Structuralist Explanation Research Articles

Using Process Tracing to Investigate Elite Experience Accrual: Explaining Margaret Thatcher’s Support for US Air Strikes Against Libya

The United States’ invasion of Grenada in 1983 represented the lowest point in Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s relationship, with Thatcher incensed at what she perceived to be her ally’s misuse of military force. However, in April 1986, Thatcher gave permission for the United States to use British-based aircraft for air strikes against the Gaddafi regime in Libya, a mission as tenuously grounded in international law as Grenada. How do we explain Thatcher’s apparent change in approach to foreign policy, now placing strategic interests above her previous deference to international law, and what does this tell us about the role experience plays in a leader’s foreign policy decisions? Drawing on insights from the ongoing behavioural revolution in International Relations, this paper argues that the experience Thatcher gained during the Grenada episode led to her support for US strikes against Libya. A process tracing approach using documents from the UK National Archives, as well as biographies and memoirs, tests this individual-level hypothesis against a rival structuralist explanation. This research shows how experience gained in office can influence a leader’s future foreign policy decision-making and demonstrates the utility of process tracing methods for investigations into the role of experience in international politics.

ПИТАННЯ ТЕОРІЇ РЕЛІГІЇ У ТВОРАХ МИРОСЛАВА ПОПОВИЧА РАДЯНСЬКОГО ПЕРІОДУ

Based on the works of the Ukrainian philosopher Myroslav Popovich, dating back to the Soviet period, an analysis of some aspects of his theory of religion is proposed. In particular, the theory of religion as used by M. Popovich is subject to reconstruction, his perception of religion primarily as a special form of understanding (its analogues: "fideistic rationalism" and "religious thinking"). Special attention is paid to the development of questions of understanding of religious ideology and its correlation with science. In the context of M. Popovich's solution to the problem of the structure of religion, it is remarkable that he singled out the mythological component as the determining one. The mythological component is revealed in its essential characteristics and its semantic diversity. The subject of analysis is also the semantics of the word "paganism" and its perception by M. Popovich as a worldview system. In particular, the two methodological guidelines proposed by him in the study of Slavic paganism are considered. First, we are talking about the reconstruction of the common Slavic confessional material and its further extrapolation to the whole of Slavia. Secondly, the structuralist explanation of the essence of the Slavic myths, including the "basic myth" (the fight of the thunderer with the serpent), is stated. It is generalized that M. Popovich treated religion as a consistent rationalist. Certain innovations proposed by him in the study of religion were at odds with the guidelines of the then religious science

Capacity or Culture? Assessing Their Significance for the Divergence in the Fulfilment of Common EU Obligations by Member States

[The multi-level governance of the European Union (EU) makes the adoption and implementation of its laws and policies vulnerable to the variation in the ability of member state institutions to deliver on their obligations. Studies of EU law compliance have established the relevance of institutional capacity to member state performance. This paper contrasts institutional capacity with an alternative structuralist explanation: the autonomy of state institutions from wider social pressures (such as corruption, clientelism). This follows the emphasis on impartiality in the ‘quality of government’ literature. The paper explores the relative significance of ‘capacity’ and ‘autonomy’ for compliance, but also extends the focus to other areas in which governments fulfil EU obligations. The latter cover core government functions of regulation and distribution, allowing a broader assessment of both propositions. The empirical results, tested against alternative indicators, suggest that ‘autonomy’ (the sociology of the state) matters more than institutional capacity for both EU law compliance and the implementation of EU policies. To this extent, there are important implications for debates on the conditions impacting ‘impartiality’, but also for those on the inclusivity and deepening of the EU integration process.

КОНЦЕПЦІЯ РОЗЩЕПЛЕННЯ СВІДОМОСТІ У ПСИХОАНАЛІЗІ ТА НАСЛІДКИ ЇЇ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ДЛЯ СОЦІАЛЬНОГО ПІЗНАННЯ

КОНЦЕПЦІЯ РОЗЩЕПЛЕННЯ СВІДОМОСТІ У ПСИХОАНАЛІЗІ ТА НАСЛІДКИ ЇЇ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ДЛЯ СОЦІАЛЬНОГО ПІЗНАННЯ

<em>A Poststructuralist Approach to the Dagbon Chieftaincy Crisis in Northern Ghana</em>

The intractable Dagbon Chieftaincy Crisis be - tween the Andani and Abudu families for royal supremacy re- flects the dilemma confronting the relevance of chieftaincy in Ghana in the context of social change. The paper offers a post - structuralist explanation for the succession disputes, po liti cal manipulations, and perennial violence that have contempo- rarily characterized the crisis. It posits that the sources and dy- namics of the crisis are found in the dominant norms, values, traditions, and common history of the Dagbon state. They are located in the cross- generational structural continuities that are drawn upon and reproduced by purposive actors in strategic interdependence at both the local and national levels.

