How did “capitalists”, “petty bourgeoisie”, and other class categories based on Marxist critiques of capitalism become highly visible in local society while communist regimes abolished capitalist institutions? Conventional approaches to class lack the necessary tools for unraveling such “Marxist classes”, let alone their impact on class formation in the common sociological sense. I use Weber, Foucault, and others (together with a study of the emergence of a “petty bourgeoisie” in a Chinese school system) to highlight the bureaucratic struggle of the state to classify everyone with a Marxist schema of classes. Spotlighted are “textual corroboration” and “workplace ascription” of class status, two everyday processes carried out by state representatives that normalized the class categories as well as muddied their boundaries. I contend that official conversion of jobholders into different kinds of predefined class subjects rendered any “class-in-itself” or “class-for-itself” virtually impossible. The conclusion suggests how further research on bureaucratic classification and Marxist classes can advance understanding of state-society relations under communism, especially in comparative terms.

This article examines the relationship between the structure of politico-military movements and effective insurgent engagement in peace processes. Drawing on the experiences of Irish republicans and Basque separatists, I argue that centralized movement structures in which politicos wield influence over armed groups allow for effective coordination between movement wings in peace efforts while providing political leaders with credibility as interlocutors. In the Irish case, centralization enabled Sinn Fein leaders to ensure Provisional ira commitment to peace and to contain schism within the republican movement throughout the peace process. In the Basque case, movement decentralization created persistent coordination problems between wings during peace efforts, while eta’s unilateral reneging prevented political allies from establishing credibility as peacemakers. These cases show that while movement leaders untainted by direct association with armed groups may be more politically palatable than those with ties to “terrorists”, tainted leaders may make more credible partners for peace.

Dominant theories fail to explain the use of terror during the Second Palestinian Intifada. Notably, they fail to explain Hamas’s abandonment of suicide attacks by 2005. We classified the universe of fatalities on both sides and examined the conflict’s patterns of lethal violence. Our analysis of fatality ratios and rates of change by fatality category supports a dual-arena theory of terror. Noting a rapid increase of indiscriminate Israeli civilian deaths and a relative evening out within this category in the conflict’s initial phase, we demonstrate that externally Hamas aimed to improve the balance of forces to compel Israel to negotiate on equal terms using the “out-suffering” mechanism. Internally, Hamas used terror to build confrontational capacity by attracting Palestinian factions to a resistance pole and isolating conciliatory elites. When their continued deployment became too costly relative to emerging options, the campaign was swiftly called off. In the end, while based on strategic calculations, Hamas’s use of terror proved to be a failure.

This review explores contributions by science policy studies and the sociology of science to our understanding of the impact of governance on research content. Contributions are subsumed under two perspectives, namely an “impact of”—perspective that searches for effects of specific governance arrangements and an “impact on”—perspective that asks what factors contribute to the construction of research content and includes governance among them. Our review shows that little is known so far about the impact of governance on knowledge content. A research agenda does not necessarily need to include additional empirical phenomena but must address the macro-micro-macro link inherent to the question in its full complexity, and systematically exploit comparative approaches in order to establish causality. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration between science policy studies, the sociology of science, and bibliometrics, which all can contribute to the necessary analytical toolbox.

Opponents of commodification say that some things should not be for sale. Is citizenship one of them? Citizenship-by-investment schemes of naturalization allow investors virtually to “buy” citizenship. Revisiting objections to the older practice of selling another civic status—noble status—underscores many reasons why this trade may be regarded as problematic. The practice of selling citizenship is not only similar to that of selling honours but might also be thought wrong in analogous ways.