Caste and the Decline of Political Homogeneity

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 799-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Somjee

The relationship between the traditional social organization of India, based on the principle of hierarchy, and the newly introduced democratic institutions and procedures, based on the principle of equality, has been a subject of diverse interpretations. The more significant of these interpretations are that the social organization has subsumed the new political system, and that the various units of social organization, namely, castes, have developed voluntary bodies or caste associations of their own in order to enter into an operative relationship with the new political system. The latter interpretation also implies that the democratic political socialization in India has been taking place by means of the caste associations. This study takes a hard look at such interpretations and points out that the internal cohesion of the social organization materially alters when it moves away from its primary social concerns—ritual, pollution, and endogamy—to nontraditional concerns. This change is reflected in the fact that highly fragmented decision-making processes of castes in nontraditional matters often lead to their substantial vote against candidates of their own castes. Such political differentiation within castes has occurred before the advent of certain caste associations, and in some cases despite them. These and other assertions are substantiated through data collected in a rural and an urban community where fieldwork designed to understand their political dynamics extended over a number of years.

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åsa Bengtsson ◽  
Henrik Christensen

The interest in procedures for political decision-making has grown tremendously during recent decades. Given the intense scholarly debate and the implementation of greater opportunities for citizen participation in many democracies, there has been surprisingly little interest in citizens’ conceptions of democracy understood as their preferences concerning the processes by which the political system works. Some recent attempts do, however, suggest that it is important to expand the study of public opinion from policy output to decision-making processes, and that there are coherent patterns in citizens’ expectations of the way in which political decisions come about. What is not clear, though, is whether citizens’ different conceptions of democracy have repercussions for how they engage in politics. Using the Finnish National Election Study of 2011 (Borg and Grönlund 2011), this article explores the relationship between citizens’ conceptions of democracy and patterns of political participation. Results demonstrate a distinct association between citizens’ ideals and the actions they take.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-353
Author(s):  
Lars Laird Iversen

Abstract This guest column in Common Knowledge presents the concept of “communities of disagreement” to an international and interdisciplinary audience, perhaps for the first time. It takes as its starting point the contrast between agonistic and deliberative democratic theories, and it attempts to outline how democratic groups may live well with unresolved disagreement yet not give on up developing truth-sensitive decision-making processes. It argues against the widespread idea that shared values are the social glue of democratic communities. By developing arguments of Manfred Frank, the article outlines a model of the relationship between social context, interpretation, and information.


2011 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Juan José Prieto Gutiérrez

Networks or partnerships are used by humans since the beginning of humanity and its analysis raises concerns from many different sectors of society. In the era of the network of networks, Internet, networks are generated by virtual connections of the agents. Social Network Analysis (SNA) studies the relationship relation to each other, the social structure. It is an area that is emerging as essential in decision-making processes for its ability to analyze and intervene in the behaviour of structures. We analyze three NSA tools that monitor conversations on the Organization "IFLA" keyword in order to measure the feeling of them, managing social efforts to relate the flows between the entities, groups, etc.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
Peter Balsarini ◽  
Claire Lambert ◽  
Maria M. Ryan ◽  
Martin MacCarthy

Franchising has long been a method by which organizations seek to expand and facilitate local market development. However, franchising as a growth strategy can often be hampered by lack of suitable franchisees. To mitigate this shortage, some franchisors have engaged in recruiting franchisees internally from the ranks of their employees in addition to the traditional approach of recruiting franchisees externally. Predominantly franchisees are individuals rather than corporations and thus purchasing a franchise should most commonly be characterized as a consumer acquisition. To explore the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk, and information search behaviors when purchasing a franchise qualitative interviews were conducted with franchisees from the restaurant industry. Half of these respondents were externally recruited having never worked for the franchisor and half were internally recruited having previously been employees of the franchisor. The external recruits expressed a strong desire to own their own business and engaged in extensive decision-making processes with significant information search when purchasing their franchises. Contrastingly, the internal recruits expressed a strong desire to be their own boss and engaged in limited, bordering on habitual decision-making processes with negligible information search when acquiring their franchises. The results reveal that differences in subjective knowledge and perceived risk appear to significantly impact the extent of information search between these two groups. A model of the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk and information search in the purchasing of a franchise is developed that reconciles these findings. The findings also have practical implications for franchisors’ franchisee recruiting efforts which are integral to their capacity to develop local markets.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (8) ◽  
pp. 1671-1706 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Weber

Focusing on millennials, individuals born between 1980 and 2000 and representing the largest generational population in our history, this research seeks to understand their ethical decision-making processes by exploring the distinctive, yet interconnected, theories of personal values and cognitive moral reasoning. Utilizing a decision-making framework introduced in the 1990s, we discover that there is a statistically supported relationship between a millennial’s personal value orientation and stage of cognitive moral reasoning. Moreover, we discover a strong relationship between three of the four value orientations and a corresponding stage of cognitive moral reasoning. The theoretical and practical research implications of our discovery about millennials’ decision making are discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olumide Olasimbo Jaiyeoba ◽  
Frederick Odongo Opeda

