Suchergebnisse

Since Aristotle, a vast literature has suggested that economic inequality has important political consequences. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for government income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in dictatorships. Most such arguments crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution. Using a variety of large, cross-national surveys, we show that, in recent years, ordinary people have had little idea about such things. What they think they know is often wrong. Widespread ignorance and misperceptions of inequality emerge robustly, regardless of the data source, operationalization, and method of measurement. Moreover, we show that the perceived level of inequality – and not the actual level – correlates strongly with demand for redistribution and reported conflict between rich and poor. We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be either abandoned or reframed as theories about the effects of perceived inequality.

The study analyses bureaucratic capacity in Brazil's and Argentina's federal governments by applying the concept of state capacity. To capture the capacity civil servants the study investigated dimensions such as professionalization, qualification, promotion rules, and recruitment mechanisms for entering the civil service. The study shows that although both countries experienced the same trajectory in the early years of the construction of their bureaucratic systems and that access to civil service combined patronage and meritocratic patterns in the early 2000s, however, Brazilian political elites implemented a constitutional mandate determining that access to civil service was conditioned to competitive exams, making the system closer to Weber's rational-legal authority type. Argentina, in contrast, kept the selection of their civil servants based on personal and political ties. This does not mean that Argentina's bureaucracy lacks quality but they do not fulfill some of Weber's requirements such as stability and selection more based on merit rather than patronage. The study argues this difference is explained by different redemocratization agendas.

This paper uses new data on Swedish national wealth over a period of two hundred years to study whether the patterns in wealth-income ratios previously found by Piketty and Zucman (2014) for some very rich and large Western economies extend to smaller countries that were historically backward and developed a different set of political and economic institutions during the twentieth century. The findings point to both similarities and differences. In the pre-industrial era, Sweden had much lower wealth levels than the rest of Europe, and the main explanation is that the Swedes were too poor to save their income. Over the twentieth century, Swedish aggregate trends and levels are much more similar to those of the rest of Europe, but the structure of national wealth differs. In Sweden, government wealth grew much faster and became more important, not least through its relatively large public pension system. This suggests an explicit role of historical economic and political institutions for the long-run evolution of wealth-income ratios.

The creation of bureaucratic rule through political process impacts the often conflicting interests. The difficulty of implementing change is probably because political consensus is not easily obtained. Regulations are often made in greater details expecting to regulate the behavior of organizations and bureaucracy. However, most regulations clash one another, so regulations are changed before it was even implemented, and the change is also in conflict with others. Changes are often difficult because the changing demand is not only for the rules, but also the bureaucracy that is closely related to mental attitude or the man behind the system. If the public bureaucracy in the public service is not qualified, bureaucracy will be abandoned by users (citizens), and it means it has failed the mission of providing services to the public. This is what happens in the Indonesia's transition government entering the reformation era, therefore legislations need to be created in greater detail to regulate the behavior of organizations and government bureaucracy.Keywords: reformation, bureaucracy, public service

The starting point of this article is a lecture (Émigration frioulane et Résistance) given by the author in Paris – March 2014 – on behalf of two associations of French people of Italian origin whose ancestors had come to France between the Great Wars from that part of Italy which at present runs alongside Slovenia and Croatia and is included in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. The text, duly elaborated and accompanied by foot-notes, focuses on the case of sixty-four individuals who shared that regional origin and all of whom got involved in the French Resistance. Within the limits of the existing literature, and the available evidence, the article brings to light their different destinies taking into account several factors: age, place of origin, residence in France, job, political or military experience (in the Spanish Civil War, for instance), family and village networks as well as their political allegiance, most of which was communist even if the ties with either the French or the Italian Communist Party greatly varied

This paper uses new data on Swedish national wealth over a period of two hundred years to study whether the patterns in wealth-income ratios previously found by Piketty and Zucman (2014) for some very rich and large Western economies extend to smaller countries that were historically backward and developed a different set of political and economic institutions during the twentieth century. The findings point to both similarities and differences. In the pre-industrial era, Sweden had much lower wealth levels than the rest of Europe, and the main explanation is that the Swedes were too poor to save their income. Over the twentieth century, Swedish aggregate trends and levels are much more similar to those of the rest of Europe, but the structure of national wealth differs. In Sweden, government wealth grew much faster and became more important, not least through its relatively large public pension system. This suggests an explicit role of historical economic and political institutions for the long-run evolution of wealth-income ratios.

