Suchergebnisse

A major feature of the political development of Western democracies is the growth of indigenous, ethnic and national groups striving for political self-determination. This book analyses the institutional responses individual governments have made to these demands. Sub-State Nationalism provides a much needed categorization and genuinely comparative analysis of the political voice gained by sub-state national groups in multinational democratic communities. The book includes international case-studies drawn from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. It covers the empirical question of what voice these groups have, and how its institutions are structured, and the analytical question of how such knowledge contributes to our theoretical understanding of the politics of group rights and representation.

AbstractAt the end of the twentieth century, Latin American states began processes of transition and democratic expansion. Two decades later, these processes seem to have been partially achieved through mostly competitive subnational governments in the region. Yet, some countries still show uncompetitive elections and restrictions to local and regional power. This study shows how the interaction between political and administrative decentralization conditions and competition vary in Colombian local municipalities. Using local electoral data and local numbers of contractors, it reveals that politicians at the national level and the number of local contractors are positively related to higher levels of political competition. These results evidence the importance of national political variables and show how administrative decentralization affects local electoral competition.

An enabling environment for malnutrition reduction includes creating policy and political momentum, and converting momentum to implementation and impact. We used several qualitative data sources to investigate changes in policy and action over time in Zambia. There now exists coherent policy covering key nutrition issues from several sectors, and multisectoral coordination structures at national level and in pilot districts. However, converting momentum into action faces challenges of limited national political and funding commitment, with increased donor resources currently bridging the gap, and reach into communities is still limited. To sustain recent stunting reductions there are still political challenges to be addressed in Zambia, and citizens and civil society will need to hold government to account for recent commitments on nutrition.

This study analyzes the impact of social capital on national policy satisfaction in Korea. Although social capital has been investigated in previous studies, most of them have been limited to the local government level. This study concerns national policies and uses data from the 2007 Survey of Citizen Perceptions of the Public Sector. In total 1,200 people responded from across the country. Using factor analysis, social capital factors were extracted: participation in political networks, participation in nonpolitical networks, trust in others, and altruism. Trust in others was statistically significant to all levels of policy satisfaction; however, other variables were significant only to certain policies. Unexpectedly, participation in political networks, by means of political demonstrations and online debate, was not significant with regard to satisfaction with any policy.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0032329206297145 ; In the 1990s, Bolivia's indigenous population mobilized to claim new political roles, and in the process, directly challenged the privileged position of economic elites within national political institutions. In response, business associations in Santa Cruz, Bolivia's most prosperous region, began to demand regional autonomy—in contrast to the demand for authoritarianism that characterized prior generations of business elites when confronted with threatening political change. After examining Santa Cruz' past relationship with the national government, this article explores the challenges that led economic elites in the department to seek autonomy and the strategies that they have adopted in pursuit of this goal. ; Funded by the Research Initiation Program at the Naval Postgraduate School.

As India's new dominant party system coalesced after 2014, the country entered a phase of centralisation. India has always had federalism with a strong centre, but from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s, political and economic regionalism and national coalition governments encompassing national and regional parties produced an appearance of deepening federalisation. Since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became the first party in over 25 years to win an outright parliamentary majority, the twin pillars of political centralisation under a dominant party system and economic concentration, have once again drawn attention to the contested nature of India's federal contract.

The Irish Government is in the process of developing a National Planning Framework (NPF). This will replace the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002-2020 (NSS). The NSS is generally considered to have been unsuccessful, mainly due to a lack of implementation driven by shortcomings in governance. This paper explores these shortcomings, and suggests ways to prevent similar difficulties with the NPF. The paper concludes that the political process needs to be at the heart of the preparation and adoption of the NPF. There is the danger that the NPF will fail if the political environment remains embedded in traditional approaches to planning across the state.

Given that most national executives have been men, it is a commonplace to observe that access to executive power is gendered. Men have historically served as heads of government, and few women have been presidents or prime ministers. Women's numbers are increasing, however, as is research focusing on women who have achieved national executive leadership (e.g., Jalalzai 2013; Murray 2010). Such research has emphasized women's individual resources and credentials, family background, and political experience as factors contributing to their political success; research focusing on the strategic and institutional structural factors that contribute to this success has been rare.

The purpose of the study is to delineate the impact of national and industry-specific government interventions and the influence of political parties in power. The study employs an interrupted time series design from the annual national coir export data (1970-2012) published by the Coir Board. The study concludes by highlighting that the significance of economic environment has a greater impact on the trends of coir exports than industry-specific interventions. A seminal finding of this study is that there is a significant difference in the coir exports during the period of governance by the two political fronts in Kerala.

IntroductionAlthough ethnocentrism is one of the fundamental concepts in the social sciences, its study has been impeded by a diversity of conceptualizations and measures. In recent years, a growing number of political scientists and psychologists have undertaken in-depth research into ethnocentrism. In addition, researchers have recently proposed a comprehensive reconceptualization of ethnocentrism and developed a new Ethnocentrism scale. There is strong evidence for this scale's reliability and validity in indexing ethnocentrism, but like most measures in psychology and political science, this scale is based on classical test theory. Item response theory (IRT) is a powerful psychometric technique that can provide a much more sophisticated test of test performance and is currently under-utilized in research.MethodsWe performed IRT to assess the psychometric properties of the Ethnocentrism scale on a sample of 4,187 participants.ResultsThe scale's items had strong psychometric properties to capture the ethnocentrism latent construct, particularly in the below average to above average range. Men required marginally lower levels of ethnocentrism to endorse less socially acceptable items than women (items relating to superiority, purity, or exploitativeness). When compared to liberals, conservatives responded more readily to nearly all ethnocentrism items. Given this variation, the IRT approach highlighted that future measurements must adjust for differential item functioning, albeit more for political orientation than gender identity.DiscussionThe findings detail how IRT can enhance measurement in political science and demonstrate the implications for how gender and political ideology may affect the differential performance of items.

"We live in an era of human-dominated ecosystems in which the demand for environmental governance is rising rapidly. At the same time, confidence in the capacity of governments to meet this demand is waning. How can we address the resultant governance deficit and achieve sustainable development? This book brings together perspectives from economics, management, and political science in order to identify innovative approaches to governance and bring them to bear on environmental issues. The authors' analysis of important cases demonstrates how governance systems need to fit their specific setting and how effective policies can be developed without relying exclusively on government. They argue that the future of environmental policies lies in coordinated systems that simultaneously engage actors located in the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. Governance for the Environment draws attention to cutting-edge questions for practitioners and analysts interested in environmental governance."--Jacket