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Powerful Actors (powerful + actor)
Selected AbstractsUnequal Plurality: Towards an Asymmetric Power Model of British PoliticsGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2003David Marsh Until recently, Rhodes's ,Differentiate Polity Model' (DPM) has been the most analytically-developed model of the British political system, but it is not without its problems. Here, we argue that the DPM over-stresses the diffuse nature of power in Britain and the extent to which the state has been hollowed out. Instead, we contend that the British political system is more closed and elitist than the DPM acknowledges; rather than being hollowed-out, the state has been reconstituted and the core executive still remains the most powerful actor in the policy process. These themes are reflected in our own ,Asymmetric Power model'. [source] How the WTO Matters to Industry: The Case of Scotch WhiskyINTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Andy Smith Although the World Trade Organization (WTO) has spawned a considerable academic literature, as yet research on this organization has rarely been problematized around clear theories of the relationship between law, economics, and politics. Building upon institutionalist premises and concepts drawn from political sociology and industrial economics, this article suggests a means of filling this gap by grasping the "political work" involved in the regulation of specific industries. Illustrated through the case of Scotch whisky, a focus is developed on how the WTO matters to contemporary industry. This reveals that the most powerful actors in industries such as Scotch have developed resources which legitimize their simultaneous engagement in a range of decision-making arenas. These include, but are not necessarily dominated by, the WTO. [source] Corporate E-Cruiting: The Construction of Work in Fortune 500 Recruiting Web SitesJOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, Issue 1 2005Jun Young Corporate recruitment efforts have evolved from traditional newspaper want ads to highly sophisticated, rhetorically powerful recruiting Web sites or "career sites." This e-cruiting phenomenon offers a unique opportunity not only to examine organizations' persuasive attempts to recruit potential applicants online, but also to uncover contemporary corporate representations of the meaning(s) of work. Using a random sample of recruitment Web sites of Fortune 500 companies, we employ content analysis and rhetorical criticism to catalogue content types, identify persuasive structure, and analyze rhetorical themes in representations of work. The investigation reveals that career sites are not merely places to post job openings, but reflect corporations' attempt to sell a glorified image of work, one which positions workers as powerful actors and employers as kind benefactors. In view of current reports on working conditions, we argue these glorified representations reflect a rhetoric of idealization and discuss potential consequences of such a strategy. [source] Constructing Reform Coalitions: The Politics of Compensations in Argentina's Economic LiberalizationLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2001Sebastián Etchemendy ABSTRACT It is frequently argued that the key to "successful" economic liberalization is to marginalize interest groups that profit from existing regulatory regimes. This paper contends that some established interests can craft public policies to protect their rents in the new market setting. The state may shape the interests of social actors and create proreform constituencies out of old populist and interventionist groups. In Argentina, this coalition building was achieved by constructing reform policies that granted rents in new markets to business and organized labor and by deliberately avoiding unilateral deregulation in sectors where reform would hurt traditionally powerful actors. This argument is developed through a comparative analysis of policy reform in the labor market institutions and protected industrial sectors, areas where the costs of deregulation are said to be unavoidable for the established actors. [source] | ||||||||||