Geographies of Health: An Introduction

List of Figures. List of Tables. Figure Sources. Preface. Part I: Describing and Explaining Health in Geographical Settings:. 1. Introducing Geographies of Health. Health and Geography: Some Fundamental Concepts. Concepts of health. Geographical concepts. Geographies of Health: Five Case Studies. Asthma in New York. Area effects on smoking in disadvantaged communities in Glasgow. The changing political economy of sex in South Africa. The personal significance of home. Embodied spaces of health and medical information on the Internet. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 2. Explaining Geographies of Health. Positivist Approaches to the Geography of Health. Positivist explanation. Further examples of positivist approaches. Social Interactionist Approaches to the Geography of Health. Social interactionist explanation. Further examples of social interactionist approaches. Structuralist Approaches to the Geography of Health. Structuralist explanation. Further examples of structuralist or conflict-based approaches. Structurationist Approaches to the Geography of Health. Structurationist explanation. Further examples of structurationist approaches. Post-structuralist Approaches to the Geography of Health. Post-structuralist explanation. Further examples of post-structuralist approaches. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 3. Method and Technique in the Geography of Health. Mapping the Geography of Health: Quantitative Approaches. Visualization. Exploratory spatial data analysis. Modeling health data in a spatial setting. Geographical information systems and health. Interpreting the Geography of Health: Qualitative Approaches. Interviews. Focus groups. Other qualitative methods. Qualitative data analysis. Rigor in qualitative research. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. Part II: Health and the Social Environment:. 4. Inequalities in Health Outcomes. Patterns of Inequality. Health inequalities: international comparisons. One Europe or many?. Health inequalities: regional and class divides. Explaining Inequalities in Health Outcomes. The programming hypothesis and the life course. Behavioral (lifestyle) factors. Social and community influences. Working conditions and local environments. Material deprivation and health. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 5. Inequalities in the Provision and Utilization of Health Services. Principles of Health Service Delivery. Levels of health care provision. Geographies of rationing. Efficiency and equity. The need for health care. Inequalities in the Provision of Health Services. Health care provision in developing countries. Health care provision in the developed world. Utilization of Services. Use of primary health care services. Use of secondary and tertiary health care services. Do Provision and Utilization Affect Outcome?. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 6. People on the Move: Migration and Health. Impact of Migration on Health. Migration and stress. The health of refugees. The impact of migration on the spread of disease. Migration and the incidence of disease and ill-health. Impact of Health Status on Migration. The selectivity of migration. Migration for health care and social support. The Relationship between Migration and the Delivery of Health Services. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. Part III: Health and Human Modification of the Environment:. 7. Air Quality and Health. Types of Pollutants. Area Sources. Radon. Ozone. Linear Sources. Point Sources. Point sources in the developing world. Point sources in the developed world. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 8. Water Quality and Health. Water-borne Diseases. Cholera. Schistosomiasis. Gastroenteritis. Water Hardness. Chemical Contamination of Drinking Water. Aluminium, fluoride and arsenic. Other Forms of Contamination. Hazardous waste sites. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 9. Health Impacts of Global Environmental Change. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion. Ozone depletion and skin cancer. Other health impacts of ozone depletion. Global Climate Change. Direct effects: thermal stress. Indirect effects. Impacts on infectious (especially insect-borne) disease. Other health effects of climate change. Health Effects of Other Global Environmental Change. Concluding Remarks. Further Reading. 10. Conclusions: Emerging Themes in Geographies of Health. The Macro-scale: Health and the Global. The Meso-scale. The Micro-scale. References. Appendix: Web-based Resources for the Geographies of Health. Index

Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights

Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights Neil Stammers (bio) If people are not aware of the historical and contextual nature of human rights and are not aware that human rights become realized only by the struggles of real people experiencing real instances of domination, then human rights are all too easily used as symbolic legitimizers for instruments of that very domination. 1 I. Introduction Despite some recognition in recent literature that there is some sort of link between social movements and human rights, the nature of this link and its possible implications for understanding human rights have rarely been explored in any detail. A similar argument can be made in respect of the highly ambivalent relationship between human rights and power. 2 This [End Page 980] paper argues that these lacunae arise because dominant discourses from both proponents and opponents of human rights are not analytically equipped to grasp the way in which ideas and practices in respect of human rights have been socially constructed in the context of social movement challenges to extant relations and structures of power. The contention of this article is that if we use the triadic relationship between human rights, social movements, and power as an organizing focus for analysis, we get a very different picture from those offered by the dominant discourses, not only in respect of the origins and development of human rights, but also their potentials and limits. The need to see this alternative picture is made all the more urgent by the current pace of the processes of globalization, which appear to be significantly transforming the capacities of many social and political institutions, including the nation-state. The potential importance of this last point can hardly be exaggerated given that the nation-state is almost universally regarded as the main duty-bearer in respect of all forms of human rights. Beyond this, it is also clear that human rights are part of globalization processes: an important and contested, some would even say oppressive, element of political globalization. In the rest of this introduction, I will set out my assumptions in respect of social constructionism and power. The first main section of the article will then offer some initial thoughts on the nature of social movements and the role of social movements in the socio-historical development of human rights. The section which follows looks at the limits of the dominant discourses on human rights, and the third section examines how we might go about understanding the highly ambivalent relationship between human rights and power. This leads to a final section which considers some issues relating to how human rights might be reconstructed under contemporary conditions of globalization. A. Social Constructionism and Power To say that human rights are socially constructed is to say that ideas and practices in respect of human rights are created, re-created, and instanciated by human actors in particular socio-historical settings and conditions. It is a way of understanding human rights which does not require them to have any metaphysical existence (for example, through nature or God), nor does it rely on abstract reasoning or logic to ground them. The emphasis on the potential creativity of human actors in this understanding of social constructionism also stands in contrast to forms of structuralist explanation that reduce the role of social actors to nothing other than bearers of structural determinations. Taken together, these assumptions locate my ontological [End Page 981] and epistemological positions close to those of “structurationist” and “critical realist” schools of thought, 3 sharing common features with many feminist, and some cultural relativist, critiques of human rights. 4 “Power” is the other term I want to briefly discuss at the outset, because how power is conceptualized also bears heavily on how human rights have been understood. Within the western liberal tradition, the concept of power has often been used in a very limited way: as the capacities of social actors located in the political sphere (the state, government, political parties, etc.). In other words, the sort of power that has been much described, studied, and analyzed has been restricted to political power. There have been, of course, much wider understandings of power than...

VARIATION IN STRUCTURALIST AND INDIVIDUALIST EXPLANATIONS AMONG CLASSES IN HONG KONG

An essential test for the significance of class examines variation in people's explanation for social reality. This explanation usually comprises two independent dimensions, structuralist explanation and individualist explanation. Whereas structuralist explanation emphasizes causal factors in society and social structure, individualist explanation concerns causal factors in the individual. Class theory predicts that members of the working class are more favorable to the structuralist explanation and less favorable to the individualist explanation than are members of middle and employing classes. Furthermore, it primarily proposes that the differential explanation results from one's experience from work conditions, for instance, work alienation. This study tests these hypotheses explicitly with data collected from 276 married couples from Hong Kong . Results of structural equation modeling are in favor of hypotheses concerning effects of class and their mediation through work alienation. These effects appear to be more consistent than those of competing predictors including income, home ownership, education, age, gender, and religion. These findings illustrate the plausibility of the learning - generalization model in interpreting class effects.

