Suchergebnisse

La crisis de los partidos políticos venezolanos, ostensible desde la década de los años '80, tuvo su expresión política más acabada en el triunfo electoral de Hugo Chávez en diciembre de 1998. Los acontecimientos que sucedieron a partir de entonces tuvieron una importante cobertura por parte del periodismo argentino, particularmente los medios de mayor circulación como son La Nación y Clarín. La información que se percibe desde esos y otros medios de comunicación social sobre el proceso venezolano es más frecuente y con mayor grado de detalle que en etapas anteriores y pese a la clara intencionalidad de generar opinión, permite un mayor conocimiento de una realidad conflictiva y polémica. ; The crisis of Venezuelan political parties, evident since the eighties, had its ultimate political expression with Hugo Chávez's electoral victory in December, 1998. The events that followed had an important coverage in the Argentinian journalism especially of the most known newspapers such as La Nación and Clarín. The information concerning the Venezuelan process perceived from these and other communication media is more frequent and detailed than in previous stages and -despite its clear purpose of creating an opinion- it allows for a greater understanding of a conflicting and controversial reality. ; Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales

In the past decade, 21 countries have adopted gender quota laws that require between 20% and 50% of all legislative candidates to be women. What explains the adoption of these laws? I argue that three factors make politicians more likely to adopt gender quota laws. First, electoral uncertainty creates an opportunity for internal party reform that factions within a party can exploit to their advantage. Second, the courts play an important role because of the centrality of the issue of equal protection under the law to gender quotas. Finally, cross‐partisan mobilization among female legislators raises the costs of opposing such legislation by drawing public attention to it. I examine these three claims with regard to Mexico, where the federal congress passed a 30% gender quota law in 2002.I'd give up my seat for you if it wasn't for the fact that I'm sitting in it myself.—Groucho Marx(quoted in Abdela 2001)[Many Latin American countries] have 'homosexual' political systems, that is, the power of the political parties and the state is in the hands of only one of the sexes.…—Line Bareiro, Paraguayan feminist(Bareiro and Soto 1992, 11)

This paper examines the interplay between the life and ideas of a Catalan anarchist and autodidact, Salvador Torrents, who migrated to Australia in 1915. Until his death in 1951, Torrents, from his isolated farm in North Queensland, contributed regular commentaries and articles in libertarian newspapers in Spain, France and the United States. With the exception of the years of the Spanish civil war, Torrents remained outside mainstream Australian labour politics. Like many non‐English speaking immigrants, a lack of the language was an obstacle to participation. As well, as an anarchist, Torrents considered political parties and electoral politics a waste of time in achieving social and political change. Instead he propounded, and practised, the transformative powers of self‐education and the revolutionary role of the autodidact in fomenting radical change. His ideas had been forged in the turbulent politics of Catalonia in the first decades of the century. In Australia he continued to apply the same analysis in what he perceived as the similar context which Southern European immigrants confronted in North Queensland. Although invisible on the Australian Left, Torrents functioned as a left wing intellectual, contributing to a particular public discourse, which took place in a space that was separated from the mainstream Australian Left by language and different radical traditions.

This article attempts to explain the rural–urban voting patterns
in the
1992 Ghanaian presidential election. In this election, rural voters voted

overwhelmingly for the incumbent and urban voters did the opposite.
It is argued that Ghana's Structural Adjustment Programme (1983–92)

was distributionally favourable to rural households and unfavourable
to urban households. A link is therefore drawn between the
distributional impacts of the Structural Adjustment Programme and
the voting patterns of rural and urban households.The relationship between the state of the economy and the fortunes
of political parties at the polls is one which has generated a lot of
debate. This debate has largely taken place within the confines of
Western democracies, not least because of the absence of Western-style

democracy in many developing countries. We are, however, seeing a
movement towards 'democracy' in many developing countries,
with
pressures for economic liberalisation going hand in glove with those for

political liberalisation. The increasing democratisation by many
African countries undertaking Structural Adjustment Programmes
provides us with an opportunity to investigate the relationships
between the welfare implications of these programmes and the voting
behaviour of the electorate. Is voting behaviour in Africa any different

from that in Western democracies?

