The recruitment functions of social ties: Weak and strong tie mobilization for 84 demonstrations in eight countries

an article by Stefaan Walgrave and Pauline Ketelaars (University of Antwerp, Belgium) published in International Journal of Comparative Sociology Volume: 60 issue: 5 (October 2019)

Abstract

Although recruitment is often studied by social movement scholars, the literature lacks an integrated account of what recruitment actually entails and there is disagreement about who the recruiters are (weak- or strong-tie contacts).

This study develops a theoretical account of different recruitment “functions” that can be fulfilled by social ties and that enhance protest participation. Participants need to be informed about the protest event, many of them need to be persuaded before they join a demonstration, and most of them also want to have suitable company to attend the protest with. We expect that these three recruitment functions—information, persuasion, and company—are often fulfilled by the same social tie (homogeneous pattern).

However, when this is not the case, we expect that strong ties become more important the closer one comes to actual participation (centripetal pattern).

Drawing on individual-level information about more than 14,000 protesters, we find that these patterns are robust across 84 demonstrations in eight countries.

Nevertheless, there are systematic differences across countries and across types of social movements. The centripetal recruitment pattern is significantly more apparent when people protest for socio-economic issues compared to when they participate in demonstrations on other, non-socio-economic issues.

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Immigration policy and the modern welfare state, 1880–1920

an article by Sara Kalm and Johannes Lindvall (Lund University, Sweden) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 3 (October 2019)

Abstract

This article puts contemporary debates about the relationship between immigration policy and the welfare state in historical perspective. Relying on new historical data, the article examines the relationship between immigration policy and social policy in Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modern welfare state emerged.

Germany already had comparably strict immigration policies when the German Empire introduced the world’s first national social insurances in the 1880s. Denmark, another early social-policy adopter, also pursued restrictive immigration policies early on.

Almost all other countries in Western Europe started out with more liberal immigration policies than Germany’s and Denmark’s, but then adopted more restrictive immigration policies and more generous social policies concurrently.

There are two exceptions, Belgium and Italy, which are discussed in the article.

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An East–West comparison of healthcare evaluations in Europe: Do institutions matter?

an article by Tamara Popic (Institute for Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal) and Simone M. Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Germany) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 28 Issue 5 (December 2018)

Abstract

Differences in welfare attitudes of Eastern and Western Europeans have often been explained in terms of legacies of communism.

In this article, we explore evaluations of healthcare systems across European countries and argue that East–West differences in these evaluations are explained by differences in the current institutional design of healthcare systems in the two regions.

The empirical analysis is based on the fourth round of the European Social Survey, applying multilevel and multilevel mediation analysis. Our results support the institutional explanation. Regional differences in healthcare evaluations are explained by institutional characteristics of the healthcare system, that is, lower financial resources, higher out-of-pocket payments, and lower supply of primary healthcare services in Eastern compared to Western European countries.

We conclude that specific aspects of the current institutional design of healthcare systems are crucial for understanding East–West differences in healthcare evaluations and encourage research to further explore the relevance of institutions for differences in welfare state attitudes across socio-political contexts.

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