Monetary policy, output and inflation in Bangladesh: a dynamic analysis

This paper investigates the relationship between money, prices, output, and the exchange rate in Bangladesh during the 1974–92 period. Several interesting conclusions can be derived from the paper. First, the inflationary process in Bangladesh cannot be explained exclusively by the monetarist or the structuralist explanation of inflation. Second, regardless of the monetary aggregate employed, monetary policy exerts a significant unidirectional impact on real output. Third, monetary policy and inflation together account for a significant portion of fluctuations in the exchange rate. Finally, it is noted that monetary shocks have a strong, but relatively short-run, impact on inflation. In light of these findings, it can be concluded that monetary policy in Bangladesh should be carried out with extreme caution. While tight money may put a short-term halt to inflation and help stabilize the foreign trade sector, it may also cause a slowdown in the economy.

Geopolitics and geoculture in world-systems theorizing: A review essay

This article discusses the strengths and weakness of world-system theorizing in the light of recent geopolitical changes and the emergence of new “shatter zones” in the world economy. It also examines the relationship between hegemonic social sciences and the crisis of the world-system. Thus, it argues, the idiographic tradition that emerged in the nineteenth century pushed us in the direction of specialization and micro-analysis at a time when a global perspective and comparative, interdisciplinary analysis could have offered deeper insights into the nature and direction of social and geopolitical change in the modern world. It also suggests that the nomothetic tradition which emerged in the 1960s is being revived in order to push us away from structuralist explanation and in the direction of atheoretical and quantitative analysis. The article concludes with a brief discussion on the organization and political problems confronting antisystemic movements in the modern world.

The analysis of political structure

Part 1 Structure in political research: structure in contemporary political analysis political structure revived varieties of political structure effects of non-formal political structures effects of formal political structures structuralism as a theory of determination structuralism, systems analysis and higher-order structures comparative research and whole-system constraint. Part 2 The structuralism of Nicos Poulantzas: Poulantzas - Marzism redefined structuralist Marxism and systems analysis a structuralist explanation of the state the state a structural object the structural forms of the political systems the transformation of authoritarian political structures. Part 3 Higher order structures: higher order structures - as explanation higher-order structures - their composition and influence substance vs method.

Punishment and the Individual in the United States and Japan

In this paper we argue that differences in the conceptualization of individual actors in networks provide the most parsimonious explanation for differences that occur between American and Japanese views of sanctions and between actors in different role relationships within each society. Our empirical tests drew on respondents' hypothetical punishment choices and punishment rationales in surveys of Detroit, Michigan, and Yokohama and Kanazawa, Japan. As predicted, American views of punishments for everyday misdeeds were more likely to favor isolation or retribution and American rationales for imprisonment were significantly more retributive than in Japan. Within each culture, offenses between intimates were least likely to evoke isolative or retributive punishments whereas offenses between strangers were most likely to do so. We conclude by considering alternatives to our structuralist explanation of these findings and by suggesting some implications of legal culture for dispute resolution in the United States versus Japan.

Elster's Marx

A central aim of Elster's Making Sense of Marx is to recover Marx for methodological individualism, to show that Marx, unlike many of his followers, sought to provide his explanations of macro‐phenomena with micro‐foundations. Though I largely share Elster's methodological commitments and his view that Marx also (intermittently) adhered to them, I question whether this makes Marx a methodological individualist. In my view, Marx practised in his best work both individualist and structuralist explanation simultaneously. In three briefer remarks I also comment on Marx's and Elster's treatment of the differences between workers’ and peasants’ propensities for collective action; the primacy in Marx's theories of dynamics internal to a society and his failure to recognize the importance for domestic developments of interactions with other societies and states; and finally Marx's ‘progressive’ values, which Elster seems to share.

Evolutionary theory and teleology

The order within and among living systems can be explained rationally by postulating a process of descent with modification, effected by factors which are extrinsic or intrinsic to the organisms. Because at the time Darwin proposed his theory of evolution there was no concept of intrinsic factors which could evolve, he postulated a process of extrinsic effects--natural selection. Biological order was thus seen as an imposed, rather than an emergent, property. Evolutionary change was seen as being determined by the functional efficiency (adaptedness) of the organism in its environment, rather than by spontaneous changes in intrinsically generated organizing factors. The initial incompleteness of Darwin's explanatory model, and the axiomatization of its postulates in neo-Darwinism, has resulted in a theory of functionalism, rather than structuralism. As such, it introduces an unnecessary teleology which confounds evolutionary studies and reduces the usefulness of the theory. This problem cannot be detected from within the neo-Darwinian paradigm because the different levels of end-directed activity--teleomatic, teleonomic, and teleological--are not recognized. They are, in fact, considered to influence one another. The theory of nonequilibrium evolution avoids these problems by returning to the basic principles of biological order and developing a structuralist explanation of intrinsically generated change. Extrinsic factors may affect the resultant evolutionary pattern, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for evolution to occur.

