Given equal income incentives, why does migration from poor countries to rich countries vary ? I apply Boudon's logic of relative frustration and Elster's model of interactions among desire, opportunity and action to interpret sociological findings on the self-sustaining nature of the migration process. I conclude that migration does not occur in the absence of initial opportunity, but that once begun tbe migration process itself increases, both the opportunity and the desire to migrate.

Focusing upon donations to monasteries in the medieval Western world, this paper expands upon extant discussions of religious gift-giving in the ‘great traditions’ , and of its relation to more archaic forms of gift-exchange, hitherto largely based on non-Western and mostly Asian anthropological material. While displaying many of the social functions familiarly associated with the gift in archaic or primitive societies, donations to monasteries are shown to have also entailed a process of immobilisation of wealth not extant in the gift circuit of ‘simpler’ societies. While donations to monasteries clearly attested to the impact of otber-wordly religious orientations, they also entailed a range of symbolic dynamics very different from, and even incompatible with, those analysed by Jonathan Parry with regard to the other-wordly ‘pure’ gift. The paper then brings into relief the precise constellation of ideological ‘gift-theory’, socio-economic ‘gift-circuit’, and macrosocietal context, which enabled this specific variant of the gift-mechanism to operate as a ‘total’ social phenomenon in the two senses of that term suggested, though not clearly distinguished and equally not developed, in Mauss’ pathbreaking essay on the gift.

In 1992–1994 the Russian people met with a drop in their standard of living and suffered from a rapid deterioration of public services. Yet their dissatisfaction did not manifest itself in collective protest actions. Their patience can be explained as a consequence of their desire for order, their pessimism, their capacity to adapt to difficult situations and, above all, by their evaluation of virtual outcomes. Convinced that protests would not lead to any positive results, the Russian people preferred to rely on patience rather than action. A rejoinder, by Marie Mendras, traces this discussion back to its Western antecedents.

Data from 1991 surveys, from elections, and from elite discourse in Estonia and Bashkortostan are presented. Despite significant historical and demographic differences in these two post-Soviet republics, the Russian population in both places had similar reactions in regard to the collapse of the Union. In both republics, Russians were wary of assimilation, yet they neither planned to exit in large numbers nor to organise politically as Russians. Furthermore, in both republics, elite discourse was framing a new identity, which can be called the ‘Russian-speaking nationality’. This nationality is likely to be secular, Soviet, and includes all non-titulars whose primary language is Russian. While it is unlikely that this emergent nationality will be the same in all post-Soviet republics, in large part because incentives from the titulars will be markedly different, the data show in the early period after the Soviet collapse, in two ‘most different cases’, the dynamics of Russian identity re-formation have been quite similar.

State socialism is often analysed as if all institutions functioned in directions diametrically opposed to those in liberal Western states. A frequent assumption in both the East and the West, therefore, is that marketization and democratization require the dismantling of powerful, centralized states. This paper explores changes in the distribution of income in Poland between 1982 and 1991. As market reforms are introduced, power shifts from centralized to decentralized authorities, and from the state to the private sector. Market coordination produces new opportunities and sources of income for rentiers and entrepreneurs, but it also substantially reduces the income share going to direct producers. These data suggest that both economic equality and income determination depend on changes in state policy more than on fledgling markets. Dismantling the centralized state organisation is proved to be much less favorable for economic growth and a better income distribution than usual liberalism would claim.

In Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Alvin W. Gouldner has developed a conception of rational domination which is different from that developed by Max Weber. Gouldner argues that a democratic variation of rational domination (representative bureaucracy) can be more efficient tban the authoritarian variation, and that, accordingly, the ‘iron cage of rationalisation’ is not inevitable. I will show that Gouldner—who is sociologically driven—contradicts Weber on the basis of an erroneous translation and a poor understanding of the concept of bureaucracy. Thus his critique in no way undermines the Weberian typology of domination.