Despite the lack of legal channels through which binding commitments can be made by the government, economic and political factors enable it to affect future outcomes. In practice, large transaction costs are associated with any significant change of policy, and therefore the current government can adopt policies so that certain outcomes are more likely to be realized by its successor. In this paper it is argued that transaction costs combined with electoral uncertainty are likely to drive the current government to adopt a policy which is extreme relative to the preferences of the existing political parties. This policy is adopted in order to ensure that due to transaction costs, the future government will not depart radically from the most preferred policy of the current government. If the current policy is likely to affect the election outcome, then, in addition to the above considerations, the electorate attitudes would have to be taken into account by the government. Hence, the current government confronts two factors in choosing its policies: the behavior of the future government and the behavior of the electorate. The interplay between the two factors determines the choice of the current policy.

Seven drafts of the constitution submitted to the Polish Sejm by political parties have been analyzed and compared within the scope of regulations concerning the economic organization of the society: property rights, freedom of economic activity and its limitations, social security, state budget and debt, etc. Though advanced by groups of different or even (seemingly) opposite political orientations, the drafts do not differ much, all of them presenting a vision of a rather liberal state with the possibility of state intervention, in case it is necessary to protect "the public good". Most important differences may be noticed in the area of social insurance, education and health service. It is, however, often difficult to state decisively what the differences between the drafts consist in. All the drafts have been written in a very general language. It is only the future legislation which will determine the shape of the economic system of the state, and will interpret the still vague regulations of the constitution, the final version of which will certainly be a compromise between the submitted drafts. ; Digitalizacja i deponowanie archiwalnych zeszytów RPEiS sfinansowane przez MNiSW w ramach realizacji umowy nr 541/P-DUN/2016

This paper deals with the politics of redistribution in local government. Traditionally, it has been assumed that redistributive policies are crucial in electoral competition and party politics, both in national and local political systems. From this perspective, differences in local competition and party systems are essential to an explanation of local redistributive efforts. Peterson (1981), however, claims that redistributive policies are excluded from the local agenda because they impair local economic prosperity. These policies are therefore not conceived as instruments in the vote-maximizing strategies of local political parties. In this paper, hypotheses on the impact of party competition and party politics on local redistribution are formulated and tested on data for 342 Dutch municipalities. The results show that, contrary to what would be expected from Peterson's perspective, municipal redistributive efforts were related to electoral competitiveness and the party system. The proposed model, however, proved to be unsatisfactory in accurately predicting the direction of the effects of these explanatory variables. These results suggest that, rather than abandoning the study of local redistribution as a non-issue in subnational politics, an effort should be made to develop a better theoretical understanding of the ways in which competition and party politics shape these policies.

Challenged is the neo-Leninist thesis which suggests that the integration & stability of the capitalist world economy depends on the effective intervention of one strong, hegemonic state. Unlike the early twentieth century, the postwar capitalist experience has created an integrated, transnational bourgeoisie, & political parties have evolved to reflect the North Atlantic consensus in favor of global economic integration. This perspective is supported by making a sharp distinction between the functioning of a national capitalist economy & the behavior of giant capitalist enterprises. The British case indicates that it is possible for a national economy to decline while global corporations owned by national capitalists flourish. It is also noted that the US encouraged this political economic trajectory of global liberalism by permitting West European & Japanese elites considerable autonomy shortly after the conclusion of WWII. Given the integrative consensus within this global power bloc, it should not be expected that the world economy will disintegrate as the relative economic strength of the US declines. Nation-state elites still struggle to represent national economic interests, but these contemporary nationalist conflicts focus on establishing a favorable terrain for futher capitalist integration rather than establishing protected fields of capitalist influence. 25 References. AA

Several conditions contributed to bring about the 1964 coup against Goulart. Deteriorating economic conditions, with high inflation coupled with stagnation, alienated large sectors of the population, including the middle class, businessmen, and the military. Many considered Goulart's presidency illegitimate but did not question the regime itself. When it became clear after Goulart's removal that the military would install a dictatorship, many who had supported the ouster of Goulart turned against the military

The view of critics like Myrdal that a solution to problems of mass poverty requires sweeping changes in established cultural attitudes and institutions which cannot be carried out through democratic methods remains influential in India among intellectuals and radical political parties. Yet, a frontal assault on the existing social order would delay or abort basic economic reforms by fragmenting large numbers of the poorer classes along more potent allegiances to religion, language, and caste. An alternative solution can be devised based on the distinction betweendirectandindirectobstacles to economic development which are part of the social setting. Direct constraints are found in patterns of land ownership and land tenure. By contrast, the cultural attitudes, caste structures, and power relations are indirect obstacles in the sense that they strengthen ideological and political patterns that stand in the way of agrarian reform. Under Indian conditions democratic rather than authoritarian institutions offer the best prospect over the long term for carrying out basic economic changes. They strengthen egalitarian values and provide an opportunity for direct organization of the more numerous lower castes to weaken both the legitimacy and power of the dominant landed castes—without risking the social disorder of a direct confrontation.

