Publications by Type: Book Chapter

This present chapter gives me another and very special opportunity to reflect on my work during the past 55 years. The focus of these reflections is my particular way of doing social psychology over these years – my way of expressing the core of my professional identity as a social psychologist. The background of these reflections, very appropriately, is the work of my students as exemplified in these chapters and comments in the preceding pages.

The rise of the radical right is open to multiple interpretations. The question addressed in this paper is whether many of these parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters and, if so, which social sectors are most likely to support them. Part I discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks provided by the classic accounts of the 1950s and 1960s, the ?new social cleavage? thesis common during the last decade, and the theory of partisan dealignment. The chapter then compares evidence to analyze rival hypotheses about the social basis of the radical right vote across fifteen nations, using data drawn from the European Social Survey, 2002 and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996–2001. Part II focuses upon the role of socioeconomic indicators, while Part III considers the enduring gender gap and patterns of generational support. The conclusion considers the implications of these results for understanding the basis of radical right popularity, and for the stability and longevity of these parties.

This paper is drawn from Chapter 6 of Radical Right: Parties and Electoral Competition, a new book by the author forthcoming with Cambridge University Press (2005).

This chapter focuses on reconciliation in the context of and in relation to an emerging or recently completed process of conflict resolution. The cases that particularly inform my analysis are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and other protracted conflicts between identity groups – such as those in Bosnia or Northern Ireland – that re characterized by the existence of incomplete, fragile peace agreements (cf. Rothstein, 1999a). I hope, however, that the analysis also has some relevance to reconciliation in postconflict situations – both those of recent origin, such as South Africa or Guatemala, and those of long standing, such as the German–Jewish or the Franco–German relationship in the wake of World War II. Clearly, there are differences in the nature of reconciliation processes as a function of the stage of the conflict and the time that has elapsed since the end of active hostilities, but such differences need to be accounted for in a comprehensive theory of reconciliation.

This chapter presents a social–psychological approach to the analysis and resolution of international and intercommunal conflicts. Its central focus is on interactive conflict resolution (see Fisher, 1997), a family of models for intervening in deep–rooted, protracted conflicts between identity groups, which is anchored in psychological principles.

A great deal of discussion about freedom in the People?s Republic of China has proceeded on certain assumptions about the role of the state and about law's place in helping define it. At the heart of these assumptions is the idea that the cause of freedom in China will best be advanced through the state's retrenchment and a concomitant ceding of power to non–state actors, particularly with respect to economic and social matters. This notion is perhaps most obvious in calls for the promotion of greater economic freedom via both the "privatization" of state– owned enterprise and an increasing reliance on market forces, but it also informs the view that such measures are or soon will be leading to a marked growth in political freedom. And it undergirds the conviction of most observers that what is termed the rise of civil society will perforce enhance personal freedom in China. As the noted Chinese scholar Liu Junning observed in a recent essay extolling Hayek, "almost all of those who shape public opinion in China are liberals [as] classical liberalism now dominates China?s intellectual landscape."

Law occupies a prominent position in this vision, being increasingly seen in both academic and policy circles as critical to the attainment for Chinese of fuller economic, political, and social freedoms. In part, the prominence accorded law is attributable to its perceived potential, however imperfectly realized to date in the PRC, to facilitate the above described transfer of power from state to society by limiting the spheres of life over which the former has authority and providing constraints as to the manner in which such authority is to be exercised. No less importantly, law is extolled for the vital role it has to play, once the state has receded, in establishing the proverbial "level playing field" on which a new society is to be grounded. In contrast to the avowedly political and highly particularistic manner in which the Chinese state historically reached into citizens' lives, law is commended for being facilitative, rather than determinative, providing a neutral framework through which citizens, each endowed with the same rights and each entitled to invoke the uniform procedural protection that formal adjudication is intended to provide, may work things out for themselves.

No idea is more enticing to policymakers and academics alike than the proposition that economic interdependence encourages peaceful international relations. Policymakers are gratified that trade is a policy lever that governments can influence. Academics are encouraged by the (relative) ease of constructing long time series of bilateral cross–border transactions in goods for most countries. On top of this, economists tell us trade is economically efficient. Policymakers, scholars, and consumers should all be thrilled that trade and peace are robustly correlated.

This is why it is essential to submit the pax mercatoria hypothesis to severe scrutiny, both methodologically and theoretically. This chapter does the latter and focuses on one particular theoretical issue to which few scholars have given serious attention: what is the theory of the state that provides a plausible mechanism linking private trade to public conflict behavior? The first section argues that this question deserves attention. The second section outlines three general approaches to state–society relations and discusses the implications of these for empirical research. The third section concludes and calls for research that includes more meaningful tests, informed by more explicit theories of state–society relations.