, la Asamblea ha propiciado el desarrollo de un nuevo movimiento por una vivienda digna (MVD) de tipo mas rupturista y menos convencional al tiempo que se ha embarcado en una estrategia de accion colectiva contenciosa en las calles. A pesar de la importancia que la sociedad otorgaba a la situacion del mercado inmobiliario, el MVD ha sido incapaz de �explotar� el tema y de conseguir resultados tangibles. El uso de un enmarcado radical e intransigente, la ausencia de estrategias que facilitaran el establecimiento de amplias alianzas sociales y la falta de disposicion para cooperar con potenciales aliados politicos pueden explicar por que esta organizacion no ha sido capaz de generar un movimiento social exitoso.

Culture and Politics in China's Internet

[ 164 ] asia policy Culture and Politics in China’s Internet Randy Kluver Political leaders, activists, and academics have all shared a common expectation regarding China’s relationship to the Internet. Given the explosive growth of the number of users, China’s innovative use of technology, and the tension between the “Internet wants to be free” technology and China’s highly controlled political and social sector, the scene is a set for a classic “battle royale” between state control and a newly empowered citizenry led by issue advocates and Internet campaigns. Guobin Yang’s highly interesting and informed look at this battle brings together a number of narratives, including the role of transnational activists, utopian realism, and the style of contention online. His focus, however, is primarily on the role of netizens and civic associations in using the Internet to launch campaigns for justice, to challenge the rules and authority of central and local governments, and to push for greater openness in Chinese society. Given the large interest in China’s relationship to the Internet, of course, there are a number of works that address this issue, including Michael Chase and James Mulvenon’s You’ve Got Dissent: Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing’s Counter-Strategies, Christopher Hughes and Gudrun Wacker’s China and the Internet: Politics of the Digital Leap Forward, and Zixue Tai’s The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society.1 Yang’s contribution is to weave together strands of the argument that has been made piecemeal by a number of other authors and to take a more nuanced perspective regarding the promise of the Internet. Indeed, at a time when observers in the West have largely lowered their expectations for Internet-driven political change, there remains a certain confidence that the Internet will indeed transform China, much as earlier advocates argued that trade would lead to a more open society. As evidence for this, one need look no further than the blurb by Governor Howard Dean on the cover of Yang’s book: “The ultimate instrument of individual empowerment is remaking one of the most controlling societies on earth.” 1 Michael Chase and James Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent: Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing’s Counter-Strategies (Santa Monica: RAND, 2002); Christopher R. Hughes and Gudrun Wacker, China and the Internet: Politics of the Digital Leap Forward (New York: Routledge, 2003); and Zixue Tai, The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society (New York: Routledge, 2006). randy kluver is Executive Director of the Institute for Pacific Asia and Research Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. He can be reached at . [ 165 ] book review roundtable • the power of the internet in china The problem is that Governor Dean’s enthusiasm perhaps is more a projection of his own desires than a reflection of the reality of social life in China. Yang, for his part, acknowledges the role of the Internet in empowering individuals and activists but, to his credit, understands that there is much more ambiguity than is often acknowledged regarding the long-term social and political consequences of the Internet. What he does do is pull together multiple data points in such a way as to better articulate the capacity of new informationtechnologiesforacceleratingsocialandpoliticalchange.Thereare multiple narratives at play within Chinese cyberspace, including the use of the Internet by individuals to challenge governmental policies, to redress local or central governmental officials, and to build new forms of social alliances. But in addition to these positive trends, the Internet in China also has contributed to increased social bullying (such as through the “human flesh search engine” phenomenon), fraud, and disinformation. Yang very carefully sorts through these multiple narratives and attempts to locate the role of the Internet in a time of already rapid and extensive social and political change. This story, moreover, is difficult to tell: During the most rapid economic growth and social change in history, how does one isolate the role of one variable, even— or, rather, especially—when that variable is the Internet? China’s political and social makeover began long before 1994, when the Internet was introduced to China, and includes factors that seem far...

The Italian Communist Party, local government and the Cold War

The Italian national elections of 18 April 1948 handed power to the Christian Democratic Party. The Italian Communist Party had, however, gained significant municipal control in the local elections of 1946. For the Communists, the local level became the testing ground where administrative practices, political initiatives, social alliances and economic projects were developed. The leaders and the intellectuals worked to outline the cultural framework of a political project which could challenge national politics from town councils. Meanwhile, with a view to making gains in the local elections of 1951–1952, propaganda was used in an attempt to diffuse and proselytise municipal political programmes among different social classes in a divided socioeconomic environment.

Sustainable land use scenario framework: Framework and outcomes from peri-urban South-East Queensland, Australia

Scenario planning is a common tool used for dealing with uncertainty in rapidly changing situations. The aim of this paper is to create a practical framework for developing sustainable land use scenarios that has direct policy relevance. The framework was created and tested in a peri-urban area, Rocky Point in South-East Queensland, Australia. The framework, which is driven by participatory processes and consists of an iterative combination of three steps: context assessment, decision structuring and decision analysis. The participatory process involved a range of actors engaged through steering committees, public meetings, focus groups, questionnaires and interviews. The outputs from these activities were four landscape scale scenarios which were sustainably assessed by an impact matrix and equity matrix (relating to a dendrogram of coalition). Critically, these outputs also identified the possible formation of three new social alliances amongst key local actors considered necessary for the manifestation of any of the future scenarios. Application of this framework demonstrated its usefulness to inform policy by outcomes already being included in current policy documents. Additionally, the framework will inform future scenario developers by including: (i) a flexible participatory process able to respond to local contextual needs; (ii) capability to identify ‘triggers for change’ by actors to delineate alternate scenarios; and (iii) development of ‘enabling policies’ as part of the participatory process, to move towards target scenarios.

Three Stories about Life along the Road: The Survival of the Benedictine Monastery of Andres

The monastery of Andres in the county of Guines may appear at first glance to have been poor and isolated, yet its monastic cartulary-chronicle, written by Abbot William of Andres in the early thirteenth century, reveals a house positioned to make the most of its small assets along the roads. Roads brought guests to the almshouse/hostelry, permitted the monastery to collect its rents and tithes, facilitated the abbots’ administration of the property, and allowed the monks to engage in investment and banking. The roads defined an axis along which the monastery forged social and political alliances as well as spiritual ones. Ties with Stephen Langton and the monks of Canterbury helped William gain the friendship of Innocent III, which permitted the monastery to escape the control of its motherhouse, Charroux in Poitou. The success of the monastery was intimately tied to its mastery of its geography through its roads.

Being fair and being seen to be fair: Corporate reputation and CSR partnerships

Over the past two decades, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been a growth area in managerial practice and academic consideration, as companies pursue the strategy to advance their corporate reputation goals. A popular CSR activity for many companies has been to enter into social alliance partnerships with nonprofit organisations [Berger, I., Cunningham, P., Drumwright, M., 2004. Social alliances: company/nonprofit collaboration. California Management Review 47 (1), 58–90]. This has been met by a sceptical yet pragmatic public, willing to support the partnerships so long as corporates are seen to be fair and just in their dealings with the nonprofit partner. Currently, however, there is little ability for stakeholders to know whether the partnerships are fair. This paper considers conflicting conceptions of how justice may be understood in corporate-nonprofit partnerships. It offers a model for how stakeholders may judge justice in CSR partnerships and relate this to corporate reputation.