Metagovernance refers to a theory of how governments steer decentralised networks by indirectly shaping the rules and norms of those networks. This article develops metagovernance conceptually and empirically by looking at the use of ‘hands-off’ metagovernance tools in the case of English devolution, which encompass the ‘designing’ and ‘framing’ of local governance networks in the process of th...

Ireland has featured little in development literature, being largely seen as a developed western European state far removed from the challenges facing countries throughout the so-called 'developing world'. Yet for Raymond Crotty, who has been described as 'one of Ireland's most distinguished social science scholars' (Mjøset, quoted in Coughlan, 1998: 140), Ireland was the first country to suffe...

The spectacular revival of economic sociology in the US in the 1980s and in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century will be regarded as part of a paradigm shift in social sciences. Whereas classical sociology almost always dealt with normatively defined situations and value-based actions in which individual decisions, interests, and other situational aspects disappear from view, neo-classic...

Background & objectives: Social capital is a set of norms and social relationships that enable people to interact together to achieve desirable goals and reduce the cost of interaction and communication. Considering the importance of social capital, the aim of this study was to evaluate the social capital and related factors among students of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. Methods...