The structuralist explanation in the theory of inflation

This paper argues that three main elements form the basis of both the Latin American and the European branches of the structuralist school of inflation theory. These elements are: (1) relative prices that change when economic structure changes; (2) downward inflexibility of (some) money prices; and (3) a passive money supply closing the deflationary gap caused by price increases. The only difference between the two branches is what they consider to be the main cause of structural change. The object of this paper is to show that models worked out by Latin American structuralists during the 1960s and models developed recently by European structuralists have a common reduced form and describe similar inflationary processes.

Pocock and Machiavelli: Structuralist Explanation in History

Notes and Discussions POCOCK AND MACHIAVELLI: STRUCTURALIST EXPLANATION IN HISTORY I. It has been four years since the publication of Pocock's Machiavellian Moment,' and the intervening period has seen the book attract sufficient attention to earn it the status of required reading in the field of early modern European and American political theory. Although a good deal has been said about the book, 2one is struck by what has not at all been said as yet-viz., that it deploys a structuralist methodology to interpret Machiavelli and the tradition of republican thought. J The book's structuralism is announced by the title. At first glance the notion of a "Machiavellian moment" might well invoke the idea of a ruling group or individual making a political decision of doubtful morality-a Machiavellian decision, grounded in raison d'dtat, that deliberately subordinated all means to the overriding end of maintaining political power; that countenanced, even required political duplicity ; or that sanctioned the strategic use of cruelty for political purposes. Alternatively , the title could refer to the brief period in Florentine history, between 1498 and 1512, when Machiavelli vigorously pursued a career as Chancery Secretary-a career, one might argue in light of this book's emphasis, in which the Florentine fused theory (with its universalizing properties) with practice (in all its particularities ), in which he discovered that the universal cannot be separated from nor exhausted in any of its particulars, that the lessons contained in particular events go beyond those particular events, and that one case can be seen as analogous to another by virtue of our capacity to perceive in the model event a general lesson not reducible to an abstract rule. Still another possibility lies in the view that the Machiavellian moment refers to an application of the principle that since things are not what they appear to be, Machiavelli's own works (or some of them) contain commentary on Florentine affairs disguised as reflections on Roman history. But none of these interpretations truly explains the title. The term "moment" derives rather from Pocock's concern with synchronic as opposed to diachronic structures of thought, with structures of relationships across moments in time instead of development or evolution through time. Accordingly, the Machiavellian moment is something determined by a network of existing structural relations, not by any historical process (of which there is relatively little discussion for a book so I wish to thank Fredi Chiappelli and Joe Slavin for their helpful reading of an earlier draft of this paper. ' J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). 2 The most important review-discussions are those by J. H. Burns in English Historical Review 92 0977) : 137-42; Felix Gilbert in the Times Literary Supplement, 19 March 1976, pp. 306-8; J. H. Hexter in History and Theory 16, 3 (1977):306-37; and Cesare Vasoli in Journal of Modern History 49 0977): 661-70. 3For an earlier, though very brief, treatment of Machiavelli from a structuralist viewpoint, see Roland Barthes, "Historical Discourse," in Michael Lane, ed., Introduction to Structuralism (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 145-55. [309] 310 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY apparently freighted with history)." Indeed, the Machiavellian moment is but one, though the most important one, of a host of "moments": Savonarolan, Rousseauian , dialectical and apocalyptic, beside moments of acute particularity, of providential judgment, of reason of state and salus populi, of conscience and appeal to heaven; moments of nature and of the sword, of the imminent true millenium, of fortune and reason, and of grace and renovation. It is not always easy to isolate and define these moments, to keep them in some kind of equilibrium, and to jump back and forth among them as one proceeds through the book. But their very presence as such underscores Pocock's declaration (p. vii) that this is "not a history of political thought whatever that might be"; nor is it "a history of the political experience of Florence." On page 157 Pocock will remind us that a formal and analytical approach such as his must be limited to its own methodology and that there are...