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State Politics (state + politics)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Is There a Political Ecology of the Sierra Leonean Landscape?

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2001
A. Endre Nyerges
Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. William Reno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 229 pp. Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone. Paul Richards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996. 182 pp. Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies Are Failing in West Africa. John F. Oates. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 310 pp. [source]

Bottom-Up Federalism: The Diffusion of Antismoking Policies from U.S. Cities to States

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2006
Charles R. Shipan
Studies of policy diffusion often focus on the horizontal spread of enactments from one state to another, paying little or no attention to the effects of local laws on state-level adoptions. For example, scholars have not tested whether local policy adoptions make state action more likely (through a snowball effect) or less likely (through a pressure valve effect). This study conducts the first comprehensive analysis of vertical policy diffusion from city governments to state governments, while simultaneously examining the influence of state-to-state and national-to-state diffusion. Focusing on three different types of antismoking laws, we find evidence that policies do bubble up from city governments to state governments. State politics are crucial to this relationship, however, as local-to-state diffusion is contingent on the level of legislative professionalism and the strength of health advocates in the state. [source]

Pentecostals: The Power of the Powerless

DIALOG, Issue 1 2002
Lene Sjørup
Many researchers interpret Pentecostalism in terms of external factors such as European and North American history or economics. In this article Pentecostalism is examined from below, through qualitative interviews with women living in poverty in Santiago, Chile. The analysis shows how Pentecostalism led to a new theology where the believer became the subject of her own life. Social ascent was made through ecstatic experiences of the spirit in a caring community which directed the individual towards "a female ethos." This subjective change affected social changes in Chile under dictatorship but not in state politics because parts of the Pentecostal hierarchy collaborated with Pinochet. [source]

Moving up, moving down: Political careers across territorial levels

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003
Klaus Stolz
In the sparse literature on political careers in federal systems, regional positions are often seen as mere stepping stones on the way to federal office. But are they really? The recent professionalization of state politics in federal systems and the regionalization of former unitary states point to the strengthening of the regional level as a career arena in its own right. Could this lead to the emergence of a regional political class with a set of career interests distinct from those of national politicians? This article takes a first, comparative look at current patterns of career movements between regional and national parliaments in a wide range of federal and newly regionalized systems. The study shows that, contrary to general belief, the number of deputies actually moving from the regional to federal level is generally relatively low. While some cases show fairly integrated career structures, others exhibit a pattern of career development in which state or regional office functions as the main focus of political careers. The territorial structure of the political class is dependent upon a whole range of social, cultural and institutional factors. At the same time, it is also an important factor in the mechanics and institutional development of each federal system in question. [source]

"Divided Government" in State Executive Branches

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2003
Fred Monardi
The study of "divided government" has focused on the split partisan control of executive and legislative branches. The concept of divided government can also be applied to the study of state executive branches. There is no plausible reason for state electorates to prefer one party for governor and the opposing party for other state executive branch officials, yet many states have a governor of one party, while several of the state executive branch officers are of the opposing party. This study examines the extent of divided executive branches in state politics. Incumbency, state partisanship, and the changing nature of Southern politics affect levels of divisiveness in state executive branches. Electoral features do not affect levels of divisiveness. The data comprises states that have separately elected state executive officers between the years 1968 and 1993. [source]

The Living and the Lost: War and Possession in Vietnam

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2007
Mai Lan Gustafsson
The war in Vietnam claimed the lives of five million of its citizens, many of whom died in ways thought to have turned them into malevolent spirits who prey on the living. These angry ghosts are held responsible for a host of physical ailments and other misfortunes suffered by survivors of the war and their descendants. Known in the anthropological literature as possession illness, the cross-cultural treatment for such maladies is typically provided by practitioners like mediums and exorcists, who cure victims by interacting with noncorporeal entities. In Vietnam, such spirit healers were banned after the communist takeover of the North in 1945. This has posed a problem for the large numbers of Vietnamese who suffer from ghost-induced sickness. This paper focuses on three victims of angry ghosts, presenting the common origin, context, and resolution of their suffering. In doing so, it provides an overview of Vietnamese beliefs about death and the after-life, the ideal relationship between the living and the dead, and the connection between state politics and spirit practice. [source]

STATE-LEVEL BASIC WAGES IN AUSTRALIA DURING THE DEPRESSION, 1929,35: INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICS OVER MARKETS

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Peter Sheldon
Australia; basic wage; depression; institutions; state tribunal State wage-fixation tribunals developed quite particular patterns of basic wage fixation during the Depression. They declined to follow the Commonwealth Court's 10 per cent wage cut, thereby confining its effect to about half the workforce and creating distinctly different State and Commonwealth basic wage patterns in each capital city. Further, tribunals' uneven patterns of basic wage adjustment to deflation meant that in some states, the real State basic wage increased. Patterns of state institutional behaviour and state politics therefore help explain the stickiness of real average wage levels during the Depression. [source]