What implies the conversion to fundamentalist Islam? What are the repercussions and implications of 'political Islam' in specific contexts? The relation between Islam, democracy and violence is often represented in a reductive or simplistic way. In order to contribute to a reasoned debate on these pressing questions, this essay covers some key dynamics stemming from long-term ethnographic observation regarding the conversion to neo Salafism among Arab Bedouin citizens in southern Israel, placing them in the context of contemporary developments of Islamic political thought. The ethnographic sensitivity, combined with the voices of some eminent Islamic intellectuals, allows to go beyond both the rhetoric of cultural complexity and the common-sense view that Islamic terrorism would be a kind of 'anti imperialism of the losers', arguments employed often to contest emerging neo-orientalist discourses. In this sense, the essay states the need to shed light on coordinates and interpretative categories that are not placed in an essentially different but in often unexpected ways.

This collection engages with current issues on equal protection in the USA, as seen from the perspectives of leading academics in this area. Contributors with a range of perspectives interrogate the legal, theoretical and factual assumptions which shape case law and consider the extent to which they satisfactorily address contemporary concerns with social hierarchies and norms.Divided into five parts, the study focusses on the connections between equal protection jurisprudence, discrimination in its contemporary manifestations, the implications of identity politics and the moral and political conceptualizations of equality that represent the parameters of debate. Drawing on historical analysis and disciplinary insights of the social sciences, the book bridges the gap between theory and practice. The themes presented and analyses developed are among some of the most contentious currently in America, and will be of interest not just to lawyers and legal academics, but also to inter-disciplinary social science researchers, including sociologists, economists and political scientist. © Anne Richardson Oakes 2015. All rights reserved.

The 1995 Quebec referendum almost resulted in Quebec's secession from Canada. This paper makes the case that since then the chances for the accommodation of Québécois nationalism in Canada have significantly increased – more than that: today, cooperative arrangements between Québécois and Canadian nationalism have reached an unprecedented stability. We make this argument on a conceptual and an empirical basis. We contend that both Anglo-Canadian and Québécois conceptions of nationalism have experienced a shift from an ethnic to a civic orientation over the course of the 20th century. We argue that today, Canadian nationalism is widely understood as purely civic whereas Quebec is a case of what Michael Seymour has described as a socio-political nation. From this perspective, the accommodation of Québécois nationalism has become more likely under the current political and economic conjuncture for three major reasons: a new emphasis on citizenship in Québécois nationalism, the integration of immigrants, and the dominance of neoliberal globalisation centred on individual autonomy and flexibility. ; http://www.kanada-studien.org/publikationen/zks/

Conflict has a detrimental effect on the structures of local communities. Current research shows that the direct and indirect effects of conflict are especially destructive for women. Although the call for a gender focus in (post-)conflict countries has garnered international attention with the adoption of Women, Peace and Security Resolutions by the UN Security Council, the issue is still understudied. Often, the interlinkage between the political empowerment of women, violence against women and the economic position of women is overlooked. Yet, coping strategies related to the direct and indirect effects of conflict result in political and economic participation. This integrated effect stresses the importance of understanding the role of women in the post-conflict economy and its relationship to 'social services justice'. This research aims at addressing this issue by looking at the obstacles and opportunities faced by women in terms of economic participation during and after conflict. The theoretical framework is supported by a case study analysis on the recent conflict in Burundi using in-depth interviews and desk research.

