Suchergebnisse

Abstract.Using time series, cross-sectional econometric modelling, an analysis is made of competing political and economic determinants of Canadian provincial government fiscal policy during the 1980s and 1990s. It is determined that provincial government spending responses to trade liberalization are dependent upon the ideology of the government and conditioned by the degree of provincial unionization. When relatively high levels of unionization prevail, those governments that typically spend the most reduce total spending to a lowest common denominator. However, when unionization is low, provincial government spending responses to increasing trade openness is primarily compensatory. This is in contradiction to the "race to the bottom" theory. The contingent nature of the provincial government spending response to trade openness means that despite overall pressures for fiscal convergence, political, economic and regional factors continue to contribute to distinct provincial spending policies.Résumé.Cet article utilise une modélisation économétrique transversale en série chronologique pour analyser les déterminants politiques et économiques en compétition au niveau de la politique fiscale du gouvernement provincial canadien durant les années 1980 et 1990. Il est établi qu'en termes de dépenses publiques, les réactions du gouvernement provincial face à la libéralisation des échanges sont tributaires de l'idéologie du gouvernement et déterminées par le niveau de syndicalisation provincial. Lorsque le niveau de syndicalisation est relativement élevé, ce sont les gouvernements provinciaux qui dépensent le plus qui réduisent leurs dépenses totales au plus bas dénominateur commun. Par contre, plus le niveau de syndicalisation est bas, plus les dépenses publiques face à la libéralisation des échanges sont principalement compensatoires. Cela vient contredire la théorie du " nivellement par le bas ". La nature conditionnelle de la réaction du gouvernement provincial en termes de dépenses publiques signifie qu'en dépit des pressions globales pour la convergence fiscale, des facteurs politiques, économiques et régionaux continuent de contribuer aux politiques de dépenses publiques distinctes.

How can the seeds of accountability ever grow in authoritarian environments? This book explores how civil society 'thickens' by comparing two decades of rural citizens' struggles to hold the Mexican state accountable, exploring both change and continuity before, during and after national electoral turning points

Building on a model that integrates reforms into exogenous and endogenous growth models, this paper designs an econometric model of the interplay between economic reform measures, political decisions and economic performance. Several key hypotheses about transition are tested using two-stage least squares on a logit model using data for six countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Russia and Slovakia) over their first ten years of freedom. We draw three conclusions from the empirical evidence. (1) Contrary to the litany that everyone favors reforms, we find that voting for strong reform parties leads to more reforms. (2) History matters, even in a model of forward looking rational agents. Where communism was relatively popular, Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria, reform is slower, more problematic, and aimed toward a welfare state not US-style capitalism. The cost of debunking communist ideology evidently slows progress considerably. (3) Better economic performance does not result quickly from reforms. From a public choice perspective the immediate identifiable social costs of reforms often appear stronger than the eventual diffuse benefits. Though not surprising this result does not auger well for reformers. Finally, critical macroeconomic data for the earlier years around the transition period are very poor quality. Indeed economic data seems to be too poor to reveal much about changing economic circumstance. Measured output may actually move in the opposite direction of realized output. International agencies could contribute greatly to analysis of transition by quickly and deeply engaging the local statistical agencies.

Political science has been greatly stimulated in recent years by the invention of new designs for the comparative analysis of political systems. The diversity of these designs, however, risks creating a situation in which it may be difficult to derive agreed conceptual tools. Any points of convergence which can be found, therefore, and particularly in contrasting comparative designs, need to be emphasized. The purpose of this note is to show that in two recent designs for comparative analysis which are divergent in purpose, method and universe of application, there is a convergence on two fundamental points. The first is that liberty, taken to mean freedom of criticism and of discussion, is a major variable for comparative analysis. The second is that once liberty has been employed as a variable, it is necessary to employ policy as a secondary variable in order to discriminate among those political systems in which freedom of discussion does not exist or is severely limited.Neither of the systems of comparative analysis which I will discuss, one constructed by Raymond Aron and the other by Gabriel Almond, explicitly employs either liberty or policy as variables. In fact, Aron makes a deliberate effort to avoid using liberty as a variable, and policy is implicitly ruled out of Almond's design by his reliance on functional categories. Yet both authors implicitly take freedom of discussion as a major variable, and when they discuss totalitarian regimes they both employ additional variables which can be subsumed under the heading of policy.

Research for the EUDO Citizenship Observatory Comparative Analyses has been jointly supported by the European Commission grant agreement JLS/2007/IP/CA/009 EUCITAC and by the British Academy Research Project CITMODES (both projects co-directed by the European University Institute and the University of Edinburgh).

AbstractThis article reviews recent studies showing that distrust lies at the heart of the serious crisis of sustainability that humanity is failing to address, insofar as distrust of environmental scientists, communicators, and policymakers are all undermining public demand for better public policies. Generalised distrust of scientists is rare, but political distrust is ubiquitous, such that even people who are concerned about environmental problems are often opposed to potential policy solutions. There are also people, however, who do not even believe in some of the problems—most notably climate change. This scepticism is sometimes interpreted as a consequence of their preferring free markets to regulation; in other ways, though, the sceptics are not at all sympathetic to free markets. What appears more distinctive about them is their distrust of virtually all elite social institutions, including communities of experts, and a corresponding divide between their beliefs and preferences and those of experts generally.

