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Political Coalitions (political + coalition)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences87%

Selected Abstracts

INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL MOBILITY AND TRADE POLITICS: CAPITAL FLOWS, POLITICAL COALITIONS, AND LOBBYING

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 3 2004
Michael J. Hiscox
Conventional wisdom holds that increasing international capital mobility reduces incentives for firms to lobby for trade protection. This paper argues that the effects of increased international capital mobility on the lobbying incentives of firms depend critically upon levels of inter-industry mobility. General-equilibrium analysis reveals that if capital is highly industry-specific, greater international mobility among some types of specific capital may increase lobbying incentives for owners of other specific factors and thereby intensify industry-based rent-seeking in trade politics. Evidence on levels of inward and outward investment in US manufacturing industries between 1982 and 1996, and on industry lobbying activities, indicate that these effects may be quite strong. [source]

Recovering from Crisis: The Case of Thailand's Spatial Fix

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2007
Jim Glassman
Abstract: Although the Asian economic crisis has been the subject of numerous analyses, the varied and uneven processes by which different Asian countries have recovered from the crisis have received comparatively less attention. This article focuses on the process of recovery in Thailand. While the crisis and recovery both have international dimensions that go beyond individual nation-states, the case of Thailand can be used to analyze some of the forces that are at work in both the national and international contexts. Thailand's process of recovery can be analyzed by noting tensions and overlaps among different forms of spatial fix,those involving investment in Bangkok' built environment, those involving the geographic decentralization of investment to lower-cost production sites, and those involving the effort to expand exports. Each of these spatial fixes involves different accumulation strategies and, therefore, political coalitions. This situation suggests the centrality of social struggles over the appropriation of surplus to both crisis and recovery. [source]

Tutors and Pupils: International Organizations, Central European Elites, and Western Models

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2001
Wade Jacoby
In the past decade, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe have often sought to imitate Western organizational and institutional models, while organizations like the EU and NATO have often acted as "institutional tutors" in the region. Using evidence from Hungary and the Czech Republic, this paper demonstrates why imitating Western structures has been both administratively expedient and useful in building political coalitions. It also stresses that the short-term benefits of doing so are followed by longer-term costs. The paper answers four questions: How have certain models been held up to CEE elites? Why might some such models be targets for elites to imitate? How does such imitation occur? And what results from imitation? Contrary to expectations that institutional modeling would be merely technocratic and used only yearly in the transformation, the paper's threefold heuristic of templates, thresholds, and adjustments shows that the process is both politically contentious and sustained. [source]

Shifts in Global Security Policies: Why They Matter for the South

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2009
Susan L. Woodward
The global security order has been evolving since 1989, led initially by the USA to expand its post-1945 order in Europe to the rest of the world but propelled as well by competition and debates within that post-Second World War alliance, as collective victors in the Cold War, about how to define a new international order. This article identifies three US policies that began this restructuring; their parallel redefinitions of security, and the tensions provoked by this agenda and its consequences, both within the ,North', replacing the ,West', between North and ,South', replacing the,East'and the resulting multiple opportunities for alternative political coalitions, North against South, between North and South, and within the South, that have yet to play themselves out fully. The resulting fluidity has not yet stabilised into a new international security order. [source]

The Political Economy of AIDS Treatment: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Generic Supply

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2007
Kenneth C. Shadlen
This article examines the relationship between intellectual property (IP) and public health, with a focus on the extension of AIDS treatment in the developing world. While most of the literature on IP and health examines the conditions affecting poor countries' capacities to acquire essential medicines, I show the distinct,and more complicated,political economy of production and supply. IP regulations alter the structure of generic pharmaceutical sectors in the countries capable of supplying essential medicines, and changes in market structure affect actors' economic and political interests and capacities. These new constellations of interests and capacities have profound implications for the creation and maintenance of political coalitions in support of on-going drug supply. The result is that the global AIDS treatment campaign becomes marked by mismatches of interests and capacities: those actors capable of taking the economic, legal, and political steps necessary to increase the supply and availability of essential drugs have diminished interest in doing so, and those actors with an interest in expanding treatment may lack the capacities to address the problem of undersupply. By focusing centrally on actors' interests in and capacities for economic and political action, the article restores political economy to analysis of an issue-area that has been dominated by attention to international law. And by examining the fragility of the coalitions supporting the production and supply of generic drugs, the article points to the limits of transnational activist networks as enduring agents of change. [source]

Bono Made Jesse Helms Cry: Jubilee 2000, Debt Relief, and Moral Action in International Politics

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2007
JOSHUA WILLIAM BUSBY
Do states and decision-makers ever act for moral reasons? And if they do, is it only when it is convenient or relatively costless for them to do so? A number of advocacy movements,on developing country debt relief, climate change, landmines, and other issues,emerged in the 1990s to ask decision-makers to make foreign policy decisions on that basis. The primary advocates were motivated not by their own material interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What contributes to the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? Why do some advocacy efforts succeed where others fail? Through a case study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, this article offers an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates to get the attention of decision-makers. Such strategic but not narrowly self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value and/or ideational traditions to build broader political coalitions. This article, through case studies of debt relief in the United States and Japan, also links the emerging literature on strategic framing to the domestic institutional context and the ways veto players or "policy gatekeepers" evaluate trade-offs between costs and values. [source]

Seeking the Truth, Spiritual and Political: Japanese American Community Building through Engaged Ethnic Buddhism

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 1 2010
Masumi Izumi
This essay documents the history of the Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Central Los Angeles, a Japanese American temple belonging to the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) School. In the United States, ethnic Buddhists are generally perceived as socially conservative and politically passive, while convert Buddhists are known to be active in peace movements and social activism. The essay analyzes the reforms Senshin members introduced to the temple's religious rituals and elucidates the development of new cultural activities and art forms, which not only contributed to the emergence of vernacular ethnic art and music, but also to the construction of a community of socially engaged Japanese American Buddhists. By opening their temple to members of local minority communities, Senshin Buddhists formed artistic and political coalitions with other peoples of color, harboring subaltern cultural activism, which transgressed national, racial, and religious borders, and defied hegemonic racial, gender, and class hierarchies. [source]

Change, Continuity, and the Evolution of the Law

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2008
Forrest Maltzman
Congress regularly passes significant laws. Some of these laws continue in their initial form, with the original bargain struck by the enacting coalition untouched by any future laws; others are changed,strengthened or weakened,soon after passage. What accounts for this variation in the stability of laws, in the longevity of the original legislative agreement? We contend that political conditions at the time of enactment,in particular, the existence of divided government and the level of ideological disagreement between the House and Senate,influence the likelihood that a law will be amended. We demonstrate that laws originally crafted by diverse political coalitions are less durable than those crafted by strong, unified coalitions, which are in a position to entrench their preferred policies and protect them from future change. Furthermore, we show that the probability of a law being amended is affected by future political conditions, the actions of the judiciary, and factors specific to the law. [source]