Suchergebnisse

AbstractProperty rights are important for economic exchange, but in many parts of the world, they are not publicly guaranteed. Private market associations can fill this gap by providing an institutional structure to enforce agreements, but with this power comes the ability to extort from group members. Under what circumstances do private associations provide a stable environment for economic activity? The author uses survey data collected from 1,179 randomly sampled traders across 199 markets in Lagos, Nigeria, and finds that markets maintain institutions to support trade not in the absence of government, but rather in response to active government interference. The author argues that associations develop protrade policies when threatened by politicians they perceive to be predatory and when the organizations can respond with threats of their own. The latter is easier when traders are not competing with one another. To maintain this balance of power, an association will not extort; it needs trader support to maintain the credibility of its threats to mobilize against predatory politicians.

AbstractThis article discusses the significance of dress codes and clothing in postcolonial Myanmar's successive legislatures. Burmese representatives have since the 1950s been strongly encouraged to wear dignified garb and non-Western dress when carrying out their duties in parliament. What does it tell us? The contribution of this study based on field interviews and the analysis of newspaper reports and parliamentary procedures, is threefold. It first sheds light on Myanmar's understudied parliamentary history and some of its startling institutional continuities despite decades of military rule. It then shows how the fashioning and reinvention of traditional attires by Burmese parliamentarians has accelerated the pace of decolonisation, while serving as an effective tool of representation. Lastly, it argues that the ritual of dress in parliament has contributed to a persistent reification of identities, thereby reinforcing the politicisation of ethnicity in an already fragmented Myanmar society.

The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard was the first British television series production that featured a woman Prime Minister, backed by an all women party and elected by the large majority of voters. This article investigates whether the series was an attempt to provide a feminist portrayal of women politicians. It addresses three main issues: whether and how the series inscribes gender frames to place expectations upon women leaders; if it constructs sex stereotypes with regard to political women's presentation and policies, which distort the roles that these women play in public life and finally it problematises the kind of visibility given to women politicians in the series. Adapted from the source document.