International audience ; Over the last twenty years, European Union (EU) actorness at both regional and global scales, has become a fruitful topic of analysis in the eld of political science, and more specically in international relations and political geography. Critical geopolitics dedicated many substantive papers on EU discourses and representations. Our paper aims at providing a complementary way to study texts issued by the EU and to question EU actorness by adopting an approach based on textual analysis. The corpus examined includes the seven communications on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) issued between 2003 and 2013. These communications provide essential information regarding relations between the EU and its immediate neighbours. The textual analysis allows several relevant characteristics of discourses to be highlighted: stability and changes, actors, spaces and scales mentioned. The outcomes of the analysis conrm previous research on the subject: The ENP appears as a bilateral state-centric policy, missing global scale, and neglecting the role of regional powers like Turkey or Russia.

The Polish May Constitution, formally recognized as the fi rst constitution in Europe, differed from the American Federal Constitution of 1787 and the French Constitution of 1791 in that that it had failed to create any legitimized foundations for a pro-revolutionary or modern state. Even worse, the Polish Constitution of 1791 did not provide for Polish citizenship, nor did it directly articulate the principle of the equality of citizens or for political equality, or proclaimed the fundamental rights. ; The Polish May Constitution, formally recognized as the fi rst constitution in Europe, differed from the American Federal Constitution of 1787 and the French Constitution of 1791 in that that it had failed to create any legitimized foundations for a pro-revolutionary or modern state. Even worse, the Polish Constitution of 1791 did not provide for Polish citizenship, nor did it directly articulate the principle of the equality of citizens or for political equality, or proclaimed the fundamental rights

Confounding all conventional wisdom, the fertility rate in the Islamic Republic of Iran fell from around 7.0 births per woman in the early 1980s to 2.1 births per woman in 2000. That this, the largest and fastest fall in fertility ever recorded, should have occurred in one of the world's few Islamic Republics demands explanation. The paper addresses this issue in three parts. The second part is its core: a description of fertility levels, trends and patterns in Iran by rural and urban areas and provinces in the 1972-2000 period. Own-children data from the 1986 and 1996 Censuses as well as the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) allow us to analyse single-year movements of fertility over the last three decades. This demographic description is proceeded by a socio-political history of Iran in the years 1970-2000, providing a context for the demographic changes. We conclude with some speculations linking specific socio-economic and political changes to the demographic change. Our concluding arguments suggest continued low fertility in Iran.

Theorists of civil-military relations have for long tried to identify the specific factors that lead to weak civilian control of the armed forces in some countries and very strong oversight regimes in others. While some authors highlight the importance of structural factors (such as the level of economic modernization), others point to the crucial role of personal agency (i.e., the quality and characteristics of leadership). Obviously, some form of interplay between structure and agency does occur, but the precise patterns of this relationship have rarely been explored. This article analyses the overall strong, yet institutionally volatile state of civilian control in post-authoritarian Indonesia, and evaluates the role of structural and agency-related factors in this outcome. It concludes that Indonesia has broken its supposed path dependence in several historical, economic and political areas, suggesting that post-1998 actions by political leaders and elite groups have played a more significant role in shaping the new civil-military relationship than commonly thought.

This paper provides a comparative history of radical pan-Americanism with the view to examining its potential under contemporary geo-political and socio-economic conditions. Radical pan-Americanism has manifested itself in different ways according to specific national contexts and historical circumstances. It has been inspired by local popular struggles against imperialist power and through the recognition of a shared history. In contrast, hegemonic pan-Americanism has tended to be driven by the interests of powerful states and their strategic interests. We emphasise how radical pan- Americanism has periodically reappeared in response to the prevailing form of hegemonic pan-Americanism. Two historical traditions are examined-the Venezuelan tradition and the Nicaraguan tradition. These examples suggest that the possibilities of uniting local inflections of radical pan-Americanism depend upon the prevailing geo-political climate. We conclude by assessing whether the early twenty-first century is a propitious moment for radical pan-Americanism, or another false dawn.