The unprecedented abundance of choice and retail outlets creates a massive array of choice for consumers most especially students. Innovative consumers are an important market segment. This paper seeks to investigate whether consumers’ innate innovativeness is associated with their shopping styles. Specifically, it aims to explore the relationship between two types of innovativeness (sensory innovativeness and cognitive innovativeness and consumer shopping styles). Indeed, the unprecedented abundance of choice and retail outlets creates a massive array of choice for consumers. Despite these significant changes in the commercial environment, very little is known about the decision making processes of consumers in developing countries, most especially in Botswana. Ostensibly, the paucity of research in this area hinders our understanding of consumer decision making processes. The paper integrates the consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping styles literature. A structural equation model was used to test the relationship between cognitive and sensory innovativeness and various shopping styles. Cognitive innovators are inclined to show shopping styles such as quality consciousness, price consciousness, and confusion by overchoice, while sensory innovators are inclined to have shopping styles such as brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, recreational orientation, impulsive shopping, and brand loyalty/habitual shopping. The research is based on a convenience sample of young consumers in Botswana. The findings of this research would hopefully help managers to develop a deeper insight into product development and marketing. Furthermore, since the youth market in Botswana represents an enormous opportunity for marketers, the paper provides valuable insights into this key market segment. It thus provides new insights into the shopping patterns of consumers who belong to different innovativeness types. It also makes a new contribution to the shopping styles literature by explicating potential antecedents to the various shopping styles among the largest private tertiary institution students in Botswana.


Author(s):  
Oscar J. Romero ◽  
Ran Zhao ◽  
Justine Cassell

In this work we propose a novel module for a dialogue system that allows a conversational agent to utter phrases that do not just meet the system's task intentions, but also work towards achieving the system's social intentions. The module - a Social Reasoner - takes the task goals the system must achieve and decides the appropriate conversational style and strategy with which the dialogue system describes the information the user desires so as to boost the strength of the relationship between the user and system (rapport), and therefore the user's engagement and willingness to divulge the information the agent needs to efficiently and effectively achieve the user's goals. Our Social Reasoner is inspired both by analysis of empirical data of friends and stranger dyads engaged in a task, and by prior literature in fields as diverse as reasoning processes in cognitive and social psychology, decision-making, sociolinguistics and conversational analysis. Our experiments demonstrated that, when using the Social Reasoner in a Dialogue System, the rapport level between the user and system increases in more than 35% in comparison with those cases where no Social Reasoner is used.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Zimmermann

When the Lisbon Treaty entered into effect, the European Parliament became a core player in the decision-making processes of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and its external dimensions. This new role suggested a shift towards stronger politicization in what had previously been a rather technocratic policy field. However, the CFP is not yet marked by a clear and consistent level of politicization. I use the concept of ‘layered politicization’ to explain this pattern. Although it is not comparable to the degree of political controversy shaping fully politicized policy fields, some similar political dynamics can be observed. Among them is a transformation in the policy process due to higher ratification requirements; a higher likelihood of political deadlock resulting from an increasing number of veto-players; and a strengthening of the contested legitimacy of EU decision-making. An empirical test of these theoretical propositions is provided here in the form of two case studies; the negotiation of Fisheries Partnership Agreements with Morocco and Mauritania.


2014 ◽  
Vol 687-691 ◽  
pp. 4568-4572
Author(s):  
Hai Chen Zhan

Modern logistics industry as an emerging industry, with the industrial division of labor with the social refinement and depth, to promote China's economic development has become an important industry and new economic growth point. This paper uses econometric approach to relations of the logistics industry and economic growth in Gansu Province made an empirical analysis reveals and Reveals the relationship between logistics industry and economic development in Gansu Province And for the results of the analysis are summarized and give relevant policy recommendations, hoping to provide a reference for the development of decision-making in Gansu.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Michael K. MacKenzie

This chapter makes three arguments in support of the claim that we need inclusive deliberative processes to shape the future in collectively intentional, mutually accommodating ways. First, inclusive collective decision-making processes are needed to avoid futures that favour the interests of some groups of people over others. Second, deliberative processes are needed to shape our shared futures in collectively intentional ways: we need to be able to talk to ourselves about what we are doing and where we want to get to in the future. Third, deliberative exchanges are needed to help collectivities avoid the policy oscillations that are (or may be) associated with the political dynamics of short electoral cycles. Effective processes of reciprocal reason giving can help collectivities maintain policy continuity over the long term—when continuity is justified—even as governments and generations change.


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