The 2006 Nicaraguan elections saw a victory for Daniel Ortega, who has continually been identified as an icon of the revolutionary era in which the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) destroyed the Somoza regime and formed a revolutionary government. Ortega's success can be better understood by viewing the Nicaraguan Revolution as a state formation process in which popular culture is a field of conflict between social groups. The conflict here is between party militants and Sandinista supporters who do not enjoy the privileges of membership. Examination of oral histories reveals that the conflict between militants and popular combatants began in the Insurrection of Monimbó. The FSLN has appropriated and used the social memories of the combatants to produce its own history of that insurrection. Social memories reflect concrete processes of political subordination that result in the production of a dominant political language.

This analysis assesses the debate over the relevance of the strength of Barack Obama's "Blackness." Defined as the cultural cues in his personal identity, his "Blackness" exists as a modulating factor in his capacity to attract support from potential Black voters. Yet the link between his cultural identity and the representation of Black interests is complicated by the emergence of his campaign in the center of the American electorate and the structural requirements of fund-raising and the interests projected by White voters. The campaigns of other Black presidential candidates posed no such problems because they emerged from the Black community at the margins of the American electorate. Therefore, the author concludes that although cultural identity is important, the ultimate strength of Obama's appeal to Black voters is vested in the effectiveness with which he resolves the center position of his campaign with the interests and expectations of Black voters.

Family law is a site of social conflict and the erasure of non-traditional families. This book explores how conservative religious and progressive queer groups can cooperatively work together to expand family law's recognition beyond the traditional state-sponsored family. This book also looks to future arenas of queer and religious political cooperation beyond family law

Using the work of Jacques Ranciere, I argue for an egalitarian reading of the political hierarchy in Pseudo-Dionysius. I first analyze various historical attempts to derive a political theory from Pseudo-Dionysius in the work of Juan Miguel Garrigues, Rene Roques, and Dominic O'Meara. I then turn to Jacques Derrida's attempt to distinguish deconstruction from negative theology, and consider especially the political effects of this strategy. I argue that Derrida's attempt to undermine Psuedo-Dionysius's system from within is unsuccessful, and suggest instead that Ranciere provides the conceptual tools to identify an egalitarianism within Dionysian political theory. Adapted from the source document.

This article is a comparative examination of foreign invasions of Afghanistan since 1838. It assesses why such invasions were launched, why they succeeded or failed, and how Afghans responded to them. It demonstrates that intelligence failures, and confused and over-optimistic policy, shaped all such decisions to invade; that in most cases, Afghans were not so much collaborators or resisters as opportunists; that not all invasions failed, while those which failed, did so less because of damage inflicted by Afghans, than because of the limited value of Afghanistan as an interest. The article concludes by examining current western involvement in Afghanistan in the broader context of this history.

Vor der Unabhängigkeit Simbabwes war der Zugang zu den Schulen durch Rassengesetze geregelt, was zu extremen Restriktionen führte. Auch zehn Jahre später ist noch die Hälfte der Erwachsenen Analphabeten. Danach folgte eine Phase der quantitativen Ausweitung des Bildungswesens, wobei aber beachtlich qualitative Mängel festgestellt werden. Gefordert wird eine weitere demokratische Diskussion der künftigen Entwicklung sowie nicht zuletzt eine Reform der Lehrerausbildung. Die Lehrer sind zudem in ihrer Kreativität durch die hierarchische Verwaltungsstruktur eingeengt. (DÜI-Wsl)

For much of the twentieth century the Peruvian working-class has been limited in size and divided between different groups with divergent political objectives. Successive Peruvian governments have been able to capitalize on these features in their attempts to control the working-class, directly regulating workers' organizations or playing off one group against another. Yet, despite these limits and divisions, workers have on several occasions staged general strikes and pressured governments into taking account of their demands. Consequently, the political development of sectors of the working-class at the local level has been closely affected by political processes at the national level.

1. Algeria's Islamists in times of political change : an exceptional case? / Rachid Ouaissa -- 2. The trivialization of Hindu nationalism and the reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie / Sebastian Schwecke -- 3. Globalization and Islamic radicalism in the Arab Gulf region / Mary Ann Tetreault -- 4. The economic ideology of Hasan al-Banna and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood / Ivesa Lubben -- 5. The AKP or the success of a hybrid / Gerard Groc -- 6. Similarities and differences in the strategies and programs of the BJP and the Congress in India / Randhir B. Jain -- 7. Power games or programmatic evolution in the BJP / Klaus Julian Voll -- 8. Middle classes and new cultural-identitarian policital movements : perspectives / Hartmut Elsenhans -- 9. How to build a viable economic policy on Islamic foundations the case of the MSP party, Algeria / Abdelkrim Dahmen -- 10. The Bharatiya Janata Party : identitarianism and governance agenda / Rajvir Sharma -- 11. Rivalry, failure of the secular nationalists, geography, history : embedding the rising new cultural-identitarian movements in Africa and Asia in the emerging multipolar system / Hartmut Elsenhans.

As an epilogue to the essays in this special issue, the article revolves around the question of the specificity of urban religious experiences. In addressing this question, I will first elaborate on the conceptual notion of the city that fruitfully frames the essays, in order to show, by a second step, its strengths but also some blind spots. Finally, ways to illuminate the blind spots are suggested which at the same time may stimulate further research in the field of urban religion.