Abstract: Following the election of the Whitlam government in December 1972 changes in the composition, work and style of ministers' offices were substantial. Evaluations of the emerging pattern conflicted, often quite sharply. This paper surveys the pattern of staffing introduced by Labor and examines in particular the roles of ministerial officers as political and policy advisers. The paper also discusses recent experiences with ministerial staff in the United Kingdom and Canada, and makes brief reference to the use of ministerial staff by the Fraser government. Assessing the effectiveness of ministerial advisers is not easy. No straight forward measures of effectiveness exist. It is argued that, despite the ambitions of some ministerial staff during the Whitlam government, the role of ministerial advisers was essentially limited and confined. Ministers found them useful but few found them overwhelmingly so. While the Fraser government has reduced the number and visibility of ministerial staff it has retained the institutional underpinning of Labor's system. In the search for ways of assisting political parties to govern and to respond to changing situations, it is likely that ministerial staff with ability to advise on policy will receive further attention in the future.

Nowhere in Latin America is the struggle of the working class against imperialism and its national allies as fierce as in Argentina. Daily newspaper stories document the intensity of the undeclared civil war raging in that country. A brief glimpse of the reality of this struggle, which claims hundreds of lives, emerges from the following article. It is excerpted from the Report submitted to the Latin American Studies Association by its Sub-Committee on Academic Freedom and Human Rights in Argentina of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Human Rights composed of Juan E. Corradi (New York University), Chairperson, Eldon Kenworthy (Cornell University), and William Wipfler (National Council of Churches). The Report and its lengthy documen tary supplement "Argentina de hoy: un régimen de terror, informe sobre la represión desde julio de 1973 hasta diciembre de 1974," discusses the historical background of the current struggle, outlines its present dimensions, and amply documents repression against specific groups and institutions. Among the latter it treats: political parties, workers and unions, universities, the Church, the mass media and artistic community, and marginal groups. It also includes testimony from political prisoners and persons tortured under the present government (on Argentina in general, see Corradi 1974a and 1974b and NACLA, 1975).

There are still a large number of local councils where the majority of the seats are not held by nominees of the political parties. It is important that we should try to understand the operation of the decision-making process in these authorites as well as in those in which the party groups dominate the council chamber. Non-partisan local authorites are generally to be found in the smaller district authorities (smaller in terms of population size, that is) and in the county councils serving predominantly rural areas.
Non-partisan political systems are concentrated in the smaller district authorities and the county councils serving rural areas, partly because, as Jeffrey Stanyer has pointed out, 'in order to vote on other than party lines, an elector must know something of the personal characteristics of the candidates' and he is more likely to have this information in a small community; and also because the difficulties of individual electioneering are greater in larger electoral areas. Of course, as the community grows larger, the local newspaper may attempt to provide relevant information. In large cities this is usually confined to brief and rather dry biographical information about the candidate and his civic activities.

The Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch, hastily begun on March 13, 1920, and ingloriusly ended with the resignation of Dr. Wolfgang Kapp on March 17, has already been the subject of significant study. The details of the putsch itself, the character of the conspirators, and their motives, the positions taken by the political parties and leaders, and the reasons for its failure are fairly Well known. It is generally agreed that the circle of conspirators had too narrow a social base and was too divided in its purposes to be successful. In essence, it was a revolt of unemployed reactionary East Elbian officials like Kapp himself and his "Minister of the Interior," Traugott von Jagow, disgruntled conservative military officers, the most important of whom was Freiherr von Lüttwitz, and military adventurers like Colonel Max Bauer, Major Pabst, and Captain Ehrhardt. Where Kapp sought far-reaching constitutional and political changes, Lüttwitz strove for more short-term goals, i.e., reconstruction of the cabinet to give it an "expert" character, new elections, and a larger army. The Kapp regime was doomed because of the refusal of the government bureaucracy to serve it and because of the general strike called by the trade unions on March 14.