Mainland Scandinavian languages have been reported to allow movement from embedded questions, relative clauses, and complex NPs—domains commonly considered to be islands crosslinguistically. Yet in formal acceptability studies Scandinavian participants often show ‘island effects’: they reject island-violating movement similarly to native speakers of ‘island-sensitive’ languages. To investigate this apparent mismatch between informal and formal judgments, we conducted two acceptability judgment experiments testing the acceptability of topicalization from various island domains in Norwegian. We were interested in determining whether we could (i) find evidence for island insensitivity and (ii) pin down the source of qualitatively different island effects. We asked whether such effects are best explained as reflecting violations of a uniform syntactic constraint or extrasyntactic factors. Our results suggest that embedded questions and relative clauses are not uniform syntactic islands for topicalization, but complex NPs are. Unexpectedly, we also found evidence suggesting that conditional adjunct clauses may not be islands.

This article seeks to explain the dramatic rise of Pim Fortuyn's right‐wing populist party during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands in 2002. Fortuyn succeeded in attracting by far the most media attention of all political actors and his new party won 17 per cent of the votes. This article analyses how this new populist party managed to mobilise so much attention and support so suddenly and so rapidly. It uses the notion of ‘discursive opportunities’ and argues that the public reactions to Pim Fortuyn and his party played a decisive role in his ability to further diffuse his claims in the public sphere and achieve support among the Dutch electorate. The predictions of the effects of discursive opportunities are empirically investigated with longitudinal data from newspapers and opinion polls. To study the dynamics of competition over voter support and over space in the public debate during the election campaign, an ARIMA time‐series model is used as well as a negative binomial regression with lagged variables to account for the time‐series structure of the data. It is found that discursive opportunities have significantly affected the degree to which Fortuyn was successful both in the competition for voter support, and regarding his ability to express his claims in the media. Combining these two results, a dynamic feedback process is identified that can explain why a stable political situation suddenly spiralled out of equilibrium. Visibility and supportive reactions of others positively affected the opinion polls. Consonance significantly increased Fortuyn's claim‐making; dissonance undermined it. Furthermore, electoral support and negative claims on the issue of immigration and integration in the media by others enhanced Fortuyn's ability to further diffuse his viewpoints and to become the main political opinion‐maker during the turbulent election campaign of 2002.

This article is concerned with the decline of American party organizations and, in particular, with the role of amateur (issue-oriented) activists in contributing to this. It focuses on two main problems. The first is the relevance of the post-1968 Democratic party reforms in destroying the role of party in presidential nominations. Contrary to a widely held view, it is argued that a decentralized system of nomination would have emerged in an ‘unreformed’ party. Secondly, the decline of the Democratic club movement is examined. It is argued that the clubs did not develop as major institutions within the party, and that they were an appropriate form of organization for liberals in only very restricted circumstances. The example of Denver is used to illustrate this argument. The decline of the clubs in those parts of America where they had become established is traced to one of three possible causes, each of which would be a sufficient condition for the collapse of the club movement. In conclusion it is argued that the clubs were a transitory form of political organization, linking the period of political machines with that of candidate-centred politics. Rather than destroying the parties, if anything, they served in the 1950s and early 1960s to diffuse potential anti-partyism.

This paper adapts Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s social origins theory to argue that the nonprofit regime in Hong Kong can be characterized as statist-corporatist. This statist-corporatist regime displays the hybrid character of both a statist and a corporatist regime: its statist character can be seen in the high degree of autonomy of the state, its tendency to limit freedom of association, and the low commitment to social provision. Its corporatist character is evident in the high level of participation by designated nonprofit organizations in selected areas of social provision under state funding. It is shown how the development of this nonprofit regime was historically shaped by four factors; namely, the interest of the colonial state in maintaining domination, economic and public financial policy, the historical formation of the welfare system, and political regime change. The findings illustrate the distinct historical forces and the path of development in an Asian state that might affect nonprofit development.

This article examines the way in which the canons of Nicaea continue to form part of the living canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church. It addresses how these ancient canons should be interpreted to ensure their relevance, and application, in the contemporary Church. The article concludes by emphasising that the canonical tradition is, in fact, part of the theological reflection of the Orthodox Church.

