Suchergebnisse

"About 30 of us, all exhausted with aching feet, gathered in a run-down outdoor cantina in the center of Mexico City in April 2012. The sound of varied regional accents bounced off the walls-the sing-songy lilt of the Yucatán, the nasal northern inflection, rapid-fire Mexico City slang, and at times my gringo-accented Spanish interjected a question or comment. This motley crew had spent the day in the Mexico's Senate chanting, waiting, listening, chiding, cajoling, and finally cheering when a majority of Mexican Senators voted to approve the Victims' Law. We"--

Claim-making - the everyday strategies through which citizens pursue rights fulfilment - is often overlooked in studies of political behavior, which tend to focus on highly visible, pivotal moments: elections, mass protests, high court decisions, legislative decisions. But what of the politics of the everyday? This Element takes up this question, drawing together research from Colombia, South Africa, India, and Mexico. The authors argue that claim-making is a distinct form of citizenship practice characterized by its everyday nature, which is neither fully programmatic nor clientelistic; and which is prevalent in settings marked by gaps between the state's de jure commitments to rights and their de facto realization. Under these conditions, claim making is both meaningful (there are rights to be secured) and necessary (fulfillment is far from guaranteed). Claim-making of this kind is of critical consequence, both materially and politically, with the potential to shape how citizens engage (or disengage) the state.

Does political mistrust lead to institutional disengagement? Much work in political science holds that trust matters for political participation, including recourse to the justice system. Scholars of judicial institutions, relying largely on survey research, argue that low trust decreases legal compliance and cooperation, threatening the rule of law. Legal consciousness and mobilization scholars, meanwhile, suggest that trust does not drive justice system engagement. However, their single-case study approach makes assessing the wider implications of their findings difficult. Based on an innovative comparative focus-group study in two uneven democratic states, Chile and Colombia, we show that trust is not the primary factor driving justice system engagement. Rather, people's engagement decisions are shaped by their expectations and aspirations for their political system and by their politically constructed capacities for legal agency. Our study offers insights of relevance for analysts of various forms of political participation in uneven democratic states across the globe.