European Union referendums invite national electorates to vote on transnational cooperation and regional integration, thereby creating tension between transnational ballot issues and domestic electoral mobilisation. Because of the tension, domestic political parties are forced to confront a two‐dimensional political space in EU referendums. In the referendum‐generated political space, unless integration issues are more salient than domestic concerns, intra‐divided and inter‐converged mainstream parties tend strategically to abstain from the campaigns. Yet, explicit inter‐party collusion may allow the pro‐integration mainstream to form a party cartel in EU referendums. Suggestive evidence is drawn from a case study of the two Irish referendums on the Nice Treaty. Based on a party‐candidate survey, Irish parties are mapped onto a latent two‐dimensional political space. The findings shed new light on the initial abstention of Irish mainstream parties in the first Nice campaign and their subsequent mobilisation in the second referendum.

Two major evolutions have been reported to occur in the nonprofit sector during the past decades. Both the nature of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and of volunteering style are changing. While this creates challenges for NPO governance and management, little is known about the process or the outcomes of these two developments. We propose a two-dimensional conceptual model to explain how the aforementioned evolutions influence the attitudes and behavior of volunteers, based on psychological contract theory. More specifically, we posit that both evolutions create tensions in volunteers’ psychological contracts that could lead to contract breach. We formulate twelve propositions on the nature of this psychological contract breach and the resulting attitudes and behavior of volunteers. Finally, we offer some possible solutions that NPO boards and managers can apply to cope with these challenges.

This article tries to enhance knowledge about organizational characteristics and processes that are important for mitigating oligarchic tendencies in the governance of CSOs, and to discuss the factors that condition the operation of these characteristics and processes. Civil society is frequently seen as an important part of societal governance and discussed as the intermediary link between the individual and society. This connection is often made through the aggregate function of civil society organizations (CSOs). Currently there are discussions regarding the decline of traditional cross-class federative CSOs and the possible effect of this on democracy in society. This article presents a longitudinal case study of the governance within a large, membership-based federative CSO and illustrates the revitalization of a CSO and its mission through the influx of a new group of members from the surrounding environment. The author argues that this revitalization process was possible partly because the proposed changes were in keeping with the organization’s original ideological core and partly because of the organization’s open democratic governance system. This permeability is found at two levels: first, the borders are open for individuals to enter the organization as members, and second, the borders of the internal governance system are open for members to take part in the decision-making process. This enabled ideas to percolate up from the members through the democratic decision-making system to the top of the organization, and some ideas are translated into statutes and policies, which then trickle down to the members again through the executive structure. The conclusion is that a functioning democratic governance system, which is able to stay true to the organization’s ideological core at the same time as it is able to modify it in light of societal change, seems imperative for this kind of organization. By doing this, the organization is not just staying true to its original mission but also actively contributing to democracy in society by including new groups into the decision-making process.

The overall project aims to establish a dialogue between normative democratic theory and research on policy formulation and implementation. This introductory article first notes the growth of various participatory and deliberative procedures in policy making, portrays the context of this growth and justifies the cases selected. It then presents the conceptual framework used for the study of these procedures, which mainly draws on participatory and deliberative democratic theory and the literature on the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. Based on this conceptual framework, the article focuses on four research questions the authors consider particularly important for the assessment of the contribution of the devices under scrutiny to democratic and effective decision making: questions of openness and access (input-legitimacy); questions regarding the quality of deliberation (throughput); questions of efficiency and effectiveness (output-legitimacy); and the issue of their insertion into the public space (questions of transparency and accountability).

A cohort of twenty British national voluntary agencies serving handicapped people was studied in 1976 and again in 1989 after a decade of major shifts in public policy. Changes and continuities were identified in income, structure, governance, management, programme, interorganisation relations and advocacy. A consistent pattern of growth, bureaucratisation and professionalisation was found, with relatively little change in the dominant mode of financing, statutory or philanthropic. A three-stage model is proposed to describe the development of British voluntary agencies since the 1970s, and some of the organisational implications of current policies for the 1990s are noted.

“Resilience and the Management of Nonprofit Organizations” is a book that explores the concept of resilience management for nonprofit organizations. The authors, Dennis Young and Elizabeth Searing, argue that the current paradigm of nonprofit management, which focuses on trustworthiness and efficiency, needs to be revised to adequately address the challenges facing nonprofit organizations. They propose a new paradigm based on resilience, which they define as the ability of organizations to adapt to changing circumstances and continue serving their missions effectively. The book provides strategies for anticipating and preparing for crises, explores the various dimensions of organizational resilience, and offers management strategies for achieving organizational resilience. It also discusses the need for “organizational slack” in order to be flexible and adaptable in the face of challenges.